energy dependence, 2/8/2014

This phrase "energy independence" that we keep hearing in defense of oil, coal and fracking rests upon a logical fallacy and is a red herring. Every extraction or expenditure of earth's resources for "energy" depends upon the actions of many determined or otherwise ignorant persons and has innumerable life threatening effects which are not at all beneficial to life on earth. We will never be truly independent, even with solar or wind power. And we'll still be plundering the earth for her other privatized "commodities"!

hope, 2/8/2014

Aren't there levels of hope, from reasonable expectations up to "beyond all possibilities"?!  And is there not a hierarchy of goods attained while in this state of hopefulness? From those attained because we were hopeful (presuming this were possible) to those attained regardless of the expectation. I believe it is true that hope itself is not a weakness but rather the application of it is susceptible to overuse --- for example: "I sure hope we get home in time to see the Superbowl!" versus "I couldn't feed my children and I would have lost all hope if it were not for the kindness of strangers"...

Mundane references give "hope" a bad name I think. The same could be said of "love" I suppose, or even the simple acknowledgements we use from day to day. How might we respond if someone told us the truth when we asked them "How are you doing?" We might discover the real meaning of expectations and disappointments but better perhaps our potential for compassion...

The weakness then lies more in our lack of response to suffering...

More than becoming less humane we are becoming more predatory... consider that even government becomes predatory as it is either  incapable of challenging or colludes with the merciless speculative aggregating powers that are destroying families everywhere on earth --- and the sustainability of life on earth for that matter! Mere hope cannot stop these beasts! ...

I do not believe human beings on the whole to be thoroughly trustworthy creatures. We are at root creatures after all...  What is predictable is that we can be unpredictable. We can only hope that another's actions will incidentally favor us...

owe my apocalyptic writing, 2/1/2014

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ 

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" (W. B. Yeats, from The Second Coming.)

I owe my apocalyptic writing to such poetry as this, and yet it is fueled by the connivings and ignorance of others far less gifted with words or any other medium... unless you consider gluttony or killing an art-form!

(poem for Shea) 1/16/2014

Me too... but "the sap had to come from some haven heavy and grand... terra-formed where once was clearing, pond... a wide wondering tome... leaves rustle remembering whence the wind comes" 

Spielberg quote, 12/20/2013

it's so visual to the extent that it's "antithetical to the way we are accustomed to receiving stories"  Stephen Spielberg

12/20/2013 note

I have always wrote with the intention of changing attitudes towards what poetry can be, changing the formal status, the sense of what that type of literature might mean to all cultures, our planets inhabitants.

12/1/2013

looking through the dining room window without his glasses it looks as though there are bodies struggling in the conifers, limbs tangled with limbs. winter is coming fast and the air bites at the face like microbial cats. They will be dining by the fireplace. Better to listen to the fire cackle too than hear that tree scratching at the window.

are we not fungi? 3/14/2013 note

frost and lichen as penetrating space in simplest form.

frost, upon impenetrable glass nearly shrieks, spikes where it can an objection to barriers and thus captures what foothold it can by imprisoning the vitality of water.

lichen, being penetrated itself and liberated by water [algea being symbolic of this resounding penetration] needs not to penetrate, rather is happy to take whatever form is sufficient for its stage of growth, bulbously fructiform or rhizines lancelately weaving in any direction---squamulose, crustose, foliose, such expansions are enough to state its meagre case that these are the shapes of uninhibited becoming, or perhaps more importantly, of two becoming one. It could be said then that all who conjugate are thalli perched upon a cosmic tree.

poem, 3/13/2013

we splayed the neighbors' lilac

and tried to fix it with a hypodermic

needle we found in the alley.

we prayed one day a week

and cursed like pirates all the rest

upon a fallen garage door galley.

we paid for all our labor dear

though would have traded all for a crayon

from a spindly girl named Sally.

poem, 3/13/2013

hollyhocks stood tall

above her in the garden...

such that she could scarcely

retrace the path of her rage

but the trowel must have

each and every stroke upon

the clumped, beaten soil

reminded her of the knife handle

that endured his barreled chest

like the planters stake 

that marked nearby a row of peas

and signaled the eventual

tilling of the earth

Comte, Aquinas 2/13/2013 note

Comte's three phases resulting in positivism which hails science... he points out the basic weakness of theology and metaphysics that they can not be verified... these three phases fit into the center stage of my triattitude, excepting that Comte denies the early and last stages,(?) 

within the early stage I associate creativity, recklessness, defiance and stubbornness with youth, nihilism, and aesthetics; the third or last stage I associate the surrender of old age with all of Comte's religious attributes which he posits in his first and second phases for it is in this stage where faith in a greater guardian such as God can bring consolation as we are about to pass away, and this on the next logical level is synthesis. 

The rational attributes I place in the maturing phase of an individual's capturing of identity. It is the metaphysical and spiritual outpourings that call into question our material security and propose a higher new place for being to continue... as a soul.

cf Aquinas' (Aristotle) "functions of the psyche [...] the 'vegetative' ( the autonomic physical function), the 'sentient' (perception, appetite, locomotion), and the 'rational' (memory, imagination, and reason or intellect)" 

Morton Hunt p. 60.

I'd prefer to say that the psyche does not have a function but rather only appears to operate for the "self".  The lessons and distractions of the senses however cloud more and more the basic will to survive---

regardless, it would seem that what we call humanity is still in it's adolescence.

allegiance pledge revised, 11/29/2012

How about a fiscal pledge? I pledge allegiance to the natural citizens of the United States of America who have been sold out for the benefit of a critical mass of far too few and I choose to manifest this oath proactively through discourse and other non-violent actions.  Mere waving of a flag proves nothing but blind allegiance to an absolutist hegemony (one that only reiterates the attitude of free enterprise by rephrasing it: "Let the commoner beware!"). I insist that for fairness to occur amongst all the citizenry, yes, conflict will inevitably  arise but only redistributive compromise and provisional sacrifices will allow for a general happiness. Otherwise it would be an endless and perhaps even violent struggle for a populace increasingly sapped of its health and savings.  Today's provisions for a stabile nation then call for offerings primarily from the wealthiest corporations and citizens---since their aggregate of wealth has become so disproportionately large having been extorted from the lower and middle classes by various corrupt and deceptive means including the commoditization of oil, medicine, food and water, and other financial debauchery. Let us mot forget too that runaway factories and out-sourcing for example have exported the value of labor to other nations and while benefitting the stakeholders some of these corporations give only debt and increased costs back to the nation.

Given these circumstances I trust government to be no more nominal a benevolent power than one amorphous form called governance (not a partitioned body of leaders, or lawmakers, rather one that recognizes that even its own power and wealth corrupts however it delegates it) and that democracy or any other form is its own worst enemy if it holds to be an absolutely fixed ethical form of governance. Governance, therefore, if it would purport to be a fair and stabilizing influence, should claim to be nothing more than that, a provisional means to this condition since it is beholding presumably to the public.  Contrarily violence can be none other than the undoing of this and therefore is the opposite of governance. It might be said however that governance, as an age old practice, has had to remake itself over and over again; or as a motivating force has found itself suddenly promoting what would be its undoing, and therefore has an unholy alliance with violence---it does after all reserve the practice of physical force for itself alone. Yet there must be no end to the evolution of a diverse people however they are sustained or individually seek to preserve their identities; but let it be our desire to follow cyclically our peace as if it were a flower bending supply toward the sun rather than merely have faith we will escape from the critically resurrected fear of the darkness by standing staunchly beneath a flag.

destiny, 2/3/2013

if there were such a thing why would reality ever have proceeded to expand upon the shape of a perfect sphere?  Or perhaps it is just that coursing away from and back again to sphericality which is our ultimate destiny. the spiral then might more truly be the most perfect pattern throughout that eventuality... the light and the drain have much in common.

efferents of waking, 2/1/2013 note

The efferents of waking as effervescence:

I am convinced that the direction of pathways into the brain is just as significant as the supposed locus of activity and that this cloud of impulses combined is very becoming of the very shape of the brain. the brain looks like what one might expect to see given a washing, bubbling in of waves of said impulses from a vectorization of the six directions. the first washing in being cellular differentiation and the second being stimulus. All the washing in defines by afferents an involuted evanescent form of being literally drawn out along a span of time as if it were etched from a watershed; the body then is the shape of time captured for a redundant moment to gaze upon its reflection like a tree bent over a stream. 

     The neuron is the simplest manifestation of the logic of this event which I will call the predication of being, I am __ ( Ix ); whereupon the sixth direction, up, being contrary to the downward sensation of gravitational pull is the will to be freed and motile: "we were, now I shall..."

Spinoza qualification, 1/28/2013 quote/note

Spinoza

joy, sorrow, desire qualified by "pleasant or unpleasant stimuli" [Morton Hunt, p 76]

consonant/aspirant 1/24/2013 note

Contrarily to Decartes' insistence that abstract concepts originate with the soul, I believe their roots can be seen to originate with the context of the environment, its forces create a necessary awakening of the senses, yes, but these must respond in very similar fashion such that we develop the basic concepts in similar fashion for example that we form our first morpheme for mother in the pattern consonant-aspirant-consonant (mahm), or the reverse, aspirant-consonant-aspirant (umah)

lines we draw 1/21/2013 note

...so it is a time for re-evaluating the definitions of our terms. What does progress mean to you? What does reform mean to you?  and unity?

The lines we draw---where does "we" cease to hold that line most dear: a home, a community, your state or nation... earth?  How many walls do you need to feel secure, stabile? What makes you feel "great"?

Augustine's triad, 1/18/2013 note

accounting for the mind, Augustine sees a triad of will, understanding and remembering... like many other notable postulates, these can be seen to correlate to my tri-attitude, the aesthetic, scientific and the spiritual attitudes. Bearing a youthful mind we express a vigorous will-power up against the status quo to establish our place and potentially recreate the rules and insist upon upheaval or the new; as mature adults we express our resolve, that we seek more to understand and set our will to maintaining a stabile arival upon a plateau; as a senescent adult or near death we strive to remember a happy life or wonder how we will be remembered once we are gone and whether we ourselves will preserve our identity for ourselves without the remembering...

reform, 1/18/2013 note

"reform"  

You know, I wish we could rein in this word's use. Charter schools, methods of assessing student, teacher, and school performance---or maintaining a fair distribution of accountability between the "partners" (parents, community, etc...)---these are subsets of the major issue, the concern by many that public education appears to be ailing in its efforts to educate--- ie., in the general sense of the word and in keeping with the depoliticized meaning of the word, reform. There are good and bad ideas. Certainly we are in need of a little experimentation, but not a full commitment to charter schools! And certainly while some partners may be failing to meet expectations we mustn't overcompensate by handing over full control to any one other partner (eg., the business sector). Nor can we simply put full responsibility on parents' or teachers' shoulders. The economy is such that many parents just aren't fully available for their children at home or school, and teachers at the moment are obliged to follow a very compromised system if they want to get paid. So what reforms are we talking about when we say "reformers"? That word seems to have taken on limited connotations that obscure the overall problem. Our educational system has already been hijacked by a vested interest, a partner which has long vied to profit from educating rather than truly aspiring to enlighten the citizens and their children. 

So, how would you define education then... as a race against other nations for dominance in a world economy? --as a training program for employment? --as empowerment of individual and potentially creative or prolific minds?  Where is your allegiance? --with the inheritors of the same established elitism that condemned Socrates to death?  How many centuries do we even have left to get it right?   What ever happened to the western idea of school as the agency of the individual mind? Are we in America headed towards a disdain for the individual aspirations of natural persons while promoting only the supposed rights of corporate personhood?  Which logic are we using to define reform?  --that which provides a stabile and moderate benefit for all, or a strategy that both aggrandizes and enslaves? And where will your children be in fifty years from now? --struggling with tyranny or fecklessly resolved conformity? 

Sustained diversity is my proposition for humanity---whatever reforms we're talking about---just as it would be if we were talking about agriculture (another perverted human endeavor!).

So, for example, as long as teachers are barred from broaching controversial subjects and thereby teaching children how to resolve conflict through compromise, we will have learned nothing as a supposedly evolving-for-the-better species. We need not simply become as the marching millions of insect colonies and lock step our way to a happy leisure for a minuscule few queens? Such absolutisms are not what I call reform but rather are regressive means to preserve a toxic facade of progress!

killing and the river to cross, 1/13/2013 nbote

Let's say that the river we must cross is the act of killing. Firstly we must acknowledge that there are at least two categories of killers: those bound by professional duty (a respectable compelling interest in the death of an other), and those for whom it is strictly a personal interest and therefore the act is not sanctioned by immediate others. There is as well the question of the ordinary v. the extraordinary.  That is, there are great differences in contexts for killing which we need to view from in order to comprehend the contrary levels of human justification (between the serial killer v the soldier, and the passion driven murderer v the dispassionate executioner).

In other words,  we must acknowledge that extraordinary circumstances transform ordinary men, cause severe declension of their moral compass.

So to align our killing and the river, all killers come in contact with this compulsion, this river, but have different motives for engaging it. The ordinarily accepted man finds himself taken up by the river to either fight our wars or perform an execution; while the extraordinarily nihilistic serial killer or the average criminally passionate killer choose to cross that river of what we normally consider a worthy practice.

Of Mice and Men note 1/13/2013

One literary example, from Of Mice and Men, George must "put down" Lennie at the bank of a river (the same river across from which Lennie could only retrieve a mouse in the beginning but thus revealed Lennie's true independent free will). George mercifully provides Lennie in the end with images of attaining their own land and freedom; while his own act, being at last a kindness to his companion, is on the surface a cruelty and selfish in that he will no longer have to care for Lennie. George too then attains freedom at the bank of the river---but his freedom had the price of giving up his companionship and his surrender to the will of the mob.

-meta note 1/13/2013

When we are speaking in reference to life in terms of fluidity, disorientation of open space or the chaos at the entrance or exit doors, or enchantment by ghosts and spirits: we are often sensing and indirectly describing group temperament as well; ie.: being in the waters and the turbulence of it as opposed to the friction felt by the obstructive matter, and the invisible others or a single divine oarsman (intelligent design). Speaking from an appreciation for aesthetics we are accustomed to speaking of the waters; scientifically speaking we fix our placement in the moving cosmos by defining the forces (4 of them at least) as being a supple matrix of manifolds outside Euclidean geometry (such that light for example swims around objects in space). Speaking from a religious point of view we are conventionally coddled and consoled by a divine purpose or we are visited by and enamored of a multitude of spirits or angels which appear to escort us like dante's Virgil, or we are frightened by ghosts which appear to dart at and against us like hungry sharks.

This brings to mind visually that we observe and confuse two tangents of being and flow. We can and do look at an event both ways almost as if to say we view with both a parallactic and a panoramic intent.

Consider a flock of birds that in migration each is both following their individual magnetized path while at the same time expelled as a group by the cold front (the unidirectional impetus of self preservation v. the wave form of being driven by an external constrictive force ).  

We as humans either feel more compelled at times to cross the river,  expressing an individual and spirited force within ourselves; or at other times are engaged in and caught up by the force of the river, and even find ourselves relenting to its massive flow and become one with it (a case in point is Mishima's River of Action and the founding of his Shield Society). These then are instances which can be seen to correlate with the two implications of the Greek/Latin morpheme "meta-" (as a paradigm shift). We either advance together, beside each other, or we confront each other head on and place our tropaeum conspicuously along the dividing line. Our flags, symbols of unity, thus become symbols of our greater surrender to separateness.

Genesis... confound speech quote 1/12/2013

Genesis 11:6 (KJV)

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Genesis 11:7 (KJV)

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

Of Mice and Men quotes and notes 1/11/2013

Of Mice and Men

"they run us outta Weed."

stake

red, blue and green rabbits

pants rabbits

"Then how come he got graybacks?"

"...so much trouble for another 

guy.... what your interest is[?]"

swamper

big guys v little guys (george v boss' son)(Lennie v Slim)

"raw eggs and writin' to the patent medicine houses"

"...don't know a barley bag from a blue ball"

"Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other." (Curly's wife also mentions this being scared of each other)

George's confession to Slim

God

"Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella.[...] sometimes it jus' works the other way around"

Lennie re playing cards: "why is both ends the same?"

"...set on the trigger of the hoosegow."

stable buck, Crooks: "It's just talking[...]being with another guy.... 

Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody---to be near him[...to help measure what's goin' on...] he gets too lonely an' he gets sick."

Crooks again: "Nobody gets to heaven and nobody gets no land."  cf. Waiting for Godot.

Crooks' liniment for his back(?)

tenement ( tournament)

George's final kindness...

Malcolm X - Ballet or the Bullet speech quotes, Detroit, 1964

Malcolm X 

"the ballot or the bullet" speech in Detroit [1964]

"freedom fighter [ on all fronts ]"

 "If we bring up religion we'll be in an argument."

so  keep religion between us and our god to find unity as black community.

Islam is his religious philosophy

but his political philosophy is black nationalism.

"pretext of integration" is crazy.

The Man is becoming richer and richer and you are becoming poorer and poorer.

"we suffer political oppression [...] this government has failed us"

"you do too much singin' [ and ] today  it's time to stop singin' and start swingin'"

a "do it yourself" "self-help philosophy"

"[Independence through Nationalism]"

"second class citizen [as a] 20th century slave"

"victims of Americanism [of] so-called Democracy" "hypocrisy"

"experienced the American nightmare"

"Romney is a dixie governor"

"[Whitehouse v doghouse]"

"[south did not lose the civil war...]"