And now,

"Your Funeral... My Trial"
(Cave)

I am a crooked man
And I've walked a crooked mile.
Night, the shameless widow
Doffed her weeds, in a pile.
The stars all winked at me
They shamed a child.
Your funeral, my trial.

A thousand Marys lured me
To feathered beds and fields of clover.
Bird with crooked wing cast
Its wicked shadow over.
A bauble moon did mock
And trinket stars did smile.
Your funeral, my trial.

Here I am, little lamb...
Let all the bells in whoredom ring!
All the crooked bitches that she was,
Mongers of pain.
Saw the moon
Become a fang.
Your funeral, my trial.

The Sword of Mars

autumn brings out the red sword of mars
under a harvest moon cuts raw meat
soul-butchery
like an animated corpse-
when the magic is gone,
the body collapses and is reclaimed by the ground.

i hope you can keep yourself together until spring
until spring, until that sun
rises over behind the shed again
and paints all the world with all its pretty flowers;
i hope you can keep yourself together until
the green arms of life arrive.

Another time

When do your memories start?

How far back do you remember? Surely you remember being 10. Most likely you remember being 5 - at least a few events. Farther than that? 3? I have some impressions that I think are memories from that age.

Things start to get murky here though because it's hard to be sure you aren't transcoding what people have told you later in life about that time into pseudo-memories. It's been shown people can be made to "remember" things that never happened, by hypnosis, by psychotherapy, even by leading questions asked by researchers.

So when does long-term memory actually begin? More to the point, why don't we remember back all the way to birth? Is there some advantage in forgetting those first few years?

Of course, we forget millions of things every minute - only a tiny contingent of the vast armada of information assaulting our senses makes it into consciousness, and then only a small fraction of that gets transfered into long term memory.

Even long term memory goes away for one reason or another. But what I'm talking about is the seeming wall that exists before which we remember nothing. Is there a reason for this?

For you

green eyes, blonde hair
a smile that can melt a heart away
makes me want you here
every day.

it doesn't have to be ordinary
doesn't have to be extraordinary
it's just two people
with one heart to share.

For you, too

I want to do good in the world but I don't want to be a zealot
Want to push you to be your best without nagging you
I want to push myself without getting down on myself
Want to give you all the love you need without smothering you
I want to take care of you without mothering you
Want to protect you from harm without eliminating risk
I want to be playful without ever hurting your feelings
Want to show you I have class without being boring
I want to give you your space without ignoring you
Want to appreciate your beauty without trivializing
I want to follow my heart without leaving you behind
And I want to make your life as wonderful as you've made mine.

(picture is not mine; unsure of origin)

Sunburn

Sunburns feel good, because they hurt. They feel dry and tight and you gain sensation all over the affected areas. No more drifting - you hurt and you are aware of it. Maybe you feel hot or cold, or even both at the same time. But you're alive with discomfort. Pain is good in that way. It forces you into the now. We're not supposed to expose our skin to the terrible rays of the sun for fear of developing cancer. The whole educated world is against it. That's why I like getting a dark tan, venturing into the red, to feel alive again, and be put in my place. Nature is infinitely more powerful than we are, it's good to remember that from time to time.

Life begins and ends within the earth

It does and it's a struggle. But it's worth it, if you let it be. Some people may find it strange for me to be saying that, as the issue of "worth living" is one that has been plaguing me for years. But I'm not trying to tackle anything on the scale of Life. Just small-letter life as it is lived from day to day, even moment to moment.

When I see the sun high in the sky unfettered by clouds, I cherish all the things it does for us. Maybe it's too hot and I can't stay to gawk long, maybe its rays are coming in at angles and it's too cold. But the fact that it provides heat and light enough to support and nourish us and not so much that it kills us is reason for a small smile.

The moon - a jewel in the night that doesn't have to be there. We'd survive just fine without the moon. But would night be nearly as interesting?

Most of all, the earth. The solid two-dimensional plane undulating beneath our sandals, which turns out to be three-dimensional when you dig! I remember the awe I felt as a kid at the beach, excavating sand to build a castle, idly wondering just how far I could dig if I had all the time in the world.

Our big playground Earth has its limits, but they are completely beyond the scope of a single being. Collectively we can harm the planet, individually we are nothing. I'm grateful for that.

Untitled

you think you're headed
wild where trees bend in close
and the smells are of rose
so much to rewind
so much unallocated time
but freedom plays with your mind
the doors can close so quickly
you might lose your opportunity
that dead weight of trying too hard
monkey grabs your shoulder
in an instant the feeling is gone
and it's black, blind, subterranean,
extraterrestrial
outside all conceivable range of
fun and games until
the flat end of all things.

Untitled

I had a dream about you
you were pale white and standing in a nightgown,
downstairs amidst the baby toys and looking up at the sky
through the sliding-glass window.

You thought the few stars you could see seemed redundant,
having been there all your life and yet new to you here.
You felt bored because you see telescopes and computer-
enhanced images of them all day long, politely.

In my dream you were holding a bundle of yellow flowers
and you thought for a second about stepping outside,
outracing this feeling of being anchored to your new home;
You wondered if you could break the rope.

You thought the cut flowers would be nice for some old woman
whose life was shattered when her husband died
or whose grip finally slipped and all her memories flew away,
and you thought about the things you could change in this world,

all the small differences in those lives, if you could wake up
with the same utopian urges. The shadows here don't scare you,
you know them all by name. Your old life is fading slowly,
like a pleasant dream marred by tiny jolts of sadness.

You were in my dream and I was only present in mind
but inside you there were colors and questions, and
great big smiles and a few forced ones, and a heart on fire
beneath a glowing mind that asked but could not answer.

Your world is so large on the inside, there are
creatures crawling on its skin. Some are pastoral caretakers,
others crude consumers, and some are wistful watchers
and dreamers, and some people are lost from the start.

But your eyes are too big, too round, too kind and too smart
for any of that old nonsense. You forget the window and
get another half-glass of wine from the refrigerator.
The baby is sleeping, the husband dreaming, and you

are alone at the center of the universe again.

GONE is META spelled backwards

Dear black and white divinity, save me. I seem to be haunted by a past I can barely remember. God or anyone else, I beg of thee, help me in my time of need. I only ever wanted to do right.

(dead christ by giovanni bellini)

Modes

Is it better to feel, but almost always feel only hurt and loneliness, or to have no feelings, and in this supreme insensitivity hurt other people? This seems to be the decision given to me to make. One is unbearable, the other unconscionable.

And there is more. Like this, I am nothing. No ambition, no special skill or insight, no passion. Lacking condfidence, I feel cheated by time even as I dread the passage of hours. Yet too much piqued, too medicated, and I am an irate fireball of charm and terror ablaze in the other direction.

If only some systematic amount of such curatives could be released with my veins, the amount or timing over which I had absolutely no control, then perhaps I could find a balance, a thirst for life and the confidence to face it, without the accompaniment of amnesiatic madness.

Born in torrents

Life is hard. I feel bad for everyone who has to go through it. I know people spend endless amounts of energy staying positive and thinking the glass is half full and all of that, but that's generally because they're too scared to think it all might be pointless (yes, I'm simplifying). Pious people tend to think of atheists as afraid to commit, afraid to have faith and give yourself up to God, but I think religious people are the cowards who need a God they can serve to make their existence meaningful. Believing that there probably isn't any meaning to anything is rather frightening, deadening, confusing. It doesn't bear to think about too much. But the people who go this route, either by choice or because they simply can't accept the easy answers that institutionalized religions provide, are the real heroes in my book.

Because deep in my heart, I do wish there were meaning and it all made sense and there was someone I could mindlessly serve and make happy. And that such a being would then take care of me, like a parent, would answer all my questions and tuck me in at night. But it doesn't feel to me that this is way things actually are. It may be, but until I have evidence of it, I'll think of it as no more likely than seeing dinosaurs walking around outside my window. And yet I go on, feeding myself and sleeping and trying to move toward some inexorable fate, lastly marching on to death itself. Walking on in complete and utter darkness, and in the face of sheer terror, is a courageous act all its own, and should never be diminished. I feel sorry for those souls who travel the same path, and this is why I'll never make more children.

Learned helplessness

Good things go fast,
Bad things take forever.
Good things don't last,
Bad things are far too clever
To slip into the past.
They catch you trying to escape,
Drape themselves all over your back
Like a monkey,
Like the weight of the world.
Like money,
They turn all your dreams into trash.

หยิน หยาง

☯
Two opposites:
Each rests upon the other
Each precedes and yet follows
Each contains a bit of the other
Each is incomplete without the other
Each is defined by a contrast to the other
Together they are whole
The ten thousand things are enfolded in them
And there is still room for infinitely more
This is the wellspring of what we call life
And the wading pool for life that is failing
Turn it around, look at it any way you like
It's symmetrical and strong
It doesn't need anything else.

Web 2.0

Narcissa Redux

Riding a white horse

crashing through
the earth's atmosphere
austere and unique
like everybody else
I'm on zyprexa and benadryl
venlafaxine and daffodils
mother of pearl, zen, and windmills
chasing a lion down a long steep path
with a dragon in the aft
I'm steering toward a horizon
or a cliff
and I'm so scared I stay silent
shrug my shoulders
say it's all I ever do.

An Inconvenient Truth

Went and saw An Inconvenient Truth this evening. It's a movie in which Al Gore tries to sincerely describe the climate change - née global warming - problem that is facing the world, ostensibly without motive. It works and doesn't work, and let me tell you why.

In favor of the movie, it addresses the issue of global warming, makes you feel that something should be done, and does so in an entertaining enough way that you won't fall asleep.

Opposed, the interlude cuts between the main material seem a little too eager to establish Mr. Gore as a "regular guy" and are just the sort of nonsense you'd expect from a politician. Also, while there are lots of graphs shown and statistics quoted, these are rarely attributed to real scientists, much less mouthed by them. Instead they arrive on a PowerPoint screen voiced by Mr. Environmentalist, and seem suspect in that way, even though they are indeed valid.

This may sound, on balance, like a condemnation of the movie. It would be, except that the subject matter is too serious to be a flaky critic about it. At least Al Gore is talking about the problem, not pretending it doesn't exist like the current administration. In the end, it's the seriousness of the issue that recommends this movie more than anything else.

On the other hand, if you are interested and have a little resourcefulness, check out David Attenborough's recent 3-part series on climate change or the documentary called The Selfish Green, which presents a filmed debate between Richard Dawkins, Attenborough, Jade Goodall, and Richard Leakey. The latter program is one of the best ways to spend an hour of your life, in my opinion. There is some theorizing from on high, but also down-to-earth suggestions which anyone can follow to do their part to minimize damage to the global ecology.

And, most importantly, it imparts an urgency that something must be done, in any case. That is the strength of all these films - simple awareness of the issues. Some such film should be required viewing for every citizen of this planet - if we want to leave it usable for our kids and grandkids, that is.

(picture courtesy of NASA, used without permission)

Population

The figure is debatable, but it seems reasonable to assume that something like 100 billion people have ever lived on Earth, if by "people" we mean Homo sapiens sapiens, our little twig on the evolutionary tree after its most recent separation from some other line of hominid creatures that we define as nonhuman. This happened something like 5 million years ago, though again, the actual figure is in debate. Nevertheless it must be something over 2 million years and less than 8 million years, since we have strong fossil evidence in both directions from those dates.

Think about that for a second. There have been 100 billion human beings ever in the history of time, and 6 billion of them are alive right now. If we only count people who've lived in historical times (since the invention of writing), that 6% figure might jump to something like 35%. It's astonishing to realize that a huge chunk of human history is happening in this span of years that is so puny on a geological and even biological scale.

The human population has exploded. We were condensed into a relatively small are - the arboreal highlands of eastern Africa most likely - for most of our past. Something (climate change, perhaps) caused us to come down from the trees and adapt to life on the savannah, and from there things started to snowball and people spread all over the earth. The actual population size was still small, though; perhaps a few tens of thousands, certainly less than a million.

Then we learned to farm and herd. It's debated when this happened and why, and which came first (certainly herding in my estimation), but these technologies enabled humans to stop wandering after game and put down roots. Cities were born, and with them, division of labor. Soon there were kings, priests, soldiers, farmers, craftsmen, civil servants, artists, and so on. The fact that society could now support some portion of itself not tied to manual labor in pursuit of food or shelter meant that lots of esoteric things could be thought about and produced.

That led to smelting, tanning, writing, astronomy, and the rest of it, and soon enough Rome became the first city in history to have 1 million residents. Things hit a bit of a bump in the road with Rome's fall (though not nearly so much as you might have been taught in school), but soon enough London emerged with 2, and then 3 million inhabitants, and more importantly, was the site of the industrial revolution, where people began to mechanize labor. This produced an enormous surplus of available resources, and, predictably, human population exploded.

And what an explosion. When I was born in the 70s, there were 3.5 billion people. We've practically doubled now to 6 billion. The 60s and 70s brought fears of a Malthusian-type explosion leading to mass starvation, but the population growth rate seems to be declining so that the next 30 years likely won't see another doubling but rather a more modest increase. That is, unless fossil fuels are replaced with some even more readily available energy source. Cheap fusion, for example, could cause another population explosion. Such an explosion would necessarily mean a push into space, to the moon or mars or beyond, since the Earth's viability as a habitat would be jeopardized by so many people.

There is lots more to think about and talk about when it comes to population growth and control. I've only just brushed the surface here, and it is a fascinating field, if you're of a mind to be fascinated by such things (exponential growth, limiting factors, and so on). I believe a basic knowledge of ecology in all its subdisciplines must be learned by everyone who shares this planet, or we risk bringing about our own destruction through ignorance.

And it still blows me away that something between 5% and 10% of all people who have ever lived, are living right now.

the dance

dance with me now
and let the rain fall
there is a quiet inside our moment together
which could give us shelter
and your arms tracing circles and all
the flashing desires in your eyes
drift away in silence
when you've let go of the sound
preceding this whirl
that I entangle you in now
and blur your vision with colors
of the permanent.

(painting is dance of life by edvard munch)

Untitled

I'm not looking for a miracle drug
Your voice is miracle enough
As far as I can tell
The only reason to be alive is to make things that are beautiful
And to surround oneself with things of beauty
What other purpose could there be?

But it's not love of beauty that
Has torn my orderly garden to shreds.
It's more like the rooted earthen palms that pull one against
The skyward tug of Heaven
Are the only truth left in this World
Worth believing in.

(painting is van gogh's stairway at auvers)

I.E., Don't use

It just occurred to me to check how my blog appears in Internet Explorer. I only ever use Firefox to browse but as part of my feeling selfish and egotistical in the last post I suddenly remembered that there are those who still use that other browser. So I checked, and guess what? It looks terrible. The font sizes are not consistent from post to post for some bizarre reason, nor are the size of the line breaks between photos and such.

I am not here to tell you what to do; that's what mothers are for. But if you want an optimal experience viewing this particular blog, please avoid IE. Firefox is what I use to create it, so that's gonna be your best bet. As for even more obscure browsers like Opera, I cannot say. I'd be interested in hearing anything enlightening in that regard, though. Thanks.

Leggo my ego

When I think about what I want and expect from life, it makes me seem really selfish. I want to be comfortable - to avoid things that are unpleasant. I want people to like me. I want something elusive called happiness that seems to be an amalgamation of passion, contentedness, and security. I want to make people who are nice to me happy. I don't want to be nice to people who are not nice to me. I want to eat, to be safe, to be kept within reasonable temperature limits. I don't want to have to work too hard for all this. I want to express myself, not merely exist. In a world of six billion people, I want my voice to be heard and to be taken seriously. When I think about it, it makes me seem really selfish.

The Sound

And wide are your delusions,

Deep red is the space behind your eyes.
Closed forever is the door to your room,
But inside there lives the sound.

You despise,
But I love...
You despise,
What I love...
You despise,
I love...

Mother, I was wrong.
I was wrong.
I am wrong.

(m. gira)

(picture is of unknown origin)

Almost midnight

How to make good on an evening. Never spend it alone. But whatever you do, don't share it with anyone else. To make good on an evening, retreat into yourself and then let it all go. But don't do that, absorb what others are all about instead. Sleep inside the mosquito nets thinking, with the three-quarter moon overhead. Try it sometime. In the morning you will feel interested and challenged, not hoping the sun will somehow travel faster, not hoping that life will leave you behind in its wake, not shaky. When we include other people in our dreams, out dreams turn out richer. No matter what we logically think.

Best. Lyrics. Evar.

"Echoes"
(waters)

Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves
In labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine

And no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the wheres or whys
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb toward the light

Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can

And no one calls us to move on
And no one forces down our eyes
And no one speaks and no one tries
And no one flies around the sun

Cloudless everyday you fall upon my waking eyes
Inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Comes streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

And no one sings me lullabies
And no one makes me close my eyes
And so I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky.

VoIP, brah!

Let me tell you, the telecoms are really ripping us normal folks off. But what I'm here to tell you today is THERE IS A WAY TO BEAT THEM AT THEIR OWN GAME. Oh shit, sorry about that, the caps-lock key got stuck. Anyways, you get the idea. Let's all band together to use the ample bandwidth of the Internet to provide geeks like ourselves with free, yes FREE phonecalls, anywhere in the world. We'll call it Voice over IP so it sounds sorta descriptive-yet-tech, but can also be shortened into an acronym, VoIP, that will make star wars and buffy fans will go nuts. VOOIIPP!

Of course, all this will take some money to run. I mean, the software switchers have to sit on servers, which must be upgraded and maintained continually. Techs will have to do that. Those techs are gonna need a layer of management above them to ensure they aren't just sitting around blowing smoke rings of the sticky icky. And then there's the top tier staff who have to have porsches, legal advisors, military advisors - wait, forget that last one - the people we'd have to contract with to give us a marketable "brand" and handle all our press contacts, customer support, and a myriad of other things.

So no, of course it's not gonna be free. We'll pass along some minimal cost-per-minute to the users so we can stay afloat and not actually LOSE money. That would suck for customers too, right? And it's not like you all - I mean we - have to have physical telephone sets anymore, so that's an even bigger savings! If you do have one, you can always ship it to those kids with huge stomachs in Africa, making them so happy and giving you a little more karma in the bank. Back to the phones, though; See, instead one of those clunky dedicated phones, you have a crappy sounding headset and a mic that makes any sniffle or throat clearing sound like the storm that that brought down the Edmund Fitzgerald. You'll have to pay a bit for this starter kit too, and maybe even more if you want to actually hear words on the other end rather than the vague sound of bears chewing on onions.

Ok. Ok. We admit it. The cost saving aren't going to amount to much if you're a moron who stays in his mental box all day thinking his simple neolithic thoughts. But the hip crowd is gonna be all over this, because check this out: You can use it anywhere!!! You don't have to stay in a room with a phone jack. You're FREE baby!! (there's that word again). Yes, you'll have to find a hotspot to have service, but people are throwing those up all over the place, right? Although...I heard many are now charging small subscription fees of their own. Hey... Maybe we should see if we can get a piece of that pie as well. [editor: do not print last sentence]

So, to summarize.

Pros: It makes you look cool. It makes it possible to not take a cellphone with you on your business trips, since you've got that big hunking laptop you can talk with. Two, you're sticking it to The Man (who, to be fair, also owns us, but he doesn't OWN us, if you get my drift. We call the shots here, not those pricks in their boiler suits). And lastly, but possibly most importantly, it makes you look cool.

Cons: Our lawyer says we must disclose these. Customer service will vary wildly from bad to horrific, lines will drop off and cut out every time someone three streets down sends an email to your daughter, the equipment is all proprietry and will need uprgrading periodically to keep you in with the hip crowd and give you the biggest pipe on the block. Yes, those phones from the 40s still look clasy and work like a charm, but... um... well anyways like I was saying VoIP (*tingles*) is the wave of the future, and if were you, buddy, I'd grab my malibu pronto and dawn-patrol straight into the green room rather than waiting and having to baby ramp into someone else's curl like a barney.

"Voice over IP - I'm Lovin' It!"

Ăä

If a boy is crying wolf
Maybe it's because
There really is a wolf.

Hulme's finest

"Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me"
(morrissey)

Last night I dreamt
That somebody loved me;
No hope, no harm—
Just another false alarm.

Last night I felt
Real arms around me;
No hope, no harm—
Just another false alarm.

So tell me how long?
Before the Last one.
And tell me how long?
Before the Bright one.

This story is old—I KNOW
But it goes on.
This story is old—I KNOW
But it goes on.

Goes on....
Goes on........
Goes on............