Some Beautiful Thoughts on Getting Old.

BUGGER

I've forgotten what they were......

Some thoughts on thought Itself, in poem and painting

The older I get the more I find myself lost in thought, and very pleasant it is too.  So it was a joy to find my feelings about it so well described in two different media, separated by 2000 years: a poem by D.H Lawrence, and a fresco by an unknown artist in Pompeii.


I love this poem;  both thought-provoking, and straight out provoking.  

Thought:  by D.H. Lawrence
Thought, I love thought.

But not the jiggling and twisting of already existent ideas

I despise that self-important game.

Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness,

Thought is the testing of statements on the touchstone of the conscience,

Thought is gazing on to the face of life, and reading what can be read,

Thought is pondering over experience, and coming to a conclusion.

Thought is not a trick, or an exercise, or a set of dodges,

Thought is a man in his wholeness, wholly attending.

See what I mean?  Hopelessly flawed!  Banal and arrogant in the opening, betraying the very self-importance that he disavows, followed by soaring and beautiful descriptions of inner experience in the middle, and an ending which I (not a man) find highly affronting, and at the same time totally descriptive of exactly what happens to a person lost in thought.  Most provoking.  But I love it even so.

I also love, perhaps even more, the way in which this ancient artist has captured exactly the same moment of full engagement, of gazing into the middle distance, but without a touch of self-importance.

Sapho (?).  Pompei.  

In fact, I'm finding this really a haunting picture, of the moments, perhaps long moments, before writing.


__________________


You may also enjoy The Gift.  It, too, includes a quote about the inner person, and if I remember rightly was also dogged by inappropriate use of the masculine pronoun.  Although there I did not resist the temptation to excise it.

The Dog Jed

Dog-lovers among you will know that the Lurcher is a breed of exceptional charm and sweetness.  Not only very fast, but very calm and easy-going.

And of his peers, Jed must be as far out on the well-adjusted end of the personality spectrum as it is possible to get.

Although more of a cat-person myself, Jed is one of my all-time favourite characters, and I am totally happy to be his companion for a few weeks while his owners are elsewhere.

Here he is, brindled, smooth-haired and calm, and, it has to be said, distinctly micro-cephalic, resting quietly behind the sofa.

The reason for his lovely nature is said to be that the life he leads corresponds almost exactly with that for which he was bred, and the Lurcher is a runner.

Caught here in a rare moment of stillness as he waits to go through the kissing-gate, you can see that Jed is not so much small-headed as big-bodied, with strong, muscular legs and shoulders, and above all a huge chest to accommodate the pump and bellows needed to keep his muscles supplied with everything  they need, often at very short notice.

Derived from the Greyhound, dog of the aristocracy and forbidden to the poor (thus did the rich seek to appropriate to themselves the free goods of the forest), the Lurcher was bread essentially for poaching, mainly by Travellers.  Lur means "thief" in Romany, and I like to think that they used the term ironically.

Be that as it may, Jed loves nothing more than chasing hare and rabbit, squirrel and deer over open ground. He is delighted by all the scents of woodland, but is in his element where he can run completely free.

He walks and runs daily over the rolling open fields of the Weald of Kent, which is scattered with copse and woodland full of the creatures he is hard-wired to pursue.  These not infrequently venture into the open, and he, being a sight-hound, can see them from a very great distance.  I'm glad to say, despite his speed, they usually make it back to cover well before he reaches them.

Nevertheless, he has so much fun causing mayhem in the rodentine and ruminant communities around that he never seems disappointed. Perhaps he is just suffused with endorphins. Perhaps he knows instinctively, as part of his inner balance, that its the journey, not the destination, that counts in life.

I have tried to take photos of him doing what he loves best, but either I or my camera just aren't up to it:  this is what I got.

Oh well ......

Pity about the jump especially.  Like most hunting dogs, he can clear a five-bar gate like a cricket.

In many ways Jed lives in a doggie time-warp, rarely seeing roads and traffic, rarely in places he does not know, and almost always close to his owner, whether striding field and hedgerow or sitting not far apart while one works, the other dreams.

When not outdoors he is generally in his much-loved basket, where with blanket and a chewy toy or two he seems to achieve a zen-like state of contentment:-

....  through quiet contemplation,

... a little side snoozing ..

...some front snoozing ...

sometimes a bit of back snoozing for a change (he really is asleep here),

and Yoga

Thus does this gentle and disarming creature spend his pleasant days.

And among the best of his several gifts to me is that of a sufficient amount of exercise.

I have been for many weeks curtailing my daily walks due to joint pain.  But, forced by his need to expend energy, I have been walking at least two hours daily, sometimes more, and the pain apparently is no more, within a very few days.

This is a very welcome change.

So I will continue to re-learn from Jed the joy of walking, although I doubt you'll see me, cricket-like, clear fence or gate in a single bound.

But stay tuned.  You never know.  Life is full of surprises.

Hitch and Fry the Vatican

Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens, I salute you!

The BBC World Service's Intelligence Squared Debate: The Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World took place almost a year ago - in November 2009.

Its protagonists were:
For the motion - Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja, former Conservative MP Anne Widdicom; seriously outgunned by, against the motion -  commentators Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry

Image via Wikipedia

Hitch and Fry comprehensively, systematically and courageously express my own scepticism in general, and disgust at the Vatican, its hierarchy and its flying monkeys in particular.

Although neither new nor timely, and already available in all the usual places, I am posting their remarks because I agree totally with them on this.

The older I get the more anti-clerecist (sp?) I become

It is really good to see the mysticism and obscurantism, not to mention the moral and legal criminality, of this dangerous and extremely worldly structure (regardless of whether its spiritual teachings are true or not) so directly and comprehensively hollowed out by rationality. 

Good that it was broadcast world-wide by the Beeb.  I hope that it gets many repeats.

You can find the whole debate and question and answer period on Youtube.

Stand By Me

This is a shout-out and great big thank you to Andrew and Jilly, Fran and Peter, Stephanie and John. Thanks for standing by!  Love you all.

And for the rest of us, its another opportunity to listen to this wonderful arrangement of a wonderful song.

A Stroke of Insight, and the Whole Free Person

This video is really interesting and moving on right-brain/left brain interaction, consciousness, creativity and the whole free person.

The balance between our impulse to control, and our ability to appreciate the marvelous current moment.

I especially like the descriptions of what it feels like when your right brain really kicks in!

Well known, and quite important.





Ron Howard wants to make a movie of it, with Jodie Foster.  I wish he wouldn't

A Poem for 9/11 by Emmanuel Ortiz

In response to my last posting, of Ani DiFranco's 9/11 poem "Self Evident", I received the following from a friend in India, which is a far more comprehensive and damming indictment. 

I am very grateful that she took the trouble to send it to me.

I feel chastened that I did not know about this poem, here where I sit "somewhere within the pillars of power", but am very, very glad to put it here.

A Moment of Silence Before I Start this Poem, by Emmanuel Ortiz

Originally published in Mostly Water

Before I begin this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.

I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the U.S., and throughout the world.

And if I could just add one more thing…

A full day of silence… for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.

Six months of silence… for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of a 12-year U.S. embargo against the country.

…And now, the drums of war beat again.

Before I begin this poem, two months of silence… for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where “homeland security” made them aliens in their own country

Nine months of silence… for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin, and the survivors went on as if alive.

A year of silence… for the millions of dead in Viet Nam —a people, not a war—for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it.

Two months of silence… for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem,
Seven days of silence… for El Salvador
A day of silence… for Nicaragua
Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas…
1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body
That burns in the desert sun
Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly,
A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.

25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.

For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees
In the south… the north… the east… the west…
There will be no dna testing or dental records to identify their remains.

100 years of silence… for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people
From this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness…

From somewhere within the pillars of power
You open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence
And we are all left speechless,
Our tongues snatched from our mouths,
Our eyes stapled shut.

A moment of silence,
And the poets are laid to rest,
The drums disintegrate into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence…

You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.

…Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem…
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.

And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th 1973 poem for Chile.
This is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa.
This is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York.
This is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia.

This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.

This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told,
The 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks
The 110 stories that that cnn, bbc, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.

This is a poem for interrupting this program.

This is not a peace poem,
Not a poem for forgiveness.
This is a justice poem,
A poem for never forgetting.
This is a poem to remind us
That all that glitters
Might just be broken glass.

And still you want a moment of silence for the dead?

We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves,
The lost languages,
The uprooted trees and histories,
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children…

Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

So if you want a moment of silence

Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines, the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights
Delete the e-mails and instant messages
Derail the trains, ground the planes.
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell
And pay the workers for wages lost.

Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses
and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July,
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale,
The next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful brown people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,

Here is your silence.
Take it.
Take it all.
But don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.

And we,
Tonight,
We will keep right on singing
For our dead.

Emmanuel Ortiz is a third-generation Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American community organizer and spoken word poet. He is the author of a chapbook of poems, The Word Is a Machete (self-published, 2003), and coeditor of Under What Bandera?: Anti-War Ofrendas from Minnesota y Califas (Calaca Press, 2004). He is a founding member of Palabristas: Latin@ Word Slingers, a collective of Latin@ poets in Minnesota. Emmanuel has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Oakland, California; and the Arizona/Mexico border. He currently lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the “buckle of the Bible Belt,” with his two dogs, Nogi and Cuca. In his spare time, he enjoys guacamole, soccer, and naps.

_______________

in the dark times

Will there also be singing?

Yes, there will also be singing

about the dark times. 

- Bertolt Brecht

A Poem for 9/11. by Ani DiFranco

Even more angry, and even more righteous, is "A Moment of Silence Before I Read this Poem" by activist Emmanuel Ortiz.  Check it out, if you havn't already.

"A Moment of Silence Before I Read this Poem"

A Journey to the Crime Section.

Tony Blair: war criminal, carpetbagger and pariah.

Spend a few subversive minutes in any bookshop moving his tiresome memoire to the crime section, where it belongs.

Better yet: to the criminology or criminal psychology sections as well, if they have them.

You'll feel quite a lot better, and be joining a growing movement.

I like the collage effect of this group of linked titles in Waterstones, Piccadilly.  Unfortunately a book called "Mass Murder" was not in stock.

Further mischief, this time more hastily executed

So, the smirking little rat chickened out of the 8th. September book signing at Waterstones in Piccadilly AND his "secret" drinkies with a few "friends" at the Tate Modern, because of the threat of more demonstrations.  

Kudos to the demonstrators in Dublin for drawing a line in the sand.

Shame on the Tate, prostituting itself yet again (remember the BP party?)

It's good that he's been intimidated by these demonstrations, but I would love to have seen him hit by a shoe.  Particularly fitting.

Facebook Page:  Subversively Move Blair's Book Into the Crime Section

Facebook Page:  Kate O'Sullivan is a Legend (citizen arrest in Dublin)

Citizen's Arrest:  Find out how to conduct a citizen's arrest of Blair, and claim your prize

Let him know we don't want him at any price.

And this is a lovely poem.  Well done Julia Brosnan.

The Needy Blogger

I get a lot of tweets about blogs that give advice on how to be a blogger with loads of followers.

I know they are all really quite self-referential, but I have to admit I've read quite a few, just in case ...... 

And this is what I've learned, pretty much.

But the main message I'm getting from all these blogs about blogging is this:

The cartoons are by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

P.S.  Please link to me.