Scattered Bits and Broken Pieces…

[thoughts from ~burning woman~ ]

A quote from the movie, Trial and Error(1997) “The guy’s an asshole, Charlie.”
“I know.”
“Do you know why he’s an asshole? Because he’s never taken responsibility for anything he’s ever done; ’cause he’s got a story for everything and if the truth catches up to him then hey, he just tells one more lie to stay ahead of it. That sound familiar?”

If someone, anyone, after some discussion, ventures the remark, expresses the opinion that, “…you surely have had a hard life” it is wisest to reply, “yes, I suppose I did” and always add, just as you would add a spoonful of sugar to a cup of black coffee, “but never as hard as many others and no harder than some” thus making an end of the matter by not allowing pride to take root in false humility.

The candle flickered, throwing around a bit of unsteady light only it wasn’t a candle, it was the gas heater in the corner of the dark room, the flickering light coming through the glass front. It was the fire I was looking at while a line, a quote, kept going through my head: ‘Those who would give light must endure burning.’ I’ve watched many a combustible give light being eaten alive by fire, consumed, not by choice but by nature and position.

It’s discouraging to realize how many people are shocked by [political] honesty and how few by [political] deceit.

I am a truth teller; I always tell the truth and I am lying to you right now, everything I say is a lie.

“The world’s debt currently exceeds $86,000 per person on average, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The US, China, and Japan are the top three global borrowers, accounting for more than half of the global debt. Source: Global debt hits all-time high of $184,000,000,000,000” — RT Business News RT.com 15 Dec, 2018

“I am reading the book of human sin. When I’m done I’ll cast it into the fire and all their sins will be gone.” (The Island – Russian movie)

To ponder: Electricity is NOT an energy source.

Some statistics on the great pyramid: Weighs 6 million tons. Covers 13 acres. 750 feet per side, 481 feet high. Contains over two and a half million individual blocks of stone.

Theremin: the only musical instrument played without being touched. Invented by a Russian physicist in 1919.

Most people are other people; their thoughts are someone else’s opinions; their lives a mimicry; their passion a quotation.” (Oscar Wilde)

“What is the meaning of it, Watson? What is the object of this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must have a purpose or our universe has no meaning and that is unthinkable. But what is that purpose? That… is humanity’s great problem… to which reason, so far, has no answer.” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It’s not ‘jurybuilt’ it’s ‘jerrybuilt’ for quick, cheap assembly or construction. It’s not ‘jerry rigged’ it’s ‘jury rigged’ – quick assembly for temporary use.

“We all fear death and question our place in the universe. The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.” (movie: Midnight in Paris) [yes that remains the artist’s job. The priesthood and science have both glaringly failed in finding that antidote.]

The third major cause of blindness is cataracts. The first two causes are politics and religion.

I understand that practicality and realism are alien concepts in American politics, to be approached with trepidation, but maybe, just once, we should think before sticking our private parts into a wood-chipper. Just once. I do not propose consistent rationality, forethought, or intelligent behavior. I profoundly respect my country’s traditions. (Fred Reed)

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. (George Carlin)

A woman’s mind is a strange pool to slip into at birth. It is set within parameters by the first few months of listening and seeing. Her infant mind is a vast blank template that absorbs all and stores it away. In those first few months come role acceptance, a beginning of attitude, and a hint of future achievement. Listening to adults and observing their actions builds a storehouse of preconceptions and warnings: Do not see those ghosts on bedroom walls—they aren’t there! None of the rest of us can see your imaginary companions, darling… It’s something you have to understand. And so from some dim beginning, not ex nihilo but out of totality, the woman begins to pare her infinite self down. She whittles away at this unwanted piece, that undesired trait. She forgets in time that she was once part of all and turns to the simple tune of life, rather than to the endless and symphonic before. She forgets those companions who danced on the ceiling above her bed and called to her from the dark. (Wind from a Burning Woman – Greg Bear)

“‘Til next time!…” ~burning woman~

Update: Words by which to make a World

[thoughts from    ~burning woman~     Sha’Tara]

The particular phase of our volunteer rebuilding project came to an early end today. How this came about was through great cooperation and coordination of volunteers and home owners. More importantly perhaps, was the dedication along with supportive words and kindness expressed by all to all. The owners’ children, between home schooling and chores, brought us coffee and home baked “goodies” and always, without fail, with broad smiles on their faces. Elizabeth, the oldest child still residing at home, commented on how beautiful their future home looked after we had completed the “Hardie” type siding work. It was wonderful to see her face light up when I emphasized that the house was to be her home. “Yes! Yes, my home, yes!” She kept staring at it as she backed away to take in more of the scene. I think at that moment I came closer to understand what it would mean to have your home burned to the ground knowing that all the work that had gone into building the original was irretrievably gone. In these remote areas there is no fire insurance available.

More, longer term volunteer service is being planned or in the works in and around this area as last years’ wild fires swept over hundred of miles of forests, farms, homesteads, homes and villages in that central part of B.C., Canada. I’ve already put my offer in to be on one of the rebuilding crews.

On the way home my partner and I stopped at a road side hotel and restaurant in Cache Creek. On the walls above us many signs were hanging, carved or painted. While some of their messages did not interest me nor could I have afforded any of the signs based on their price tags, one said: “Always remember to be humble and kind.”

Coming from one entire week of such experience, I couldn’t help but ask myself, ‘Indeed, why not? Why not? Why can we not all be humble and kind as the most natural expression of our claimed humanity? Why not?

Consider the following quotes, no author given (nor needed!) in keeping with words and acts by which we make a world.

 

~~^j^~~

“Being rude is easy.
It does not take any effort
and is a sign of weakness and insecurity.
Kindness shows great self-discipline and strong self-esteem.
Being kind is not always easy when dealing with rude people.
Kindness is a sign of a person who has done a lot of personal work
and has come to a great self-understanding and wisdom.
Choose to be kind over being right
and you’ll be right every time
because kindness is a sign of strength.”

~~^j^~~

We don’t know
what someone is going through.
We don’t wear signs
that illustrate our personal struggles.
You don’t see
signs taped to people’s shirts that say
“Going through a divorce”
or
“Lost a child”
or
“Feeling depressed”
or
“Diagnosed with cancer.”

If we could read visually
what those around us are going through
we would definitely be nicer.
But we shouldn’t have to see signs
and have reasons to treat strangers with kindness.
We should do it anyway,
whether we know what is going on or not.
Whether they deserve it or not.
Let’s give everyone an extra dose
of patience, kindness and love.”

I find these sentiments appropriate and inspirational.

Presenting Oriah Mountain Dreamer

D’you ever get into that space where you feel a quasi-manic need to say something when you don’t know what that is?

I’m living under a piebald sky of white to black clouds roiling across an achingly deep blue sky, doing their best to hide it and bring the rains back but failing at their purposed task.

I love being here, as in this life right now, passionately so, yet I long to be somewhere else, anywhere else. The storm that defines Earthianity, the clashing of thunderous waves against granite cliffs perpetuates itself and while the waves gain power, eroding the cliffs, they also get darker and full of the detritus of the things they have drowned and of the sands they have troubled, stirred and relocated.  I love the storm but I don’t want the garbage it stirs up. I like the rocking of the waves but I want a clean bed to sleep in.

When I get into such a whirlwind mind space and seek to find a place to set my feet that isn’t moving under me or a place to sit down that won’t collapse and send me plummeting down a bottomless cliff, I pull up this old quote and read it, thoughtfully.

Then I wonder how much of a hypocrite still remains calling itself ‘me.’

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with Joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty everyday. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes’.

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from inside when all else fails.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

 

 

The Challenge of Death

or
Happy Valentines Day

(thoughts from ‘The Other Side’ by ~burning woman~ )

I took a break from writing the novel tonight and watched a movie my friend left with me. It’s called “The Carer” and it is a good story.

Here are some quotes from that movie:

Quote: “Great Dramatists and great actors conspire to blow up complacency, corruption, pretension, all the vices of our rich, sordid, jaded world with humour, passion and a large dollop of sex.”

(And I would add, so do great writers.)

Quote: “How many of us here deny the human condition in one form or another? We get old, that’s the truth. And how can you tell true stories about the human condition if you deny it, choosing only the good bits: youth and beauty, passion and sex. There’s no truth in cosmetic enhancements, you know, no candour in collagen.”

(And here I would add: Nor in ostentatious adulation and riches.)

Quote: “Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once.”

(And here I would add that those who work so hard at denying the coming reality of death and what it may entail of the unknowns it hides, are as cowardly as those who quail when facing it on the battle field or in opposing tyrants.)

Quote: “Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing as death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” {End of quotes}

Let’s engage the topic of “this or that” History Month. Let’s look at some big topics we could have official history months on and pretend, just for one moment, that a “History Month” means that we actually cared about what “month” is being recognized for or celebrating.

OK, big topics.

How about a “Love History Month”? I’m told that love is really, I mean, really important; that everybody wants love, needs love. Two days from “Valentine’s Day” and suddenly the subject of “love” is all the rage. Maybe they should have made February “Love History Month.” Ah but then I wonder what sort of “history” would emerge from such a topic. Who would mention that love is an absolute value; that there are no “degrees” of love? Imagine a whole month where, as celebration of love everybody does nothing else but love one-another.

I think not. Let’s just send each other little red hearts on cardboard or on digital screens and keep on pretending.

Do we have an official “Life History Month”? I don’t remember hearing about that either. Yet, is there a more important topic to discuss and engage? Shouldn’t we, once and for all, define life as an absolute value? How about celebrating a whole month without any killing, not in warfare, not in sports, not as a police activity, not as random street crime and not in the killing fields of meat packing. For one month, all life is sacred, at least to the very best of our ability to practice this.

I’m afraid we’re not touching that one with a ten foot pole.

Do we have a “Peace History Month”? OK, here goes, one whole month dedicated to doing peace. One whole month of total cease-fire, no warfare. One whole month no oppressing, no bullying, no extorting, no taking advantage, no competitive activity. Just peace.

Hm. Why can’t I see that happening either?

So,
can’t do love,
can’t do life,
can’t do peace.

Hey, I know. Let’s have a “Death History Month”! Focus on everything and everyone on this world that’s died, is dying, and will die, how and why. For an entire month all we do is study death, observe death, think and talk about our own guaranteed, certain death, then feel the feelings engendered by such a study.

Of course we would never do that; it would be considered morbid.

Yet does anyone realize that the more death is studied and focused upon, particularly one’s own death, the more one comes to understand the necessity of
loving unconditionally? Of
treating all of life as sacred? Of
personal and global peace as the only foundation for any civilization?

But we won’t have any of that because, well, we all know why, to the tune of about seven and a half billion reasons. We would never contemplate engaging love, life or peace in any meaningful context, it would upset the applecart and the applecart is what’s sacred!

I’m told that mankind is not brainwashed, is not manipulated, is not controlled. Therefore what I’m really being told is that mankind is autonomous, free to think, speak and act in every way.

If that is the case, then mankind, that is each and everyone of us, is fully responsible, and accountable, for all the misery, the horror, the killing, that takes place all over this world. There is no one else to blame! If you’re not the victim, then you are the perpetrator. Sure, there’s countless arguments against my black and white views of things, but they remain spurious.

As perpetrators of global injustice the reality we exist in is a reality we all want, desire, or feel the need for. As victims, the same reality is one we consider hell and would do practically anything, if we had the power, to get out from under. It’s just that the perpetrators, the consumers, the relatively content, the remaining “haves” won’t let their victims escape; they won’t even let them seek refuge from oppression and drone bombing in the box store, the fast-food drive-tru or multiplex theatre because that would spoil the game and the game must go on.

We of the west with our fake religions, fake economics, fake politics, have been masterful at vicariously spreading hell and death throughout the world through our Master we call the Military Industrial Complex. For several hundred years we’ve benefited from that exploitation and now, when it’s coming to a justly deserved end we’re not giving up in the face of certain collapse, we’re desperately attempting to shore up the crumbling edifice of militaristic imperial democracy and “Christian” values even if all we’re doing is pretending it isn’t collapsing.

The costs? More deaths of innocents, but as long as it’s not my death, or the death of “my” innocents, it’s normal and fair collateral damage. If a dozen Kurd children need slaughtering today so I can fill my SUV gas tank or buy a bigger screen smart TV, that’s the price the Third World or developing world has always had to pay to the Empire so why should that be a problem today, particularly?

Happy Valentines day…

This and That, Why Not?

As you may  have noticed, er, hm, I’m writing a story that seems to be turning into what is called a novel.  Why a novel?  No idea except that it’s not a novel idea.

Anyway, be that as it may and all the rest of the massacree, once in a while it’s good to just stop.  Catch your breath, stop chasing after those characters who can run circles around you and disappear in the blink of an eye and you can’t find them again.  So, I got ’em where I want ’em and I’m putting on the brakes and taking a break.

That being said, I found some questions in “THE” note book that I want to share, maybe get some feedback.

“Is an unenforceable law still a law?”

“If it is enforceable but no one wants to enforce it, is it still a law?”

“Is an idea that is in words only a valid concept?  or  Does it gain validity only when it is proven that it can be applied and that it works?”

“The future is not an extrapolation of the past, it’s doing things differently.”  Does that mean that when we don’t do things differently we are not moving into the future but living in the past?  I think that question is loaded and demanding scrutiny.

And a quote that most can probably identify with:

I look at my past life as at a field lit up by the sun when it breaks through the clouds, and I note with metaphysical astonishment how my most deliberate acts, my clearest ideas, and my most logical intentions were after all no more than congenital drunkenness, inherent madness, and huge ignorance. I didn’t even act anything out. I was the role that got acted. – Fernando Pessoa

And that’s all folks!