Ward Carleton Williams

Weath ~ Wall St. & Violence

2011-10-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

It is disheartening and painful to look into the eyes of violent beings. There is a fundamental absence of connection. There is no opportunity to share a recognition of humanity, or awareness of love or peace. It is common as well with some spiritual teachers, public performers of every stripe especially those involved in the politics and trained in to our children we send to die and come back wounded and invisible after following our instructions to kill. Once you think about it you can see it in Obama and Hillery, It is the look in Lyndon Johnson’s eye; King and Kennedy both murdered to oppose equality, peace, or human dignity.

Lacking truth, honesty or moral standards in our culture is our primary failure. The glaring lack of any control over the addiction to violence or profit, when rhetoric of addiction falls to drugs in support of a prison state.. The denial of environmental cost and the poisoning of a public planet that does not belong to anyone, for nothing but simple profit, Is insanity.

As if that would buy a single moment of peace or comfort knowing ones part in creating the direct suffering of another. This is the unspoken responsibility of community and capitalism. If we cannot practice capitalism with humanity and equality then perhaps private wealth should move into history as a fragment of the shattered psyche that inhabited the last 20 or 30 centuries in the dominant groups of coincidentally violent and destructive beings. I don't say i know how to do it, I'm just saying that i want to do better.

The image of Anthony Bologna pepper spraying little girls held in a cage like puppies is a particularly disturbing example of what the extremely casual violent support of capital in looks like in broad day light, casual violence offered without thought or regret not worth of the consideration of the energy and darkness one like him would express in private, whether one is guilty or not then leaves the picture entirely in the absence of justice or humanity. What bothers me more is the absolutely fish eyed lack of humanity of the woman to his left who is apparently his slave has enslaved her own soul.

One wonders if humanity has any real claim to anything if this is the result of American sacrifice and posing as a humanitarian state. How this underscores the atrocity of predator drones and the so called human people doing such a job beggars the mind and ravages the soul.

I know it's simplistic, but we could change the banking system and just allow those who need money to borrow it just like the banks, built on the same pyramid of deposits of the wealthy. we take all private wealth and allow it to secure the loans to the poor so everyone can eat and have a roof over their head with sanitation and warmth and the chance for a days work ahead.

Relief

2011-06-06T16:43:00.001-07:00

Dreams of dawns dew, firmament, a poetic as an act will ever be , watching at the window side, seeing streaks of black, sleeting across the wall, into the wall.

Police lights flash in repetitive patterns on the asphalt between the kids sneakers, his knees shaking', fear of broken kneecaps, future/past generational terror of serfs always seeking redress for the habituated and enshrined, traditional justice system in the world that tortures, and kills, and enslaves, with out concern for anyone. . . but themselves and their kind. Perhaps it is just a show, a story line, that could be true here or in Peru.Then the traditional escalation of blame and appeasement that comes when you wake up feeling the contraction hit you; looking at yourself; trying to differentiate from slave or heretic waiting for their doom. Good luck not getting wet in the rain on the way home from the show.

Small glimpses of clarity

2011-05-15T12:14:00.001-07:00

Given the reality of the global degradation of the environment as well as the general lack of realistic opportunity for global change, I'm happy to not be miserable or suicidal. To be honest, it is not I that is suicidal, but the trans-national corporate, and "elitist" society at large, whose actions are causing global catastrophes and genocides of biodiversity as well as the slow motion genocide of humanity through pollution, war and short sighted "free market" capitalism, specifically the transfer of resources from the collective to the elite, powerful and wealthy sociopaths that market the system..

It is more accurately stated that I am acutely aware of humanities suicidal and self destructive actions in the name of security, power, sales or whatever adjective of denial you choose. This makes the global market an addictive one of great self destructive reality constantly confirming it's own denial. One's whose total and complete rejection of the possibility of change in the face of destructive behavior dooms us all to extinction.

Ironically, from this perspective it is finally possible to enjoy life as it is: without the confusion or denial of responsibility and yet maintain the most freedom simply by refusing to be a global consumer (to the greatest possible extant). If there is a meaningful sense to the word "recovery" it lies in this area of abstinence, for me. No longer do i have to constantly consume. I can stop, for a moment, an hour, even longer, I can learn to be generative and giving to others and myself.

Simply said this means not driving much; consuming as little non renewable resources as possible, not purchasing commodities that are produced by corporations and ultimately opting out of the consumption cycle to the greatest possible extant (including not replicating). It is a wonderful thing to exercise power in the ability to abstain. There is beauty and grandeur in saying, no more, not again, will i doom the planet and a soul to the realm of destruction. For me and my quality of life it also means earning as little money as is absolutely necessary for basic health and well being and essentially refusing to be a global "consumer". Therefore again limiting the amount or resources I use or expend in business operations. This also allows me to reduce my environmental impact and tacit support of the status quo.Sometimes the most revolutionary action is to simply stop running and appreciate what is available in the present.

While I am sure there is much else to be "done" along these lines it has been absolutely crucial for me to get some clarity around the suicidal self destructive market based "society" I am constantly trying to differentiate myself from for a personal sense of well being, as well as the natural pursuit or drive, for truth and clarity. Finally it offers me a more accurate perspective on my own responsibilities, which are accepted, rather than imposed. Celebrated rather than endured.

Better words than mine

2011-01-18T11:58:00.001-08:00

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam

Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
April 1967
At Manhattan's Riverside Church

OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorage, leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political play thing of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years - especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But, they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a Civil Rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed from the shackles they still wear.

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Vietnam." It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the "brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant or all men, for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that He died for hem? What then can I say to the Viet Cong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with hem my life?

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its re-conquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision, we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants, this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 per cent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will to do so.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy, and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers destroy their precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for each Viet Cong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building?

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts'? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land?

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than 25 per cent communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded at Geneva to give up, as a temporary measure, the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th parallels. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8000 miles from its shores.

At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently, one of them wrote these words: "Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It' will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony, and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of her people.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing the war to a halt. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmare:

1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military build-up in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.

5. Set a date on which we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the NLF. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, in this country if necessary.

Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than 70 students at my own Alma Mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy, and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. The need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: " This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

Thursday Blues

2010-12-16T19:21:00.001-08:00

I'm depressed with my life, America, and the world. I am disappointed about our starting and escalating two recent wars of aggression (Iraq and Afghanistan)as well as the callus disregard and outright contempt that government officials, specifically elected officials of the executive branch, display towards basic standards of humanity and compassion. Not to mention our constitution (and it's amendments), and the bill of rights which they swore to uphold. Our leaders mirror our lack of compassion and humanity, whatever bitter harvest is reaped from this season of sowing, it will be deserved, if horrific, to all those who must by necessity take part in it. To perhaps finally begin to see how little is left of our "humanity", no greater punishment could be contrived for a people who however misguidedly, honestly desired to help others, without seeing first to the care of their own children, and the care of their souls.

Whether it is the treatment of poor homeless or imprisoned drug addicts or Bradley Manning. . . Or injured veterans, not to forget the innocent citizens of the countries that we so callously and unjustly invade.. . . there is only the common thread of inhumane disregard for life, and the purposeful infliction of suffering in the misguided attempt to regain the moral high ground which has been lost to us since the use of nuclear weapons in 1945, if not before that. We live as citizens of a brutal and repressive police state which functions through the use of lies, terror and violence and god help the poor people who become acutely aware of the truth of these statements. I basically despair of anything good ever happening again and await with hope and bitter prayers for a rapid and easy departure from this vale of tears. I just simply wish to leave quietly, so that I don't have to witness any more of this hell that we have turned heaven into. And i know that each day that i live, i suffer and justly so, for i have stood by silently while great evil is being done. "And the band played on". And yet none of what i have said impinges upon or sullies the perfect inherent beauty that surrounds us every day. Until it does not.

Another perspective

2010-12-08T20:11:00.001-08:00

Feeling kind of ashamed and guilty, yet not necessarily believing or agreeing with these reoccurring patterns, Knowing that there is nothing that can be done, much less some wrong, that can be righted, I feel broken at times, unable to play with the children in the sun, unable to enjoy god's grace, of course death seems like a solution, for I'm alive enough to know that I'm not quite able to endue or appreciate life in the contributing manner that i might dream of. I am both afraid to die and afraid to even enjoy if it means walking through this miasma of pre conscious trauma that is my karma to face and to ideally, burn.

I can habitually focus on the pain, and the fear, always afraid of the trauma's incipient return, never noticing that it is actually gone and that I am safe and sound in this graceful respite. I want to live in the grace and beauty of the space of the saints, yet stumble upon the threshold to heaven, wondering how to cast off my shoes, that I might enter heaven, forgetting that I am on solid ground.

I must or can return to this moment and to this space accepting and relishing what sensation I can, even if it requires slowing down the input so I am not lost in overload. I am no longer running from an imagined hell. I appreciate the fact that I'm not doing all myself, that I've got some good heart-ed professional help and I understand that I am graced with friends and teachers and community, and most of all the desire to live and grow and be part of the solution. For if even if I cannot embody clearly what I love, I know it is there, and I, like a flower can turn and face the sun, enjoying what I can, with the hope of enjoying more tomorrow.

This sums up my feeling on hearing Isaac speak of his less fortunate students, which I count myself among, as those damaged to some degree, in my capacity to enjoy or manifest fully the grace and beauty I see and experience in Satsang , implicit in life, and the world, in spite of or enduring the damage humans inflict upon each other and the planet. I wish to avoid the reckoning yet realize that I am embodied specifically to witness and experience all that I have and do. While hopefully pointing toward something useful and beautiful for us all.I think perhaps we all struggle to contribute our love to the common good.

Truth, Morality, and Fear

2010-12-03T17:22:00.001-08:00

The obvious truth: that mortals are immoral is both obvious and painful to many of us. Most of us will spend our entire lives avoiding or embellishing this simple fact. In that light it's understandable why people of all persuasions and beliefs go to such length to keep secrets and gain and exercise violent and oppressive power over one another. The fact that our social, religious and political organizations mirror our personal human actions is of course no real reason for surprise, despair or outrage. All that is required is a realistic acceptance of profoundly human nature, our deep wounds and the tendency for power to corrupt the very best of intentions, our current president is a wonderful example, if you don't want to look within yourself.

The recent furor over journalistic publication of international information is the primary reason for the previous paragraph. It is difficult and challenging to accept the level of corruption and dishonesty at work in the world today if we do not look deeply into our own souls to search for our own duplicity, corruption and violence. For it is in my own personal relations with my loved ones, my family and myself that I see my own faults laid bare. How can I honestly fault others for behaving exactly like I have consistently in my own life, whether in relation to myself or others? True the level of degree is vastly different, and I am a harsh judge of myself, but only to underline the profound need for compassion. Yes others have said this far better than I, yet I need to learn to say it, and live it for myself. So that I might live peacefully and joyfully in these days of our lives.

How often and consistently have I terrorized my own better motives, dreams and inspirations to follow the routine habits of self oppression, addiction and denial? How often have I beat myself emotionally for having the honesty and interest to look deeper into my own heart than perhaps my partner, parent or therapist might wish? For to be compassionate with ourselves is the first and most important challenge, from that battle or opportunity will all else in life perhaps flow. When we can and do accept and love ourselves as we are, rather as we would have ourselves be, we then can extend this understanding and compassion toward others, and without which we have no chance of true love or relationship with life at all. While this simple truth lies at the basis of all life it is often overlooked in our capacity to reason and think and without which all thinking and reason will be poisoned by deep misrepresentation of the self by the habit of dualistic repression by the mind or ego.

So again we are invited to peace, for ourselves, by our deepest self, or god or higher self, call love by any name you may, it answers to love.

Monday, November 29, 2010

2010-11-29T15:46:00.001-08:00

"I" don't know what I am doing, better or worse for myself or the world. I do "know" that the more I throw myself into life, the better it seems and the more I withdraw the worse. I need to remember to eat, to nourish myself both with food and with prayer and pray constantly if spirituality is what I actually want in my life. I was always confused thinking, obsessing and ruminating rather than simply applying the tools of prayer and surrender to my life and my experience.

The simple act of turning my attention toward God is all that is necessary for me to enjoy relief from my addiction or "bondage" to self. It is the ego or personality which claims to know heaven but only offers me hell. It is the activity of seeking soulutions or meaning elsewhere but through God grace that is so painful that I must constantly be medicated still desiring death, not of the body or the grace of life but death of the egoic separation that has come to be synonymous with suffering and hell for this either blessed or cursed man. For I know that I asked for this experience, that all my life "I" have been "seeking" a greater sence of grace or connection with "god" or reality or whatever could possibility relieve my sense of abandonment and separation from that very self same god.

My greatest mistake or worse habit is to seek validation and confirmation from those unqualified or capable of providing it. Of course sanity appears to be madness to the mad person and so the madness of consumerism is invisible to those content with the gains and profits of the market place.

It is only those who feel the emptiness of material things and void projected through casual approval based upon material achievements who will seek greater meaning and depth in life. That meaning will only be temporally assuaged through seeking and the company of seekers and praise, something greater eventually must be found to quiet the yearning of the heart for a wholeness that is not found though carnal love or even validation. Only the self can acknowledge the deep needing and the deep fulfillment that the love and company of god brings. There are simply no words or language to point one beyond the simple direction, away from everything that can be known or held, bought or appreciated. That which truly fulfills one is beyond all that both consistently present and always absent as long as we choose to long rather than be fulfilled.

Progress

2010-11-23T18:48:00.001-08:00

I am pleased and happily surprised at how well the combination of medication and meetings, yoga and prayer and action has transformed my life in relatively such a short period of time. While difficult to acknowledge and understand, I cannot control my own recovery process, at the best all I can do is follow directions and get out of my own way. As the slogan states: My best thinking got me into this situation, something radically different is necessary if I want different results or a better future. Repeating the same beliefs and actions will only guarantee that I receive the same miserable results that I have finally become willing to let go of and seek an different, better, more loving and loved way of life. Life is definitely what I make of it, rather than coming with its own intrinsic meaning, and that sentence is both true and false, for while each moment is full and complete in itself the experience of time and continuity is a result of the witness which is constantly creating a dialogue and value judgment of the experience. This "story" is actually less important and far less inclusive than experience and ideally "my" life will become more focused on the former than the latter.

Perspective

2010-11-14T12:54:00.000-08:00

It’s difficult sometimes to have any perspective

“My” mind, does not seem to work so clearly anymore

It seems that it has become damaged, along with the planet,

our ecosphere, or spiritual sphere, our love sphere.

Violence becomes the reality of the moment

In so many very painful expressions.

the worst is always to ourselves,

yet as we mature we understand

that we are one and the same.

While we may love peace and unity,

There seems less and less of it in each day.

This is not to devalue it’s truth or beauty,

It become more precious every moment.

The ability to step away from fear and surrender to reality

To accept that what is, is and that peace and love is possible

Even in hell, one can love, one can reach toward the light

And smile, and offer kind words, or expressions, a crust of bread

Amidst a hurricane, tsunami, or volcanic eruption of dis-ease.

Our leaders seem incapable of doing much positive

Except small gestures that we are told to be grateful for.

Corporations and violent oppressive institutions rule western society

Until American dominance finally recedes, to late to be of any use.

I fear the worst, and try to appreciate the best, that is available every moment.

There is beauty love and happiness in my life.

There is clean air and water where i am privileged to live.

There is economic abundance and excess as almost nowhere else.

We are in heaven as the planet slowly begins to shrug us off like a

Dog, going for a long swim, to rid itself of fleas.

This flea is happy to surrender thoughts of “meaning” or grandiosity

Thoughts of responsibility or failure to respond, and accept that

Life is a passing gift to be appreciated while it lasts.

That kindness and compassion are enough.

Gratitude

2010-11-02T22:05:00.001-07:00

Thank you for the prayers

healing intentions, and thoughts,

gentle love flowers within

good morning

2010-10-24T07:46:00.001-07:00

I hope that we all have a good, joyful, peace filled, gentle relaxing day. I am working on enjoying this day, being grateful for this life and appreciating it, and my friends, and family and extended community. Through living this life with gentle appreciation and gratitude.

I seek to reach this goal, through being kind toward myself and others. Not believing or running with critical thoughts and focused on remaining relaxed today. While i don't struggle to stay clean i do work hard to be gentle with myself and not "believe or "run" with self critical anxious thoughts about thoughts, or medication, or situations beyond my immediate control or capacity to shift. I am making a vow to not "run with" hopeless, or fear, or despair, because the world, or my "habits' have not changed overnight.

But that i may appreciate the love I give and receive today and recognize that i am gifted with friends and family that care for or are good with me. That i can drink water and stretch and go back to sleep and enjoy a day off. I'm using new "breathe easy" strips that do help keep my sinuses clear , a very welcome change, something beautiful and unexpected. I am happy to find a non drug solution that helps me enjoy my life!

I'm grateful for my friends and teachers and supportive tapes and family. I am grateful for and appreciate my family, dear close and supportive friends.Thank you for the support and attention. May you also be be happy and peaceful amidst this and every day.

Another Sunday Musing

2010-10-17T10:54:00.001-07:00

I used too constantly deal with anxiety and depression, more anxiety and self judgment around medication as well as anxiety around aging and being alone and not "dealing with it well" than anything else. I do have prescribed medication that work, that for some reason, I was horrified at being addicted to.

The irony is mind boggling and really far too much for most therapists or doctors to appreciate. That while i see that all thoughts are a form of drug, i worry about medication that is actually prescribed & seems to work and feels OK if not good. And yet for months, i worried about "dependence".

I don't know how much of this has to do with quitting smoking and drinking two and a half months ago, some i imagine, but I can see it's more the "focus" of my attention that causes discomfort, than any particular mental or chemical im/balance. It's clear that when focused on a task, book or person i can be totally happy and well adjusted. Yet when alone and adrift in my own mental stew i am quite miserable and almost at the edge of panic in "my" anxiety. Thankfully i am capable of using the medication to assuage such problems and return to something approaching a "set" or balance point that is comfortable and stable. I also listen to allot of audio tapes and such by Byron Katie, Pemma Chodron and Isaac Shapiro among others. These are far better than drugs and almost or if not on occasion even more effective, yet there is more "to do" or involved, in consciously shifting, or inquiring into the "focus" of "my" attention.

It is especially ironic to grasp at life amidst the depths of depression after a life of casually embracing death and suicidal ideation. This is actually humorous and funny!

It is as if now that i am aging and lonely and depressed beyond words or medication to do more than "help" i find myself so grateful for life and wanting to actually "live" as if i had the vaguest idea of what being alive meant without referencing to some relationship with a woman or sibling or parent, ideology etc. I face the void and often panic and recoil rather than acceptance and peace. I cry both at my humanity and my self judgment, that i cannot truly appreciate the depth of my heroic intent at inquiring deeply into the reality of existence.

I have this funny idea, born of severe attachment disorder, that if i could only be happy alone, with myself, then my life would be complete and i would have no "problems". Yet the fallacy of such ideation is apparent to even me. I am happy and OK with my own company almost all the time. What is difficult for me is unstructured or open space that my ego is adrift in, like a diver with "blue orb syndrome" in which one in open water with no visual reference points becomes disorientated and often swims down rather than to the surface. This experience is actually fairly common for me as my blood sugar drops, it's such a simple thing, to eat and nourish oneself, yet somehow that basic function, once automatic and happening without much conscious thought, now requires significant energy, focus and work. Perhaps some of that "work" is that I don't eat much processed food and that I eat at home and dislike cooking for one. Yes, that just might have something to do with it. . .

I'm reading allot, maybe have 3 or 4 books going right now. One is "In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts ~close encounters with addiction" is particularly disturbing and yet intriguing. As well as my usual fare of fantasy, SF and post apocalyptic fantasies, my life time mainstays. No wonder i'm depressed just look at what i read, And yet, how can I criticize myself for naturally occurring interest? Some of it is inspiring, some distracting and some a little educational and thought provoking.

I cannot read or watch the mainstream news; as it's so toxic and depressing, not to mention the fallacy and duplicity offered as fact. Rarely if ever addressing the primary issues that challenge humanity, inequity, the failure of violence (war, prohibition, arms industries and private armies, prison system, private education and capitalism, as if they were separate institutions, to address or solve our current social problems, and the destruction of the environment. Yet i do watch or listen to some Pacifica radio or TV, like democracy now! and KPFA which i'm happy to support. The local economy has picked up a little (as it teetered on the edge of total destruction), so there is some much appreciated structure, Yet it does really requite a fair amount of high functioning to run a business, so that's both good and challenging.

Such is Life: a gift that we grasp, perhaps more desperately, as it slips through our aging, impotent fingers. How much better to simply relax and open the palm so it may alight for a moment like a wild gift, resonating and resting with us before shifting to the next moment. For what is this tumult and anxiety in a momentary and shortly passing experience but a gift to be appreciated and enjoyed rather than dissected or criticized. Let us enjoy ourselves and so each other and express the love that we are in all that we do.

Dreams of my fathers house

2010-10-03T04:40:00.001-07:00

Don't know why I'm writing here, rather than my journal, but to more widely "accept" the message and acknowledge the "party". I'm reading Gabor Mats's book: "In the realm of hungry ghosts"

I just woke from a crawly-crazy intense wild ancestor drug dream. so wild and intense. I was at my dads last house a cabin on the beach in Waldport on the Oregon coast, overlooking the beach and sea. Next too a state park and i was there just for a night seeing the changes and sleeping there I realized in some fear, what at first glance appeared to be "kids" had climbed the fence from the park next door and were having a kegger party in the front yard and asked them to move and the did. . . but as they went back "over the fence" into the state park, they started playing "catch" or throwing things at each other; weird "stuff" and all these wild mad homeless characters started appearing out of or into their tents and sleeping bags strange wild faces and mad expressions bedding down for the night and i watched amazed and compassionate and somehow no longer afraid at the horror and strangeness and homecoming and weirdness, I'm scared and alone and at home and blessed finally meeting the guests in my fathers house, realizing that while asking them to respect the boundaries, i may regain my semblance of sanity and yet meet and greet my ancestors and fellow humans or members of my psyche. Very healing dream ~ or not, we shall see. . . .

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”

2010-09-26T20:50:00.001-07:00

I'm paraphrasing or quoting Helen Keller, who said "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure". It seemed inspiring when I was 29 in need of support for creating drama in my life, fairly new at being clean and totally (as now) incapable of having a cognizant direction in life outside of work, paying bills, writing and entertaining my own madness. As I said to a dear friend recently "I'm not wealthy enough to be eccentric" Today I'm happy to be somewhat balance in awe and horror of life. I look at the world and see that my life is a bowl of cherries compared to the average Joe in China or Somalia, astounded that people would bother to sully their hands, much less risk prison to make 2 grand shipping rifles (AK47s) to that country under UN arms embargo. I think the US and Mexico need to be under an arms embargo, unfortunately the constitution and the dominant corporate powers disagree.

I'm becoming more and more disappointed with Obama, more because of my own understanding of who he is (a successful politician) rather than what he does (lie and kill). It's his job, he applied for it and apparently he got it fair and square. The fact that lying and killing (unjustified murder) is part of the job, is apparently not in and of itself, "Newsworthy" as we are suffering a Truth in reporting & media crisis along with all the "crisis" going on in the world. The fact that the FCC gives licenses for free to huge corporations still somehow does not seem to make it possible to have a decent functioning media reporting honest disturbing news. This being a very rough quote of John Madison said "It is the job of a free press to disseminate divisive ideas and issues from the margins to the center" little did I realize that he meant that literally as free postage and distribution for newspapers was the standard in this country for the first hundred years (when we had a vibrant and meaningful media) and that the us post office was the largest sector of government employment. Nope, no money for it. Pepsi is not advertising during the superbowl, the money is better spent of face book (which burns coal, another reason to un friend face book)

"Offensive and Hateful" is how our U.S. President replies to a person saying "I do not pass judgment, But don't you think the time has come for a fact finding commission" Regarding the events of 9 /11. I think that's pretty wild, I'd say the guy touched a nerve, and I'm glad he did. I don't know why, but when it comes to second rate despots, Ahmadinejad is right up there with Obama as a despot. He's not killing as many people, He does not have as many people in prisons, he's less popular, which is saying something, but he's still capable of pointing out glaring truths or at least raising disturbing questions that the mainstream media and all serious american politicians are afraid of. He likely stole and election, but hey, our own war mongering Presidents are well known to do the same. Iran is an interesting conundrum for the world: for in Iran, we see ourselves, imperfect, ugly and yet not without style, inspiration and guts. The fact that Israel is constantly on the brink of starting nuclear WW3 over Iran having the bomb is classic Jewish angst at reality. I'm fairly certain there are quite a few nuclear weapons in the Middle East and not all of them in Iran or Israel. The fact is Ahmadinejad does not really care about the Palestinians anymore than Obama shows the two have far more in common than they have to argue about. We really need to find a way to get over this little impasse. America is already on the brink of bankruptcy and martial law, the last thing we need is another front in a field of disastrous wars. I could go on but this is more than enough for a Sunday night. And i think the point (one of them) that America and Iran has significant similarity, has been made, however imperfectly, not a bad post for what started out as a personal whine.

Even rest is work if you let yourself write

2010-09-13T18:34:00.001-07:00

So maybe I'm not as depressed as I think or imagine myself to be. I got up today on time, after sleeping poorly, because I had a Dr.s appointment and want to maintain my prescriptions for the medications that help make my life manageable. While I criticize myself, and life, for it's addictions ,I'm grateful that these medications are legal and have a minimal (yet significant) side affects on my life. I enjoy being able to moderate my drug use and even manage to quit smoking and drinking when I'm clear on the costs and seeing that i have a choice of how to live these last few or many years of my life. I drift off or "wake up" as happens, take a day or two off work, and come and go, pretty much as I please. What good fortune amidst suffering!

While I don't write much anymore, it's not because I'm not thinking, I'm just not believing my thoughts as much. I'm still angry and depressed at times, or at myself and the world. I take it far to seriously: Convinced that humanity is a blight on the planet when left to it's own devices. We seem to tend toward greed, violence and overpopulation without comprehension of how this makes all our own lives less pleasurable. I'm both frustrated with humanity and totally heartbroken and joyful when I see a child and the love, wonder and beauty that each individual is. . . I wonder if staph cells see each other as beautiful?

It's both an ironic and serious question. Ironic because I realize that it's highly unlikely that staph cells have self awareness and because the same can be said about humans and myself. . . While I like to think of myself as "aware & awake" it's clear that I drift off too sleep with consistent regularity. This is both true figuratively and latterly. I can drift off into puttering around the house quite easily and enjoyably, generally cleaning, throwing stuff away etc. only to find that hours have went by and I've not "accomplished" much or "done anything" with my day.

It's interesting today is a bit overcast and cloudy and I'm likely to not go to work (Its 2 PM) and yet I'm still fairly happy and content.

I don't feel much has changed around our "relationship" only that I have become more and more willing and able to accept it as it is (somewhat shallow and distant) yet satisfying in the appearance and reality of our mutual familiarity and comfort with each other. While I believe she is not deeply "attached" to me, she does display much discomfort and un ease with my personal pain or depression and as such is totally averse to my discussion of suicide or wanting not to "be" here yet either way, I have learned not to express or elocute such feeling directly too, or with, her.

"My" depression or suicidality is gradually declining as I see my own aging happening before my eyes. As my own presence is becoming a clearly transient experience, there is less and less need to end my life prematurely. I trust that I will and can manage to live out my days in some semblance of peace and acceptance and gratitude for the minimal suffering that I actually experience. As I listen and ponder the Buddhist teachings of Chogyam Trungpa and Pemma Chodron I accept and appreciate my life and situation more and more. As well as I see that my own personal "need" for the therapeutic process is less acute than a year or two ago. I'm reluctant to pursue another relationship, at this time. I do have the appointments and will go again this week, but I'm tempted to try to see if switching to every other week or once a month is a realistic option. It's partially the timing and partially the fact that while I'm depressed and semi-suicidal, it is profoundly situational in cause and shape. While I recognize that I'm both more and less likely to commit suicide the need for discussion and help around the issue seems less of an issue. Maybe I don't want to talk about it because I feel like talking about it exacerbates the situation and again, on the other hand talking about it seems to concertize the fantasy and desire from an intangible into a reality.

It's imperative to recognize, both for myself, and for anyone who ever reads these long rambling missives, to know how deeply I love life. How grateful I am for the blue of the sky, the sunlight on the fence, the knowledge that this whole mad wild insane world is out there running around defying death and life, as I sit and ruminate, love and suffer and genuinely appreciate some tiny slice of humanity.

I know that my life is actually very small. That while I have traveled a bit, I have always held back, even in my madness and exuberance, there has been some holding back and some withdrawal from fully engaging in life.

I don't know when I started, If I had to guess, id say when we left Wisconsin, or the year before, when whatever happened is lost to that child that was robbed of something called hope or desire to aspire.

Aspiration has always been difficult for me. Perhaps the last one I truly had was to die or to "fail" and that was when I was 12 or 13. And I guess I did in so many tragic ways. I really started to fail. I got hurt, almost blinded in my left eye, and something changed after that even though I never could say why. Yet even though I knowingly denied whatever grandeur or fame life might have held, I could not destroy the actual joy of love and the gnosis of life.

My life is like that, a long series of wounds and failures compensated by success or grace.

I have been showered with the love of so many beautiful human beings, and I must say that I know that it is love, not the need that is the gift. For too often it is our need and fears that drive, dispose of and destroy our dreams of love from ever reaching fruition.

I don't know what I'm saying, but I trust you know that you have received it.

I just know.

Sunday Musing

2010-08-08T16:39:00.001-07:00

As I ponder life, and the world I often am reminded that "I" tend to take things very seriously, and that life is to be enjoyed. Enjoyment is an activity that happens most easily when my focus of attention on my enjoyment is either absolute or non-existent.

Anything between the two and my enjoyment is less than absolute. There is a varying degree of dialogue in "my" head about what's going on, a less than total surrender which results in less than total enjoyment.

So back to musing on life. A friend sent me one of those silly e-mails about what some people were doing on the morning of 9-11 rather than being at the place of others death.

And it does allow one to wonder at the miracle of life and the reality of death and the simple fact that if one believes in GOD that all of it is good, in my book. What we call evil, the active enjoyment of suffering, is essentially confusion and not something to be taken too seriously.

Now this is not to say that we should or could not strive for clarity (i.e. Good) but that the absence of clarity is not "evil" and should not be construed as such, more as the natural state of humanity, the background of life, and so Beauty and Joy arise when we glimpse or experience the absence of confusion and see the beauty and love that constantly surrounds us all, as it is.

Death I've been told is less traumatic than many traffic tickets. Supposedly, it's not such a big deal. Of course this makes dying a lot easier, especially if your worried about it, or contributing to your own (smoking, eating poorly, lack of exercise, drug abuse) or others, capitalistic consumerism, war, taxes, violence et al.

But back to the story about 9-11. If "god" saved those people who otherwise would have been "there", then all the rest that died, were meant too, and just got a pass out of this world, into the next. . .

Maybe I'm missing something profound here, but it seems that faith is like pregnancy, it's all or nothing, you either believe (or know) or you don't. Every sparrow that falls does so with god's love and blessing, or there simply is no god.

Yes, I'm aware that some people see God as allowing evil to "teach" us that good is better etc. but that is just a watered down version of what I'm saying. Essentially it's all good, it's all perfect, and it's "our" or my perception of life that is in conflict with reality or "God's will".

So from this place suffering is resisting what is. Whether what is is war and violence or the publishing of "secrets" on public websites that are then a crime for American to view if they are members of the armed forces. . . The truth is a crime, and the crime we call war is legal. . . It's all a bit overwhelming at times, yet I'm grateful for my life and "my" freedom, that has grown deeper and more profound as I have recognized my blind habits as my greatest jailer and torturer. Perhaps I will not remain so sanguine if I am imprisoned or tortured by others, yet I am inspired and given hope by those souls who have endured such realities only later to gain their freedom and shine more brightly in the world.

We need heroes, we need examples of clear thinking and right action. Wherever you find them, who ever they are, I hope the point you to greater peace, love and enjoyment.

American Government at war with Wikileaks and the internet

2010-08-05T20:00:00.001-07:00

It appears that the U.S. Defense department and the President of the United States has again bypassed the constitution. the congress and the "people". Today the Pentagon in its demand that wikileaks retract its posting of the "Afghan war diary" and other information took the first step in declaring "war" on the strongest voice for the free dissemination of information in the world. The Defense department, the Pentagon and the President appear to have joined forces with the worlds most despotic regimes to destroy Wikileaks and the Sun Shine press.

It is of course obvious that the interests of power are at odds with the interest of an informed democracy. The fact that the FCC has expedited the monopoly on broadcast news is itself, not news. What is news is the bold, and violent desperate oppression, opposition and fear that the United States is expressing in its opposition to Wikileaks. We are now declaring war on the purveyors of information to protect the guilty and the interests of the powerful, the rich and the violent. It is of course only a matter of time before any news organization that reprints or disseminates wikileaks information, becomes a target as well. We are embarking upon the end of the free press. In months or days we will see America join forces with China, Russia, North Korea, and Zimbabwe among others as censoring free press and the exchange of ideas and the eventual destruction of the internet as it is. The overt intimidation and harassment and theft from of employees and volunteers of wikileak personal has already begun. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/02/jacob-appelbaum-wikileaks_n_667665.html

It is one of the ongoing tragedies of America, that we the people, are both unable and unwilling, to reign in the endless violence that the American Government as empire, has adopted as its standard operating procedure in it's defense of itself and its growth. The "defense" of it's stolen resources, or it's championing of the theft of such resources if they are then "fenced" to "us" (the American consumer) cheaply.

While America has never had a strong history of open minded dialogue or negotiation, we (as compassionate loving beings) have the reasonable expectation that it might develop these capacities in the hope to demonstrate that we can indeed lead the world in "what is right". As a nation that identifies itself as "Christian" we have always ignored the primary teaching of Christ: "To love your enemies, as yourself".

Of course, one could argue that we do. That we are a profoundly conflicted nation of individuals, who are at war within ourselves, knowing that the luxury and peace we "enjoy" is paid for by the suffering of both our troops, our enemies, and most sadly, the countless innocent children, bystanders and citizens living in the countries where we are waging war. Whether the war is against terrorism, against drugs, against other governments is irrelevant in our willingness to kill, to pollute, and too fund oppression of democracy with outcomes other than rampant capitalism that profits those who fund the US Senate and Congress. And until or unless we address this inherent flaw in our "democracy" we have little hope of meaningful change.

It is sad and tragic in the years since 9/11 that not once has the United States leadership honestly asked itself or the world, why we might reasonably become a target of hatred and intolerance. It is indeed telling and obvious that we have a department of defense, a department of secrecy and torture, but not a department of peace or a department of reconciliation. We have become so addicted to violence and oppression of dissent that we can no longer even imaging open dialogue with those that think or feel differently. Yet it is our obligation as citizens to take the lesson of history and be willing to be oppressed, tortured and killed for the principles of truth, equality and love. It is only a matter of time that those who will not silently consume the lies we are offered every day, become targets of our own governments oppression.

Our courts and leadership have chosen to protect the interests of the rich at the cost of the poor, the innocent and the unrepresented. We have chosen to protect the auctioning of election through advertising rather than the examination and dissemination of truth or even position. I fear there is no end to the hypocrisy of our violence, oppression and hatred of those that might dare to think differently.

While as Americans, who supposedly have a government that represents us, we have many values. Sadly, Honesty, Truth and Compassion cannot be truly said to be among them.

And while today the enemy is called wikileaks, in truth what will be the casualty is the internet and the ability of Americans and humans around the globe, to access and discuss issues and ideas that are deemed a "threat" to Americas "national security".

Gulf news blackout

2010-06-21T18:43:00.001-07:00

GROUND ZERO - BIRDS FALLING FROM SKY -
BLOWING UP WHALES TO GET RID OF THE BODIES

Aqua Axel 1: ON GROUND ZERO

"I have to write this mail on a new cellphone because they have taken our phones from us. people don't know how bad this oil spill is.. i'm working in the cleanup operation and we've all had to sign a legal paper that stops us from talking to anyone.

I am onshore now and can't tell you where, but i've just finished a very long shift in the gulf and texting this... fast as i can. the military are watching us, they patrol the areas we work i cant tell you what i do cause they may know who i am.

Aqua Axel 2:

Dolphins whales, seabirds fish are all floating dead on the surface of the water... boats helicopters are scooping them away dead and dying... Whales are being exploded by the military cause they can't be carried. dead body's as far as the eye can see air smelling of "Benzene"... We've seen birds fall from the sky. Workers are falling sick we, think some workers have died. My friends are hard oil men it was ok to at the start but now we cry.

Dead sea life is as big as Genocide you wont imagine it"

Fathers Day

2010-06-20T11:03:00.001-07:00

Happy fathers day, Fathers and sons and daughters. Mothers and Grandfathers, old and coming back fresh with gleaming eyes. I awoke today thinking about where i was last year (in France) and how quickly time is beginning to move as i age and the scale becomes a little larger. Likely such trips and freedom would not exist if was a parent. I seem to manage a fair number of problems with tools, as well as life, much less children if i had them or a life partner (even an enemy is company in hell). I can't imagine the guilt i would feel fucking up someone else besides myself and my lovers and family.It's part of having such a narcissistic wound, an intense focus on the life, the world, "myself" tools, and the work. Life, like my car or computer or espresso machine, they are alive and have spirits attached to them that want attention and care at the least, and offerings and parts or service when ignored.

Awareness without belief in criticism helping the moral fiber, or individuation process, is a huge relief for me, my work and life. Just being willing to start over, again and again, as necessary. Learning through failure teaches us far more important messages than success. If Obama actually follows through with the opertunity presented by the spill, we can shift to clean energy. This is exactly the opertunity that exisged immeadeatly after 9/11 the direction and the focus will determine the future for decades, if not the human race.

an image from Palau, or Yap the god of construction image is carved in the "men's houses" where the men live collectively with a few shared females (usually visitors from the neighboring tribe) whose images are also carved on the houses. For many men, work is in the end what gives our lives form and either destroys us or sustains us. It is a mirror that we either polish or break. For others it is family. In either case it that which perceives which creates the image.

I don't know how to attach this image, i'll try later.

Drug store rant

2010-06-07T21:27:00.001-07:00

I'd rather write about this than the anniversary of my old sponsors
death. As well as my dad's, and his birthday. he gave so much to the
world, and us, yet left a hole in my heart that can only be dissolved,
never filled. While i know they are here, I feel them directly in my
heart and walk and see them in my dreams, I still miss the dead, the
10 Americans in Afghanistan today, all the grief and the pointless
rage, even my own, expressed as "art" or culture our ultimately, in a
desire to help, to foster thought, a commentary on our culture.

The entire loss leader and un stocked merchandise (garden supplies)
advertising program was effective in bringing me into the store,
however the exclusion of "gift card" to medical supplies results in a
bitter taste in my mouth and no desire to return.
The exclusion of medical purchase with the "gift card" makes it seem
more like a , well use your imagination, because I want to be polite.
The exclusion belies your true corporate desire, to exploit those who
are ill or fear sickness, aging and death. Your "Rite Aid" is to the
Board members and large shareholders. They (or your board economic
manager, don't consider the long term viability of their short term,
endless growth model of business.

Rite Aid ignores and disdains the selective consumer who discerns the
unwholesome artificial "food" which is actually poison, If your going
to sell food or any other product besides medication, sell good
healthy ones. Fresh vegetables, whole grains and cereals.
Not liquor, fast food and likely tobacco products as well, the irony
is overwhelming.

While the Marin community may be over educated as well as over
consuming, they will eventually see through false images and see the
devouring maw of capitalism. The fact that it is there own face as
well leaves us questioning the future of America, and the western
consumer culture as a whole.

It's my own fault for not reading the fine print on the coupon, but
thought I'd share because you pretend to care.

Dad 20 years later

2010-05-31T19:19:00.001-07:00

This is really cool. I did not even know my dad wrote this.They know more about it than I.

20 years later, my father makes me proud of his example. If my heart is true, it is because I follow his light.

http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2010/may/oregon-state-releases-unpublished-william-appleman-williams-novel-online

20 years later, my father makes me proud of his example. If my heart is true, it is because I follow his light.

>bk>

Yoga

2010-04-18T20:14:00.001-07:00

Yoga is starting to open a door in my body and mind through which,
awareness shines.There is a moment of peace, which allows me "drop"
into my body. As if awareness was something Seeing briefly and worse,
knowing the trauma at the break between the two. I am learning not to
react, or flinch when I become more aware of the conflict or chaos
when I move without awareness. Although it looks at times that 99% of
my life was lived without this peaceful love of embodiment, order
within chaos.My natural grace is a function of awareness of intention.
Often without awareness, driven by my thoughts, I move, and work, and
live in a way that hurts me.The first response to this awareness is
anger. "I" feel angry because life, the world "god" however one speaks it, is telling me to grow up, because the result f life, is death.I
meant to say" "grow up"; to be happier and more alive" but either way, the result is death, and I can live and write these days, with love
and meaning and passion. Or disappointed, sad and miserable. The
choice at this point does lay in my hands, and i always have, and with
grace will.

Honestly choice has never been mine. Things happen one from another,
but often the forces that move and shape our lives are unseen, felt,
or understood quickly, if ever. Occasionally, I would term this peace,
or constantly (fear) we appear to have "a choice" but mostly it is
inconsequential, or not, it is clear from this advantage point to see
at the least the immediate harm or benefit in an action, or refraining
from it. In the long term, or greater pattern, such true opportunities
are both rare, and every moment, again, largely unseen or imagined, by
those with us, or those with the power or the daring to affect
positive change. Largely we unceasingly, act from small selfish
interests that bring transient pleasure: That ends with lasting heath
consequences. The distractions of greed and laziness and fear, the
scarcity response = violence. This inability of simple consciousness
allows us to remain mired in the endless cycle of aggression and
response; collectively we are both unable and unwilling to face the
demands as a species to mature. The unending chaotic swirl of and
economic, social and physical degradation is barley held back by the
distractions of a technological juggernaut of both development and
disaster that has us dancing at the edge of a global precipice.

These consequences are as relevant regardless of where they fall, and
upon whose shoulders. Whether directly, in the economic, physical, or
social health of the individual, community, or global impact, it is
one connected system and it is madness to continue to make political,
social or economic decisions without understanding that the economy is
far more illusionary that we know, and the positive economic, global
energy and food production issues are a product of our conditioning
and it is long past time for radical change in the framing of our
social, judicial, and global goals.

School, Suicide & Bullying

2010-04-02T08:50:00.001-07:00

My earliest memories of school are bland, empty of much meaning or impact. I remember per-school with my sisters? No, they were too old, but perhaps I did get taken down the block by my slightly hung over father in a little red wagon to pre-school once or twice. I was certainly told the story often enough.

Bullying and abuse did not really cross my awareness until I was in 6th or 7th grade and when it did, there was and is only hurt confusion and pain. Somehow, I knew that it was not about me. That there was no way that I could be so important in these children's lives that they would act in such a way. What is clear, its that I understood, how and why we kill. How we ignore suffering and abuse, how we contribute to suffering every day, in millions of small ways and that it is truly the darkest shadow of humanity.

Why do we hurt each other, our friends and innocent bystanders? Those who are different, often prettier, smarter, or somehow slower, more vulnerable, those of us who cry easily. We are all targets. All you
have to be is a minority, it does not matter what kind. Bullies target
minorities, and in that I mean it statistically. It's like primate
behavior, and again, defenders of abusers, (for that is what bullies
are) are both sick and likely abused themselves. If something is seen
as normal, how can it be a problem? If verbal and physical violence is
portrayed and accepted and lauded in our society, in our foreign
policy, how do we then blame our children for taking up what we have
shown them on TV, video games and how we communicate within our
families and with our friends? We start to be abusive, sarcastic and
ironic to show intimacy, and even in our sickest moments, love.

So how does this relate to a 12 year old boy holding a stolen gun
waiting for his bullies in the bushes in a small Oregon town in 1972?
I don't really know. I just remember being scared all the time. That
still I wonder how I make it through the world seeming so calm, when
it's all there inside me. The trauma, the violence, and worse; the
earnest hatred that was so calmly expressed, ahhh there indeed is the
root of my cynicism and nihilistic hatred of humanity and life itself,
for if this is life and human society, I realized I wanted nothing to
do with it.

And sometimes reading the papers, I wonder, has anything changed at all?

Insomnia

2010-02-24T20:25:00.001-08:00

Just not sleeping well. I often awake in from dark dreams,
into the dark, full of fear, not anxiety, not panic, just my old friend fear.
Fear of rejection, of loss, of love, of life and
lately, strangely, lately as i come to love life,
i find a new fear, that of death.

Feeling the reality of transience. That while life might be brief and fleeting, I have lived long enough in this short half of a century, too see this world de-forested, our native flora and fauna destroyed, our Oceans fished "out" and filled with garbage. Banally, without regard or thought. Purely for convenience and profit. Armageddon as a derivative consequence of greed and the choice of convenience over compassion.

I'm afraid I have too, have wasted this precious life, planet, love affair called life. That I'm guilty like anyone else alive today. That somehow i could have stopped this, and that when i die, it will all be made clear, where i went wrong, and missed the opportunity for our salvation.

I cry because I'm just sad and in pain; I cry tears of gratitude that these fleeting experiences are not "overwhelming" that I'm not medicating them,
that I can access resources of love, of wisdom, of perspective and
knowing that whatever happens, it is already ok.

Grateful that in this moment, this morning, that what is asked of me to endure is so much less than my fellow humans without any hope or opportunity for self redemption,
but there speaks hubris. Many of my brothers and sisters
are far wiser and know love and peace better than I.

I'm grateful that it's so easy to get up and cry, and write, that "I" have toilet paper to blow my constantly congested nose in. Grateful that I want connection, intimacy, love and peace. As opposed to power, money, control, excess materialism, or worst of all,
the deadly security of belief.

Finally breathing deeply, comforted, that here, in this karma that it may come to an end. That I might find some rest and compassion somehow, in this life. That I may stop running scared. That I might find myself loving in the dawn, accepting all
that I has been love & feared, in this wild journey,
a movement towards gratitude, called life.

Manifesto and prayer

2010-02-20T22:49:00.001-08:00

Powerlessness: means knowing peace and not finding it.
unmanageability is not being able to deal with reality.
Insanity is anxiety, looped trauma, the primal memory.
Sanity is the journey of gently releasing of that trauma & story,
Through prayer, friends, art, lovers, family,
and whatever god I embrace in body and soul.
Home in accepting awareness.

Dark Matter

2010-02-12T19:54:00.001-08:00

There is some field of energy that we are missing in our studies of the physical sciences of the exchange of energy form and meaning. What if the only consistent measuring device is awareness itself? And if there is no fixed moral perspective then what is measured? Than merely a symptomatic lack of lack of response to the apocalypse. It's like Joe Strummer said, if Hitler flew in today, they'd send him a limousine anyway.

I'm trying to be grateful for my own economic meltdown that it has taken so long, and may even have some minor reprieves, but undoubtedly, the loss has been going on for years. Every year I grow a little closer to poverty, to reality. To that which is the backdrop of most of life on the planet. Maybe I can learn to look back at the beauty and appreciate it now. That's the very best I can hope for. It's a way of enjoying the present while embracing the experience of coherent story of grace in the Fall.

All the while not pretending, that all that is happening in the world, is not. I have never been in denial of the situation, only to ready to question meaning, values and ends. . . That all those visits to the ocean, trying to vacation, I was fully aware of the vanishing ecosystems. . . collapsing as I watched, frolicking with the wild dolphins in Palau on my fortieth birthday, trying too hard to grasp what is always just out of reach in our world, in our souls.

The horror and the beauty simultaneously interacting, destroying if not creating each other, but how not ? In some time and space. For here now: in Afghanistan, the Congo, the middle east, our brothers, Fathers and children hate kill and suffer rape while we consume, medicate and dither as the world burns and we pretend to care?

Is every shallow tea party conservative actually right when they say ( insert stupid comment) dismissing the true horror: That Violence is a deeply gratifying in perverse semi sexual satisfaction mutilation and torture that is so endemic in the male global psyche. It is men and the masculine alone? who/which addictively and obsessively repeats this self traumatizing pattern?

Destroying the feminine and repeating the fall from heaven as well as the experience of birth, individuation, awakening to the horror of the human condition, and for some, a loving gesture in the face of it, in whatever way we briefly rage against the machine, we do live, and challenge the apparently entropic decay of humanity until the last days.

Eventually we all find the last breath, the last tree, and the last sunrise in each of our lives. What we leave behind, and who we touch, we will never truly guess, for so much of perception is lost in this mess. And yet the lucky and the lost of us in the end, find rest.

Moral compass

2010-02-09T21:06:00.001-08:00

What judged then, judges now

nothing changes, always the same hate

is death something to be feared or embraced ?

something inside me died today as I watched the men collapse

and fall to their faces prostrated before they were shot from behind

bodies jumping in the dirt in some repulsive squirt

away from the earth now lying still

no movement again I read about the world

and I want to kill "stop loss"

drilling in the waste: Tritium in Vermont

again today the world has touched my psyche

why does it feel like rape? Just reading the news

sooner or later I'm infected with hate, and I start to die.

I wana get high before I turn into the enemy and believe

that I know what is right. And which ones first to sacrifice

to the elders & the spirits of the earth the spirits of all the children gone to waste

weve hung, on a bullet or a brain or a needle stuck in a vein

greed or another sick idea into the heart that it's ok to prosper while another dies

that this is not all one life and that heaven hell is not later, but here; now.

and I refuse to believe that's its really ok, that this is from another perspective

its all just a big game. While the bodies rot and the oil burns I so love to gavotte

Because then I'd have no excuse but to enjoy it all right now

forgetting whose right or wrong just loving this time and place

the occasion of my mothers birth, her mothers disdain,

no longer resonates in my heart. to clean up a mess

that she did not see her own part in.

Practice

2010-02-01T14:17:00.000-08:00

I feel better when I write. To communicate something, even an expression of pain, as the world both lives and dies laughs and cries as the sun dances so quickly across the sky we forget that we are spinning always around a center we cannot see, something holding us here, together in life and death as the two become one and the horror and the beauty merge into something so much grander than I have ever imagined or dared to believe, even these brief glimpses seem to leave me no better than before; I cannot say what progress is about, because I only seem to know what looks like failure. Except in the grace that holds my life, and somehow I see and appreciate, the beauty that is here, and if wanting more is the cause of pain, then I see how I pay the price in wanting every day, some other kiss, a different caress than this one I receive every day, from what can only be god.

Psyche Eros Gaia

2010-02-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

There is this sucking wound
In my connection to the world
In connection to the mother
No peace in my fathers house

I cannot find any in the world
I must find it within myself
And manifest it in the world
Perhaps something will heal

Before I come along in blind habit
And rip off the scab again
So instead of something healed
I just end up with another scar

It’s difficult to hold onto the truth
When you can’t focus on the walls
Made real by beliefs and judgments
We find ourselves alone once again

With the world as our stage
And our prisons as our homes
We calmly watch our demise
In animated parody of life
Looking for something to buy

Some experience to which we compare
Our pleasure to their despair,
Nightmares made real,
Our dreams rendered
worthless

Living in America

2010-01-27T16:50:00.001-08:00

It's difficult to express

Or even acknowledge

Everything that's really

Going Down,

All the brothers and sisters

Doing hard time,

in the prisons of America

To keep the rest of us free.

Going down,

all the children and elderly

Starved and beaten, shot and killed

Collateral damage from the apocalypse

That unfolds in slow motion

Going down,

Straight to Hell All our very best,

the bright and courageous

To fight against what is portrayed

as the enemy as it laughs

silence and tumult

The warriors, the children of no future

Those killing and killed, to live on in some

Strange silent horror of past trauma

Staring into the future

Only they can see

As the storm moves

intimately closer

And we barely even shudder

Amidst their screams. . .

Oscar Wilde

2010-01-27T16:37:00.001-08:00

He stares from the bookshelf

Little known, somehow an accusation

Or an invitation, waiting, like god

To spread his legs.

Being Alone

2010-01-23T20:20:00.001-08:00

Being alone sucks ass: bigtime.
Being all one is a spiritual high
And I guess I know I’m using
Pretending all the time . . .

These layers of ambiguity
Under, before and within
Joy.

It springs forth, un~detered
when met in loneliness
Hold my own hand.

No longer it’s, but everyone else.
That is my job as a human to reach
Across the gulf of personal suffering,
mingle it gently, violently

raise it too our lips
this bitter cup made sweet
in sanctification, of knowing
if we suffer so must god,

And then, in shock, I know
that for a moment, or too many
to recall, I am loved, and have loved
and that's the only thing that matters.

And in Support of Happiness

2010-01-23T12:46:00.001-08:00

I'm habituated to thinking
myself unhappy.
As if it were an unconscious virtue
Yet thankfully
I'm incorrigibly happy,
despite my grumpy habits,
so carefully nurtured,
from decades of needless judgment

There are these smiles
that erupt from the sky
like clouds
or blue

And well worn worries, prejudices against
Wealth, power, freedom of choice, especially
Pointless choices that still, somehow, seem
To make us happy.
It's weird

In defense of depression

2010-01-19T22:02:00.001-08:00

wisdom can be quite destructive without compassion,
we are what appears to leave in ''death"
appears again yet we take it so seriously,

It seems strange to worry so much about
the forms that come and go . . .

While it may be naive or unreasonable to suggest
that people making a living working with or fora
product be rescued from witting about it,
or prominent in the byline.

Treatment professionals, and victims of depression
or other "moral unfortunates, all of us,
when it comes to our sense of happiness,
our unique or shared humanity,
an axe to grind.

I find it depressing to see article after article about drugs being
written without giving space to other alternative treatments. While
most of us read such "news" for entertainment value or to support one
of our particular biases, some people are actually seeking
information. Mentioning that diet and exercise are often as or more
effective treatments for depression than medication, would be
helpful to include in any discussion of major media discussion on the subject.
It begs the question if it is not our "habit of focus" as well as
endocrine system being shifted into another paradigm.

Eye contact, touch, petting a dog, walking, meditation, prayer as well as
pleasant conversation with the checker at Safeway has all been shown
to also raise endorphins, serration, and Oxytocin. Such shifts lead to
a greater sense of well being, perhaps what we strive for is some
connection with life and "community" as we are conditioned to
most positively experience it, the absence of which iwe may label "depression"

Further lacking in a serious inclusive discussion of depression is the
endemic of the use of both substances and drugs: those licit such
as alcohol and tobacco, and also "perscribed medication to theat
depression, unhapiness, anxity, both social and existential.
The widespread use of illicit drugs to treat "depression".

The use social of drugs to further social connection and to
treat many signs of addiction is startling absent in any open
discussion of the topic, if only to broaden the scope of self
medication in response to an imperfect and unequal societal and
cosmological reality. It is common knowledge in some circles that
many people in recovery from addiction at some point realize that
that depression was and is a major impetus to self medicate, and that
some substances were effective treatments for some individuals for up
to decades.

An argument should be made that much criminal persecution
of the depressed exists, for it is unhappiness itself that asks for
attention. And finally so many "addictions" are not "too"
substances, but activities, all giving a rush and having
the ultimate problem of declining efficacy.

Additionally, it behooves us to see if depression might not be a
reasonable response to a world busy with self destruction. While we
kill each other, starve each other and torture each other, all in the
name of ideology (god, profit, etc.) we perhaps ignore that being
depressed is a reasonable and healthy response as part of a world wide
problem called "humanity" driven primarily by the desire for
resources, power and the problem of distribution & overpopulation.
Perhaps depression encourages us to refrain from the root causes of
the problem, consumption, meaningless activity and replication.

I hope it is not outrageously hopeful, idealistic or deluded to
suggest; that while not always effective, another modality for
treatment for depression is acceptance of the situation as it is. The
belief that there is a problem drives the mind to find a solution.
When I accept the moment as it is, occasionally, and perhaps even
somewhat more often of late, it seems, There appears in a discrete
moment, an opportunity to stop, breathe and simply appreciate without
the need or desire to change.

Depression can often be another way of "labeling" relaxation or
stillness. It is the story we tell ourselves and the agendas that
society that society holds for us to "be productive" that color our
experience. When we strip away all stories and rest in what is, there
lies a possibility of peace that stretches beyond the graveyard or
mire of human anguish.

wisdom can be destructive without compassion, we are either
connected or not, what appears to leave in ''death" appears again
yet we take it so seriously, It seems strange to worry so much about
the forms that come and go . . .

While it may be naive or unreasonable to suggest that people making
a living working with or for companies selling a particular type of
product be rescued from witting about it, such connection should
certainly be prominent in the byline. Even treatment professionals
and victims of depression or other "moral unfortunates,
all of us, when it comes to our sense of happiness,
however we may see our unique or shared humanity
have, to use an unfortunate phase, an axe to grind.

I find it depressing to see article after article about drugs being
written without giving space to other alternative treatments. While
most of us read such "news" for entertainment value or to support one
of our particular biases, some people are actually seeking
information. Mentioning that diet and exercise are often as or more
effective treatments for depression than medication, would be
helpful to include in any discussion of major media discussion on the subject.
It begs the question if it is not our "habit of focus" as well as
endocrine system being shifted into another paradigm.

Eye contact, touch, petting a dog, walking, meditation, prayer as well as
pleasant conversation with the checker at Safeway has all been shown
to also raise endorphins, serration, and Oxytocin. Such shifts lead to
a greater sense of well being, perhaps what we strive for is some
connection with life and "community" as we are conditioned to
most positively experience it, the absence of which iwe may label "depression"

Further lacking in a serious inclusive discussion of depression is the
endemic of the use of both substances and drugs: those licit such
as alcohol and tobacco, and also "perscribed medication to theat
depression, unhapiness, anxity, both social and existential.
The widespread use of illicit drugs to treat "depression".

The use social of drugs to further social connection and to
treat many signs of addiction is startling absent in any open
discussion of the topic, if only to broaden the scope of self
medication in response to an imperfect and unequal societal and
cosmological reality. It is common knowledge in some circles that
many people in recovery from addiction at some point realize that
that depression was and is a major impetus to self medicate, and that
some substances were effective treatments for some individuals for up
to decades.

An argument should be made that much criminal persecution
of the depressed exists, for it is unhappiness itself that asks for
attention. And finally so many "addictions" are not "too"
substances, but activities, all giving a rush and having
the ultimate problem of declining efficacy.

Additionally, it behooves us to see if depression might not be a
reasonable response to a world busy with self destruction. While we
kill each other, starve each other and torture each other, all in the
name of ideology (god, profit, etc.) we perhaps ignore that being
depressed is a reasonable and healthy response as part of a world wide
problem called "humanity" driven primarily by the desire for
resources, power and the problem of distribution & overpopulation.
Perhaps depression encourages us to refrain from the root causes of
the problem, consumption, meaningless activity and replication.

I hope it is not outrageously hopeful, idealistic or deluded to
suggest; that while not always effective, another modality for
treatment for depression is acceptance of the situation as it is. The
belief that there is a problem drives the mind to find a solution.
When I accept the moment as it is, occasionally, and perhaps even
somewhat more often of late, it seems, There appears in a discrete
moment, an opportunity to stop, breathe and simply appreciate without
the need or desire to change.

Depression can often be another way of "labeling" relaxation or
stillness. It is the story we tell ourselves and the agendas that
society that society holds for us to "be productive" that color our
experience. When we strip away all stories and rest in what is, there
lies a possibility of peace that stretches beyond the graveyard or
mire of human anguish.

Off topic letters to my CPA

2010-01-18T18:57:00.001-08:00

It looks like I'm down over 16K this year. . . Rather Sobering for a guy who has never "lost" money in business. A good experience personally to "feel" the cost of a decades of both personal and national "borrowing". A profoundly flawed moral, economic, national, and personal policy. Perhaps this ongoing fiscal and spiritual depression will allow myself and our fellow Americans an opportunity for humility and enlightenment. The depression may actually undermine personal as well as shared national habitual arrogance and delusions of superiority. I am beginning to understand that being a critic of ones country does not alleviate one's financial and moral responsibility to proactively work for change at all levels of both personal and national government.

Something I apparently i needed to experience as an individual and more importantly, as a citizen of the USA. I no longer benefit from suffering* the fiscal and moral costs of practicing greed and terror as a basis for our foreign as well as domestic national policy. All the while transnational corporations continue to profit from taxpayer subsidies which in turn continue the media circus of distraction and denial of the limits of global military Empire which benefits the uber rich .01 percent of the world population.

*(in the ancient context of allowing)

Alternatively, may learn from our experience the values of working with each other for positive shard benefits in a world of shard threats and opportunities. To practice peace and compassion, helping those most in need, and being gratefully aware of the incredible luxuries enjoyed by the happy accident of birth or circumstances of apparently simple or complex: our ancestors wisdom to emigrate or seek better lives in their own families, towns, and communities.

Just This

2010-01-09T04:18:00.001-08:00

4 am woke a little panicked, alone, scared, and depressed. Aware of how and why I need community. There is not a lot holding my psyche together. I understand why people use such crutches as drugs or entertainment or belief to hide from the simple reality of being alone as by one-self in life and the world. It's not easy like being in a community or a family is by comparison. We are social animals by and large and being alone is both difficult and painful. I see why my friends have children and family just to avoid the pain and isolation of being by ones self. Being alone requires much gentleness and acceptance in letting things be exactly as they are. Naked reality, I'm alone and that's OK.

A deep breath and perhaps back to sleep. This is enough, I don't need any more and if I want more, well I can go pursue it, in full awareness of what I'm avoiding, and how, eventually, it will return fro me before or when I die. and how right now, in this grace, just being is enough. Nothing more needed. I can love and bless all, just as it is.

2010-01-03T13:33:00.001-08:00

I wonder where "my" mental health and "the worlds" meet. . .

In my head and my heart and again, the I feels so vulnerable

I'm raw and burnt. Torn and hurt, mostly by the super critic

The voice that knows it knows best. And no good, it has to say.

Loving the catastrophe, or seeing it as perfect, is that so hard?

It's letting go of my ideas of good and god and write and wrong?

It's not that simple, it's subtle, to not hate each other or ourselves

Where does god go when we torture? Ourselves? Our family.

Where is god when we rape, torture, each others children?

All addiction the utterly futile attempt to numb out the self loathing.

Shame, hatred, despair of total confusion.

We teach our children to kill on other human being on a tv screen.

The irony of the training "Targets" with accompanying collateral

Damage, again our sisters and children, our own souls,

Reflected in the screen, beamed directly into our brain,

"Heads Up" display of the Empire.

Happy New Year !

2010-01-01T12:27:00.001-08:00

I don't know, I just don't know. I like to pretend I know, but I don't.

There are all these ideas in my head. Today discipline is somewhat prevalent.

Perhaps "interest" is a better way for my "amerikan" mind to grasp the idea.

To pursue of devote one's attention to what is attractive, in the deepest, truest sense.

As if my human mind and heart is not fickle and changing, as all is that is in this relative world,

all the time "I " am seeking permanence. "Truth" , final solutions and easy answers that to do not

demand constant surrender, compromise and compassion,

first with myself, and then with everyone else.

2009-12-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

Weapon

2009-12-03T23:45:00.001-08:00

The greatest weapon is Belief

it is the root of all fear and lust

that we might love more perfectly

later.

read on someone's blog

2009-11-30T18:32:00.001-08:00

http://kdsthinkingoutloud.blogspot.com/

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Hope

It hides from us in corners of our past, peeking out, then retreating for cover.

It bares itself openly in unexpected moments, overwhelming all of our senses and leaving us breathless.

It whispers to us in dim light and quiet moments when everything seems lost.

It endures the struggle of our battle against it, stronger than we could have imagined, defeating our resistance and somehow empowering us after the fight.

It is a mystery, a longing, a prayer with held breath, a distant glimmer of a light that looks something like peace.

It takes audacity to willingly seek it, even when it seems a given that it is there.

It takes a realm of courage unfamiliar to almost everyone to truly fall and know you will be caught by its net.

It is blindingly beautiful in the midst of chaos and debris.

It is today…shocking…because it resides in my heart.

It may at times seem weak to hope. Watching someone stand in the middle of a figurative or literal wasteland and profess hope for the gift of the next day can seem powerful, or a little delusional. And while most of the time I feel the former, when I heard the word audacity tied to the feeling of hope, it hit me how deep the level of courage that is necessary to accept and see some sort of possibility—to simply anticipate that things will get better.

I was not watching in 2004 when President Obama delivered his speech -The Audacity of Hope. I can't say I have ever seen it, and have not had a chance to read his book with the same title. But I loved those words—and without anything to do with politics. Those words –the audacity to hope—spoke to me.

The thoughts I write tonight come to me as I stand on the edge of uncertain territory. I can say that over the last few years, I have watched my ability to hope falter in what I was sure was a map for my future. But there is a strange mix of fear and courage that brings me to this place—willing to take a step, a leap into an experience unknown to me until now.

And I feel those words that touched me so when I heard them. The audacity to believe permanent scars fade and heal, trust can return to my vocabulary, and a flicker of something I knew only before countless hard lessons, and too many mistakes…the belief that it will all be alright.

And as I type these last words tonight, there is an audacity in that, too. Putting these words out there, giving them life beyond the silent safety of just lingering in my mind.

It makes this real, it makes hope come alive—living and breathing in my mind, my heart…

in my life.

Posted by Kim at 10:17 PM

Labels: hope, life lessons, love

old writings, old loss

2009-11-20T16:03:00.001-08:00

Looking through the drawers of love
I came across this poem for a friend
who OD'd back in '85
I still miss him,and many others

Dennis

why didn't you watch it?
I hate you for dying
Why did you have to leave me here so alone
I miss your happy smile even if your
con was always your own

no longer to party, no longer to share
in my bitterness, i hate that i care.
so easy to mourn you
so hard to let go
I am reluctant to let my pain show.

It was a dark lonely love
alone that we shared
But in our own ways
we knew that we cared

Yet no matter how much i deny it
nothing i feel
will change what is true.

I wait along with the many
for the rising of the few
so i may again
be with you.

I think this is an excellent example of the
both sentimental and perhaps genuine
love we feel for our friends,
and on the impact
of drug abuse,
suicide, and death.

Exploitation of Soul

2009-11-19T09:16:00.001-08:00

drugs,
sex,
food
media
being right

eclipsed
by
ideas,
religions
political power
violence

Arms'n "defense" industry,
oil, lobbying, legal drugs;
alcohol, tobacco,
pizza, prozac
computer games

We operate the largest prison
system in the world.
and yet we imagine ourselves free

That people will make reasonable
choices in their long term interest is a far more risky
venture than chancing their foolishness may
lead to and opportunity for learning.

Recovery is confronting the
addictions that destroy not only family's,
but countries, forests and ice caps.
the ones we buy through hierarchy

intoxicants are part of what makes us
not only human, but creative and responsible to heal
necessary for the flu, chicken soup, made with love
there's some of the best drugs of all.

whatever we use
is benign in comparison:
to the inherent
violence of capitalism:
exploitation
of the Soul

Time

2009-11-11T20:20:00.000-08:00

Writing a bit on another project
you come across an old song
i've been listening to this
since i was 9. it's weird to
hear Morison say the same
words today.

Soft Parade

When I was back there in seminary school
There was a person there
Who put forth the proposition
That you can petition the Lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
You cannot petition the lord with prayer!

Can you give me sanctuary
I must find a place to hide
A place for me to hide

Can you find me soft asylum
I can't make it anymore
The Man is at the door

Peppermint, miniskirts, chocolate candy
Champion sax and a girl named Sandy
There's only four ways to get unraveled
One is to sleep and the other is travel, da da
One is a bandit up in the hills
One is to love your neighbor 'till
His wife gets home

Catacombs
Nursery bones
Winter women
Growing stones
Carrying babies
To the river

Streets and shoes
Avenues
Leather riders
Selling news
The monk bought lunch

Ha ha, he bought a little
Yes, he did
Woo!
This is the best part of the trip
This is the trip, the best part
I really like
What'd he say?
Yeah!
Yeah, right!
Pretty good, huh
Huh!
Yeah,
I'm proud to be a part of this number

Successful hills are here to stay
Everything must be this way
Gentle streets where people play
Welcome to the Soft Parade

All our lives we sweat and save
Building for a shallow grave
Must be something else we say
Somehow to defend this place
Everything must be this way
Everything must be this way,

The Soft Parade has now begun
Listen to the engines hum
People out to have some fun
A cobra on my left
Leopard on my right,

The deer woman in a silk dress
Girls with beads around their necks
Kiss the hunter of the green vest
Who has wrestled before
With lions in the night

Out of sight!
The lights are getting brighter
The radio is moaning
Calling to the dogs
There are still a few animals
Left out in the yard
But it's getting harder
To describe sailors
To the underfed

Tropic corridor
Tropic treasure
What got us this far
To this mild equator?

We need someone or something new
Something else to get us through, yeah, c'mon

Callin' on the dogs
Callin' on the dogs
Oh, it's gettin' harder
Callin' on the dogs
Callin' in the dogs
Callin' all the dogs
Callin' on the gods

You gotta meet me
Too late, baby
Slay a few animals
At the crossroads
Too late
All in the yard
But it's gettin' harder
By the crossroads
You gotta meet me
Oh, we're goin', we're goin great
At the edge of town
Tropic corridor
Tropic treasure
Havin' a good time
Got to come along
What got us this far
To this mild equator?
Outskirts of the city
You and I
We need someone new
Somethin' new
Somethin' else to get us through
Better bring your gun
Better bring your gun
Tropic corridor
Tropic treasure
We're gonna ride and have some fun

When all else fails
We can whip the horse's eyes
And make them sleep
And cry

Jim Morrison~1969

Stay Free

Healthcare

2009-10-23T21:34:00.001-07:00

I wonder about it, what will happen, how and when. I've kinda opted out of the debate. Don't quite know how to do it. (debate, attend to it) A friend challenged me on it toady. It's interesting, I've become "uncovered" or "self insuring" as I think of it. I accept that my finances are best managed by myself and that if I need and cannot receive critical care here, perhaps I can afford it in India or Mexico, and if not, I will die. I accept the simple reality: we all die.

And I started wondering. I've intuitively known that at some point fending off death is merely a delaying tactic. Holding onto decaying health after this point is an economic and legal issue as well as moral. If we are to come to some reasoned settlement on social security for the public we must also accept that we have limited resources, and that as population increases, this will be exacerbated. This means people die. They die when insurance companies stop paying, and we will die when our government cut's its losses as well. Its reality and we behoove ourselves to accept it with dignity and aplomb.

Yet this invitation to accept the transient nature of life, and more importantly the naïve and particularly american fantasy of empire and freedom from not only terrorists, dissention but death itself is a wonderful paradoxical opportunity for exploration of life, and the further enjoyment of it, knowing it is but a passing fancy.

love no dog from hell

2009-10-22T18:03:00.001-07:00

Love dog

It's a dog of love

This love the dog

You love the dog

And you wish it

Would die times

Like these you

Remember why

Smiling is our

Natural state

And then again

Later, a bit maudlin

Perhaps in age

Forgot to cry.

do it much again

Later.

it’s all vanity

2009-10-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

sitting on the shitter
thinking I’d like to have the
two or three initials after my name
like my sister's or my mum's or da'
some personal failure made socially
relevant, not being in the wider healing
professions. Yet profess I do, constantly,
except when deeply asleep, or the verge of love,

even with myself

no more separation between good and failure.
doing and not collapse.

Just watch the dog.

Sleep in the yard, not waiting for the sun, simply sleep.
Watching the sky, incoming photic messages thousands of years old,
too see that which is emitted rather than reflected~no distinction in perception exists
listen to the silence at three am late evening in Hawaii, something still, is alive.
are we any different in our Ballardesque media consumption
apparently lacking almost all public attention of alternative
assumptions, rather than sand over air. not even turtles all the way down.
Class struggles are sharpened by perceptions
not our hearts desire

While at the Park

2009-10-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

It’s suburban paradise in Marin. I went with the dog to the park today. We met 6 neighbors.
All drawn by Amma. the kids wanted to pet and love on her, as she is especially beautiful whilst running and jumping for the ball. Four of them ran from 4 to 7 and an equal mix of boys and girls, and two adults, much the same, all unique, the older of us, likely a bit more curmudgeonly, than the younger.

Yet one of them was unique. Everyone was quite pleasant, and polite, even the reluctant old socialite. What was odd was the love and attention they gave. The young one who after petting the dog, somehow snuck around to my blind side and started calmly proceeded without comment to pet me! Naturally, matter of factly with authority, petting my shoulder and bicep. It was so incredibly intimate and sensuous, as distantly, publicly, she managed to stroke my soul.

I did turn and look at her, but she ignored me and I went back to listening to her friend complete her detailed life up to here story including; how she and her dog were both 7 and had been together their entire lives, relating her twin had died at birth. Somehow all this seems so ordinary, like the tearful little boy, relating how his dog, had died. I just stared at the other adults, none of said a word.

Stuck momentary awake in the beauty of the day, the sun after days of rain. The kids teaching us, being bodhisattvas, gods and poets. I left unaware or in some strange shock by witnessing their shimmering beauty. Whose attention moved with absolute grace, “like goldfish”, from moment to moment with perfection.

Work

2009-10-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

Got loaded in and rough sanding, just loved ~ hated it, so nice to be a workin joe.
God blue collar, dirty tee shirt, skilled labor is a grace I forgot. I’ve been laid off for too long, such pleasure in
just getting back to the regurlar abrasive grind I love it. After almost thirty years it is both an avocation, vocation, art, therapy and, perhaps, repentance. There is a subtle craft based superiority of making lasting objects of utility and beauty that can, with care, last many generations. I suppose it’s kind of like writing a book that actually becomes a classic, like the old man’s, I do aspire to that as well. I guess, what with luck and grace, the world does not end. The floors I’ve laid with love, some of them, will last to be appreciated and loved,

What is success ?

2009-10-06T10:17:00.001-07:00

"Success" is a painfully amorphous chimera, especially in the current global context. Does it mean the successful ministering to the world or the exploitation thereof? And what is successful "ministry"? Whether nursing, or feeding, or healing, the less fortunate so that they (or we) can eek out a life under the radar of the ruling elite without either rocking the boat or suffering unduly?

Of course it depends on one's perspective and how "identified" one is with the self, and the particular agenda that comes with "belief" of perspective and experience. Unfortunately it has rarely been my experience of academic education as an examination of beliefs or facts, rather a very costly vocational training program for system management combined with economic exploitation of the student and faculty, while distracted by social networking opportunity for job placement of the pseudo elite, who perhaps still believe in the plausibility of economic or social security.

I found Chris Hedges book, Empire of Illusion quite edifying and readable. Although, at times i think he tends to belabor a point. He ends with the rather grim prediction that the American economy has been looted and systematically destroyed by the corporate and banking elite which owns the judicial and executive branches of government. I am truly grateful not to have children that will die in such a long slow economic depression that we are just entering with much denial and obfuscation.The likes of which have not been seen in at least 80 years and likely worse than anything in recent history since Nazi Germany, with less hope of salvation by an idealistic oposition. I have no doubt that our primary export (weapons of mass destruction) will eventually return to our own shores to exact their karmic due, whether wielded by our own military or not.

I have lived a life of rare experience. Witnessing beauty and love, as well as depression, pain, and travail. If I have a personal concept of success it is to live and die with beauty while balancing the capacity for self condemnation with forgiveness for not being a successfully "heroic" figure, tempered by the awareness of how I am still caught in a mythology that died decades ago.

I don't have much hope for america or the world, much less myself, and yet acknowledge that i may do some small accidental deeds of beauty or compassion for others and the world. I'm uncomfortable aware that my very existence is a drain on the environment and feeds the coffers of the very corporations I oppose so impotently . It is a challenging existential exercise to justify ones own existence. Perhaps it does not require justification. I do still experience joy and gratitude so life is experienced mostly as a blessing, for what i do not know. . .

Hedges on corporate power

2009-10-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

I find myself imagining him somehow optimistic.
It is not our ignorance or greed that fails us.
It is our perfect vulnerability to what is called evil,
What always underlies: an aspect of inhumane nature.

We live to kill, to consume, to fuck and again, kill.
Rape, consume, exploit all the while we (or "they")
manufacture our consent for our own slavery.
Or with cruel spite fucks with coke & all of us whores
for casual violence. Arms laden international environment
of corporate death.While we appear “entertained”

We act as if this was not going on for the past 200 years.
And rightly or insane as ghetto Jews we argue against
violence as our brothers sharpen their knives
and no longer pretend to smile. . .

I remember being a child in the 70’s
knowing with certainty that our destruction
started long before I was born, the seeds of our
callous failure of humanity lie in the imperial
past, in the roots of empire the rot is there. In
slavery, in genocide and from the old lands we brought
them here.God knows the our own debt,
slavery and karma of the local people,
we are venal in our souls
I’m both ashamed.

Rant

2009-10-02T18:38:00.001-07:00

What gives value, if not uniqueness, but commonality? Our capacity for loving; (even if it's coffee, whiskey or taco's). The opportunity to reflect, the inherent freedom of awareness. Every unpredictable moment that precludes safety, yet is pregnant with opportunity. We may purse a shared disillusion of the individual into a "greater self", yet some struggle with the ego and the surrender of "I".

Yes, I wonder if appreciation is predicated on vulnerability. Or is it simply grace? The tragic failure is to not pursue our dreams, but to remain never waking or immediately nodding off as a dazed heroin addict will, as you let him know the house is burning down. One persons death is a tragedy yet thousands of dead children are a statistic.

Our human capacity to respond and transform the world remains blocked in the most basic expression. We cannot take care of our own shared sentient beings. We instead turn further inward toward artificial realities based on illusion of: media, availability, sustainability and joy. Endlessly repeating violent images coupled to the the manufacture of consumer desire we have blinded ourselves to the global totalitarian regimes we create to sustain our cannibalistic consumption of our very biosphere, planet and souls.

The Sacred and Profane are a false opposition. A limited perspective of War rather than Peace. When we separate humanity we embrace a dark "psychotic split" in life which reflects in the biosphere, the market place, our home and foreign our relations.

War is our greatest lover and will be our last addiction i fear. Until we desire and demand abstinence, until give our own violence surrender. Until the day we balance our populations with resources and care, we grow inexorably closer toward to the demise of the our environment, values, and existence of human love and piety.

While we remain in a have and have not society we fuel the tension and lust of goods & privilege access to justice, and equality. What passes for pleasure is mostly distraction and intoxication, for the pseudo spiritual this is silence or absence of awareness and any emotional tone of the biosphere is in it death throes.

When most open, vulnerable and Surrendered we witness our Kafkaesque yet Kali driven participation in the sorrows and death of the world. It is the very experience of adolescence and the waking or extinction of the nascent capacity for loving response as a sundered scion of the psyche of truth.

Our society posits the opposite. It is the obligation (that I often shirk) for the reflective being to jostle his neighbors awake as the ship of state is nearing the reefs of totalitarianism and collapse that is implicit in the myth of Empire and reality of “free market” capitalist plutocracy. What does this "mean" this supposed, posited yet unproven capacity for shared experience? And what does communication mean or offer as a tool or capacity for charging the world? How much is this a delusional distraction from what simply is; life, death, pain, joy, anxiety, and silence. Is that the "silence" we mystics pranam too, is that also the silence of the grave?

My friends ask me? How does one awakened the dammed on a ship of fools? I can only suggest to watch for what opportunity offers itself. The arise every day if not moment. It is not our enemies we have to fear, it is our own incapacity to act in each moment as the opportunity consistently appears.

Roman Polanski

2009-09-27T14:43:00.001-07:00

I had to think about if for a minute, just to remember who he is, I had him confused with Jackson Pollack. . .

Can you tell I don't follow the rich & famous? Rule number one in being cool in my book.

Thankfully I don't hold others to it, after all, they cant help that they choose to expose themselves to media, film and hype. Although I do remember in retrospect seeing his films and liking them. I love that this came up, it's a rich topic to sound off on all my inane personal positions which if I'm lucky, you will find contradictory, paradoxical, thought provoking and yes, totally irrelevant.

First of all, this arrest stinks! I mean why him, why now. . . Your telling me for thirty years the French have resisted all U.S. attempts to prosecute this case? There was no time in thirty years the French needed a favor from us with extradition? I don't think so.

American & global corruption, media spin and distracting the public from the loss of the North Polar ice pack, the inalienable right of Iran to Nuclear Weapons (for defensive purposes of course, like Israel) and the rest of world governments. God Obama's hypocrisy about a nuclear weapon free world is unbelievable!

Why do we get so scared at other people having weapons like ours? ? ? Could it come down to Empire and Greed and Oppression no, what could I be thinking, we are the GOOD guys right, freedom, equality, free trade in plutonium etc. . .

What's up with Switzerland! ? ? I mean the man lives there part time, owns a house and now all of a sudden they decide to arrest them at the behest of the US on a thirty year old warrant? Remember these are the guys who helped the Nazis even after the fall or the Third Reich, meanwhile supplying the guards for the Pope, another hate monger. . . Gota love them, there as conflicted and screwed up as the rest of us. If it weren't for Carl Jung I'd say write off the country to the Germans and the French. But I love Carl more than Jo Campbell. . . If it weren't for him Psychology would be truly fucked instead of just about as useful as any other new age approach.

Now onto the my spin of the facts. He's a rapist and child molester. Fact. OK and rich and famous and not going to do any time. Fact. His victim has forgiven him, so at this point all that is to be gained is allot of grandstanding by the some Judges and Prosecutors, who apparently, violated there own rules. . . this is a good laugh.

All my opinions about his childhood, his parents and Sharon Tate are really beside the point. This is just some weird trip of the US judicial system and its obscene obsession with punishment, fear mongering and oppression of poor minorities than justice, fairness or truth. If we were interested in that we'd be prosecuting corporations and not people. The fact that Roman was arrested is just another note in the lousy symphony as the ship of world "civilization" sinks. The band plays on. . .

ZPG

2009-09-25T08:09:00.001-07:00

I've been reflecting on not having children recently. I've been generally happy with the situation most of my life with a few periods of intoxication with the idea. It only happens in the first few months of a new relationship, and then it's a consistent fantasy that brings pleasure. Yet a few months or years later I find myself both relieved and grateful I'm apparently shooting blanks.

Some of my best friends are parents, breeder is somewhat pejorative, yet it's clear that while busy and engaged with activity, they are often far less available for reflection and free time than myself.

Yet for me the issue that decided the issue was not happiness but reason. Or what passed for it when I was a child. When I was an adolescent in the early 70's I became acutely aware of the diminishing open space on the planet & concurrent death to every other species on the planet, which I actually feel responsible for and deeply connected with.

As well as increasing pollution and strife for economic resources. All of these issues were (and remain) directly tied to population growth. I had never heard of Gandhi at the time but knew that this was one thing I could do to make the world better, not replicate. I think the decisions we make when young are often far more reflective of our souls desire and purpose (if such a thing exists), than the decisions, free or forced upon us, as adults.

So for me, the issue as a nascent environmentalist was clear doesn't replicate. I have never found any argument that diminishes the environmental degradation that population growth entails. This also begs the question of why economic models are always based on growth. Could we not model a society and economy based on sustainability rather than lust for material objects and transitory experiences? I don't know, I'm not doing so well in that department myself (lust and transitory experiences) I crave pastry and chocolate and caffeine lately, still appreciate beauty and quiet and attention. I don't think this is bad per say, what I think is it's interesting and useful to consider the costs and implications of our desires and if and how desire affects choice (again, if such a thing exists).

Just thoughts

2009-09-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

I think of people I love, that inspire me and I cry. I want so badly to be of service to people, to share something of beauty or value and I fail to imagine how that might look. Sometimes I think that is the primary failure, the loss of ability or courage to dream of a better world. It is so easy to be nihilistic, fatalistic and depressed. It is a challenge to be and express the love and joy that is the truth of this embodiment of life called “me”. And then, in a moment it all shifts. There is a seeing, that while other expressions are beautiful and perfect, so is my own. And in judging and criticizing myself, I create and continue a pattern that is not the love that I am. So perhaps, I can just be who I am, breathe, love and enjoy. May we all do so.

Friday, September 11, 2009

2009-09-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

The dead rest uneasy
While flames cover the earth
“Small Wars” good 4 busines$
Insanity at it’s worst. How to see
Ourselves in everything & nothing-
ness too. All the violence in the world
Imperfectly reflected human residue.

Your always know sweet baby,
that i long to come home to you
Something always sought and never found
Or found and lost in every moments time
This bliss in every moment
And weeping with it too
Cries of souls like murder
Are those of birthing too?

I’d like to think when I die
With a smile upon my face
All those love and lost
Home inside of “me”

Old Musing

2009-09-09T15:16:00.001-07:00

Traffic reminds me of the sea.

The cry of the gulls,

Reminded of origins

return to visit

the water

piscine movement

and knowing,

the silence of being.

as you read this,

Could you

Just a little bit,

for no reason

something beautiful

is around you,

that stirs your gratitude

just for fun,

Enjoy

Feb 1, 2006 9:58 pm
1732 Views

It is clear that at some level I am almost always looking for love and approval especially from those close to me. As I am looking outside myself for "you" (or another) to give me something I want, (approval, love, etc.) I am compromised in my ability to be honest with you (remember, I'm looking for love here.) I am rather likely to treat you very carefully so I can get what I think I "want".

If this is going on in both people unseen, it will be very difficult to sustain the relating in the face of this tension between getting what we want and being honest with ourselves about what we feel and want in that moment atempting to "get".

At a very deep level I suggest that no one else can make me happy, at best I can find people who are happy and hang out with them, but if I'm feeding off their happiness it will be a short time until I see that they are not quite making me happy in the way I want.

A friend once pointed out that when I say, "I love you" to someone what I am really saying might also be expressed as "I'm happy and I think it has something to do with you". The converse would be "I hate you" to be interpreted as "I'm unhappy and I think it has something to do with you"

This is definitely a minority opinion. However it does allow us the opportunity glimpse what is possible with a very small shift of focus, that my happiness in this moment is largely determined by whether or not I am contracted into my sympathetic nervous system or utilizing my capacity to enjoy the moment, which happens when I relax, enjoy, and appreciate the beauty that is.

This is difficult if we do not remember that we have been raised and live in a global energetic field contraction of and suffering . . .

Ultimately people will be far likelier to relax, love & enjoy when I do, and that relaxation happens when we see that contracting serves us not at all. If we believe that tensing up will help, when will we stop?

Feb 1, 2006 2:00 pm
1613 Views

This Longing, it

Does not stop

It changes every moment

And returns like the tide

Rising, falling, in it's own beautiful music

like the moon. Shedding light

Revealing beauty

As I circle, shedding knowing

Longing for the emptiness

In that rhythm.

6/03/2005

The Shoreline

Jan 30, 2006 4:31 pm
1584 Views

I have always been afraid of the sea

As a child I nearly drowned any number of times

Not that I have ever stayed away

From that luminal space

Between the shoreline and the sea

Where things appear to chase me, or run away

I can either meet or retreat, from my life

What is there now, will never be the same

And what was then is gone forever

Not to hurt or please me again

Except through the mirror of memory.

We are all there, between the tides rising and falling

Letting no one we love leave this shore of being

Except to travel away to the dry land of conviction

Or deep into surrender.

WCW
June 7th 2005

Poem for the ocean	Jan 26, 2006 1:16 pm 1690 Views
I am lost out at sea, far beyond the horizon The shore a distant memory being carried along not even trying to swim, i make feeble movements of surrender and resistance that make absolutely no difference yet bring unsought grace to life

I am That	Jan 26, 2006 1:11 pm 1642 Views
I am not this wanting I am not even this pain I am somewhere else Deeper, Meaning full Free These Habits of desire are not living They are a habitual dying of choice To surrender to what is Or suffer, endlessly Continually Wanting 15 April 2005

Back in my fathers house

Jan 21, 2006 2:29 pm
1778 Views

I saw the mess in the basement

Was being cleaned

Repairs were being made

You must start there

In the blood and the mud

To seek anew the foundations laid

Beneath every thing

The essence there, is plain to see

Surrounding us everywhere

Behind the gun, held to our head,

Is an amazing place

There's no one there, and nothing else

Can ever begin to compare

So it's up to you.

WCW
11/23/2005

Musings on baggage (from last june)

Jan 21, 2006 2:29 pm
1889 Views

i think about the past and what i thought I did want
that now gives me nothing but pain:

so so bittersweet, the loss of all
the beautiful young women who loved,
that left

all the beautiful young women who loved,
that i left

these endless drama's
of heartbreak
such a beautiful story
but so wearying to the soul.

my limited vocabulary has failed me
again

More confusion than truth
this dazed walking around in the dark

117 words on Mr. Cohen

Jan 20, 2006 10:30 pm
2194 Views

If I had

"a secret life"

I would die, because I could not keep it secret from you.

Still I know where I find my pleasure, and I know what it will hold

No mater where I find my self going, of course I return to the bank

On bogie street that hold the mortgage on my soul.

I gaze through the window confused, have I not been here before

The buzzer to enter, the guard at the door

I know I was robbed here a long time ago.

I walk by quickly trying not to remember

With who and for what and how there

It all came to me this morning

My father really did care.

No choice	Jan 20, 2006 8:02 pm 885 Views
But to love Any option leaves us smaller And the world darker Wanting this light To see the path That is before me 20/1/2006

Limits?	Jan 20, 2006 8:38 am 761 Views
I am here do not ask more of me I am all that I can be No striving for any greater love Or happiness will bring us A better experience I cannot be the answer I am only the question Like narcissus looking for my reflections I find no answer, only peace From prosecution and my heirs. Wanting is pure hell Only solace found in surrender Calling from emptiness Recalling the price of separation This merging breaks my heart To empty again, only to find Fruition in the filling once more. 19/1/2006
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Torture	Jan 19, 2006 6:18 pm 735 Views
I cannot tell you what pattern drives This pain, into my heart, again and again I do know, whatever love I found Was always there, is now there. And will remain. So Why? do I return to this Missing the last object, the focus of my desire That is unavailable. Now, I am left only this wandering. Lost in being, then returning, to peace. April 27th 2005
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Foreign object	Jan 19, 2006 9:23 am 1002 Views
This sliver is it in my throat, or my heart? or are there two wounds like gifts separate yet complimentary, or is this mantra in my throat, the only obstruction blocking attempts at true speech "I don't want to hurt you" an old memory from childhood buried in the rubble of trauma whispering out of the tears I am left wondering who was being addressed? WCW 1/19/2006
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Fire	Jan 13, 2006 9:40 pm 759 Views
To burn, the flame must be fed, Give it all your wanting, every single desire All the fucked up, held back, never satisfied, Absolute hungering for love. All the fear of abandonment: Be alone with this burning All else falling aside, crumbling like towers in the flames Shiva Dancing in your heart of your homeland Burning everything you tried to keep safe, hold dear, protect. Feed it the love you have. The love you wanted Every tear, every orgasm, every last piece of shit All of it and more, nothing held back Or else spend your life in this fire, until you become old, and careful with fuel, Nurturing this small, precious flame. Every last dream of succor No one, nothing held back even this last small wanting. . . Burning Being: Annihilated
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Here	Jan 12, 2006 6:29 pm 724 Views
I stand again in this place Where nothing moves, no vision or stir of breath within Nyx's realm Without: bodies, sensations, a furry, the fire of motion Blind to what I see and denying what is before me at what speed does violence move in the heart ? how quick the defensive patterns response? who sacrifices to Ares in the green fields outside the city whose fine white stallions slaughtered with Krishna's Oxen ? in this fog of war that pervades the land. 1/12/2006
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For better or worse, my own.	Jan 12, 2006 10:55 am Mood: melancholy, 715 Views
Betrayal in a novelty only once The ashes of bonfires mark the passage of my life burnt bridges, rain soaked pylons fairy circles on another shore no longer touching yet sympathetically connected loving words cannot change the past attention determines experience focus is crucial how awake, each moment can I be ? the deliverance I crave can only be found in this moment how quickly do I abandon myself?
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process	Jan 11, 2006 11:59 am 828 Views
Until you can earn your way Clean your den Every week/ Between the shifts Of those that care for you Clean the den of your heart Of what stain you may have laid to rest there
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three dots to many	Jan 8, 2006 2:51 pm 634 Views
Love is the voice at the door love is the sea rolling into your soul love is the moment not asking for anything more Uhh . . . Does size matter ? Yeah, uh hum, let's see it helps, but its the energy. . . You are so good at saying so little and then nothing at all nothing about you is quite innocent
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christmas lovers	Jan 4, 2006 9:17 am 647 Views
Christmas lovers I miss something often here with me I am artfully confusing sex and love are such different things. yet we do them both naked. I am not what i do, or even what i am essence beyond knowing i flounder in this storm of sensation occluded by thought and re action wishing only to lie there touching you 12/25/2005

christmass museing

Jan 4, 2006 9:09 am
32 Views

washing dishes in the kitchen

I think of children in the world

I want it to be safe & peaceful

Something my home rarely was.

i was to live something different

than the story i used, to know, to use.

if you really know what i mean.

so there's my meandering heart

singing out to me at the window

to the earth, the sky and the tree.

I want to speak so clearly of meaning

That can only be found in the moment

that continues a song held unbroken

through every soul whether base or high

we come round again to this moment

the sun setting on the year nigh

What we call forth into being this year

could well be the last many see

I ask that we all tread lightly

its only one boat in the sea.

WCW
12/24/2005

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words	Jan 3, 2006 5:05 pm 596 Views
A meditation for the Earth Body of star-ash, given form through water and desire Fired transformation, of old ancestral stories Moving through deep water darkly in to the light and shadows of the shallows, Quickened in movement and birthed in slow contraction after long gestation. This cosmos, this world, our bodies and our children Hold our deaths within their hearts To feel oneself as separate from the mother is Hubris Thought is a gift from the father with clear responsibility To return, deepen and embrace this re-late-ing To my family, my cousins, my ancestors is the re-membering of maturity. I may hold my body as a gift from Tumpallo My Intellect a function of Tingan, with A clear connection of the earth: community and abundance. Is it any wonder that I feel alone when I forget or deny this, Is it any wonder the bliss I am when I surrender too it's embrace? Give and it shall be given to you is an old adage. Our attention and intention are our most precious Gifts to share with the rapidly changing dream For they shape and hold, what is to come. Awareness imbedded in contextual space-time This dance partner of "now" is a beautiful chimera Quickening our breath into this body, time, & place So much is dying at our species hands Our species like a mindless virus the mother /father has birthed To destroy or make ready the earth / her-our body For a another beginning, awareness, peace That begins now, long ago, in a moment. 11/15/2005
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2009-09-08T18:31:00.001-07:00

Truth or fiction?

2009-09-08T18:29:00.001-07:00

Gravitating toward position

There is a knowing of truth

Patiently, the blacksmith

Hammers the blade

Filthy Money

2009-08-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

Does it matter where we gamble
does it say something?
the fact of the
matter

the roll of the dice

Money there to be taken
or lost ~ time
participation is optional
reserved for capital

we all die:
few choose their moments
or their smiles.

2009-08-16T17:33:00.000-07:00

~

2009-08-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

Putting away dishes
I start to cry
It's been along time
desire and guilt
obfuscate
loss

Like aging
love and death
it gets
less painful
all the time

I miss Matt
I miss Robert
I miss Will
I miss Daddy,

There here maybe too close
Where can they go Same for Her

I guess that makes it alright
Sometimes that's all
Just OK . . .

2009-08-10T13:45:00.000-07:00

On The Road

2009-08-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

National Security

2009-08-07T20:33:00.000-07:00

Victory on the war on drugs? Let's redefine it, Lets roll it into Nafta ~ Nationalize it. It Practically the only thing propping up the dollar, besides mad~paper is Drugs, yet the government refuses to tax, instead like most big corporate operations, we subsidze it with a prison system, enforcemnet, justice and lives. It's so obsene you know the world is mad.And , there are a hell of allot of people living (and dying) off the income from it. It's almost as big as porn. . . Or the arms business. . .How about a bandwidth tax on porn? From Langley to Columbia, We are complacent and understand the business. If radical change is to happen for the benefit of al. Lets just froget proabition, for good this time.

Meanderings

2009-08-07T20:21:00.000-07:00

Here to work? be depressed? I have no idea. Would like to get out more, even alone. Also see otherPeople widen my social life, yet I think I’m picky. . . do others like me, etc. Can I hang out with different people, will they care? What do I care, how much of my depression is coming to terms with life, that I live in a world of rage, starvation , murder, rape, safety, beauty, excess, indulgence, nirvana and bliss. Heaven and Hell all right here on our home, Earth. This has always been my primary predicament, to be in the world and appreciate the reality and privilege and beauty horror and sublime indulgence of leisure. And while the fall of world empire takes years,the "tipping point" is long past. What we do now is not to criticize or blame, but appriciate the beauty and grace that is lent us in these final eons to enjoy. For each moment, when savored in silence does indead feel like years.

Militia

2009-07-30T21:11:00.001-07:00

Strange to find myself led to writing about this survivalist idea

Old as catastrophe, or pestilence or plague, the whole good bad and

the ugly Without the good, or watch out that could mean you (or some abstract,

{but very real you know} community of lovers, do~gooders and people

of questionable character, for verisimilitude and the opportunity to offer

relevant political critique based in whatever. . .

So back to the bunker and the camo, generators and seed banks, and fertilizer a

nd composting toilets and all the shit to be able to make parts to make parts to

make parts to make circuit boards. All that shit, in the long run it's and end game

to raiders and strongholds, but surprises will come and multiple fall back positions

are expensive: people are simply ireplaceable.

Fuck it. Die with the rest of us, or not, no worries.

Oh yea, forget the future, you have to survive the immanent present when cops

stop going to work for us and join the opposition. If we don't have a militia or ability to

Control such now unemployed vets and cops and support personal to guard our shit,

Were fresh fish: to be raped and eaten or worse. Russia in particular has horrifying

examples. We have some pretty sick shit on Video and porn now, so who knows

how ugly it can get? But we do know were talking about young American men,

military or not, with no future, swine flu perhaps, god only Knows? Or nothing,

slow incremental economic improvements, some tax hikes, getting the hell out

of Afghanistan and taxing the oil imports, (ought to boost internal output and

employment In red states, not a bad idea, rich conservatives will give the liberals

time to sharpen their quills and write some decent reversions to the tax code.

Simplification. Tax wealth transfers and loan against large capital. Fleece the

goose. Fund single payer

flowerbox

2009-07-30T20:45:00.001-07:00

Rant & Rave

2009-07-28T15:32:00.001-07:00

Perhaps police budgets are

defense & security the stock market budget.

wonder how it would look:

our financial "crisis" an opportunity to

Cut our defense, security and terror addiction.

put only the violent in prison

Heal the disturbed and tax the rich

loving the rhythm of this ancient yiippie yowl

libraries the size of malls, and

Schools in sports arenas,

metro system instead of cars.

What man promised us change and

Vision to only feed his friends

And kill more again.

how much do you want this

2009-07-26T16:29:00.001-07:00

will you lie to have it
or prefer me in reply
gone the moment
words pass then
slide

This habit kills the hope
quash the dream the gutted
imagination, from breathing again.

Judgmental a demon seduced
us a pornographic succubus
from desire for love

Imagining sex and security
a reasonable panacea for life.
destruction of idle lives

rhetoric, grandiose
posturing / depression
fear of failure
beyond any fault

We suffer collectively
insane denial of mutual complicity
we know the positions of theft
as we rape and whore Babylon

Whether bedroom whatever marketplace
facile personal
trauma's that leave us
anxious and depressed

Omitting only the present
struggle to desire
some touch
in moments gaze that go's beyond

this shattered life and dreams
i've worsted and so desperately desire
beyond imagination
in the stars gaze.

.

Profit

2009-07-25T16:12:00.001-07:00

What value is profit if gains are from another's loss

When the sky gets dark one becomes restless and unsure

Everything that comes feels like a threat

To everything known or desired

Startled awake in the night alone and afraid

Panic of life when afraid to die

What makes me stumble through this life

As if; I was afraid to love

Life that is not mine but flows through

For what is born is certain to die

What it profit a man if he lies his way

Across a planet and never cries?

For the children never born

To enjoy the day, even though

Doomed to die? Who am i to begrudge

life's rush, the dawns flush, every day

What matters is not "our" life,

but our capacity to love it,

the other, easier

you, than me

I wonder why.

La Drome

2009-07-23T19:17:00.001-07:00

Kissing This

2009-07-21T11:05:00.001-07:00

There is no God but Love

No love in the singular, the exclusive, the I

Apart from the whole,

That connection is Love.

Love appears between love

Like pages appear between the covers of a book.

From the side the say nothing, inscrutable, obscured.

Yet opening gently, full of meaning, dialogue and joy

Until closed, when only a memory or feeling remains,

The solid pages that can stop a bullet from reaching the heart.

Allowing love to appear again, opening, the story continues.

Love without End.

Jet Lag

2009-07-19T13:44:00.001-07:00

Or travel bliss

This misdirection

Of attention

Into sensation

Small activities

Bring pleasure

Traveling home

One arrives.

gossip

2009-07-01T16:37:00.001-07:00

Working, doing well,
Thank you.

No ideas,
So much freedom,
Budding peace
             within still

       outside movement
nowhere;
the pull

that
used
    to remain.

First day in Holland

2009-06-20T15:44:00.001-07:00

Stories from my trip: So happy to be back here in Venwoude again, Beauty of the land, smiles, & laughter old friends reunited many sweet conversations, just few words of love meeting itself. Saw Nynke for a moment, she is so beautiful, dropping off her sister Dotty who also is such a joy. Hung out and chatted, but felt both tiered and aware of this deep wanting that was just starting to come home, so subtly, so long in my body. Took a nap, so jet-lagged but happy in the sensation and happy with it.

The Invitation to notice what/how "it" (the personality habits) show up or reveal themselves in silence, and sensation in the body. i begin to glimpse how shut down awareness of my emotional body is. . .. the opportunity to see these habits appear in awareness, in the body, and release the story of them being mine, personal or about me.

In the past pain was the most familiar, yet love or enjoyment was always present underneath every breath. The old (seemingly) personal habits of recycling trauma, yet, here, now it seems as i can sit with it in subtle gentleness, letting go of all "my" identity & beliefs.

This sweet surrender, the enjoying of the unfolding moment may be conceptualized in thought, speech or imagination, but only when gently embodied, kinetically is it actually realized as totally impersonal. And from there is no preference, just that.

The "I" unconsciously views others as threats and instinctively, unconsciously, contraction arises and then thought steps in to explain, help and solve a problem that is in root, merely a movement that can, eventually, if we are fortunate, be seen as an expression of the sympathetic neural system, human, but never personal, and likely, to not be of use or benefit to self or humanity.

Noticing

2009-06-19T14:28:00.001-07:00

The contrast is always obvious

When trying to speak the truth

Between love and confusion

With only silence left to say

It does not really matter

If you are near or far away

There is love here always

Each and every day.

So send the wild e-mails

Filled with humor or dismay

Nothing left to meet them

Like clouds that fly away

What is real you cannot see

Not for words to ever say

That’s as close I come baby

I was never far away

You know when here with this

That knowing cannot go away

what's left after love

is why i cry, might as well laugh

as well, what the hell

So let us kiss each others tears

And smile and cuddle and stay

This is the only moment left

I’m only living for this day.

learning to feel

2009-06-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last night was really painfull in a far less traumatic way than many disillusions have been in the past. So it’s an ending and I feel bad to hurt, and also because I love and enjoy. It is really beyond any of our choices or knowing. It’s funny to feel guilty for loving. Yet how can I apologize or feel bad for what I value most in this, that we call life?

It is clear that my dishonesty did not help. I ask myself? could i have been more honest and direct when I was in Holland and or when I got home, it was not a choice at the time. I was processing and seeing what moved in me, and yet, it’s clear and true, that I knew that desire was present, and again, at that moment I jumped over my “knowing” or voice of consciousness. It is almost like I wish it was not. Like I wish somehow I could be happy and sated with anyone, even as I am not. As if the "I"could ever find satisfaction. This interest in something more than that, in God, or Truth, sharing and living that interest is actually greater than me or anyone. And I see that there is no justification, or explanation or excuse for dishonesty or causing pain. I feel guilt, and also freedom and enjoy the honesty as it is here now.

This is both horrifying and beautiful. Both joy and pain and deliverance from resisting sensation. There is the habit of looking back, thinking there was an opportunity for choice. That there is someone to blame, usually me or someone else, either or, both. The opportunity to stand still is noticed, feel the ground under my feet. Be still. Ask who is needing anything. Ask who is aware of the need. Stop, be quiet. Breathe.

Sunday afternoon musing

2009-06-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

When I awaken, or even stir into awareness, fragments of dreams, no different than life flutter through memory leaving the odor of life and “doing”. Somehow, it seems all part of life and no longer a separate function of waking or sleeping, just of flow of thoughts and images across the screen of life.

Last night was interesting; I was restless and could not seem to sleep, my stomach seemed to pain me and then I just surrendered to the sensation and it slipped into something totally different, I can’t say what except just sensation. There was no longer pain or belief, just naked sensation not even particularly localized in “me” it was similar to peace or bliss, yet still with some sense of localized sensation. Interesting, I slept.

Yet what do I mean by “I”? There is no answer, there is only space for the question to flow, open, and vibrate into just that.

Yet what is waking and sleeping? Compared to silence?

Here is some pointing, from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”

Some disquieting commentary from a western perspective, often confused with an existential angst or a nihilistic viewpoint that is interpreted with a negative connotation, yet still pointing toward a profound and open truth, that behind all action and thought is space and emptiness, the awareness of the transitory nature of all matter, and all action.

It has been a long and somewhat tortured road from this adolescent knowing and rejection of hypocrisy and self directed violence to a calm and accepting place of nothingness that is more capable of response and love without agenda or needing, simply spontaneous movement of life, expressed through this body.

Quote

2009-06-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

Is there really any duality?
Because you believe it, there is
Are the sun's rays separate
from itself?

There is no creator of the world,
No sustainer, and no destroyer.
Everything happens spontaneously.

The manifestation of
consciousness is itself duality.

Be convinced that you are separate from the senses
and that their experience is not your experience.

Pure consciousness has never had an experience.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Trust

2009-06-06T20:41:00.001-07:00

If only this would sink in

Perhaps consciousnesses will write through this

If I invite myself aside

Something will appear

In this letting go

Let trust be your dearest friend

So you are never alone

And in your heart

You are finally home.

Truth

2009-06-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

This gentle beauty

Radiant

shining outward

form and soul

into life

Fron Venwoude

2009-05-30T12:34:00.001-07:00

love

here now

the horror, all

joy

Beauty in Hell

Flourishing

returning to

Her Throne

form

And sensation,

Heaven, ineffable

Compassion, has no need of a tongue

Bereft of arms to succor anyone

It is that beyond her eyes that

Speaks to my soul

In silence

desire falls away,

Stills the body

this divine presence

endures.

Trembling appropriates

These body's

Presence embraced

So gently, naked

At last the door

Is open.

Now

Come

to this

delicious

Commotion.

Beauty

Embodied in

The dance of forms of

Consciousness moving

How Love and Hunger

For truth finds

Form in everyone.

Amidst musing

There is peace

Knowing love

In any moment

Is surely a blessing.

Some pull remains,

No matter regret

A thousand wrongs

Can only dissolve in love

Where would I ever

Find that?

Except here, now

To give everyone, for you

Distance is painful

after such sweet intamcy

longing appears, offering

to carry messages of

reconciliation.

2009-05-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

Another Vision of Love

As one begins to Inquire

What it means to say

I love you, I fall into wonder

And questioning, and perhaps

Some truth of my habits of confusion.

For It has mostly been

An “I” loving a very specific “You”

Leaving little room for honesty,

Spontaneity or change.

What Love’s in me is not small

Or limited to One or Many

It is a expression of Oneness

That is flowing into a moment of time.

The smallness of personal love

So often denies the divine an entrance

And while waiting patiently,

“We” often despair in her absence.

So I speak to that within all

Who long to love greater than pain

And loosen the bonds of love

To embrace the grace of what is.

What love arises know no bounds

And so have become loves

And in that found the loss

Of wanting anything more.

2009-05-25T08:00:00.001-07:00

Holland

The grey spring tease’s me with blue skies

Brilliant sun from another time

I move hesitantly toward

Another home with more friends

Than my heart will allow

So it breaks and opens anew

This longed for homecoming

Into my own heart of hearts

Pain was the only lover I trusted

Now I find that it was only

An invitation into silence.

This quietness that has stolen over my body

Slows my reactions, and speeds my heart,

Like a soft caress from the divine

I am swept away into this love of sensation

While this body has indeed become a temple of god/dess

Energy releasing beyond even stories of healing

Doors opening where there were only walls

Wanting dissolving into accepting each moment of life

Again, clumsily, with what grace I know,

I point towards silence.

2009-04-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

Dad’s Home

It’s funny, but until I write this, it’s not true.
Kabir said something about this, in a different way.
Welcoming the father into the sun’s house
Good fortune, family continues.

What is this stone, once a mountain,
Now a mere enigma on my doorstep
Moving closer, around the shrines
I invoke my father’s return to home,

Here. Now, Forever more,
Until all words and languages
Are forgotten and obliterated
In the silver light of silence

He will then speak again
Like the risisng sun
Today across another world
Where things are just a little better

In that small town in Iowa
Laying in the corn
Little Billy, Does
Get his Daddy back

And everything
Everything,
Is
O.K.

William Appleman Williams's Ancestralization

2009-04-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

I started to appreciate that night, during the vigil

Meeting the people he inspired, getting inspired.

Beyond the measure of either grace or rhetoric.

Simply what dad would call a gift, a joy !

I see a bit more clearly, my history and the course

Life in America is shaped, rather than forced.

Ends are beyond our means, we are part of the flow

That we sail in and we are blessed when we recognize our crew.

Can’t say that there is a Captain, among this Anarchist lot

We sail through the storm together, and share the bounty too.

We have Historians and bards, and ancestors among us too

We are in good company all,

In all and in part because of you.

Shamed of me & the USA

2009-04-27T20:50:00.001-07:00

I grew up ashamed, it didn’t help that I was smart

I said mean things about our country &

I knew people hated me, and they knew why

Truth is Evil if used without love,

I wanted to have friends,

What I was: Alone

Sometime we don’t know, that our focus is outside,

That what we hate is merely an aspect of what’s inside

And so an opportunity for grace Is waiting on its knees

I’ll be no harsher when I’m judging my country

We tend to take everything so seriously,

Criticizing my Country, the good old USA

Is my most Patriotic act, in grace it is received,

Born with these eyes, no wonder I lost one.

Still burning bright, I love what appears to bring me joy.

Still what hurts causes scars in both

And we carry them too this day

I wonder why reflection is so difficult

Or is it the change that is denied?

No matter that the money flows

Our new cars on the way

Cruising straight to hell

For sure we know the way.

Is it radical or conservative to say

Our consuming is eating the earth alive.

America has led us here.

As my actions every day.

The Tribe of Grief

2009-04-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

A mask for the beloved to wear.

I know that while it cries,
for a period it stops: and so, stills my breath,
Alert, fresh,
this is,
what i don't see.
Collapsing, again: who am i crying for?

Emotion's flow as globally as the economy
as what we love one day we may later hate in private.
The public imposed upon the "personal",
any non-collective public grief lies unexpressed, Insane, Feared
Shunned & marginalized. Still more inappropriate if confused
or mixed, mired and fermented in joy.

People, children, babies, chickens and pigs, Millions every day
making room for ever more, let's not even talk about cows,
gmo corn and spongeiform human brains, we may all be dead
long before the prions get our non veg kids.

Amidst this perfect moment,
pain, and pleasure
both dearly held sleep
adrift in Nyx's arms
You are the lovers of desire.

Only in desperation salvation
ever surrendered.
the angels appearance.
pagan in the sun.

Torture ~ the human conditioning

2009-04-19T14:21:00.000-07:00

This is just a personal piece, to put in an awfully general, moral distant perspective. It’s as if I see, that there are aspects of life, which, we don’t talk about much but still occupy allot of space in our heads, lives and society.

Let’s stop and re-construct the discussion in terms of Violence as a Genre, and Rape, Sexual molestation, Torture, Beatings, Verbal violence, Intimidation by any group or individual, as parts or distinct. Some people break it into physical, sexual, verbal, energetic, and economic. For me it’s all part of the human experience, and the world.

So it’s a deep subject, and one that benefits from a personal, introspective as well as external examination. When judging other’s I suggest we start making statements about our own culpability in action first. This acknowledges the humanity of violence and its inescapability when unseen, recognized or honestly felt. I firmly believe we are strengthened in our capacity for honesty when we own our own mistakes and violence, No matter where we act it out whether in secret ourselves, our bodies, and our souls. Violence toward others or the generally condemned and criminal expressions; toward our environment, our pets, and finally our children, siblings and parents.

So, for starters, I do it all the time to too myself. I think that while it’s not ok, it’s not criminally offensive. It is annoying as hell to all the people who may choose to be around me. Some people just simply immediately opt out. Good for them, others, well, they either understand, don’t notice (not as bad as what they do), or simply could care less.

For me, the roots of Violence and Torture are at home, within us, our childhood nightmares, small animals and our familial relations and experiences. I think we discover Violence early as a part of life and then try to live with it however we can. Whether in denial about it, or objectifying it and localizing it in others or externalizing it in road rage, bar brawls, arguments with those we love, or most terrifying and intimate: enjoy it.

So to have a world wide discussion on the subject with the Bush administrations & The CIA being the Latest version of the Nazis, let us remember that we are all in this together, none of us has clean hands, and the best we can hope for is to stop it.

That’s all. Just stop it. Whether within ourselves, or with each other, I would first and foremost suggest we stop doing it. Then let’s see if we cannot find some space to talk without continuing it.

A comment on Sovereignty & Empire

2009-04-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

"Our" American Imperialism has deep roots, running far back, beneath Wilson "making the world “safe” for democracy" long before any speechwriters scripted Reagan or Bush Sr. stumping for freedom or democracy. American will was flat fiat. No president, on either side of the aisle has shifted or questioned the course of U.S. foreign policy to impose our markets and their owners will. We are finally beginning to see the cost of such policies.

The largely muted and consistently oppressed dialogue about, or examination of, the costs of empire has been facilitated by the tsunami of mindless media advertising cheap consumer goods.

What dialogue that has made it out into the market place of ideas and concern is focused on species, as well as “collateral” populations of non consuming human and non human portions of the biosphere. However I suggest, that in such a purely “subjective focus” we miss the opportunity or ability to address the market functions and economic imperatives that drive the cannibalistic consumption of the planet. I mention Biosphere here to remind us that a hungry human or animal will kill to feed his child, and that in our greed and lust for “democracy” we have impoverished not only ourselves, but the world.

I suggest that we recall that is our Ancestors (bless them) in their blithe hubris of self sufficiency and isolationism we slept through the watch and facilitated the deconstruction of what was, (so I hear) at one time, a decent rhetorically challenging, and affordable, national educational system the envy of the world.

It's non efficient replacement produces a citizen consumer ill fitted to sleep well in a market driven system filled with demonically possessed market architects at the helm of capitalist empires such as Monsanto, Blackwater, Halliburton, Texaco, pharmacy, and the merger between big agricultural and genetic market investors.

This corporate kleptocracy in turn funds, controls, and formulates our dialogue of our so called political system. Only when we successfully engage the body politic holistically will we succeed in shifting our collective and individual prioritizes towards actions that create beauty and meaning rather than consuming it.

Our Collective inability to engage “the right” merely exposes us for poorly educated elite without the capacity for imagination and inspiration to engage in both rigorous rhetorical and compassionate thinking. Which first and foremost is best applied to own little souls. The lack of educational ritual, rigor and maturation has created a society of narcissistic addicts bent on self destruction. This mistake has dam near doomed the world.

The lucky and the self entitled Bourgeois collectively fuck the world. As Leonard Cohen calmly states in “Everybody knows” Blindly and compulsively we replicate and consume our way through life in an attempt to avoid the unconscious fact at the root of our (mostly)white privileged, sex obsessed souls that we know there is another way.

America is a continent and hemisphere, as well as a media icon. Another truth is it is a land onto itself, with its own imperiled aboriginal, flora, fauna and tribes.

We are survivors. Call it humanity or Darwinism, Luck or “god’s will” or evil or simply what appears in awareness. The weak, the poor, the different, the stranger, often, mostly die. I know Jared Diamond might argue.

We non aboriginals have diverse gods and ancestors. We are refugees, slaves, and invaders. Some are like my family; members of the first wave of refugees and invaders. Some are more recent. Their choices are few and elusively subtle, yet with profound consequence.

One of these is the chance or opportunity to recognize and most importantly, remember our innate humanity and love. From that choice we live in either heaven or hell. The global “Clampdown” is simply to present and too serious to play games any longer about the world or our roles in it.

Refugees and criminals are defined by economic resources, timing, witnesses and chance. It is our responsibility to remember, to viscerally re-call the spirits of this land, our ancestors, and the land’s of our families birth. Through this collective re-tempering we may actually begin to meaningfully relate with each other and our colective dilema of how to live together on /with our mother-father planet spaceship.

I suspect “that everybody knows” we are far more intuitive or “savage” than we care to admit. Regardless if our efforts are beyond the "tipping point" we still have the ability and vision to offer our children a good and peaceful death, owning our part, and our complete lack of intention to suffer. This is a bright lining on a dark cloud. There is no reason not to celebrate what we have, the challenge is to share what is good and make space for each other, whether flora, fauna or enemy.

Is this moment an opportunity for a change in the consciousness of the American public? Are we desperate enough in our withdrawal from consumerism to have the fundamental realization of all recovering addicts, that untreated addiction destroys societies, worlds and lives.

It matters not if its power or crack, the ends are the same and yes, the solution is both internal and external, both within our bodies, families, and communities, but also in our immigration, employment, education and environmental and economic priorities. The fundamental failure of the “Left” is it's entrapment in dualism. when we can bow to the hawk within, we will risk the possibility of compromise as well as compassion. We cannot find unity without, if we do not free ourselves and our dialogues of shame, blame and guilt.

While it is an effective story to release adrenaline and stress hormones, our collective or personal focus on past or present human sacrifices, to our gods of national defense and fear, or too loose ourselves and grieve the dead. We repeat the trauma and remain a nation lost in narcissism and personally and collectively isolated.

It may be through the opportunity of the current global environmental economic moral crisis that we may seize this opportunity to evolve as a species dependent upon the bio-sphere we have poisoned in the name of secular profits.

Collectively we have the resources of imagination and implementation to make a quantum jump both as individuals and begin to husband the planet. Perhaps we have looked down in confusion, pain and anger. It may prove more humane to raise our gaze and our hearts to the heavens and make this day and this world all it may me. There is in simple honesty, an opportunity to unite, move forward and focus on life and it's inherent beauty in each and every moment. Yet there is hope that such a small shift may be the missing catalyst for our collective salvation.

More to come later, thanks for reading.

Leonard

2009-04-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

I'm an old Cohen fan, back from my teenage years in San Francisco punk scene. So I imagined that after 30 years of listening to my favorite bards voice I knew something shared, unique in all of us. I wanted to go to the show, but had no tickets and just put a prayer out on Craig's List. To my surprise i found myself answering the phone at 7.30 pm, a woman on the phone asking me if i had a printer, and saying i should get dressed.

An hour later, across the bay in Oakland's Paramount theater, I found myself together with the friend. Persians would call it "Sobet" "divine conversation" pure fields of musical nectar, enhanced joy of life, spontaneous, pouring through the "cracks in everything" where the light gets in.

Seats at gods feet, i cannot speak except with the sweet tears of loves fulfilled desire. All my life i have been like a blind man slowly finding my own way, hurt by help of others way. With the three thousand souls together we shared some truth, recognizing hearts know the way. This man is a living icon of all that is good and beautiful in life, nature, the world and the masculine soul.

And funny, humble and playful, skipping off the stage and pretending to go, And seeming to play a Kafka~esque riff on Sinatra. He appeared as a hip~post apocalyptic Archetype in the flesh. Masquerading as classical folk rock global poetic treasure. A genre transcending art that both contrasts and unites disparate experience of wealth, class and self esteem in the cauldron of the human heart. Where our struggles for power, meaning and control are ultimately passionately analyzed and surrendered upon the the mercy of love. And the letting go of even that, in love.

too familiar

2009-04-06T02:01:00.000-07:00

Philosophy can start out comfortable, so abstract, know what i mean?

Then in some late night, early some morning, samadhi fuled meditation, it actually start sliding into and out of some rather altered experience of conciousness.

A mad comuters early morning anxity attack smorgasbnoard?!

I would have a moment of dream awareness, perhaps identifying a gender, or a body type, some focus of attention, maybee a emotion. a felt sense of life embdied but not "mine"

Then it would begin to shift, i would remember "myself" and experience vertigo or nausea a shifting sence of awareness and personal karma

Then a personal referance point would fade or evaporate demanding an imediate sureender to what is joy if not fought, it it is resisted, it is freak the fuck out scarry!, riding the tusnami !

maybe another experience, a dream vinyet of body, calm breathing a clear pchysic exchange of some sort, yet i am riding the edges of Trama again. . . it can get to much really quick!

But also exhilarating and almost extinction. if that's excitement, i don't need it. Yet it's not for excitement, it's experiencing, and a letting go or allowing in, of other experiences, ones that are waiting to share if we allow much wonder in to our dreams, our awakenings.

Healthcare & Warfare

2009-04-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

They are a pair, like husband and wife, an allegory made ironic by it's accuracy and lack of funding. Its an unexploited argument in soundbite time; media cannot repress. Imagination is revolution Lennon taught us that. Lydon gave us anger Strummer epitomized self control.

So back to my refrain: Dark and Light, Love and Hate, Separation and Unity, the list go's on. Living on the edges~surender~enjoy. The love we all share, no matter how obscure'd are shared by a "critical mass" like pshye fission, it's our only choice: we either evole or we die, and of course it's allways the two.

Enough of us have all grown weary of the monatary junk, weary of our next desire, we shudder to even tru it. no matter where we run, the rest of the world is going straight to hell. We have brought it upon ourselves, The sins of our fathers, seven generations told: were still paying off the civil war. . .

If it's all karma, and we'll pay every second as we go. We come in with lot's of credit - or none of that's "how it goes". Not abstract or interesting when afluant dreamers wish to die in some winter dreams. I say dance your sister to the freedom, that has allways been here, we know it's only music that's playing in our ear.

Take a deap breath ad breathe into this pose. Every perspective is like a child, manipulating it's patents in to defending regardless of the cost. I imagine a mature recognition, that releases sahme and guilt - control. none of us is inocent, none are guilty if truth is honestly known. All that happens is a fragment of ourselves, the deeper we deny it, more the evil sold.

The dynamic of conflict is rooted in our souls, it aches in the morning as soon as we awake, as we age we feel it's cost in our bones.

smiling

2009-03-31T20:31:00.000-07:00

Life is going on
with or without us
constantly shifting
Like the sea.
our only delusion:
naming a direction.

Heaven or Hell

2009-03-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

Such a perfect day

two hours of yoga

two at the coffee shop

perfect conversations with friends

all parts of life embraced

Today we are enjoying more peace

than many know their entire lives.

Wind on the hill

2009-03-14T19:37:00.000-07:00

I love to get out, around sunset and take a walk up the hill.

I even like the anticipation, like sex, when you know it's going to happen

and you haven't yet moved a muscle, I don't ever know what it will be like

i don't' think it's ever been bad ( or at least not for a long time), and i love it every time.

Just an unexpected flower, or the wind pushing the grass flat against the hill

like forces bend me without my knowing anything, but this lying down and getting up.

Then they sky grows pink and red and i know it's getting dark, and I'm happy to be alive.

Images in a Mirror

2009-01-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

Orientation, frequencies we attune to
flow through so powerfully, at times, overwhelmingly so
I hear watch and feel myself,
reflecting the world in the personal pronoun.
Hearing others grieve in anger and pain,
I feel so ashamed and guilty,
that i am no better, arrogance
is the most painful teacher,
merciless in it's punishment
of the guilty, I remember what
Peace is found in crying joy,
with humility and in exhaustion,
surrender.

~