Saturday, December 12, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Weapon
it is the root of all fear and lust
that we might love more perfectly
later.
Friday, November 20, 2009
old writings, old loss
I came across this poem for a friend
who OD'd back in '85
I still miss him,and many others
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.
both sentimental and perhaps genuine
love we feel for our friends,
and on the impact
of drug abuse,
suicide, and death.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Exploitation of Soul
sex,
food
media
being right
by
ideas,
religions
political power
violence
Arms'n "defense" industry,
oil, lobbying, legal drugs;
alcohol, tobacco,
pizza, prozac
computer games
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
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Time
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
Friday, October 23, 2009
Healthcare
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.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
love no dog from hell
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
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
Friday, October 16, 2009
While at the Park
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.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Work
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,
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
What is success ?
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. . .
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Hedges on corporate power
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.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Rant
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.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Roman Polanski
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. . .
Friday, September 25, 2009
ZPG
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).
Friday, September 18, 2009
Just thoughts
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
Friday, September 11, 2009
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”
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Old Musing
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.
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 | |||
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Feb 1, 2006 2:00 pm | |||
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Jan 30, 2006 4:31 pm | |
I have always been afraid of the sea |
Jan 26, 2006 1:16 pm | |
I am lost out at sea, |
Jan 26, 2006 1:11 pm | |
I am not this wanting |
Jan 21, 2006 2:29 pm | |
I saw the mess in the basement |
Jan 21, 2006 2:29 pm | |
i think about the past and what i thought I did want |
Jan 20, 2006 10:30 pm | |
If I had |
Jan 20, 2006 8:02 pm | |
But to love |
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