Work -The four-letter word tied to our fate
Enslaves the spirit during out pubescent state
It’s an entrapment we think fills all our needs
But its only really benefits the masters of greed.
Work - A story of lies will always get you the pay
I’ve done it more times than I care to say
Though, once I fell off my ladder of lies
But landed in a garden of lucky surprise.
It began, as always, with an innocent tale
A story of employment in the sign-posting world
I bragged that I’d worked in the U S of A
Climbing the scaffold for aerial displays
My master said son, “If that is the case,
Then climb up this ladder and show me your pace.”
He left me alone while I stumbled up high
But I soon lost my head in a vertigo cry.
As I wobbled on stilts, applying paper to paste
The wind whipped around me and splattered my face
The paper slipped down, nearly taking me too
After five minutes of frustration I didn’t know what to do.
My master returned in the nick of time
Smiling broadly at this battle of mine
“Well, I guess this ain’t for you he said with a grin
So come on down before you cause a great sin.”
As I sat in the office feeling humilities hell
The Gods smiled too, at my inept portrayal
Of a worker who climbs to the stars just to smell
The odor of money at the bottom of a pail.
So when my master emerged from the cavern of fate
He applauded my brass balls and the smarts that it takes
To lie and face up to the realities of truth
Because what else can you do when your lie comes unloose!
So seeing I wasn’t a fool, just a liar
He gave me a job in the office as his squire
A position that suited me just to a tee
Because as an Englishman I loved morning tea.
I worked there three months massaging my career
Til my American wife dragged me over here.
Now I’m not sorry to say I preferred to make the move
But my master was heartbroken when he heard the news.
So the moral of this story, if you really need one
Is work is for horses and fools - so just have some fun!
Monday, August 13, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
TO SEE LONDON AND DIE
To see London and die', is etched on the skulls of all who have been touched by this fabled city. In the scattered colonial hamlets around the world the streets of London are said to be paved with gold. But in the Britain of the 1990's the great motherland of suffrage tolerates Black people only if they have money, know their place, and stay in it!
Returning to London after ten years living in California, the reality of this peculiar British tradition of ‘knowing one's place’ struck me anew as I pushed through the crowds at Gatwick Airport. The customs officers looked suspiciously at the visas in my passport, from the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East, and asked me just exactly how long I intended to stay. When I informed them I had the right of abode in the country, their conspiratorial eyes followed me until I was out of the terminal.
As I stepped out into the oozing, stifling drizzle, which is called a climate on these wind-swept shores, everything looked so small and miserly. The dank rows of brick tenement buildings that curled around car lined stuffed roadways, were much too small for single lined traffic let alone the monstrous trucks with European plates. The skies constantly overcast seemed to agree with the disparaging looks on the faces of my black brothers, colorless and gray. To be Black in Britain is to be cast adrift in a sea of dullness, ostracized from the gaiety of a motherland's warmth, a beggar at the gates of a bleached kinship. But what is most painful about being Black in Britain is the systematic leaching of aspirations and hope.
As I moved on into the maelstrom of Maggie Thatcher's new vision, past the begging punk rockers and the hordes of soccer hooligans armed with the ignorance of race hate, I longed for a pint of best ale. Fortunately, the pubs still remain a sanctuary from the gathering greed that has infected this land since Maggie and Ronnie's political intercourse. Of course the fact still remains, that the further north you go in England the better the beer is. Here in London I made do with best bitter, hybrid dark ale on tap. After years of suppin' the insipid Budwieser and its various 'lite' cousins in America, I was happy to wash my parched throat with a true brew with a healthy head.
The pubs I found were still the bastions of free speech in a nation that loves to philosophize. And unlike America, political and cultural debate is rampant in Britain! But it is said that an Englishman may respect your opinions, but will deny you your feelings. Thus these philosophical posturing are often a mask behind which hides many aching souls.
In America generally and California in particular, people delight in expressing their personal feelings, a little too much at times, perhaps. Yet there can be seen a sincere desire to get out of themselves, to share their feelings with others in order to better understand themselves. The British conversely pride themselves on holding back their feelings, superior in their faith of not being too emotional. Consequently they live lives of quiet desperation, shut up in themselves, afraid to feel, made all the more stifling because it's self inflicted. This adherence to proper form and its denial of individual initiative is the biggest battle that the exile fights to overcome when he leaves Britain. Some never make the break, while all are scarred by its destabilizing influence.
This peculiar feature of self-effacement and emotional self-doubt in the British character is, to my mind, the cornerstone to the governing classes ability to manipulate its people and limit their potential, because if people are put on the defensive when questioned about their feelings, they will become immediately intimidated by the logic of the question rather than grasping the motivations of the questioner. And if you doubt your own feelings, or can give them only limited credibility, then a large element of faith in yourself has been removed from your control.
And control is the name of the game. For if an individual doesn't control his or her destiny in life, then there are many people waiting in line to control that individual. Slavery, after all is simply the giving up of an individual's ability to control his or her destiny.
The destiny of Black people like all others can only be found in our own hands. Black people must throw off the culturally incarcerating stigma of the Anglo-Saxon's in- ability to feel. We must trace our roots through our feelings taking control of our lives in the process. Because there are only two indisputable facts in this life: one; we all will die, and two; if we don't control our destiny others will!
In America this concept of control is understood, and as such it has given way to the cult of the individual. Three thousand miles away, on the wind-swept shores of Britain, a nation who has put its thumb print on much of the world, the cult of the individual appears excessive, corrupting and uncivilized. Yet this concept, although it has its shortcomings, instills the belief that if you want something you must go after it yourself. You must want it like a passion bordering on obsession. And to hold it, you must control and focus your attention on your success to have any hope of it working for you! This is not to say that just by asking you will receive; but rather by believing in oneself, focusing your control over your skills and abilities, that effort will create the conditions for your own good fortune.
As an individual who was raised in the Brixton of the sixties, I could see very little had changed on my return in the nineties. Brixton's battered lanes and scars of bubbling dreams still collided in a twilight firmament exposing a sorely unequal country. The tenements had become 'gentrified' but the consolidation of sorrows can not be so easily patch over.
The prospects for Blacks in Britain seems no brighter now than when I lived there. But the will for change cannot come from the favors portioned out by the powers-that-be. They must come from Black people rediscovering their emotions and feelings, monitoring them with their knowledge of the world, and taking positive steps daily to take control of their own lives.
Returning to London after ten years living in California, the reality of this peculiar British tradition of ‘knowing one's place’ struck me anew as I pushed through the crowds at Gatwick Airport. The customs officers looked suspiciously at the visas in my passport, from the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East, and asked me just exactly how long I intended to stay. When I informed them I had the right of abode in the country, their conspiratorial eyes followed me until I was out of the terminal.
As I stepped out into the oozing, stifling drizzle, which is called a climate on these wind-swept shores, everything looked so small and miserly. The dank rows of brick tenement buildings that curled around car lined stuffed roadways, were much too small for single lined traffic let alone the monstrous trucks with European plates. The skies constantly overcast seemed to agree with the disparaging looks on the faces of my black brothers, colorless and gray. To be Black in Britain is to be cast adrift in a sea of dullness, ostracized from the gaiety of a motherland's warmth, a beggar at the gates of a bleached kinship. But what is most painful about being Black in Britain is the systematic leaching of aspirations and hope.
As I moved on into the maelstrom of Maggie Thatcher's new vision, past the begging punk rockers and the hordes of soccer hooligans armed with the ignorance of race hate, I longed for a pint of best ale. Fortunately, the pubs still remain a sanctuary from the gathering greed that has infected this land since Maggie and Ronnie's political intercourse. Of course the fact still remains, that the further north you go in England the better the beer is. Here in London I made do with best bitter, hybrid dark ale on tap. After years of suppin' the insipid Budwieser and its various 'lite' cousins in America, I was happy to wash my parched throat with a true brew with a healthy head.
The pubs I found were still the bastions of free speech in a nation that loves to philosophize. And unlike America, political and cultural debate is rampant in Britain! But it is said that an Englishman may respect your opinions, but will deny you your feelings. Thus these philosophical posturing are often a mask behind which hides many aching souls.
In America generally and California in particular, people delight in expressing their personal feelings, a little too much at times, perhaps. Yet there can be seen a sincere desire to get out of themselves, to share their feelings with others in order to better understand themselves. The British conversely pride themselves on holding back their feelings, superior in their faith of not being too emotional. Consequently they live lives of quiet desperation, shut up in themselves, afraid to feel, made all the more stifling because it's self inflicted. This adherence to proper form and its denial of individual initiative is the biggest battle that the exile fights to overcome when he leaves Britain. Some never make the break, while all are scarred by its destabilizing influence.
This peculiar feature of self-effacement and emotional self-doubt in the British character is, to my mind, the cornerstone to the governing classes ability to manipulate its people and limit their potential, because if people are put on the defensive when questioned about their feelings, they will become immediately intimidated by the logic of the question rather than grasping the motivations of the questioner. And if you doubt your own feelings, or can give them only limited credibility, then a large element of faith in yourself has been removed from your control.
And control is the name of the game. For if an individual doesn't control his or her destiny in life, then there are many people waiting in line to control that individual. Slavery, after all is simply the giving up of an individual's ability to control his or her destiny.
The destiny of Black people like all others can only be found in our own hands. Black people must throw off the culturally incarcerating stigma of the Anglo-Saxon's in- ability to feel. We must trace our roots through our feelings taking control of our lives in the process. Because there are only two indisputable facts in this life: one; we all will die, and two; if we don't control our destiny others will!
In America this concept of control is understood, and as such it has given way to the cult of the individual. Three thousand miles away, on the wind-swept shores of Britain, a nation who has put its thumb print on much of the world, the cult of the individual appears excessive, corrupting and uncivilized. Yet this concept, although it has its shortcomings, instills the belief that if you want something you must go after it yourself. You must want it like a passion bordering on obsession. And to hold it, you must control and focus your attention on your success to have any hope of it working for you! This is not to say that just by asking you will receive; but rather by believing in oneself, focusing your control over your skills and abilities, that effort will create the conditions for your own good fortune.
As an individual who was raised in the Brixton of the sixties, I could see very little had changed on my return in the nineties. Brixton's battered lanes and scars of bubbling dreams still collided in a twilight firmament exposing a sorely unequal country. The tenements had become 'gentrified' but the consolidation of sorrows can not be so easily patch over.
The prospects for Blacks in Britain seems no brighter now than when I lived there. But the will for change cannot come from the favors portioned out by the powers-that-be. They must come from Black people rediscovering their emotions and feelings, monitoring them with their knowledge of the world, and taking positive steps daily to take control of their own lives.
Friday, July 27, 2007
THE POVERTY OF PLENTY
Hip hop slang
Rubs dud-dud sounds.
The music for whites
Who cannot dance and
Blacks who cannot sing.
Them loaded down
In oversized threads
Ignorant of history and
Their place in the scheme.
Them giant clothes hide
Them midget spirits
Desperate for sight
A light in the world.
It’s the poverty of plenty
In the land of the brave
Too fixed on the money
When there’s souls to be saved.
It’s the poverty of plenty
Fooling all who seek truth
‘cause the thieves of the past
Have just donned new boots.
Oh the Hip Hop slangers
What a joke to the real
All remembering a past
They've never fulfilled.
They cry over scares that
They've never shed, while
They climb over backs
Of their brothers who bled
For freedom and justice and
Respect for a truth, now.
Lost in the smocks of
A glided punk's tooth.
It’s the poverty of plenty
In the land of the brave
Too fixed on the money
When there’s souls to be saved.
It’s the poverty of plenty
Fooling all who seek truth
‘cause the thieves of the past
Have just donned new boots.
So let them hip hop
Til the cows come home
It can’t feed their kids
And it can’t feed their souls
And one day they’ll wake
From a shattering dream
To realize they
Can’t even HEAR
Let alone
Understand
The word
PEACE!
Rubs dud-dud sounds.
The music for whites
Who cannot dance and
Blacks who cannot sing.
Them loaded down
In oversized threads
Ignorant of history and
Their place in the scheme.
Them giant clothes hide
Them midget spirits
Desperate for sight
A light in the world.
It’s the poverty of plenty
In the land of the brave
Too fixed on the money
When there’s souls to be saved.
It’s the poverty of plenty
Fooling all who seek truth
‘cause the thieves of the past
Have just donned new boots.
Oh the Hip Hop slangers
What a joke to the real
All remembering a past
They've never fulfilled.
They cry over scares that
They've never shed, while
They climb over backs
Of their brothers who bled
For freedom and justice and
Respect for a truth, now.
Lost in the smocks of
A glided punk's tooth.
It’s the poverty of plenty
In the land of the brave
Too fixed on the money
When there’s souls to be saved.
It’s the poverty of plenty
Fooling all who seek truth
‘cause the thieves of the past
Have just donned new boots.
So let them hip hop
Til the cows come home
It can’t feed their kids
And it can’t feed their souls
And one day they’ll wake
From a shattering dream
To realize they
Can’t even HEAR
Let alone
Understand
The word
PEACE!
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
ANOTHER COUNTRY
The aspects that most intrigues me about living in another country other than England, are the little details. The habits by which we tie our lives together or tie them up - we rise at six, breakfast at seven and start work at eight. Those many familiar unconscious expressions by which we mark out our space in the world. We are all aware of the different names of countries, the fact that they have different languages, currencies, customs and climates. And in pursuit of adventure we devour travel books and histories and inundate our minds with the silver-screen images of new lands with fresh, crisp, green grass.
Our first steps on that new soil, however, are invariably met with profound irritation over the petty disparities of very ordinary things. As we are disgorged into the curious mass of humanity leering on airport rails, we are struck immediately by the different scent and movement in the air. Our defenses are alerted as we look to smoke out the assailant. However, as our stay becomes more permanent these disparities become exasperating to the point of obsessive national snobbery. In the course of my own travels, which have included most of Europe, the Middle East, North and West Africa, Canada and North America. I have been constantly dumbfounded, bemused and frustrated by what appears to me to be a conspiracy to be different just for the sake of it.
Why, I ask myself, would anyone go through the trouble of designing and marketing a thousand-and-one different types of toilet paper, when one size fits all? Here in America one has a multiple choice of soft, super-soft, super-super-soft, and new improved extra-soft, ad infinitum! To what purpose, I ask? In England the range is truly staggering, from the down-right coarse to the silky velvet(possibly commissioned by Royal charter), toilet paper refining has become ‘class conscious’. I met an American woman, in London, who was making a collection of these choice articles. Her fascination was incredulous; she believed the folks-back-home would just love these cultural curiosities.
In Arab countries toilet paper is sometimes not used at all. Man’s left hand is responsible for this function. This can come as a most disconcerting shock to the newcomer, especially after he is mid-way through his performance, thinking of everything but the inconvenience of being paper-less! What replaces the familiar roll is a cup or bucket of water to wash your hand with. After the initial horror of such fecal indulgence a certain logic explains the situation. Firstly, no child or adult, for that matter, can escape the ‘throne-room’ without washing their hands. Unless, of course, they like the pungent odor of waste-matter about their person. Secondly, toilet paper cannot then add to the pollution and blockage of the commode environs, creating that all too disagreeable nausea which reminds us of our entrails workings. Thirdly, with no consumer demand, many more trees are saved the ignominy of having their lives cut short, turned into pulp and then paper to grace our posteriors. One word of warning should therefore be given to the would-be travelers to these lands of the crescent star: never shake the left hand of an Arab.
Travelers, in Arab countries or elsewhere, always have a new thirst for communications. What are these new sounds? Why the different hum? Where does one pay to hear? The telephone has become our ear to the world. Its universal conformity would thus be a definite advantage. However, the trifling distinctions of the dial tones have always perplexed me. In Britain the dial tone is pitched in a staccato E and comes charging out at you, seeming to demand why you have disturbed the systems inner slumbers. One inserts the coins after dialing and making the connection, by which time the system has relapsed into comatose. The dialing tone returns reminding us of the nerve-shattering key of E and we realize where the Sex Pistols got their musical training! In America the dialing tone purrs at the you in middle C, Cherishing your patronage and ringing gently, as of a Crystal Cathedral, bestowing wisdom and comfort. The workings of foreign telephone systems exasperate Americans the most. Coming from a land where a telephone is practically a birthright, a preferred substitute to a pacifier, Americans battle abroad with coin openings which are jammed, the feistiness of operators, and the excessive cost and inefficiency of a common place utility.
Having been conditioned by a country’s medium of communication, the next great obstacle is to straddle the banal discrepancies between the uses of words. The differences between American and British words belies their common use of the English language. Not so much because they are so far apart but because of their trivial distinctions, for example; the American downtown is the city center in British English; subways are tubes; piers are quays; a duplex is a semi-detached; an apartment is a flat; elevators are lifts; the first floor is the ground floor. The particular literal definitions make one question, what is common about sense? Wouldn’t you agree that the sound of the word autumn is preferable to fall; wallet to billfold; cotton to thread; drawing pin to thumb tack; queue to line? one defines an item or situation, while the other defines its function.
There is a serious side to this dilemma which is more acute than the difference between TO-MATE-TOES and TO-MAR-TOES. One is constantly thrown off guard by the use of terms like cabinet for cupboard; truck for lorry; faucet for tap; muffler for silencer; and vest for waistcoat; we won’t go into cul-de-sacs being called dead-ends or that a fortnight is two weeks. The trivia mounts. But more succinctly the crisis can be summed-up in feet and inches. The metric inch of America is at serious odds with the centimeters of Continental Europe and the twelve inch foot of Britain. Therefor an American/British phrase-book would be a very useful addition for travelers to the United Kingdom.
Travel they say broadens the mind. However, the emotions take a battering in the process. On short stays in foreign lands everyone is granted the license of self-righteousness and cultural arrogance, but as your stay becomes extended on a foreign soil, that nation’s idiosyncrasies begin to seep into the newcomer’s sub-conscious, colonizing the instincts. Before long you catch yourself saying, restroom instead of public convenience, and asking the operator for a collect call person-to-person. Old habits die hard however, and occasionally you lapse back into the euphonic sounding words like biscuit instead of the jocular cookie, or chemist instead of the blatant druggist. But by then it’s too late because you’ve become a foreigner!
Our first steps on that new soil, however, are invariably met with profound irritation over the petty disparities of very ordinary things. As we are disgorged into the curious mass of humanity leering on airport rails, we are struck immediately by the different scent and movement in the air. Our defenses are alerted as we look to smoke out the assailant. However, as our stay becomes more permanent these disparities become exasperating to the point of obsessive national snobbery. In the course of my own travels, which have included most of Europe, the Middle East, North and West Africa, Canada and North America. I have been constantly dumbfounded, bemused and frustrated by what appears to me to be a conspiracy to be different just for the sake of it.
Why, I ask myself, would anyone go through the trouble of designing and marketing a thousand-and-one different types of toilet paper, when one size fits all? Here in America one has a multiple choice of soft, super-soft, super-super-soft, and new improved extra-soft, ad infinitum! To what purpose, I ask? In England the range is truly staggering, from the down-right coarse to the silky velvet(possibly commissioned by Royal charter), toilet paper refining has become ‘class conscious’. I met an American woman, in London, who was making a collection of these choice articles. Her fascination was incredulous; she believed the folks-back-home would just love these cultural curiosities.
In Arab countries toilet paper is sometimes not used at all. Man’s left hand is responsible for this function. This can come as a most disconcerting shock to the newcomer, especially after he is mid-way through his performance, thinking of everything but the inconvenience of being paper-less! What replaces the familiar roll is a cup or bucket of water to wash your hand with. After the initial horror of such fecal indulgence a certain logic explains the situation. Firstly, no child or adult, for that matter, can escape the ‘throne-room’ without washing their hands. Unless, of course, they like the pungent odor of waste-matter about their person. Secondly, toilet paper cannot then add to the pollution and blockage of the commode environs, creating that all too disagreeable nausea which reminds us of our entrails workings. Thirdly, with no consumer demand, many more trees are saved the ignominy of having their lives cut short, turned into pulp and then paper to grace our posteriors. One word of warning should therefore be given to the would-be travelers to these lands of the crescent star: never shake the left hand of an Arab.
Travelers, in Arab countries or elsewhere, always have a new thirst for communications. What are these new sounds? Why the different hum? Where does one pay to hear? The telephone has become our ear to the world. Its universal conformity would thus be a definite advantage. However, the trifling distinctions of the dial tones have always perplexed me. In Britain the dial tone is pitched in a staccato E and comes charging out at you, seeming to demand why you have disturbed the systems inner slumbers. One inserts the coins after dialing and making the connection, by which time the system has relapsed into comatose. The dialing tone returns reminding us of the nerve-shattering key of E and we realize where the Sex Pistols got their musical training! In America the dialing tone purrs at the you in middle C, Cherishing your patronage and ringing gently, as of a Crystal Cathedral, bestowing wisdom and comfort. The workings of foreign telephone systems exasperate Americans the most. Coming from a land where a telephone is practically a birthright, a preferred substitute to a pacifier, Americans battle abroad with coin openings which are jammed, the feistiness of operators, and the excessive cost and inefficiency of a common place utility.
Having been conditioned by a country’s medium of communication, the next great obstacle is to straddle the banal discrepancies between the uses of words. The differences between American and British words belies their common use of the English language. Not so much because they are so far apart but because of their trivial distinctions, for example; the American downtown is the city center in British English; subways are tubes; piers are quays; a duplex is a semi-detached; an apartment is a flat; elevators are lifts; the first floor is the ground floor. The particular literal definitions make one question, what is common about sense? Wouldn’t you agree that the sound of the word autumn is preferable to fall; wallet to billfold; cotton to thread; drawing pin to thumb tack; queue to line? one defines an item or situation, while the other defines its function.
There is a serious side to this dilemma which is more acute than the difference between TO-MATE-TOES and TO-MAR-TOES. One is constantly thrown off guard by the use of terms like cabinet for cupboard; truck for lorry; faucet for tap; muffler for silencer; and vest for waistcoat; we won’t go into cul-de-sacs being called dead-ends or that a fortnight is two weeks. The trivia mounts. But more succinctly the crisis can be summed-up in feet and inches. The metric inch of America is at serious odds with the centimeters of Continental Europe and the twelve inch foot of Britain. Therefor an American/British phrase-book would be a very useful addition for travelers to the United Kingdom.
Travel they say broadens the mind. However, the emotions take a battering in the process. On short stays in foreign lands everyone is granted the license of self-righteousness and cultural arrogance, but as your stay becomes extended on a foreign soil, that nation’s idiosyncrasies begin to seep into the newcomer’s sub-conscious, colonizing the instincts. Before long you catch yourself saying, restroom instead of public convenience, and asking the operator for a collect call person-to-person. Old habits die hard however, and occasionally you lapse back into the euphonic sounding words like biscuit instead of the jocular cookie, or chemist instead of the blatant druggist. But by then it’s too late because you’ve become a foreigner!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
To Suffer or Not to Suffer...?
I had the choice: spend two hours on the phone deciphering Internet-ology with a nerd from India, who was obviously far more intelligent than me - her
English surpassed my Hindi - or look at the dissolving iMac loading disk spinning it's rainbow colors into oblivion.
I chose suffering!
On the freeway into work I had the choice: stop off at an art gallery. Take in one magical image which would stay with me throughout the day, and lift me up and away from the grim and dementia of my corporate culture. Or stay in the health- depleting, soul-destroying, cancer-inducing-smog of the shunting convey-a-belt traffic, and still arrive late for work!
I chose suffering!
I had the choice: take responsibility for my life in the NOW. Or believe in the Judea-Christian-Moslem fairies at the bottom of the garden, who I can't see, but who leave me notes every time I visit them asking for money.
I chose suffering!
Suffering -
They say is God given for punishment and edification!
But the leting go of suffering offers the reward of the self floating in a heaven of its own understanding.
Pain -
Is the measurement of our trial through this life;
The litmus test of our machine existence!
Mankind-
Will give up anything…But its Suffering?
English surpassed my Hindi - or look at the dissolving iMac loading disk spinning it's rainbow colors into oblivion.
I chose suffering!
On the freeway into work I had the choice: stop off at an art gallery. Take in one magical image which would stay with me throughout the day, and lift me up and away from the grim and dementia of my corporate culture. Or stay in the health- depleting, soul-destroying, cancer-inducing-smog of the shunting convey-a-belt traffic, and still arrive late for work!
I chose suffering!
I had the choice: take responsibility for my life in the NOW. Or believe in the Judea-Christian-Moslem fairies at the bottom of the garden, who I can't see, but who leave me notes every time I visit them asking for money.
I chose suffering!
Suffering -
They say is God given for punishment and edification!
But the leting go of suffering offers the reward of the self floating in a heaven of its own understanding.
Pain -
Is the measurement of our trial through this life;
The litmus test of our machine existence!
Mankind-
Will give up anything…But its Suffering?
Saturday, July 14, 2007
THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE
To call a Californian a flake is redundant; in fact, I heard a story recently that you can lose a percentage point off your I.Q. for every year you live in La-La Land!
This phenomenon, of absent-mindedness, however, is now affecting the whole nation. Our President commutes the sentence of a man working on his behalf to subvert the course of history and justice, because Mr. Libby, “can’t remember if he perjured himself with all the important information he was instructed to lie about by his boss”! The President himself forgets his lie about W.M.D’s , the shifting goal posts of the war in Iraq, funding AIDS in Africa, and the cronies he put in charge of Katrina.
But is this a top down phenomenon or a bottom up disease? After all, the President is credited with being the dumbest leader of the ‘free world’ in the past two centuries – we can’t have it both ways!
Check out the following poem and see if you recognize someone you know?
He sat down excited over her latest adventure.
Checking his watch looking interested as I spoke mine.
Distracted by the seconds counting off her watch-ing Me.
Listening and watch-ing him looking through me to her next
appointment-Luncheon–Meeting- Tete-a-tete.
There will be times indeed when talk is right for family and friends.
Time indeed; but not now! Not any NOW’s! For he’s gone,
Dissolved, Melted back into the ether from where she came.
Smoldering
I sat feeling the air of his presence lift off of me.
She wasn’t there!
The human being just wasn’t Here!
Talking, feeling, imbibing our connection, friendship, future, present!
He never really arrived.
Hovering into my life like a paper trail of memories she’s
Chasing to find him-self-but-won’t-slow-down-to-hear-her-self-think,
Or others talk and wail and pour forth their joys and sorrows.
No!
He never was here. Never really here at all!
With you and me capturing the scent of life’s majesty passing between us.
We who care to be present when the beloved is in the air.
This phenomenon, of absent-mindedness, however, is now affecting the whole nation. Our President commutes the sentence of a man working on his behalf to subvert the course of history and justice, because Mr. Libby, “can’t remember if he perjured himself with all the important information he was instructed to lie about by his boss”! The President himself forgets his lie about W.M.D’s , the shifting goal posts of the war in Iraq, funding AIDS in Africa, and the cronies he put in charge of Katrina.
But is this a top down phenomenon or a bottom up disease? After all, the President is credited with being the dumbest leader of the ‘free world’ in the past two centuries – we can’t have it both ways!
Check out the following poem and see if you recognize someone you know?
He sat down excited over her latest adventure.
Checking his watch looking interested as I spoke mine.
Distracted by the seconds counting off her watch-ing Me.
Listening and watch-ing him looking through me to her next
appointment-Luncheon–Meeting- Tete-a-tete.
There will be times indeed when talk is right for family and friends.
Time indeed; but not now! Not any NOW’s! For he’s gone,
Dissolved, Melted back into the ether from where she came.
Smoldering
I sat feeling the air of his presence lift off of me.
She wasn’t there!
The human being just wasn’t Here!
Talking, feeling, imbibing our connection, friendship, future, present!
He never really arrived.
Hovering into my life like a paper trail of memories she’s
Chasing to find him-self-but-won’t-slow-down-to-hear-her-self-think,
Or others talk and wail and pour forth their joys and sorrows.
No!
He never was here. Never really here at all!
With you and me capturing the scent of life’s majesty passing between us.
We who care to be present when the beloved is in the air.
Monday, July 9, 2007
The Artist/Entrepreneur
You plan out your week into perfect hour segments. You start with daily exercises, followed by breakfast. Next, plan the day. You think through, and incorporate, the little adjustments that always come up every time you put your plan onto paper. You plunge into answering your emails, trashing the spam, and fighting off the temptation to click on enticing pop-ups – that will be for later, after THE WORK! You bookmark them and struggle through the horror-news-of-the-world-stories wondering what diseased brain has to compile this junk every hour on the hour.
THE WORK, has its own jealous requirements and you unscramble your mind, unlatch the doorway to your soul, and penetrate the spirit that first confirmed your affinity to the creative buzz. Time stands still. Your inspiration ignites synapses of personal places, pleasures and pain. The minutes turn to hours. You are lost in the passion of your life.
It’s time for marketing. Your accountant has told you to spend at least 40% of your business life in the ‘selling of your tail’! It’s boring. It’s so…so…so… uncreative! But it is the business of business. Nobody in America ever says, ‘he was a marketing fool, but an artistic genius ’! It’s usually the other way around. The title genius is never connected with the creative act anymore.
You rush to pick up your child from school, while decomposing the sordid thoughts that marketing has inflicted on your creative moment. You’re late. She grumbles and you use the excuse of how you were distractions by the Palestinian conflict.
A week goes by. You’ve sent out your emails and cards religiously. You forced yourself to wrestle with the marketing Neanderthal. You wait by the phone. You double clutch your mail. You even befriend the mail person as you dawdle patiently for the elixir of checks to come sluicing through your mail box shutter.
You’re working for yourself. You have more time to yourself than the President of the United States. You’re passionate about your art/creation. Your business is unique. Your neighbors envy you. Your friends avoid you. Every home-based online telemarketer has your number in their Rolodex. You are hit with a million opportunities everyday, real and imaginary.
'You are a juggler. A tight-rope-walker in midair suspended across the canyons of hope and faith'.
THE WORK, has its own jealous requirements and you unscramble your mind, unlatch the doorway to your soul, and penetrate the spirit that first confirmed your affinity to the creative buzz. Time stands still. Your inspiration ignites synapses of personal places, pleasures and pain. The minutes turn to hours. You are lost in the passion of your life.
It’s time for marketing. Your accountant has told you to spend at least 40% of your business life in the ‘selling of your tail’! It’s boring. It’s so…so…so… uncreative! But it is the business of business. Nobody in America ever says, ‘he was a marketing fool, but an artistic genius ’! It’s usually the other way around. The title genius is never connected with the creative act anymore.
You rush to pick up your child from school, while decomposing the sordid thoughts that marketing has inflicted on your creative moment. You’re late. She grumbles and you use the excuse of how you were distractions by the Palestinian conflict.
A week goes by. You’ve sent out your emails and cards religiously. You forced yourself to wrestle with the marketing Neanderthal. You wait by the phone. You double clutch your mail. You even befriend the mail person as you dawdle patiently for the elixir of checks to come sluicing through your mail box shutter.
You’re working for yourself. You have more time to yourself than the President of the United States. You’re passionate about your art/creation. Your business is unique. Your neighbors envy you. Your friends avoid you. Every home-based online telemarketer has your number in their Rolodex. You are hit with a million opportunities everyday, real and imaginary.
'You are a juggler. A tight-rope-walker in midair suspended across the canyons of hope and faith'.
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