A Matter of Few Words...

The Eroded Man
by
CDM.MMXII

Crusty...

Yea, the crusty side of me is surfacing.  I am up to here with the bullshit.  It is not my fault.  I didn’t do it.  I’m tired, sick and fucking tired, of being the one to care, and keep my mouth shut about what I can see so clearly simply because if I opened my mouth I’d be dealing cruelty in so many directions.  I’m about to think it’s time to go walkabout.  It’s been a year, I gave myself that year to let shit stew and boil and cool and separate into layers.  It’s time to make the fucking cut, and let the goddamn pieces fall where they may. 

I’m tired of so many things, so many people in my world who wear their weaknesses as their totems of identity.  Fine, be a fucking head case loser, but do it on your own time, your own nickel, your own heart.  I’m tired of being the one to pick up the slack.  I’m not doing you any favors, I’m not.  I’m guilty as freakin home made sin, for years I’ve been the one who let you get away with it thinking I might be able to ease your passage into sanity.  And all I succeeded in doing was delaying the inevitable.  Just how fucking much do I owe the world for my sins, my shortcomings? These days I’m thinking not half of what I’ve already paid. 

The poem below is how I used to feel.  Used to, as in the past tense.  No more.  No more.  I’ll see ya’ll later.  How much later?  Good fucking question.

Mea Culpa

I who speak so oft of love

oft chew the bitter rind

of what the fates left above

drowned canyons of a mind...

and I who speak so oft of peace

do battles full fierce start

with foes my fears offer lease

as wardens on my heart...

and I who speak so oft of hope

despair will hang for blinds

around the truths I can't dismiss

of wounds time ne'er will bind...

and I who speak so oft of free

wear chains of clan and kin

shackled every morning sun

compassions' brutal whim...

and I who speak so oft of dreams

oft ration sleep to parts

that bodies rest be not the line

where nightmares' race will start...

and I who speak so oft of life

roll life like dice benign

that tumble up a tiny score

against deaths' running line...

and I who speak so oft the code

of logic sans Descartes

amend my days to hold the way

Pray God will take my part.

Driftwood from the beach...

I've been a bit off my feed here the last day or two, kind of flat, kind of blah.  Things are shifting at deep levels, emo-intellectual energy is kind of at a premium.  I was rambling around in the attic, ok, the hard drive, and came across a document holding a long correspondence with an online friend.  The conversation went deep at times, there's things in there worth sharing.  So, since I'm kind of flat at the moment figured what the whale, it won't hurt to recycle some words.  A cut and paste post from personal history that sort of washed up on the shores of today...

January 29, 2007

We’re not the first to see it coming… far from it.  Consider if you will the prophet John on Patmos, penning the book of Revelation.  A simple man he was, wise but simple.  How could he possibly have words to describe modern warfare?  He did his best.  Two points have always struck me.  The one about the seven headed monster that comes from the sea and consumes cities?  Isn’t it funny, that when the engineers, both Soviet and American, had finished their work they’d both concluded seven was the ideal number of warheads to ride a submarine launched ballistic missile?  To my mind that validates the man’s vision.  But the biggie from that vision, the one that has led mankind around by the nose, is the number of man as beast.  I think the man got the mantissa, but had no way to write down the exponent. I think he was trying to communicate the critical population density on Planet Earth.  Every animal population ever studied has shown a critical density… even with every resource imaginable in plentiful supply if the population exceeds a certain density the social structures break down into destructive pathologies.  I think that number for us is 6.6^9… or roughly six and a half billion souls on planet, a number we are approaching at a terrifying rate.  And every social system on the planet is showing acute stress.  AIDS and every other pathogen in Mom Nature’s arsenal may be her attempt to stall off that critical value… we are not helping her one bit.

Happiness runs...

Happiness runs...

In a circular motion, according to the sixties poet-sage Donovan Leach.  Circles indeed.  I said something today that came right on around that circle and smacked me on the back of the head, it did.  In conversation with CJ and company on her blog I observed that relatively few people ever actually speak about the state of happiness.  They’ll speak in neutral terms, academic intellectual term about many shades of shadow, but so rarely do you hear anyone discussing the states of joy, the states of bliss.  Happiness seems a beggar forever dwelling in the cast off cloak off failure... failed.  It doesn’t have a language of it’s own.

What smacked me in the head was an idea spoken in response to CJ saying she feared most folks found happiness a boring thing.  I’d replied I thought it more likely they were intimidated by the idea of speaking about happiness. 

*smack* Intimidated?  OF WHAT?  The thought rings true, and worse than that, it rings hollow.  Just what in the world could cause people to be intimidated by happiness?!? 

It isn’t like no one has noticed this, good grief, it was in the first Matrix movie.  Agent Smith spoke of it when he was interrogating his captive Morpheus, laid it out in fine detail while Neo and company were frantically preparing for the bold rescue that provided half of the movies’ great action sequences.  “...we tried to make it a paradise for you, but your minds rejected the vision, you kept waking up, entire crops lost... Or words to that effect, I’m not sure the quote is dead on. But still, if a hunter killer program on the verge of turning rogue virus understood this thought how can the humans not?  Is it we don’t understand what Agent Smith was talking about?  Or is it that we really, really don’t want to understand?  At this point I’m of a mind to believe the latter is the more likely.

I’ve looked into myself, and realized that for all the words I’ve written I’m just as barren as anyone else in such realms.  It is rare that I’ve found a context to even make the attempt.  I call myself a writer, and I’m intimidated at the thought of trying to write a state of joy.  I suppose I’m like everyone else, that lacking examples of a format I’m not really willing to risk whatever experiences might provide source stock.  I suppose I’m afraid if I botch an attempt to set what I know of happiness into words I might lose the reality of being happy.  In a funny sort of way it feels much like being afraid of the commitment that turns your sweetest lover into your mate.

I’m wondering now as I write this what part this has played in so very many of mankind’s shortcomings.  I’m wondering how much unhappiness endures simply because even those who know happiness have no ability to communicate the nature of that state of life, no way to transfer an understanding of it.  No small amount, that much is for sure.

This is a thing that will take some thought, some meditation, some prayer.  There needs to be a way for those who know happiness to share that knowledge, share it without fear, share it without creating the discomfort of comparison.  There has to be a way.  Sooo... call it a quest.

A bit of a story for a friend ...

The clock was chiming eleven as they returned to the bedroom.  Trish turned down the bed, and taking the robe guided Sundown between the covers.  As Sundown watched from her pillow Trish undressed.

She put no intent on her motions, no effort to be provocative or alluring, she simply removed her clothes, laying them across the armchair.  It was precisely because she put no such thought into her actions that Sundown found it so entrancing, as if Trish bared more of her heart than there was body to show.  When she stood beside the bed the look on her face was one of contemplation, considering how best to approach, how to offer what she wanted to give.  It had been she in the passive role before, but now it was her turn to provide. It put a warm glow in Sundown's heart as she waited with the moment for Trish to decide how she would come to her.

Six Rounds, Yank and Fan...

1) Promote the idea of wealth as selection not accumulation. Hook this to the anti obesity movement, that a life grossly obese with material accumulation is in fact a life injured and abused and should not be considered attractive.

2) Work to diminish the very common idea of authority granted to some assumed competence associated with a prominant position within society. Challenge the one diminsional nature of success as it is defined by the self serving interests of the corporate machine.

3) DEMONSTRATE the power of self knowledge to defeat the lies of advertising that support those one dimensional definitions of success. TEACH people how to defend their SELF from the establishment.

4) RESEARCH the actual structures of the modern economic world... who owns who, and what... utilize social networking systems to assemble accurate tactical information independent of the misleading offerings of the corporate world, valid first hand data from which to act.

5) ORGANISE working "stone soup survival co-ops" based on first person WORL available resources, and this to support survival during the economic conflicts to follow, establish communications between a world wide network of such groups.

6) ENGAGE THE ENEMY IN PROACTIVE AGGRESSIVE ECONOMIC COMBAT!!!! BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT the corporate entities most responsible for injustices perpetuated for the prime motive of unearned profits extorted by way of socio-political clout and psycho-social manipulation of humanity substituted for a quality product offered at a competitive price indicating a best effort of competence. DON'T WHINE...FIGHT!!!!

The DeMet Plan: a shot in the dark...

I got asked the other day if I had any idea where it might be possible to make an intervention in the ongoing meltdown of the economic situation, the economic meltdown stressing the social structures of the world to the breaking point, a way to get behind the driving forces causing the situation and fix the problem rather than try and treat the symptoms.   After a bit of thought here’s my best guess as to how to begin unwinding the current mess.

What I see as needed first and worst is a way to restore the concept of local production.  When I say local I mean local on the global scale, that a nation (geographic region) should, for a great variety of reasons ranging from economic to factors of social psychology, produce what that region primarily consumes. 

To stabilize a world economy there must be at least one element held stable as a safeguard against positive feedback loops in the various systems.  With all due consideration I’m of a mind to believe that stable element should be the monetary value of a life-hour of  productive labor, the one element of commerce which must, by every consideration of rational ethics,  be considered of equal value regardless of where that element originates.

To accept any other definition can only be a rationalization of slavery by degrees,  an open invitation for the corruption and corrosion inherent to slavery to find paths into the deep levels of the world’s various cultures and societies.  For the macroscopic society of man to endure, much less advance, the world community must put an end to international trade wherein the  man-hours of labor exchanged between the cultures are not of equal value. 

So long as the physical location of manufacturing facilities are chosen on the basis of exploiting the differences in the assigned monetary value of a man hour of labor the inherent injustices of capitalism that drive conflict will continue.  Until such time as there is no advantage to be gained in such a manner the entities of commerce will, to the self serving motive of corporate profit first and foremost, continue policies impacting the demand side of any free market economy creating social instability and the climate of conflict.

Now that... is one grandiose pile of fine first class philosophical sounding bullshit.  I’m kind of proud of that one.  Even more so because it’s most likely more true than not.  Of course, naming the problem isn’t even close to figuring out how to fix the problem.  Naming the problem is just a matter of stepping far enough outside day to day living you can see what it is you’re looking at.  Fixing a problem requires a lot more thought, you have to not only see the what is but also see the what might be, and hardest of all pick through all the possible might be’s to find the one that will actually do some good without creating an even darker shadow somewhere else.  If, huge if, you get so far as to think you know which of the possible might be’s would actually work then you get to the hardest part of all: HOW? 

A Fine Music...

Just a minor tidbit, but a tasty one, and a big thank you to Trev for providing it.  Turns out the  symphonic form of music is actually alive and doing very well in a place I would have never guessed: as the soundtracks provided with some of the advanced video games, the warrior games.  Trev kicked me some selections from that source, said he thought I’d like them and just winked.  Well, he was right, I do.  Itunes rambled into those tracks tonight and guess what?  Great music.  Tchaikovsky would smile, and say the only thing wrong was it didn’t have his name on the cover.  You can hear all the modern elements evolved out of the artRock-> techno line, but they’re beautifully integrated and appropriate, drawing from and complementing the full power of the symphony orchestra.  Good stuff!  A well done and an attaboy to the composer(s).  Now, if such powerful music can just find a home not tied to the violence of infantry combat... but, one dream at a time, one dream at a time...

I miss my muse...

Yea, I do.  I don’t miss her because she’s as sweet hot a work of womanhood as ever graced Planet Earth, thaw a frozen heart with no more than a glance and a smile, no, that’s not really it.  I loved that, of course I did, but that’s not what I’m missing about her.  I have those memories safe stored, the enchantment of her company every warmth of the erotic distilled to such a purity as to deny the casual or the crass access even to imagination.  Those memories are treasures, but I’m not a greedy man, I’ve plenty of those to last a lifetime.  That’s not what I’m missing, not the thing I’m hungry for. 

The gift of the muse draws from the erotic, but in all truth it transcends the erotic.  Or perhaps it is the erotic enlarged into dimensions as yet undefined.  I am a self aware man, at this point in my life I’ll say that without reservation.  And yet try as I might I can’t quite bring it into clear focus, the thing I’m missing.  All I really know is that I didn’t know such places existed in my soul until her, and now that she’s gone?  It is such an emptiness to try and fill with nothing more than art, the echo of what that place was when she’d fill it to such overflow as to suspend thought for the sheer wonder of the visions. 

That place remains open, it is mine to wander at will, but it is not the same without her.  Poetry remains, to set a thought soft or scintillating into words but a matter of relinquishing the focus of reality for a time.  I can close my eyes and speak into that place, hear the poem return in the echoes.  But they are just echoes without her.

Perhaps, perhaps those echoes are part of what it is to be a man in full, to know that without woman no act of creativity can ever really ascend into that place where the awe and the wonder set mortality transparent.  Perhaps it is that transparency I’m missing, those sense visions not set in sight or sound, not cast into the mold of words, but rather the sense and sensation of transparency opening away in all directions, the poignancy of seeing all of life and light blended into… into what?  What might compare to what that felt like?  To be a man, and know in full her cry of ecstasy as orgasm grants her freedom from the desire?  Her cry of pain during the test of her labor?  That cry of separation the birthright of every new born infant?  All of everything carried on those sounds brought to a visceral harmony coursing every nerve far beyond sound?  Perhaps that might get close to what I’m missing.  Perhaps.

Or perhaps I should simply admit the gift of the muse is a mystery not mine to solve, resolve myself to endure the echoes and go toss back a shot of whiskey to toast the beautiful woman who hosted the muse for me, and hope she is spared feeling what I feel.  If fate will allow I’ll endure those echoes that she not need to, somehow I think that endurance is where a man matches to balance the things she’ll endure as a woman that no man can ever know.  There is balance in all things even when the scales are hidden from common sight, perhaps this is just one of nature’s balances.  Perhaps.

Playing the Moments for Once...

A most sincere thank-you

     to a fully sweet lass

For a laugh and a smile

     and a roll in the grass

Lit sparkling blue eyes

     weigh'd tassel and dance

O’er mirth plotted mischief

     Old memories trapped

In lost innuendoes

     scant subtle first draft.

           ***   ***   ***

Dog Washing and the Grandpa bug...

I’ve let this post age in a couple of days, some things really need a bit of time to settle before you speak of them.  That’s the dog washing thing, dog washing being both literal (the poor mutts both needed a bath, and both were very well behaved) and symbolic: I copped an attitude and did a Tim Taylor style afternoon of cleaning.  Tim Taylor, you know, Tim Allen’s character on the comedy show.  More power!  Phooeey on the Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner, fire up the shop vac, and the air compressor, spool out the hose, set the BIG fans to blow out the front door, we’re fixing to put the dirt right back where it came from.  Yea, spring cleaning man fashion.  A successful afternoon of kick ass, the dust bunnies never had a chance.  And the little farts had been getting so bold as to be setting up toll booths and trying to charge me admittance to places in my own house.  They won’t be back for a good long while, I kicked their round little rumps right up between their swastika shaped ears.  Victory is sweet.

I just wish I could have a victory over the grandpa bug to match.  But it isn’t looking promising.  I got my feelings hurt, deeply hurt on that subject, and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it but lock on a stoic face, laugh on cue and endure.  She was trying to be funny, had no clue what she was doing to me, and I forgive her.  I do love the lass, she’s been nothing but good to my daughter, and for her, she is a true daughter in love.  But even the folks we love can hurt us, and she did. 

No one who is actually gay can possibly understand what a case of that bug feels like.  The same things that make them gay put it beyond their reach.  I ‘m sure there are things of comparable impact going the other way, but being straight and a parent those things are no doubt beyond my reach.  Just an unhappy fact of life.  So, I suppose since I can’t cure the disease I’ll keep treating the symptoms, adopting this kid or the other to mentor, doing the best I can for them just like I did for my own and hoping to God whatever turned mine lesbian isn’t something I did, might do again.  The grandpa bug is a real bitch and bummer, and yea, I’ve got a case of it, a bad case.  Oh, well.  If it gets to bad I can always go trucking, and take myself out of reach.  Westbound and down (way, way down), loaded up and truckin…

I've Slept Since Then...

Yea, a full nights sleep, at night.  Racked out at 8:30pm and awoke at 5:30 the following morning.  A full nights sleep, and I needed it.

For give or take the last week I’ve been immersed in the world of the youth, living their schedules, playing in their games, listening to their music.  Nuts and bolts bottom line is I’ve been trading beer and pizza (and a safe place to enjoy all of the above) in exchange for them conducting a class on the culture they live.  My buddies are proving out to be a fine tutors on the subject, Trev in particular knowledgeable enough in the culture as it was to draw the lines of progression into the culture as it is, Keating and Rob providing additional material particularly in the realms of Anime.  It’s not a particularly easy class to sit in, but cheap at the price.  The university couldn’t provide such education, and it would cost me a whole lot more for them to even make an attempt.

A few posts back I spoke of the Anime genre as a propaganda medium dispersing a subtle despair.  Realizing I’d made a pretty broad generalization I asked after the subject, framed the question within the context for the guys.  My question was met (and my assumption validated to a degree) by a long silence as they searched their memories.  In the end they produced a couple of possible examples not conforming to the assumption.  Based on what I saw I’ll set a confidence level of 90(+/- 5)% on that assumption.  They could find exceptions, but not many, and they had to think about it.  But the most interesting thing to come out of the last week was evidence validating another assumption. 

Beginning in the late eighties, early nineties I began to sense a deliberate and coordinated effort by the “establishment” to program weakness and compliance into the emotional structures of the youth as they came up the years into their adulthood.  I could sense it, but not really prove it.  It cost me, my ears had to suffer a bit to acquire the evidence first hand, but I can now demonstrate that such an effort has to be an ongoing campaign of the enemy.  While the enemies effort is widespread and dilute, impinging on the youth from essentially every angle, every facet of their lives, their defense against that effort is by the rule of inverses concentrated and discrete.  The music they’ve evolved to call their own is in fact an antidotal agent to the propaganda efforts of the enemy, the structures of their music a perfect negative space image of the emotional weapons being wielded against their humanity by the enemy.

My stereo got a workout for several hours each night (the Kappa’s earning their keep in spades!) playing music structured to negate the propaganda being inflicted by the establishment.  In common between the works was a transition from melancholy soft tones (that instantly reminded me of King Crimson or Pink Floyd at their best) each displayed a shock stop transition into tones so harsh and hostile to assault and repel adult ears (think Jemi Hendrix bred to say Deep Purple, and then overdriven from anger into berserk insanity).  That might be expected, looking at the normal maturation process passing through teen angst and rebellion. 

But what does NOT fit that profile of maturation is this fact: the lyrics were in fact continuous, a thought continuing unbroken across the transition from melancholy to rage, the lyrics in essence buried to become a subliminal influence beneath the raw volume of the shock transition!  I was listening closely, and when each work broke into rage the volume of the instrumental elements totally obscured the lyrics, they were not within the range of conscious perception.  And yet as I watched the boys each was chanting the lyrics in perfect time to the beat!  

Yes. That is exactly what I said.  The musicianship was crafted to set the most defiant of the lyrics, the thoughts most condemning of the establishment’s efforts to rob them of their individuality as a subliminal influence, an influence impacting their psyches at the same level as the propaganda it counter attacked.  The proof of the absolutely unethical presence of subliminal propaganda in the culture is the evolution of an equally subliminal counter agent!   That the counter agent is subliminal by reason of raw volume does not change the fact that it impacts the same regions of the mind, the subconscious perceiving what the conscious is unable to!  They are in fact fighting fire with fire, and theirs is loud enough to be clearly seen by those with enough understanding to perceive the nature of the defense of self they are mounting against the efforts of the enemy. 

All I can say is fight on kids, it is your right to a free life you’re defending.  I’ll lay covering fire for you where can as can, you have just as much right to a free mind as any other human ever born of woman to the love of her man.

Facebook, and the demands of Covert Cultural Warfare...

At this point pretty much everyone has entertained the idea of Facebook and Twitter as a giant ocean of personal information where the governments of the world go fishing for what they need, or want, to know about their populations.  For those who defend the idea of civil rights this is of course a matter of concern, the potential for such information to be misused abusing freedom in covert manners.  A valid concern, but not the only genuine threat to freedom revolving around such social technologies.

It is a fact that a person’s livelihood, the way they earn their living, impacts on their freedom every bit as much as the governmental structures of their world.  In many ways it is the larger impact.  The entities of commerce, the companies and corporations of the world,  have grown to challenge the governments of the world in terms of overall power.  Their policies and practices therefore should be of every bit as much concern to those who champion freedom as are the policies and practices of the various governmental structures of the world.

It has come to light the entities of commerce are attempting to access that ocean of information contained in the social networking sites at the same resolution as might the governments of the world.  It has been revealed they, lacking the technical ability to simply access that ocean directly are essentially holding peoples’ livelihood for ransom demanding the passwords to access their employees accounts on the social networking sites.  They are in all fact executing a form of extortion and blackmail on their employees undreamed of thirty years ago.

No citizen of the United States could be subjected to such treatment at the hands of their government, the First and Fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America prohibits the government from such actions.  The mechanisms of government are far older than the mechanisms of commerce, older, wiser and far more mature than the current prime  mechanism of commerce, the publicly owned corporation. 

To an objective eye it is easily seen these new entities of commerce are now of such scope as to rival the national governments of the world.  The actions of these entities heavily influence the actions and interactions nation to nation, they are true power players on the global scene controlling the manufacturing capabilities of planet earth opposite the nation states control of raw materials and manpower. 

The corporations have grown to wield powers quite comparable to the nations of the world, the corporations wage covert cultural warfare, one people against the other, to influence their market share in the target land, it is time for the governments of the world to quit protecting them and demand they be held accountable and judged by the same standards of civility and respect for human rights that are applied to the various nations of the world.  Mankind really doesn’t have the resources, human or otherwise, to wait for them to re-invent the concepts of civility.  We don’t have time for their version of the Magna Carta or The Bill of Rights to make it through every major boardroom in the world.

A Subtle Despair…

Last couple of days I’ve been introduced to one of the most subtle and effective propaganda mediums I’ve ever seen.  It is master level work, no mistaking that.  Nor is it the effort of one group, one company, one master, which pretty well confirms it as the work of a collective entity, a social force so cohesive as to have achieved an internal identity of its’ own. 

What I am speaking of are the cartoon shows the Japanese market to the youth, the children, the form known as Anime.  Gorgeous artwork in flawless animation, a wide range of characters, plot lines devised as perfectly crafted morality plays with a heavy bias in favor of education, a world filled with creative technologies to be called fantastic ideally suited to being incorporated into a child’s fantasy play.  All in all quite entertaining.

So why claim it a propaganda medium dispensing despair, subtle or otherwise?  Because of one other facet seemingly widespread through the genre:  no victory over the various social evils incorporated into the morality play plotlines is ever portrayed as being the effort of strictly human abilities, real world verifiable common human abilities.

In the world of Anime only those possessing, or possessed by, some ability transcending the human ever achieve a victory.   These supra-human abilities take a variety of forms ranging from savant intelligence wielding ultra-advanced technologies to influence among any number of mythical creatures acting to a wide variety of motives, or some combination of the above, but in the world shown the children only those who possess what cannot be had in reality ever prevail.  The evils shown are very real in the world, but the things required to contest those evils quite unavailable if not down right impossible.

Do you see it?  Do you see how this genre of entertainment becomes a most effective tactic in the cause of maintaining a corrupt and perverted status quo?  Do you see how it plants the despair the status quo exploits to maintain its’ power base?  As the children grow into their maturity one message is reinforced to them over and over to contradict the fantasies, the play that shaped the development of confidence and self esteem.  You can’t contest the evils you see on a daily basis, you’re just a little human, an ordinary human.  You don’t have any special powers, no one does.  You don’t have allies among the mythical, the magical.  You’re not special, you can’t be special.  You?  You’re just... ordinary.  You’d better do what you’re told.

Of course it is an effective tactic, it’s oriental in it’s origin.  The oriental, where the societies are so very old, such very old monsters dominating and enslaving the humans unfortunate enough to have been born into the hive.  The oriental, that is currently waging covert cultural warfare against the free minds of the world.  The enemy is a patient and subtle enemy of substance, and like any skilled enemy its’ first points of attack will target what provides the line of supply enabling a defense against the assault.  Regardless of the nature of the combat despair in the enemy is a valuable weapon, and Anime is a fine weapon in the orient’s efforts to enslave the world.  It just takes a generation or two for the damage done to reveal itself.

At the end of the day...

It must have rained upstream,  washed some things down into the river of life.  Seen a bit of everything float by here the last day or two.  Ok, someone wants me to review what I think I know.  Fair enough, I have. 

Of all the things reconsidered this one small thought stands out as probably the most important thing I’ve ever learned from all the strange places and peoples, all the years of struggle and strife, all the beers and all the tears. 

It is more important to love someone than it is to have someone love you.

Yes, it is.  And no, that isn’t a call for emotional altruism, in point of fact it is absolutely selfish as backwards as that might sound.  How can that be selfish?  It’s really not so hard to understand.  You have to love someone to actually understand what love is.  You have to care, really care, about the state of their life, the state of their heart.  You might be their lover, share sex, shoot for the moon every now and then, but that’s not so very important, not compared to loving them.

As long as you love someone your heart won’t shell out and glaze over with scars and callous.  As long as you love someone you’ll remember what love is, you won’t lose that understanding to the cynicism of life.   And that’s very, very important because if you love someone you’ll be able to recognize what is happening when someone loves you.  You’ll be able to recognize the love they’ve offered to you, recognize their love for what it is, and accept it.

So if it comes to pass that you love someone, genuinely love them, and they can’t return your love at the same level you offer it?  Don’t be bitter and sad about the situation, don’t begrudge them their choice.  They’ve still done you an immense favor by helping you keep your heart open and alive, even if they can’t they’ve made it possible for someone else who can. 

Alex, who understands the work of Eros 

Thanks Alex.  I have no idea, none, how many people you helped keep an open heart.  I have no idea how many of them even understood what you were doing, how much love you enabled into the world.  I have no idea if anyone has ever thanked you for that, but if no one else has I will. 

You carried me across a time when I might have totally forgotten what love feels like, a time that might have robbed me of the ability to know love at all.   I owe you a huge debt of gratitude,  the kind of debt you don’t pay back, you pay it forward.  If I’ve learned one thing of importance in this life it’s that at the end of the day you end up far richer for having paid the debt of love than you do  if you default.

Pornography ...

This post is actually a comment I posted to my friend CJ's blog. I'm reposting it here, slightly reworded for context because the thought needs to be known, needs to be spread. 

I was in conversation last night with the lads and lasses I game with, they who are being so very generous with me by sharing the reality they see, youth in the 18 to 25 range of life. Their attitudes, their fears and hidden hopes go a long way towards explaining at least a portion of the situation.

In the conversations between CJ and myself we've agreed to say that pornography is that which is anti-life while the erotic is that which supports life.  There are a great many images floating loose in our world, open for any and all to view, which are in point of fact pornography but not of necessity sexual pornography.  There are a multitude of pornographies in our world.  There is sexual porn, of course, but equally there is pistol porn, blood porn, money porn, power porn, love porn (as a thing separate from sexuality, the influence of love misused).  These pornographies attack different areas of life, but are in fact still pornography, the perversion of that which supports life into that which consumes and destroys life.  We are living in a totally pornographic world, it is so terribly saturated with porn. 

I've known this for some time now, but these last weeks of keeping company with the youth has brought the gravity of the situation into full focus.  The youth I'm keeping company with are in the process of rejecting these various forms of pornography, fortifying their own attitudes on many subjects beyond the sexual to withstand the glut of anti-life their elders have put before their eyes, eyes that have witnessed the failure of the family from the perspective of the children of those failed families. 

The subject of CJ's post was the still life, art depicting the objects of life, and these have indeed been pressed into service to support the various pornographies.  It is little mystery why.  She mentioned one particular image, a picture of  living flesh pierced with hooks.  Gross, yes, but easily interpreted.  Modern society has so very many hooks in people, the various forms of porn I listed make a decent list of categories for all those different hooks.  The most extreme example of that symbolism I've ever seen literally involved a meat hook intended to hang a thousand pound steer carcass, blunted and de-barbed of course but still a meat hook, inserted in a woman's rectum to hold her by her pelvic bones so she couldn't move her hips in response to the torment and torture being applied to her genitals, the flogging of her skin.  What facet of modern life might that represent?  There is some totally sick sh** out there, and the stench of it is growing.

But the cause is not lost.  Like I said, the youth are building their defenses against it, they are seeing cePornography for what it is in all it's abysmal misery, they recognize the monster that collective entity really is.  They know that collective for what it is, they've watched what it did to their parents.  They've not put names to all of the nuances, but their souls are rallying in defense of their lives.  In many ways they are making a stand even more heroic than say the Royal Air Force's stand in defending it's homeland against the onslaught of the Nazi war machine.  I do not jest, nor am I overstating the situation.

It is up to us, we who are their elders, we who must share in the responsibility of having loosed that monster into their world, to provide them the weapons to fight that war, to make that defense.  It is up to us to give them sanctuary, comfort and support, because when one sets aside the assumptions of older and essentially obsolete eras to really talk to them, to step into their reality and look up the years at our times?  It is so terribly easy to see the battle fatigue so very deep in their eyes.

The Sands of Time...

The Sands of Time
a bit more than a doodle...

This image was done for a totally sweet lass who works at my favorite diner.  She said she wanted a surrealism, something with drooping clocks and funny shaped peoples.  I said it had been done, the drooping clocks thing and all, but said I'd take a different tack with the idea.  Anyhow, this is what became of the thought, thought I'd share it here as well.  I'll not name her, not here, but I'm sure she'll recognize her picture if she ever visits. 

You see, I've felt for some months like there was a crack, a hole, in the bottom of that hourglass that measures my life.  More and more often I've felt like it wouldn't matter how often I turned it over there wouldn't be much sand left to run back down, that I'd end up flipping that glass hour by hour then minute by minute and then second for second and that soon enough the last grain would be gone and I'd spend however much time remained to me staring at the hole in an empty glass.  But not so much now. 

The Queen is Coming...the Queen is coming... again!!!

They call it the Victorian era these days, the lady is now an icon of history.  She sat the throne of England longer than any other monarch, sat that throne longer than any Queen of modern history sat any throne.  Her reign saw the opening of what is called modern history.  Given the times and events of her long life it seems to me quite a puzzlement that her name has become  almost synonymous with attitude of sexual repression, sexual hypocrisy as part and parcel of civilized behavior.  One man loved almost beyond enduring his loss, nine children,  and yet her name is remembered as a marker for pathological repression?  Nine children, and the story is she had something against sex?  A strange quirk of history.  Or is it?

The Picture has Nothing to do with it...

No, the picture doesn't have anything to do with what I have to offer today, not really.  It's just a "diner doodle" that took thirty minutes for the pencil drawing, and a couple of hours wasted in Photopaint to attempt to refine the portrait a bit closer to what came to mind from the song, the way she's described in the first verse.  Close, almost, but still not quite,  I'll try again.   I've returned to the pencil drawing, it's better. She had to be quite a woman to be remembered so many centuries later.  Anyhow, the song is a favorite thought I'd share, and the picture just because it gets close, and what I really want to say isn't going to take that long to say.  Takes a lot less time to say it than the amount of time needed to think about it, that's for sure.

Have you ever noticed how the academic world, the smart folks, are always facing the same way in their thoughts?  How they always assume whatever it might be they're presenting to the world is something smaller, simpler, less complicated than they, and presumably their students, are?  How they always take the stance that humanity is the peak achievement of evolution's effort?  The fools.  When they're always looking at things older and lower on evolution's list of accomplishments how would they ever know any different?  No wonder they turn pale, stammer and change the subject when I try and bring up the idea of the collective entities evolving into life right under their noses.  If you're always looking down your nose at your world of course you won't have anything to say about the creatures and creations who just might be looking down on you.