There's no other way to start with how i'm feeling than to guide you here:
http://joberry4.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/end-of-year-repost-from-2010-even-more-valid/
Yes, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 ... what i said earlier this year about this free trip around the sun. Bill Hicks reminded us that "its just a ride", but in some strange carnival and finding yourself on the haunted house ride when you were aiming for the love cruise.
I've been very quiet on here this year, not that i haven't had things to say, but saying them out loud ... well i'm a firm believer in: if you have nothing good to say, don't say it, so i don't. Of course we have different levels of communication available, and when you stop talking, only silence and screaming remains. This blog was always meant to be a means of converting my thought bubbles into readable prose, but my thoughts are too incoherent, mostly just vague feelings or emotions. Not all bad emotions to be fair, but unfocussed or worse, apathetic.
2013 has been a most unpleasant year all round, both personal and public, and i feel like a comrades runner metres from the finishing post, gathering the last reserves of strength, if only to fall on THAT side of the line, and not this side of it. The line in this case doubling as a start line for next year ... not really fair, when you look at it like that. This year i get a 3 week good behaviour breather ... almost unbeliebable somehow. So I'm allocating myself tasks, every day something to do, mowing the lawn, building a fireplace to rid some of the woodpiles that have accumulated through winter, and similar trivialities.
4 days later i write this next bit ... I need to finish it off somehow. So many thoughts and things i want to say "hey look here, this is cool" ... but i can't keep my head together enough for that. I'm off to fiddle with my stuff in my man-cave and play with my nothing box.
peace and love everyone who reads this.
Tuesday, 24 December 2013
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
The Problem is Civil Obedience
I reproduce this in full, every single word matters, every single idea.
The Problem is Civil Obedience
1970 from the Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press
By Howard ZinnTranscript of my opening statement in the debate at Johns Hopkins. It was included in a book published by Johns Hopkins Press in 1972, entitled Violence: The Crisis of American Confidence. - Howard Zinn
I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down. Daniel Berrigan is in jail-A Catholic priest, a poet who opposes the war-and J. Edgar Hoover is free, you see. David Dellinger, who has opposed war ever since he was this high and who has used all of his energy and passion against it, is in danger of going to jail. The men who are responsible for the My Lai massacre are not on trial; they are in Washington serving various functions, primary and subordinate, that have to do with the unleashing of massacres, which surprise them when they occur. At Kent State University four students were killed by the National Guard and students were indicted. In every city in this country, when demonstrations take place, the protesters, whether they have demonstrated or not, whatever they have done, are assaulted and clubbed by police, and then they are arrested for assaulting a police officer.
Now, I have been studying very closely what happens every day in the courts in Boston, Massachusetts. You would be astounded-maybe you wouldn't, maybe you have been around, maybe you have lived, maybe you have thought, maybe you have been hit-at how the daily rounds of injustice make their way through this marvelous thing that we call due process. Well, that is my premise.
All you have to do is read the Soledad letters of George Jackson, who was sentenced to one year to life, of which he spent ten years, for a seventy-dollar robbery of a filling station. And then there is the U.S. Senator who is alleged to keep 185,000 dollars a year, or something like that, on the oil depletion allowance. One is theft; the other is legislation. something is wrong, something is terribly wrong when we ship 10,000 bombs full of nerve gas across the country, and drop them in somebody else's swimming pool so as not to trouble our own. So you lose your perspective after a while. If you don't think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world, and you are horrified. So we have to start from that supposition-that things are really topsy-turvy.
And our topic is topsy-turvy: civil disobedience. As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany. We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong. They should have challenged, and they should have resisted; and if we were only there, we would have showed them. Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that; people are obedient, all these herdlike people.
But America is different. That is what we've all been brought up on. From the time we are this high and I still hear it resounding in Mr. Frankel's statement-you tick off, one, two, three, four, five lovely things .~ about America that we don't want disturbed very much. But if we have learned anything in the past ten years, it is that these lovely things about America were never lovely. We have been expansionist and aggressive and mean to other people from the beginning. And we've been aggressive and mean to people in this country, and we've allocated the wealth of this country in a very unjust way. We've never had justice in the courts for the poor people, for black people, for radicals. Now how can we boast that America is a very special place? It is not that special. It really isn't.
Well, that is our topic, that is our problem: civil obedience. Law is very important. We are talking about obedience to law-law, this marvelous invention of modern times, which we attribute to Western civilization, and which we talk about proudly. The rule of law, oh, how wonderful, all these courses in Western civilization all over the land. Remember those bad old days when people were exploited by feudalism? Everything was terrible in the Middle Ages-but now we have Western civilization, the rule of law. The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed before the rule of law, that is what the rule of law has done. Let us start looking at the rule of law realistically, not with that metaphysical complacency with which we always examined it before.
When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this. We have to transcend these national boundaries in our thinking. Nixon and Brezhnev have much more in common with one another than - we have with Nixon. J. Edgar Hoover has far more in common with the head of the Soviet secret police than he has with us. It's the international dedication to law and order that binds the leaders of all countries in a comradely bond. That's why we are always surprised when they get together -- they smile, they shake hands, they smoke cigars, they really like one another no matter what they say. It's like the Republican and Democratic parties, who claim that it's going to make a terrible difference if one or the other wins, yet they are all the same. Basically, it is us against them.
Yossarian was right, remember, in Catch-22? He had been accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which nobody should ever be accused of, and Yossarian said to his friend Clevinger: "The enemy is whoever is going to get you killed, whichever side they are on." But that didn't sink in, so he said to Clevinger: "Now you remember that, or one of these days you'll be dead." And remember? Clevinger, after a while, was dead. And we must remember that our enemies are not divided along national lines, that enemies are not just people who speak different languages and occupy different territories. Enemies are people who want to get us killed.
We are asked, "What if everyone disobeyed the law?" But a better question is, "What if everyone obeyed the law?" And the answer to that question is much easier to come by, because we have a lot of empirical evidence about what happens if everyone obeys the law, or if even most people obey the law. What happens is what has happened, what is happening. Why do people revere the law? And we all do; even I have to fight it, for it was put into my bones at an early age when I was a Cub Scout. One reason we revere the law is its ambivalence. In the modern world we deal with phrases and words that have multiple meanings, like "national security." Oh, yes, we must do this for national security! Well, what does that mean? Whose national security? Where? When? Why? We don't bother to answer those questions, or even to ask them.
The law conceals many things. The law is the Bill of Rights. ;'~ fact, that is what we think of when we develop our reverence for the law. The law is something that protects us; the law is our right-the law is the Constitution. Bill of Rights Day, essay contests sponsored by the American Legion on our Bill of Rights, that is the law. And that is good.
But there is another part of the law that doesn't get ballyhooed- the legislation that has gone through month after month, year after year, from the beginning of the Republic, which allocates the resources of the country in such a way as to leave some people very rich and other people very poor, and still others scrambling like mad for what little is left. That is the law. If you go to law school you will see this. You can quantify it by counting the big, heavy law books that people carry around with them and see how many law books you count that say "Constitutional Rights" on them and how many that say "Property," "Contracts," "Torts," "Corporation Law." That is what the law is mostly about. The law is the oil depletion allowance-although we don't have Oil Depletion Allowance Day, we don't have essays written on behalf of the oil depletion allowance. So there are parts of the law that are publicized and played up to us-oh, this is the law, the Bill of Rights. And there are other parts of the law that just do their quiet work, and nobody says anything about them.
It started way back. When the Bill of Rights was first passed, remember, in the first administration of Washington? Great thing. Bill of Rights passed! Big ballyhoo. At the same time Hamilton's economic pro gram was passed. Nice, quiet, money to the rich-I'm simplifying it a little, but not too much. Hamilton's economic program started it off. You can draw a straight line from Hamilton's economic program to the oil depletion allowance to the tax write-offs for corporations. All the way through-that is the history. The Bill of Rights publicized; economic legislation unpublicized.
You know the enforcement of different parts of the law is as important as the publicity attached to the different parts of the law. The Bill of Rights, is it enforced? Not very well. You'll find that freedom of speech in constitutional law is a very difficult, ambiguous, troubled concept. Nobody really knows when you can get up and speak and when you can't. Just check all of the Supreme Court decisions. Talk about predictability in a system-you can't predict what will happen to you when you get up on the street corner and speak. See if you can tell the difference between the Terminiello case and the Feiner case, and see if you can figure out what is going to happen. By the way, there is one part of the law that is not very vague, and that involves the right to distribute leaflets on the street. The Supreme Court has been very clear on that. In decision after decision we are affirmed an absolute right to distribute leaflets on the street. Try it. Just go out on the street and start distributing leaflets. And a policeman comes up to you and he says, "Get out of here." And you say, "Aha! Do you know Marsh v. Alabama, 1946?" That is the reality of the Bill of Rights. That's the reality of the Constitution, that part of the law which is portrayed to us as a beautiful and marvelous thing. And seven years after the Bill of Rights was passed, which said that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech," Congress made a law abridging the freedom of speech. Remember? The Sedition Act of 1798.
So the Bill of Rights was not enforced. Hamilton's program was enforced, because when the whisky farmers went out and rebelled you remember, in 1794 in Pennsylvania, Hamilton himself got on his horse and went out there to suppress the rebellion to make sure that the revenue tax was enforced. And you can trace the story right down to the present day, what laws are enforced, what laws are not enforced. So you have to be careful when you say, "I'm for the law, I revere the law." What part of the law are you talking about? I'm not against all law. But I think we ought to begin to make very important distinctions about what laws do what things to what people.
And there are other problems with the law. It's a strange thing, we think that law brings order. Law doesn't. How do we know that law does not bring order? Look around us. We live under the rules of law. Notice how much order we have? People say we have to worry about civil disobedience because it will lead to anarchy. Take a look at the present world in which the rule of law obtains. This is the closest to what is called anarchy in the popular mind-confusion, chaos, international banditry. The only order that is really worth anything does not come through the enforcement ... of law, it comes through the establishment of a society which is just and in which harmonious relationships are established and in which you need a minimum of regulation to create decent sets of arrangements among people. But the order based on law and on the force of law is the order of the totalitarian state, and it inevitably leads either to total injustice or to rebel lion-eventually, in other words, to very great disorder.
We all grow up with the notion that the law is holy. They asked Daniel Berrigan's mother what she thought of her son's breaking the law. He burned draft records-one of the most violent acts of this century- to protest the war, for which he was sentenced to prison, as criminals should be. They asked his mother who is in her eighties, what she thought of her son's breaking the law. And she looked straight into the interviewer's face, and she said, "It's not God's law." Now we forget that. There is nothing sacred about the law. Think of who makes laws. The law is not made by God, it is made by Strom Thurmond. If you nave any notion about the sanctity and loveliness and reverence for the law, look at the legislators around the country who make the laws. Sit in on the sessions of the state legislatures. Sit in on Congress, for these are the people who make the laws which we are then supposed to revere.
All of this is done with such propriety as to fool us. This is the problem. In the old days, things were confused; you didn't know. Now you know. It is all down there in the books. Now we go through due process. Now the same things happen as happened before, except that we've gone through the right procedures. In Boston a policeman walked into a hospital ward and fired five times at a black man who had snapped a towel at his arm-and killed him. A hearing was held. The judge decided that the policeman was justified because if he didn't do it, he would lose the respect of his fellow officers. Well, that is what is known as due process-that is, the guy didn't get away with it. We went through the proper procedures, and everything was set up. The decorum, the propriety of the law fools us.
The nation then, was founded on disrespect for the law, and then came the Constitution and the notion of stability which Madison and Hamilton liked. But then we found in certain crucial times in our history that the legal framework did not suffice, and in order to end slavery we had to go outside the legal framework, as we had to do at the time of the American Revolution or the Civil War. The union had to go outside the legal framework in order to establish certain rights in the 1930s. And in this time, which may be more critical than the Revolution or the Civil War, the problems are so horrendous as to require us to go outside the legal framework in order to make a statement, to resist, to begin to establish the kind of institutions and relationships which a decent society should have. No, not just tearing things down; building things up. But even if you build things up that you are not supposed to build up-you try to build up a people's park, that's not tearing down a system; you are building something up, but you are doing it illegally-the militia comes in and drives you out. That is the form that civil disobedience is going to take more and more, people trying to build a new society in the midst of the old.
But what about voting and elections? Civil disobedience-we don't need that much of it, we are told, because we can go through the electoral system. And by now we should have learned, but maybe we haven't, for we grew up with the notion that the voting booth is a sacred place, almost like a confessional. You walk into the voting booth and you come out and they snap your picture and then put it in the papers with a beatific smile on your face. You've just voted; that is democracy. But if you even read what the political scientists say-although who can?-about the voting process, you find that the voting process is a sham. Totalitarian states love voting. You get people to the polls and they register their approval. I know there is a difference-they have one party and we have two parties. We have one more party than they have, you see.
What we are trying to do, I assume, is really to get back to the principles and aims and spirit of the Declaration of Independence. This spirit is resistance to illegitimate authority and to forces that deprive people of their life and liberty and right to pursue happiness, and therefore under these conditions, it urges the right to alter or abolish their current form of government-and the stress had been on abolish. But to establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail for petty technical offenses and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes. My hope is that this kind of spirit will take place not just in this country but in other countries because they all need it. People in all countries need the spirit of disobedience to the state, which is not a metaphysical thing but a thing of force and wealth. And we need a kind of declaration of interdependence among people in all countries of the world who are striving for the same thing.
The Problem is Civil Obedience
1970 from the Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press
By Howard ZinnTranscript of my opening statement in the debate at Johns Hopkins. It was included in a book published by Johns Hopkins Press in 1972, entitled Violence: The Crisis of American Confidence. - Howard Zinn
I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down. Daniel Berrigan is in jail-A Catholic priest, a poet who opposes the war-and J. Edgar Hoover is free, you see. David Dellinger, who has opposed war ever since he was this high and who has used all of his energy and passion against it, is in danger of going to jail. The men who are responsible for the My Lai massacre are not on trial; they are in Washington serving various functions, primary and subordinate, that have to do with the unleashing of massacres, which surprise them when they occur. At Kent State University four students were killed by the National Guard and students were indicted. In every city in this country, when demonstrations take place, the protesters, whether they have demonstrated or not, whatever they have done, are assaulted and clubbed by police, and then they are arrested for assaulting a police officer.
Now, I have been studying very closely what happens every day in the courts in Boston, Massachusetts. You would be astounded-maybe you wouldn't, maybe you have been around, maybe you have lived, maybe you have thought, maybe you have been hit-at how the daily rounds of injustice make their way through this marvelous thing that we call due process. Well, that is my premise.
All you have to do is read the Soledad letters of George Jackson, who was sentenced to one year to life, of which he spent ten years, for a seventy-dollar robbery of a filling station. And then there is the U.S. Senator who is alleged to keep 185,000 dollars a year, or something like that, on the oil depletion allowance. One is theft; the other is legislation. something is wrong, something is terribly wrong when we ship 10,000 bombs full of nerve gas across the country, and drop them in somebody else's swimming pool so as not to trouble our own. So you lose your perspective after a while. If you don't think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world, and you are horrified. So we have to start from that supposition-that things are really topsy-turvy.
And our topic is topsy-turvy: civil disobedience. As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany. We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong. They should have challenged, and they should have resisted; and if we were only there, we would have showed them. Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that; people are obedient, all these herdlike people.
But America is different. That is what we've all been brought up on. From the time we are this high and I still hear it resounding in Mr. Frankel's statement-you tick off, one, two, three, four, five lovely things .~ about America that we don't want disturbed very much. But if we have learned anything in the past ten years, it is that these lovely things about America were never lovely. We have been expansionist and aggressive and mean to other people from the beginning. And we've been aggressive and mean to people in this country, and we've allocated the wealth of this country in a very unjust way. We've never had justice in the courts for the poor people, for black people, for radicals. Now how can we boast that America is a very special place? It is not that special. It really isn't.
Well, that is our topic, that is our problem: civil obedience. Law is very important. We are talking about obedience to law-law, this marvelous invention of modern times, which we attribute to Western civilization, and which we talk about proudly. The rule of law, oh, how wonderful, all these courses in Western civilization all over the land. Remember those bad old days when people were exploited by feudalism? Everything was terrible in the Middle Ages-but now we have Western civilization, the rule of law. The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed before the rule of law, that is what the rule of law has done. Let us start looking at the rule of law realistically, not with that metaphysical complacency with which we always examined it before.
When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this. We have to transcend these national boundaries in our thinking. Nixon and Brezhnev have much more in common with one another than - we have with Nixon. J. Edgar Hoover has far more in common with the head of the Soviet secret police than he has with us. It's the international dedication to law and order that binds the leaders of all countries in a comradely bond. That's why we are always surprised when they get together -- they smile, they shake hands, they smoke cigars, they really like one another no matter what they say. It's like the Republican and Democratic parties, who claim that it's going to make a terrible difference if one or the other wins, yet they are all the same. Basically, it is us against them.
Yossarian was right, remember, in Catch-22? He had been accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which nobody should ever be accused of, and Yossarian said to his friend Clevinger: "The enemy is whoever is going to get you killed, whichever side they are on." But that didn't sink in, so he said to Clevinger: "Now you remember that, or one of these days you'll be dead." And remember? Clevinger, after a while, was dead. And we must remember that our enemies are not divided along national lines, that enemies are not just people who speak different languages and occupy different territories. Enemies are people who want to get us killed.
We are asked, "What if everyone disobeyed the law?" But a better question is, "What if everyone obeyed the law?" And the answer to that question is much easier to come by, because we have a lot of empirical evidence about what happens if everyone obeys the law, or if even most people obey the law. What happens is what has happened, what is happening. Why do people revere the law? And we all do; even I have to fight it, for it was put into my bones at an early age when I was a Cub Scout. One reason we revere the law is its ambivalence. In the modern world we deal with phrases and words that have multiple meanings, like "national security." Oh, yes, we must do this for national security! Well, what does that mean? Whose national security? Where? When? Why? We don't bother to answer those questions, or even to ask them.
The law conceals many things. The law is the Bill of Rights. ;'~ fact, that is what we think of when we develop our reverence for the law. The law is something that protects us; the law is our right-the law is the Constitution. Bill of Rights Day, essay contests sponsored by the American Legion on our Bill of Rights, that is the law. And that is good.
But there is another part of the law that doesn't get ballyhooed- the legislation that has gone through month after month, year after year, from the beginning of the Republic, which allocates the resources of the country in such a way as to leave some people very rich and other people very poor, and still others scrambling like mad for what little is left. That is the law. If you go to law school you will see this. You can quantify it by counting the big, heavy law books that people carry around with them and see how many law books you count that say "Constitutional Rights" on them and how many that say "Property," "Contracts," "Torts," "Corporation Law." That is what the law is mostly about. The law is the oil depletion allowance-although we don't have Oil Depletion Allowance Day, we don't have essays written on behalf of the oil depletion allowance. So there are parts of the law that are publicized and played up to us-oh, this is the law, the Bill of Rights. And there are other parts of the law that just do their quiet work, and nobody says anything about them.
It started way back. When the Bill of Rights was first passed, remember, in the first administration of Washington? Great thing. Bill of Rights passed! Big ballyhoo. At the same time Hamilton's economic pro gram was passed. Nice, quiet, money to the rich-I'm simplifying it a little, but not too much. Hamilton's economic program started it off. You can draw a straight line from Hamilton's economic program to the oil depletion allowance to the tax write-offs for corporations. All the way through-that is the history. The Bill of Rights publicized; economic legislation unpublicized.
You know the enforcement of different parts of the law is as important as the publicity attached to the different parts of the law. The Bill of Rights, is it enforced? Not very well. You'll find that freedom of speech in constitutional law is a very difficult, ambiguous, troubled concept. Nobody really knows when you can get up and speak and when you can't. Just check all of the Supreme Court decisions. Talk about predictability in a system-you can't predict what will happen to you when you get up on the street corner and speak. See if you can tell the difference between the Terminiello case and the Feiner case, and see if you can figure out what is going to happen. By the way, there is one part of the law that is not very vague, and that involves the right to distribute leaflets on the street. The Supreme Court has been very clear on that. In decision after decision we are affirmed an absolute right to distribute leaflets on the street. Try it. Just go out on the street and start distributing leaflets. And a policeman comes up to you and he says, "Get out of here." And you say, "Aha! Do you know Marsh v. Alabama, 1946?" That is the reality of the Bill of Rights. That's the reality of the Constitution, that part of the law which is portrayed to us as a beautiful and marvelous thing. And seven years after the Bill of Rights was passed, which said that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech," Congress made a law abridging the freedom of speech. Remember? The Sedition Act of 1798.
So the Bill of Rights was not enforced. Hamilton's program was enforced, because when the whisky farmers went out and rebelled you remember, in 1794 in Pennsylvania, Hamilton himself got on his horse and went out there to suppress the rebellion to make sure that the revenue tax was enforced. And you can trace the story right down to the present day, what laws are enforced, what laws are not enforced. So you have to be careful when you say, "I'm for the law, I revere the law." What part of the law are you talking about? I'm not against all law. But I think we ought to begin to make very important distinctions about what laws do what things to what people.
And there are other problems with the law. It's a strange thing, we think that law brings order. Law doesn't. How do we know that law does not bring order? Look around us. We live under the rules of law. Notice how much order we have? People say we have to worry about civil disobedience because it will lead to anarchy. Take a look at the present world in which the rule of law obtains. This is the closest to what is called anarchy in the popular mind-confusion, chaos, international banditry. The only order that is really worth anything does not come through the enforcement ... of law, it comes through the establishment of a society which is just and in which harmonious relationships are established and in which you need a minimum of regulation to create decent sets of arrangements among people. But the order based on law and on the force of law is the order of the totalitarian state, and it inevitably leads either to total injustice or to rebel lion-eventually, in other words, to very great disorder.
We all grow up with the notion that the law is holy. They asked Daniel Berrigan's mother what she thought of her son's breaking the law. He burned draft records-one of the most violent acts of this century- to protest the war, for which he was sentenced to prison, as criminals should be. They asked his mother who is in her eighties, what she thought of her son's breaking the law. And she looked straight into the interviewer's face, and she said, "It's not God's law." Now we forget that. There is nothing sacred about the law. Think of who makes laws. The law is not made by God, it is made by Strom Thurmond. If you nave any notion about the sanctity and loveliness and reverence for the law, look at the legislators around the country who make the laws. Sit in on the sessions of the state legislatures. Sit in on Congress, for these are the people who make the laws which we are then supposed to revere.
All of this is done with such propriety as to fool us. This is the problem. In the old days, things were confused; you didn't know. Now you know. It is all down there in the books. Now we go through due process. Now the same things happen as happened before, except that we've gone through the right procedures. In Boston a policeman walked into a hospital ward and fired five times at a black man who had snapped a towel at his arm-and killed him. A hearing was held. The judge decided that the policeman was justified because if he didn't do it, he would lose the respect of his fellow officers. Well, that is what is known as due process-that is, the guy didn't get away with it. We went through the proper procedures, and everything was set up. The decorum, the propriety of the law fools us.
The nation then, was founded on disrespect for the law, and then came the Constitution and the notion of stability which Madison and Hamilton liked. But then we found in certain crucial times in our history that the legal framework did not suffice, and in order to end slavery we had to go outside the legal framework, as we had to do at the time of the American Revolution or the Civil War. The union had to go outside the legal framework in order to establish certain rights in the 1930s. And in this time, which may be more critical than the Revolution or the Civil War, the problems are so horrendous as to require us to go outside the legal framework in order to make a statement, to resist, to begin to establish the kind of institutions and relationships which a decent society should have. No, not just tearing things down; building things up. But even if you build things up that you are not supposed to build up-you try to build up a people's park, that's not tearing down a system; you are building something up, but you are doing it illegally-the militia comes in and drives you out. That is the form that civil disobedience is going to take more and more, people trying to build a new society in the midst of the old.
But what about voting and elections? Civil disobedience-we don't need that much of it, we are told, because we can go through the electoral system. And by now we should have learned, but maybe we haven't, for we grew up with the notion that the voting booth is a sacred place, almost like a confessional. You walk into the voting booth and you come out and they snap your picture and then put it in the papers with a beatific smile on your face. You've just voted; that is democracy. But if you even read what the political scientists say-although who can?-about the voting process, you find that the voting process is a sham. Totalitarian states love voting. You get people to the polls and they register their approval. I know there is a difference-they have one party and we have two parties. We have one more party than they have, you see.
What we are trying to do, I assume, is really to get back to the principles and aims and spirit of the Declaration of Independence. This spirit is resistance to illegitimate authority and to forces that deprive people of their life and liberty and right to pursue happiness, and therefore under these conditions, it urges the right to alter or abolish their current form of government-and the stress had been on abolish. But to establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail for petty technical offenses and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes. My hope is that this kind of spirit will take place not just in this country but in other countries because they all need it. People in all countries need the spirit of disobedience to the state, which is not a metaphysical thing but a thing of force and wealth. And we need a kind of declaration of interdependence among people in all countries of the world who are striving for the same thing.
Thank You informationclearinghouse.info
Thursday, 21 November 2013
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Sacred Water
Bit of a long movie, includes the ickiman, but is worth the time and effort to watch.
Simply: water is an information medium, holding specific patterns related to their environment. We're 90% water, so we also resonate, both on a particle level and as a whole, holographically. Any conclusions you may draw from that should keep you busy for a while.
Most importantly it re-inforces the fractal, illusory nature of reality, a healthy reminder of who we are.
peace & love
Sunday, 6 October 2013
Star Trails
Thank you to photographer Lincoln Harris for these beautiful images.
Seen @ http://www.1000notes.com/post/62928468045
Seen @ http://www.1000notes.com/post/62928468045
Friday, 20 September 2013
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Awake
Shake dreams from your hair my pretty child my sweet one
Choose the day and choose the sign of the day
The day's divinity
First thing you see
Saturday, 7 September 2013
Reboot
WAKE .... blurry light .... sounds assaults the silence ... texture ... blankets ... warm ...
*blink*
As consciousness returns to the form, senses slowly filling, pulsing and breathing with the life breathe and blood .....
*stretch*
Awake now, stretching neck and straining eyes to take in the room, blue sky and treeline out the window, the books, all those colours and sizes, such a peaceful texture to look at. Breathing slowly, mind awakening and remembering and soonfloods the feeble body with it's stories ... enough ... wait.
*breathe*
Lie still .... pain? Yes ... there ... gently shift weight ... ok ... lie still. Breathe relax wait ...
Life becomes basic ... eat sleep poop repeat. nothing more complex than a newborn babe lying helpless. The drugs don't help ... the agony of being alive. Pain ... that klaxon that drowns all thought and feeling ... pain ... the excruciating helplessness .... pain ... that primeval driver of man and beast.
*wait*
Days and days ... doctor .. hospital ... again. Blue sky out the ward window, i saw clouds too. Waiting ... for ever and ever until the end of time, the end of a list ... almost there.
*awake*
Can't sleep can't think ....can't feel ...numb... alive but still as death ... wait.
*repeat*
_________________________________________________________
So the "routine procedure" that "may cause some pain" became 2 weeks of hell, returning to hospital for a more serious operation which i am now in recovery from. The private health system which i'm lucky to be allowed to use, left me a dry barren husk of a man, right now hardly able to walk to the bathroom.
I was assaulted by the anethatist in pre-op, something i have followed through in reporting, and has left me even more scared of hospitals than ever before. The illogical routines of ward life, the banks of forms to be filled out ... it has been a most traumatic time for me.
Except for the perpetual kindess of the nursing staff, the entire ordeal was completely unsettling, of the 2 nights i spent in hospital, the most i had was 3 hours sleep, after taking 2 sleeping tablets ... which were of course denied the 2nd night, because 3am is too late when they wake everybody up at 4am ... only to switch lights off again at 5am.
Home and still showing the origional symptoms for which i was promised i would be cured, i have a week to fully recover myself. At this point it seems an impossible task, but i have the most amazing support while bedridden, and that is a real blessing, delivered by a real angel.
Life becomes so simple sometimes ... moments of clarity. I know what i have to do next, and it frightens me a lot, but i know it is what i must do, and i know that i must enable the next reality. This life is taking its toll on me, but perhaps there is still some time to take something back ... to wrestle from the gods of fate and luck some modicum of happiness, and purpose that is purely for myself. I know what it is, but now i have no idea how to reach it, only some understanding of the challenges involved.
Lofty, given my current precarious position, but hope springs from where it's darkest.
peace and love to everyone
*blink*
As consciousness returns to the form, senses slowly filling, pulsing and breathing with the life breathe and blood .....
*stretch*
Awake now, stretching neck and straining eyes to take in the room, blue sky and treeline out the window, the books, all those colours and sizes, such a peaceful texture to look at. Breathing slowly, mind awakening and remembering and soonfloods the feeble body with it's stories ... enough ... wait.
*breathe*
Lie still .... pain? Yes ... there ... gently shift weight ... ok ... lie still. Breathe relax wait ...
Life becomes basic ... eat sleep poop repeat. nothing more complex than a newborn babe lying helpless. The drugs don't help ... the agony of being alive. Pain ... that klaxon that drowns all thought and feeling ... pain ... the excruciating helplessness .... pain ... that primeval driver of man and beast.
*wait*
Days and days ... doctor .. hospital ... again. Blue sky out the ward window, i saw clouds too. Waiting ... for ever and ever until the end of time, the end of a list ... almost there.
*awake*
Can't sleep can't think ....can't feel ...numb... alive but still as death ... wait.
*repeat*
_________________________________________________________
So the "routine procedure" that "may cause some pain" became 2 weeks of hell, returning to hospital for a more serious operation which i am now in recovery from. The private health system which i'm lucky to be allowed to use, left me a dry barren husk of a man, right now hardly able to walk to the bathroom.
I was assaulted by the anethatist in pre-op, something i have followed through in reporting, and has left me even more scared of hospitals than ever before. The illogical routines of ward life, the banks of forms to be filled out ... it has been a most traumatic time for me.
Except for the perpetual kindess of the nursing staff, the entire ordeal was completely unsettling, of the 2 nights i spent in hospital, the most i had was 3 hours sleep, after taking 2 sleeping tablets ... which were of course denied the 2nd night, because 3am is too late when they wake everybody up at 4am ... only to switch lights off again at 5am.
Home and still showing the origional symptoms for which i was promised i would be cured, i have a week to fully recover myself. At this point it seems an impossible task, but i have the most amazing support while bedridden, and that is a real blessing, delivered by a real angel.
Life becomes so simple sometimes ... moments of clarity. I know what i have to do next, and it frightens me a lot, but i know it is what i must do, and i know that i must enable the next reality. This life is taking its toll on me, but perhaps there is still some time to take something back ... to wrestle from the gods of fate and luck some modicum of happiness, and purpose that is purely for myself. I know what it is, but now i have no idea how to reach it, only some understanding of the challenges involved.
Lofty, given my current precarious position, but hope springs from where it's darkest.
peace and love to everyone
Friday, 30 August 2013
My Weak Week
I wasn't going to say anything, because this week was going to be a quiet and restful one. I've been given two weeks off for a medical procedure and recuperation, and was looking forward to a week of peace and quiet.
Of course, after a horrendous hospital stay, the first day home, my son broke his wrist by punching a wall. infinitely preferable to the other kids face, things being as they are. He was rather badly provoked, punched in the face and then laughed at by the whole class. Fustrated and rightfully angry, he made a very painful mistake. 2 hours worth of surgery and a day later and he is home now. I''m quite proud of him, he behaved really well while in great pain, and kept his humour and spirit up the whole way through.
It highlights of course the abominable treatment they suffer at schools, the complete lack of moral values or social conscience. Alcoholics and drug addicts have become the norm amongst the school kids, as are broken families and abuse. I really don't think much of these rainbow nation values that destroy the good kids with no help for the bad.
While my son was being taken for xrays, we noticed that the geyser was leaking through the kitchen ceiling, so we switched that off, and phoned the relevant people. The scheduled electricity maintenance by city power went wrong, so have a fried connection box and was without power for 2 days.
Strange days indeed, no one dead and nothing that sleep can't solve. Wishing all of you a much more peaceful and utterly loving time.
Of course, after a horrendous hospital stay, the first day home, my son broke his wrist by punching a wall. infinitely preferable to the other kids face, things being as they are. He was rather badly provoked, punched in the face and then laughed at by the whole class. Fustrated and rightfully angry, he made a very painful mistake. 2 hours worth of surgery and a day later and he is home now. I''m quite proud of him, he behaved really well while in great pain, and kept his humour and spirit up the whole way through.
It highlights of course the abominable treatment they suffer at schools, the complete lack of moral values or social conscience. Alcoholics and drug addicts have become the norm amongst the school kids, as are broken families and abuse. I really don't think much of these rainbow nation values that destroy the good kids with no help for the bad.
While my son was being taken for xrays, we noticed that the geyser was leaking through the kitchen ceiling, so we switched that off, and phoned the relevant people. The scheduled electricity maintenance by city power went wrong, so have a fried connection box and was without power for 2 days.
Strange days indeed, no one dead and nothing that sleep can't solve. Wishing all of you a much more peaceful and utterly loving time.
Friday, 23 August 2013
Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society
By Bradley Manning
The following is a transcript of the statement made by Pfc. Bradley Manning as read by David Coombs at a press conference on Wednesday:
August 21, 2013 "Information Clearing House - The following is a transcript of the statement made by Pfc. Bradley Manning as read by David Coombs at a press conference on Wednesday:
The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.
I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.
In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.
Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.
Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.
If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Pain is a feeling too
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain. ~Jim Morrison
Sunday, 11 August 2013
Life, etc.
Raw, rough, pressure, torn ... these words spring out, a honest reflection of inside. Of course inside doesn't always reflect outside, sometimes like a blue glass bowl, twisting and obscuring and curiously revealing in strangely warped ways.
The silence after an accident, the twisted metal still screeching, silently now but the mind is shattered, the glass bowls irrepairably fragmented and bloody sharp.
That moment, forever.
I have neglected my blog, my favourite little doorstep on the interwebs, my portal between my mind and out there. Perhaps i'm too far away right now, the above being clear indication. Twitter is busy, i'm loving twitter, because it's so easy to be positive there. A small "favourite" for someone, or a retweet that really is worth sharing, it is a small way of supporting the effort someone has made. I have become a bit of an addict there, under the moniker davigilant, it does mean that i have to be vigilant. Keeping eyes and mind open to what is around you. Healthy reminder sometimes.
So what's it really all about? When you come right down to it ...
I have no idea where that comes from, but it seems apt. Bill Hicks says it's just a ride, and he's right, sort of. Roller coaster ride to hell sounds more like it, you can't get off a rollercoaster until it's stopped, and you have no say in that. You said "errrr, ok" and now you're puking up the lunch that cost you most of your day's spending ...
Ok so i'm in bit of a bad place, you keep on keeping on, you know? I suppose it's quite a nice surprise that i'm still alive, so, got a chance, right? Still some fights out there you gotta fight, even when a fight is the last thing you could stomach ... this life we have is so fucking inscrutable it hurts to look at it. Look at God and you see "ineffable". Look that up and you'll understand.
The most encouraging thing i've read recently is this: We're all fucked, it helps if you remember that. True for us humans, always has been true, always will be. We are neither angel nor ape, we are the new creation betwixt and between, forging our own way forward into infinity, with only each other help us and only other humans' to hinder our progress. Only our own spark of intelligence to warm our frozen hearts by.
I think i need that on a bumper sticker. Forget "think" ... more like breathe, keep breathing ...
The free ride around the sun can make you dizzy after a while.
All i have right now is peace and love, and keep breathing. Somehow that's enough, just keep thinking peace and love, for yourself and for everyone you meet ... peace and love and keep breathing.
The silence after an accident, the twisted metal still screeching, silently now but the mind is shattered, the glass bowls irrepairably fragmented and bloody sharp.
That moment, forever.
I have neglected my blog, my favourite little doorstep on the interwebs, my portal between my mind and out there. Perhaps i'm too far away right now, the above being clear indication. Twitter is busy, i'm loving twitter, because it's so easy to be positive there. A small "favourite" for someone, or a retweet that really is worth sharing, it is a small way of supporting the effort someone has made. I have become a bit of an addict there, under the moniker davigilant, it does mean that i have to be vigilant. Keeping eyes and mind open to what is around you. Healthy reminder sometimes.
So what's it really all about? When you come right down to it ...
I have no idea where that comes from, but it seems apt. Bill Hicks says it's just a ride, and he's right, sort of. Roller coaster ride to hell sounds more like it, you can't get off a rollercoaster until it's stopped, and you have no say in that. You said "errrr, ok" and now you're puking up the lunch that cost you most of your day's spending ...
Ok so i'm in bit of a bad place, you keep on keeping on, you know? I suppose it's quite a nice surprise that i'm still alive, so, got a chance, right? Still some fights out there you gotta fight, even when a fight is the last thing you could stomach ... this life we have is so fucking inscrutable it hurts to look at it. Look at God and you see "ineffable". Look that up and you'll understand.
The most encouraging thing i've read recently is this: We're all fucked, it helps if you remember that. True for us humans, always has been true, always will be. We are neither angel nor ape, we are the new creation betwixt and between, forging our own way forward into infinity, with only each other help us and only other humans' to hinder our progress. Only our own spark of intelligence to warm our frozen hearts by.
I think i need that on a bumper sticker. Forget "think" ... more like breathe, keep breathing ...
All i have right now is peace and love, and keep breathing. Somehow that's enough, just keep thinking peace and love, for yourself and for everyone you meet ... peace and love and keep breathing.
Friday, 2 August 2013
Monday, 22 July 2013
Every hour is precious
Moscow, March, 1886
My little Zabelin,
I've been told that you have taken offense at gibes Schechtel and I have been making. The faculty of taking offense is the property of noble souls alone, but even so, if it is all right to laugh at Ivanenko, me, Mishka and Nelly, then why is it wrong to laugh at you? It's unfair. However, if you're not joking and really do feel you've been offended, I hasten to apologize.
People only laugh at what's funny or what they don't understand. Take your choice.
The latter of course is more flattering, but—alas!—to me, for one, you're no riddle. It's not hard to understand someone with whom you've shared the delights of Tatar caps, Voutsina, Latin and, finally, life in Moscow. And besides, your life is psychologically so uncomplicated that even a nonseminarian could understand it. Out of respect for you let me be frank. You're angry, offended...but it's not because of my gibes or of that good-natured chatterbox Dolgov. The fact of the matter is that you're a decent person and you realize that you're living a lie. And, whenever a person feels guilty, he always looks outside himself for vindication: the drunk blames his troubles, Putyata blames the censors, the man who bolts from Yakimanka Street with lecherous intent blames the cold in the living room or gibes, and so on. If I were to abandon the family to the whims of fate, I would try to find myself an excuse in Mother's character or my blood spitting or the like. It's only natural and pardonable. It's human nature, after all. And you're quite right to feel you're living a lie. If you didn't feel that way, I wouldn't have called you a decent person. When decency goes, well, that's another story. You become reconciled to the lie and stop feeling it.
You're no riddle to me, and it is also true that you can be wildly ridiculous. You're nothing but an ordinary mortal, and we mortals are enigmatic only when we're stupid, and we're ridiculous forty-eight weeks of the year. Isn't that so?
You often complain to me that people "don't understand" you. But even Goethe and Newton made no such complaints. Christ did, true, but he was talking about his doctrine, not his ego. People understand you all too well. If you don't understand yourself, then it's nobody else's fault.
As your brother and intimate, I assure you that I understand you and sympathize with you from the bottom of my heart. I know all your good qualities like the back of my hand. I value them highly and have only the greatest respect for them. If you like, I can even prove how I understand you by enumerating them. In my opinion you are kind to the point of fault, magnanimous, unselfish, you'd share your last penny, and you're sincere. Hate and envy are foreign to you, you are open-hearted, you are compassionate with man and beast, you are not greedy, you do not bear grudges, and you are trusting. You are gifted from above with something others lack: you have talent. This talent places you above millions of people, for there is only one artist for every two million people on earth. It places you in a very special position: you could be a toad or a tarantula and you would still be respected, because talent is its own excuse.
You have only one failing, the cause of the lie you've been living, your troubles, and your intestinal catarrh. It's your extreme lack of culture. Please forgive me, but veritas magis amicitiae. The thing is, life lays down certain conditions. If you want to feel at home among intellectuals, to fit in and not find their presence burdensome, you have to have a certain amount of breeding. Your talent has brought you into their midst. You belong there, but...you seem to yearn escape and feel compelled to waver between the cultured set and your next-door neighbors. It's the bourgeois side of you coming out, the side raised on birch thrashings beside the wine cellar and handouts, and it's hard to overcome, terribly hard.
To my mind, civilized people ought to satisfy the following conditions:
1. They respect the individual and are therefore always indulgent, gentle, polite and compliant. They do not throw a tantrum over a hammer or a lost eraser. When they move in with somebody, they do not act as if they were doing him a favor, and when they move out, they do not say, "How can anyone live with you!" They excuse noise and cold and overdone meat and witticisms and the presence of others in their homes.
2. Their compassion extends beyond beggars and cats. They are hurt even by things the naked eye can't see. If for instance, Pyotr knows that his father and mother are turning gray and losing sleep over seeing their Pyotr so rarely (and seeing him drunk when he does turn up), then he rushes home to them and sends his vodka to the devil. They do not sleep nights the better to help the Polevayevs, help pay their brothers' tuition, and keep their mother decently dressed.
3. They respect the property of others and therefore pay their debts.
4. They are candid and fear lies like the plague. They do not lie even about the most trivial matters. A lie insults the listener and debases him in the liar's eyes. They don't put on airs, they behave in the street as they do at home, and they do not try to dazzle their inferiors. They know how to keep their mouths shut and they do not force uninvited confidences on people. Out of respect for the ears of others they are more often silent than not.
5. They do not belittle themselves merely to arouse sympathy. They do not play on people's heartstrings to get them to sigh and fuss over them. They do not say, "No one understands me!" or "I've squandered my talent on trifles!" because this smacks of a cheap effect and is vulgar, false and out-of-date.
6. They are not preoccupied with vain things. They are not taken in by such false jewels as friendships with celebrities, handshakes with drunken Plevako, ecstasy over the first person they happen to meet at the Salon de Varietes, popularity among the tavern crowd. They laugh when they hear, "I represent the press," a phrase befitting only Rodzeviches and Levenbergs. When they have done a penny's worth of work, they don't try to make a hundred rubles out of it, and they don't boast over being admitted to places closed to others. True talents always seek obscurity. They try to merge with the crowd and shun all ostentation. Krylov himself said that an empty barrel has more chance of being heard than a full one.
7. If they have talent, they respect it. They sacrifice comfort, women, wine and vanity to it. They are proud of their talent, and so they do not go out carousing with trade-school employees or Skvortsov's guests, realizing that their calling lies in exerting an uplifting influence on them, not in living with them. What is more, they are fastidious.
8. They cultivate their aesthetic sensibilities. They cannot stand to fall asleep fully dressed, see a slit in the wall teeming with bedbugs, breathe rotten air, walk on a spittle-laden floor or eat off a kerosene stove. They try their best to tame and ennoble their sexual instinct... What they look for in a woman is not a bed partner or horse sweat, [...] not the kind of intelligence that expresses itself in the ability to stage a fake pregnancy and tirelessly reel off lies. They—and especially the artists among them—require spontaneity, elegance, compassion, a woman who will be a mother... They don't guzzle vodka on any old occasion, nor do they go around sniffing cupboards, for they know they are not swine. They drink only when they are free, if the opportunity happens to present itself. For they require a mens sana in corpore sano.
And so on. That's how civilized people act. If you want to be civilized and not fall below the level of the milieu you belong to, it is not enough to read The Pickwick Papers and memorize a soliloquy from Faust. It is not enough to hail a cab and drive off to Yakimanka Street if all you're going to do is bolt out again a week later.
You must work at it constantly, day and night. You must never stop reading, studying in depth, exercising your will. Every hour is precious.
Trips back and forth to Yakimanka Street won't help. You've got to drop your old way of life and make a clean break. Come home. Smash your vodka bottle, lie down on the couch and pick up a book. You might even give Turgenev a try. You've never read him.
You must swallow your pride. You're no longer a child. You'll be thirty soon. It's high time!
I'm waiting...We're all waiting...
Yours,
A. Chekhov
My thanks to: Letters of Note
My little Zabelin,
I've been told that you have taken offense at gibes Schechtel and I have been making. The faculty of taking offense is the property of noble souls alone, but even so, if it is all right to laugh at Ivanenko, me, Mishka and Nelly, then why is it wrong to laugh at you? It's unfair. However, if you're not joking and really do feel you've been offended, I hasten to apologize.
People only laugh at what's funny or what they don't understand. Take your choice.
The latter of course is more flattering, but—alas!—to me, for one, you're no riddle. It's not hard to understand someone with whom you've shared the delights of Tatar caps, Voutsina, Latin and, finally, life in Moscow. And besides, your life is psychologically so uncomplicated that even a nonseminarian could understand it. Out of respect for you let me be frank. You're angry, offended...but it's not because of my gibes or of that good-natured chatterbox Dolgov. The fact of the matter is that you're a decent person and you realize that you're living a lie. And, whenever a person feels guilty, he always looks outside himself for vindication: the drunk blames his troubles, Putyata blames the censors, the man who bolts from Yakimanka Street with lecherous intent blames the cold in the living room or gibes, and so on. If I were to abandon the family to the whims of fate, I would try to find myself an excuse in Mother's character or my blood spitting or the like. It's only natural and pardonable. It's human nature, after all. And you're quite right to feel you're living a lie. If you didn't feel that way, I wouldn't have called you a decent person. When decency goes, well, that's another story. You become reconciled to the lie and stop feeling it.
You're no riddle to me, and it is also true that you can be wildly ridiculous. You're nothing but an ordinary mortal, and we mortals are enigmatic only when we're stupid, and we're ridiculous forty-eight weeks of the year. Isn't that so?
You often complain to me that people "don't understand" you. But even Goethe and Newton made no such complaints. Christ did, true, but he was talking about his doctrine, not his ego. People understand you all too well. If you don't understand yourself, then it's nobody else's fault.
As your brother and intimate, I assure you that I understand you and sympathize with you from the bottom of my heart. I know all your good qualities like the back of my hand. I value them highly and have only the greatest respect for them. If you like, I can even prove how I understand you by enumerating them. In my opinion you are kind to the point of fault, magnanimous, unselfish, you'd share your last penny, and you're sincere. Hate and envy are foreign to you, you are open-hearted, you are compassionate with man and beast, you are not greedy, you do not bear grudges, and you are trusting. You are gifted from above with something others lack: you have talent. This talent places you above millions of people, for there is only one artist for every two million people on earth. It places you in a very special position: you could be a toad or a tarantula and you would still be respected, because talent is its own excuse.
You have only one failing, the cause of the lie you've been living, your troubles, and your intestinal catarrh. It's your extreme lack of culture. Please forgive me, but veritas magis amicitiae. The thing is, life lays down certain conditions. If you want to feel at home among intellectuals, to fit in and not find their presence burdensome, you have to have a certain amount of breeding. Your talent has brought you into their midst. You belong there, but...you seem to yearn escape and feel compelled to waver between the cultured set and your next-door neighbors. It's the bourgeois side of you coming out, the side raised on birch thrashings beside the wine cellar and handouts, and it's hard to overcome, terribly hard.
To my mind, civilized people ought to satisfy the following conditions:
1. They respect the individual and are therefore always indulgent, gentle, polite and compliant. They do not throw a tantrum over a hammer or a lost eraser. When they move in with somebody, they do not act as if they were doing him a favor, and when they move out, they do not say, "How can anyone live with you!" They excuse noise and cold and overdone meat and witticisms and the presence of others in their homes.
2. Their compassion extends beyond beggars and cats. They are hurt even by things the naked eye can't see. If for instance, Pyotr knows that his father and mother are turning gray and losing sleep over seeing their Pyotr so rarely (and seeing him drunk when he does turn up), then he rushes home to them and sends his vodka to the devil. They do not sleep nights the better to help the Polevayevs, help pay their brothers' tuition, and keep their mother decently dressed.
3. They respect the property of others and therefore pay their debts.
4. They are candid and fear lies like the plague. They do not lie even about the most trivial matters. A lie insults the listener and debases him in the liar's eyes. They don't put on airs, they behave in the street as they do at home, and they do not try to dazzle their inferiors. They know how to keep their mouths shut and they do not force uninvited confidences on people. Out of respect for the ears of others they are more often silent than not.
5. They do not belittle themselves merely to arouse sympathy. They do not play on people's heartstrings to get them to sigh and fuss over them. They do not say, "No one understands me!" or "I've squandered my talent on trifles!" because this smacks of a cheap effect and is vulgar, false and out-of-date.
6. They are not preoccupied with vain things. They are not taken in by such false jewels as friendships with celebrities, handshakes with drunken Plevako, ecstasy over the first person they happen to meet at the Salon de Varietes, popularity among the tavern crowd. They laugh when they hear, "I represent the press," a phrase befitting only Rodzeviches and Levenbergs. When they have done a penny's worth of work, they don't try to make a hundred rubles out of it, and they don't boast over being admitted to places closed to others. True talents always seek obscurity. They try to merge with the crowd and shun all ostentation. Krylov himself said that an empty barrel has more chance of being heard than a full one.
7. If they have talent, they respect it. They sacrifice comfort, women, wine and vanity to it. They are proud of their talent, and so they do not go out carousing with trade-school employees or Skvortsov's guests, realizing that their calling lies in exerting an uplifting influence on them, not in living with them. What is more, they are fastidious.
8. They cultivate their aesthetic sensibilities. They cannot stand to fall asleep fully dressed, see a slit in the wall teeming with bedbugs, breathe rotten air, walk on a spittle-laden floor or eat off a kerosene stove. They try their best to tame and ennoble their sexual instinct... What they look for in a woman is not a bed partner or horse sweat, [...] not the kind of intelligence that expresses itself in the ability to stage a fake pregnancy and tirelessly reel off lies. They—and especially the artists among them—require spontaneity, elegance, compassion, a woman who will be a mother... They don't guzzle vodka on any old occasion, nor do they go around sniffing cupboards, for they know they are not swine. They drink only when they are free, if the opportunity happens to present itself. For they require a mens sana in corpore sano.
And so on. That's how civilized people act. If you want to be civilized and not fall below the level of the milieu you belong to, it is not enough to read The Pickwick Papers and memorize a soliloquy from Faust. It is not enough to hail a cab and drive off to Yakimanka Street if all you're going to do is bolt out again a week later.
You must work at it constantly, day and night. You must never stop reading, studying in depth, exercising your will. Every hour is precious.
Trips back and forth to Yakimanka Street won't help. You've got to drop your old way of life and make a clean break. Come home. Smash your vodka bottle, lie down on the couch and pick up a book. You might even give Turgenev a try. You've never read him.
You must swallow your pride. You're no longer a child. You'll be thirty soon. It's high time!
I'm waiting...We're all waiting...
Yours,
A. Chekhov
My thanks to: Letters of Note
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Cloud Chambers
by Chris Drury
These circular chambers made outside, work on the principle of a camera obscura. The interiors are dark, the entrance being from a door or curved passageway, the floor or viewing surface is white, and there is a small aperture or lens in the ceiling or wall. Images of clouds, branches, waves, landscape, are thus projected inside.
A large preoccupation in my work has been the exploration of what inner and outer nature mean. These cloud chambers are still, silent, meditative and mysterious spaces. Outside, they are discreet objects which sit unobtrusively within the landscape; are in fact made of the material of the landscape. They are often built partially underground, so that in these dark spaces what is outside is brought in and reversed. Clouds drift silently across the floor.
These circular chambers made outside, work on the principle of a camera obscura. The interiors are dark, the entrance being from a door or curved passageway, the floor or viewing surface is white, and there is a small aperture or lens in the ceiling or wall. Images of clouds, branches, waves, landscape, are thus projected inside.
A large preoccupation in my work has been the exploration of what inner and outer nature mean. These cloud chambers are still, silent, meditative and mysterious spaces. Outside, they are discreet objects which sit unobtrusively within the landscape; are in fact made of the material of the landscape. They are often built partially underground, so that in these dark spaces what is outside is brought in and reversed. Clouds drift silently across the floor.
Much to see on a wonderful website, enjoy!
Saturday, 13 July 2013
Sunday, 30 June 2013
Closer To Fine
I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I'm crawling on your shore.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
I went in seeking clarity.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
Thank you Indigo Girls.
Thursday, 20 June 2013
Over there
"Over there" is a puzzle that has confused the Blind for a long
time....
As my guide dog and I stood at the checkout of my local store, I
asked the cashier a simple question. "Where are the Avocado Pears
please?" Her response was hurried, but sincere, "Over there."
Appearing from the station, I asked a passer-by. "Please sir, can
you tell me where I can catch the My City bus?" Before disappearing
into the afternoon throng, a kind voice offered a pleasant
response, "You can catch it over there."
So many things live over there -- Avocado Pears, bus stops, spray
cans, my shoes and even toilets ! A never ending supply of
important and indispensable items all reside in this place which is
blanketed in mystery and conspiracy. I stand in bewildered silence
after learning that something is over there! It is a place I have
never been, and have no hope of finding on my own.
My guide dog is quite clever in finding chairs, stairs, escalators,
helping me cross streets, and can even find me the buttons on a
lift; however, when I tell her to find "over there" her bottom hits
the floor and a shake of her ears tells me that she is as confused
as I am. We will not be going "over there" today.
Over there has caused me a bit of annoyance, a lot of puzzlement
and, on occasion, made my heart race. I have discovered that "over
there" can be a dangerous place.
One day, while crossing a street, I heard a driver's irritated
voice shout out a warning of a truck bearing down on me from over
there. Vixen skilfully dodged the oncoming vehicle and pulled me to
the safety of the curb. Our hearts were both racing as we took a
few moments to compose ourselves. Close encounters with over there
can be frightening experiences.
Although many blind people have wondered as to the exact location
of "over there", few have dared to venture forth in an actual
search of the mysterious place.
Once, while standing in line at the Chemist, I asked the cashier
where I can find the Aftershave. With a cheery smile, she said, "It
is over there." With a sigh, I decided I would take the extra step
to unravel the riddle, which had frustrated my associates since the
beginning of time. Taking a deep breath, I smiled at the cashier,
and deliberately asked, "Where is over there?"
I imagined the girl's shocked expression. I felt her sharing
concerned and condescending looks with her fellows in the store.
The silence grew apparent as they pondered the possibility of
allowing a blind person access to the forbidden place. She had no
choice; she would have to tell me how to find "over there". I had
won! Excitement swept through me as I waited in eager anticipation.
A victorious smile crept to my face, my hand tightened on the
handle of Vixen's harness; we would soon be going over there!
The cashier's voice was full of resignation as the decision was
made. "That way," she said!
"Date a blind man: It will give you a good feeling all over!"
Just another example of how Blind Barry Blomkamp takes his daily
frustrations and turns them into adventure and fun.
Celebrated SA Inspirational Speaker and Entertainer, Barry Blomkamp
cuts right through the mumbo jumbo of 'motivation talk' and
delivers a message that is real, genuine, unique and truly
inspiring... This despite never seeing his audience!
At the top of his business career, Barry was dramatically knocked
off his 'bullet-proof pedestal' by a devastating car crash. Barry
was very lucky to survive... but the impact left him totally blind.
Barry Blomkamp lost his beloved business, his young family was in
massive shock, and he now had to deal with a future of complete
darkness.
The concept of Barry's story is Unique, powerful and is guaranteed
to change people for the better... and provide ABILITY.
With the tightening economy, nows the time to train your staff to
perform at their peak potential and increase profitability.
Barry has been on the Public Speaking Circuit wowing audiences for
many years. With over 500 performances behind him he has a notable
standing of being one of the very best in the business.
Meet this incredible Blind man and the beautiful Vixen by clicking
on their brand new sexy site at
www.TurboTalk.co.za
time....
As my guide dog and I stood at the checkout of my local store, I
asked the cashier a simple question. "Where are the Avocado Pears
please?" Her response was hurried, but sincere, "Over there."
Appearing from the station, I asked a passer-by. "Please sir, can
you tell me where I can catch the My City bus?" Before disappearing
into the afternoon throng, a kind voice offered a pleasant
response, "You can catch it over there."
So many things live over there -- Avocado Pears, bus stops, spray
cans, my shoes and even toilets ! A never ending supply of
important and indispensable items all reside in this place which is
blanketed in mystery and conspiracy. I stand in bewildered silence
after learning that something is over there! It is a place I have
never been, and have no hope of finding on my own.
My guide dog is quite clever in finding chairs, stairs, escalators,
helping me cross streets, and can even find me the buttons on a
lift; however, when I tell her to find "over there" her bottom hits
the floor and a shake of her ears tells me that she is as confused
as I am. We will not be going "over there" today.
Over there has caused me a bit of annoyance, a lot of puzzlement
and, on occasion, made my heart race. I have discovered that "over
there" can be a dangerous place.
One day, while crossing a street, I heard a driver's irritated
voice shout out a warning of a truck bearing down on me from over
there. Vixen skilfully dodged the oncoming vehicle and pulled me to
the safety of the curb. Our hearts were both racing as we took a
few moments to compose ourselves. Close encounters with over there
can be frightening experiences.
Although many blind people have wondered as to the exact location
of "over there", few have dared to venture forth in an actual
search of the mysterious place.
Once, while standing in line at the Chemist, I asked the cashier
where I can find the Aftershave. With a cheery smile, she said, "It
is over there." With a sigh, I decided I would take the extra step
to unravel the riddle, which had frustrated my associates since the
beginning of time. Taking a deep breath, I smiled at the cashier,
and deliberately asked, "Where is over there?"
I imagined the girl's shocked expression. I felt her sharing
concerned and condescending looks with her fellows in the store.
The silence grew apparent as they pondered the possibility of
allowing a blind person access to the forbidden place. She had no
choice; she would have to tell me how to find "over there". I had
won! Excitement swept through me as I waited in eager anticipation.
A victorious smile crept to my face, my hand tightened on the
handle of Vixen's harness; we would soon be going over there!
The cashier's voice was full of resignation as the decision was
made. "That way," she said!
"Date a blind man: It will give you a good feeling all over!"
Just another example of how Blind Barry Blomkamp takes his daily
frustrations and turns them into adventure and fun.
Celebrated SA Inspirational Speaker and Entertainer, Barry Blomkamp
cuts right through the mumbo jumbo of 'motivation talk' and
delivers a message that is real, genuine, unique and truly
inspiring... This despite never seeing his audience!
At the top of his business career, Barry was dramatically knocked
off his 'bullet-proof pedestal' by a devastating car crash. Barry
was very lucky to survive... but the impact left him totally blind.
Barry Blomkamp lost his beloved business, his young family was in
massive shock, and he now had to deal with a future of complete
darkness.
The concept of Barry's story is Unique, powerful and is guaranteed
to change people for the better... and provide ABILITY.
With the tightening economy, nows the time to train your staff to
perform at their peak potential and increase profitability.
Barry has been on the Public Speaking Circuit wowing audiences for
many years. With over 500 performances behind him he has a notable
standing of being one of the very best in the business.
Meet this incredible Blind man and the beautiful Vixen by clicking
on their brand new sexy site at
www.TurboTalk.co.za
Saturday, 8 June 2013
Umair Haque
Beyond the allure of today's latest fads and fashions, beyond the advice I and others can give you about money, sex, and power and how to get it all, fast, here are four essential, timeless truths.
Life is shorter than any of us truly expect.
Human potential is vaster than any of us truly know.
Joy and sorrow cut sharper — and flee faster — than any of us can truly understand.
And so: the great truths of a life well lived have always been love, beauty, and accomplishment.
...
None of us are here not to make a difference. Let me put it like this. The industrial age's great binge has left us with a kind of existential hangover. We don't know why we're really here anymore. Is it "money"? Is it "growth"? Is it "productivity"? Here's a not-so-secret: we are here, each and every one of us, to live. Wholly, fully, uncompromisingly. And we always have been. The mercilessly vicious cycle of working harder, get poorer, feel emptier, buy more...work harder — it's not just a recipe for economic stagnation: it's a formula for a kind of existential suicide, for billions of bleak seconds every second of human life squandered. So you're going to have to refuse, reject, and revolutionize it. You're going to have to pioneer building not just "an economy" or "a business" — emptier and emptier concepts — but lives worthy of the privilege of living. Remember my four timeless truths? The great challenge — that, for a moment, dazzled by the fools' gold of plenty, we forgot — is this: inspiring, elevating, and enabling people to craft lives that honor the truth of life.
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/
Life is shorter than any of us truly expect.
Human potential is vaster than any of us truly know.
Joy and sorrow cut sharper — and flee faster — than any of us can truly understand.
And so: the great truths of a life well lived have always been love, beauty, and accomplishment.
...
None of us are here not to make a difference. Let me put it like this. The industrial age's great binge has left us with a kind of existential hangover. We don't know why we're really here anymore. Is it "money"? Is it "growth"? Is it "productivity"? Here's a not-so-secret: we are here, each and every one of us, to live. Wholly, fully, uncompromisingly. And we always have been. The mercilessly vicious cycle of working harder, get poorer, feel emptier, buy more...work harder — it's not just a recipe for economic stagnation: it's a formula for a kind of existential suicide, for billions of bleak seconds every second of human life squandered. So you're going to have to refuse, reject, and revolutionize it. You're going to have to pioneer building not just "an economy" or "a business" — emptier and emptier concepts — but lives worthy of the privilege of living. Remember my four timeless truths? The great challenge — that, for a moment, dazzled by the fools' gold of plenty, we forgot — is this: inspiring, elevating, and enabling people to craft lives that honor the truth of life.
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Bikers against Tolls Again
BIKERS AGAINT E-TOLLS - MASS RIDE 15 JUNE 2013
Shaun wrote;
NEWS FLASH ......Just got back from JMPD .......they are very happy with the way the last event was organised ,i had to sit through nearly an hour of video footage taken by their own guys .........a few issues were raised
... a/ALL BY LAWS AND STATE LAWS APPLY
so no urinating in public
b/NO ALCOHOL TO BE CONSUMED OR SOLD PROIR OR DURING THE PROTEST
... my ex mate displaying two bottles of OBS in his back pockets and consuming them will not happen again
C/THE PERMIT IS GRANTED FOR A CONVOY STYLE SLOW RIDE IN FORMATION AT 40 TO 60KMS PER HOUR .
those guys who thought it was a breakfastrun and flat out dash from one point to the next ,breaking away from the convoy ....please dont do it again .
D/PROIR TO AND AFTER THE MASS RIDE
there will be a group announcement made to start the ride and on return the Mass Ride will be declared over ,then all supporters are free to participate in the "BIKER FLEA MARKET EVENT "
You are then responsible for your own actions and me as the Convener is released from my guidelines as set out by JMPD .
E/JMPD WAS VERY LENIENT LAST EVENT AND RESPECTED US ,PLEASE LETS HAVE A GOOD EVENT WITH RESPECT FOR THE PUBLIC,FELLOW SUPPORTERS ,POLICE AND JMPD
IF YOU SHOULD WITTNESS BEHAVIOUR BY ANYONE WHICH WILL ENDAGER OUR REPUTATION AND FUTURE EVENTS ......PLEASE DEAL OR REPORT THE MATTER TO A COMMITTEE MEMBER SO WE CAN ASK THE PERSON OR PERSONS TO LEAVE ,THEN THEY REALLY DO NOT HAVE THE SAME CAUSE OR FELLOW SUPPORTERS IN MIND .
THANK YOU
RESPECT TO ALL
_________________________________________________
My sincere congratulations, truly an astounding achievement by Shaun and his crew.
I should add a link, but i received this via e-mail, published in it's entirety, with the exception of Shaun's surname.
Shaun wrote;
NEWS FLASH ......Just got back from JMPD .......they are very happy with the way the last event was organised ,i had to sit through nearly an hour of video footage taken by their own guys .........a few issues were raised
... a/ALL BY LAWS AND STATE LAWS APPLY
so no urinating in public
b/NO ALCOHOL TO BE CONSUMED OR SOLD PROIR OR DURING THE PROTEST
... my ex mate displaying two bottles of OBS in his back pockets and consuming them will not happen again
C/THE PERMIT IS GRANTED FOR A CONVOY STYLE SLOW RIDE IN FORMATION AT 40 TO 60KMS PER HOUR .
those guys who thought it was a breakfastrun and flat out dash from one point to the next ,breaking away from the convoy ....please dont do it again .
D/PROIR TO AND AFTER THE MASS RIDE
there will be a group announcement made to start the ride and on return the Mass Ride will be declared over ,then all supporters are free to participate in the "BIKER FLEA MARKET EVENT "
You are then responsible for your own actions and me as the Convener is released from my guidelines as set out by JMPD .
E/JMPD WAS VERY LENIENT LAST EVENT AND RESPECTED US ,PLEASE LETS HAVE A GOOD EVENT WITH RESPECT FOR THE PUBLIC,FELLOW SUPPORTERS ,POLICE AND JMPD
IF YOU SHOULD WITTNESS BEHAVIOUR BY ANYONE WHICH WILL ENDAGER OUR REPUTATION AND FUTURE EVENTS ......PLEASE DEAL OR REPORT THE MATTER TO A COMMITTEE MEMBER SO WE CAN ASK THE PERSON OR PERSONS TO LEAVE ,THEN THEY REALLY DO NOT HAVE THE SAME CAUSE OR FELLOW SUPPORTERS IN MIND .
THANK YOU
RESPECT TO ALL
_________________________________________________
My sincere congratulations, truly an astounding achievement by Shaun and his crew.
I should add a link, but i received this via e-mail, published in it's entirety, with the exception of Shaun's surname.
Thursday, 30 May 2013
Forest wars
Ok not really, not "wars" as such, metaphorical wars about who is bigger. A world wide biggest forest by city pissing competition, held in cyberspace. Yes, that's metaphorical too.
The city of Johannesburg is supposed to have the largest inhabited, man made forest in the world. Have, be, you know what i mean. So of course, because every knows it's true, someone has to come along and prove it wrong, it's how us humans work. We're NOT the largest inhabited, man made forest in the world, they say. We're big, and foresty, and well, we don't inhabit the trees as such, but well, we like them a lot, they'll tell us some more. We just grew a lot of them, really forest, i mean fast, and, it's a mistake, of some sort.
So then came along:
Nechama Brodie argues that while Johannesburg may not be the “largest man-made forest in the world” it can claim to be the “largest man-made urban forest”.
Yes, she know a hell of a lot more about this than i do, in her words:
It just takes a lot more digging, using a Google spade.
My kinda gal.
My Spidey senses, for what they are worth,
Research at it's finest. Anyhow, names and numbers are presented and parsed, and the conclusion is unanimously:
Given that, and given all of the other cities listed and mentioned above, it appears that Johannesburg is the largest man-made urban forest in the world.
Well done Johannesburgers. And Nechama Brodie.
The city of Johannesburg is supposed to have the largest inhabited, man made forest in the world. Have, be, you know what i mean. So of course, because every knows it's true, someone has to come along and prove it wrong, it's how us humans work. We're NOT the largest inhabited, man made forest in the world, they say. We're big, and foresty, and well, we don't inhabit the trees as such, but well, we like them a lot, they'll tell us some more. We just grew a lot of them, really forest, i mean fast, and, it's a mistake, of some sort.
So then came along:
Nechama Brodie argues that while Johannesburg may not be the “largest man-made forest in the world” it can claim to be the “largest man-made urban forest”.
Yes, she know a hell of a lot more about this than i do, in her words:
It just takes a lot more digging, using a Google spade.
My kinda gal.
My Spidey senses, for what they are worth,
Research at it's finest. Anyhow, names and numbers are presented and parsed, and the conclusion is unanimously:
Given that, and given all of the other cities listed and mentioned above, it appears that Johannesburg is the largest man-made urban forest in the world.
Well done Johannesburgers. And Nechama Brodie.
Wednesday, 29 May 2013
Think Bike
This is a great effort! With all the crash footage around they can run a long way with this theme. And yes, it's the message clearly needs to be put out there to those who are considering riding a motorbike.
Another suicide laner hit the deck yesterday, and another seperate bike crash (unconfirmed) today. Both on my 30km stretch to work and back. And i hear the same arguments about why people think the suicide lane is safer, against all argument, against all advice from those who have done it before ...
What gets me the angriest, is the fact that these guys actually mess up the biker lane, my biker lane to be sure, but the same one that would be safer for them, if they could only see it. The goodwill from cars every day really astonishes me, and in a twisted way, i'm the only person on earth who sees it.
Sunday, 19 May 2013
Blanket run
It was a damn fine event. Well done to all.
Thursday, 9 May 2013
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
"Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives-
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging from the branches of the young locust trees,
in early morning, feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left -
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass,
which is the mystery, which is death as well as life,
and not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death,
and be overcome with amazement!
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened in the night,
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses: deny me not, but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them.
Maybe I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves,
and what's coming next is coming with its own heave and grace.
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down to think about it.
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack. I float.
I ramble my way home."
~ Mary Oliver,
"West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems"
runningcauseicantfly
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Been too long
Hi, just hi.
Been a while since i had anything to post, or maybe it was the time to post, having the opportunity and will, and the same time.
hmmm. In the meanwhile:
www.motogymkhana.co.za
peace and love
Been a while since i had anything to post, or maybe it was the time to post, having the opportunity and will, and the same time.
hmmm. In the meanwhile:
www.motogymkhana.co.za
peace and love
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Saturday, 6 April 2013
Civil obedience
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That's our problem.": Howard Zinn, from 'Failure to Quit'
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Monday, 18 March 2013
RideApart
How and Why Motorcycle Lane Splitting is Safe and Good – RideApart
It's a long one, but thoroughly enjoyable. Every part of this i relate to, still dreaming of a gopro, to show you and others how it is every day for me. Wondrous and free.
peace!!
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Je crois entendre encore
I still believe I hear
hidden beneath the palm trees
her voice, tender and resonant
like the song of a dove
oh enchanting night
divine rapture
delightful memory
mad intoxication, sweet dream
in the clear starlight
I still believe I see her
half drawing her long veil
to the warm night breeze
oh night...
hidden beneath the palm trees
her voice, tender and resonant
like the song of a dove
oh enchanting night
divine rapture
delightful memory
mad intoxication, sweet dream
in the clear starlight
I still believe I see her
half drawing her long veil
to the warm night breeze
oh night...
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Tuesday, 26 February 2013
My own way to burn
"The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves-or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control.
If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn."
Sophie Scholl - 1921 - 1943 - German student, a member of the White Rose society, a non-violent anti Nazi resistance group.
If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn."
Sophie Scholl - 1921 - 1943 - German student, a member of the White Rose society, a non-violent anti Nazi resistance group.
Sunday, 24 February 2013
Liquid Sunshine
Wow.
Just, wow.
My thanks to Terri for tweeting about this, found at the following site:
"
Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun's atmosphere, the corona.
On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three. A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun's lower right hand limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays -- a phenomenon known as coronal rain.
"
Wow.
Friday, 22 February 2013
Deranging America
The article was called Deranging America, but it echoes so well with what i've seen in South Africa, it could be Deranging South Africa.
dissidentvoice.org - Deranging America by Linh Dinh / February 20th, 2013
Violence, always violence. From infancy, Americans are conditioned to enjoy violence, then lured or pressured to support it at every stage of life. Merely by voting, Americans sanction carnage against foreigners, and to have a healthy stock portfolio, one should also invest in mass murder.
______________________________________
Short article, but very pointed.
dissidentvoice.org - Deranging America by Linh Dinh / February 20th, 2013
Violence, always violence. From infancy, Americans are conditioned to enjoy violence, then lured or pressured to support it at every stage of life. Merely by voting, Americans sanction carnage against foreigners, and to have a healthy stock portfolio, one should also invest in mass murder.
______________________________________
Short article, but very pointed.
Thursday, 21 February 2013
Thursday, 14 February 2013
Like Janis
And you measure for wealth by the things you can hold
And you measure for love by the sweet things you're told
And you live in the past or a dream that you're in
And your selfishness is your cardinal sin
And you want to be held with highest regard
It delights you so much if he's trying so hard
And you try to conceal your ordinary way
With a smile or a shrug or some stolen cliche'
But don't you understand, and don't you look about
I'm trying to take nothing from you
So why should you act so put out for me?
'Cos emotionally you're the same basic trip
And you know that I know of the times that you slip
So don't try to impress me, you're just pins and paint
And don't try to charm me with things that you ain't
And don't try to enchant me with your manner of dress
'Cos a monkey in silk is a monkey no less
So measure for measure reflect on my said
And when I won't see you then measure it dead
'Cos don't you understand, and don't you look about
I'm trying to take nothing from you
So why should you act so put out,
And sit there in wonder and doubt, for me?
Rodriguez
And you measure for love by the sweet things you're told
And you live in the past or a dream that you're in
And your selfishness is your cardinal sin
And you want to be held with highest regard
It delights you so much if he's trying so hard
And you try to conceal your ordinary way
With a smile or a shrug or some stolen cliche'
But don't you understand, and don't you look about
I'm trying to take nothing from you
So why should you act so put out for me?
'Cos emotionally you're the same basic trip
And you know that I know of the times that you slip
So don't try to impress me, you're just pins and paint
And don't try to charm me with things that you ain't
And don't try to enchant me with your manner of dress
'Cos a monkey in silk is a monkey no less
So measure for measure reflect on my said
And when I won't see you then measure it dead
'Cos don't you understand, and don't you look about
I'm trying to take nothing from you
So why should you act so put out,
And sit there in wonder and doubt, for me?
Rodriguez
Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Because
So I've decided that i really like Sarah Britten, who is a lady in Joburg who is alive and living and thinking and sharing and doing stuff. The blog The Red Robot Project is hers, and now there's another project:
Because Anene.
http://becauseanene.wordpress.com/
Because they were bored.
Because they took drugs.
Because they are poor.
Because they were angry.
Of all the hype and verbiage created by this soul destroying act that has claimed international attention, i think that this kind of response is more positive, inspiring and angering at the same time. This kind of statement is an EMOTIONAL statement ... and this problem needs an emotional response, angry, hurt, fearful and brutal.
Sarah's "thing" is using lipstick as paint, and in this "rape" debate it is a shamelessly pointed standpoint, as much as ! is nothing more than an sharp intake of breath.
It is time for rapists to feel the horror of police, prisons, prisoners and the awfully long sentence. It is long overdue that the fear is transplanted from our daughters and friends onto the men and boys who have nothing else to fear, yet delight in creating it for others.
And yes, if anyone asks, i am pro capital punishment on this, and also pro vigilantism. Taking a rape victim to a police station is only giving her over to a longer, more demeaning rape of public scrutiny of a woman's most personal space. If a man rapes someone, it is only good and proper that he is either killed outright or permanently scarred for life, castration seems particularly appropriate, i'm sure the medical services would be offered free by our good doctors and nurses, who must have seen hell in a little girl's eyes.
There can be no other reasonable, rational nor indeed compassionate response.
Because Anene.
http://becauseanene.wordpress.com/
Because they were bored.
Because they took drugs.
Because they are poor.
Because they were angry.
Of all the hype and verbiage created by this soul destroying act that has claimed international attention, i think that this kind of response is more positive, inspiring and angering at the same time. This kind of statement is an EMOTIONAL statement ... and this problem needs an emotional response, angry, hurt, fearful and brutal.
Sarah's "thing" is using lipstick as paint, and in this "rape" debate it is a shamelessly pointed standpoint, as much as ! is nothing more than an sharp intake of breath.
It is time for rapists to feel the horror of police, prisons, prisoners and the awfully long sentence. It is long overdue that the fear is transplanted from our daughters and friends onto the men and boys who have nothing else to fear, yet delight in creating it for others.
And yes, if anyone asks, i am pro capital punishment on this, and also pro vigilantism. Taking a rape victim to a police station is only giving her over to a longer, more demeaning rape of public scrutiny of a woman's most personal space. If a man rapes someone, it is only good and proper that he is either killed outright or permanently scarred for life, castration seems particularly appropriate, i'm sure the medical services would be offered free by our good doctors and nurses, who must have seen hell in a little girl's eyes.
There can be no other reasonable, rational nor indeed compassionate response.
Monday, 11 February 2013
The ANC’s all-time top 10 most disturbing quotes
http://inside-politics.org/
By: Gareth van Onselen
FEATURE: I have compiled into a list what I consider to be the ANC’s 10 most disturbing quotes of the last 18 years. Each one made a significant impact on current affairs and, significantly, revealed the ANC’s real thinking, so they are worth documenting and recalling. But I am open to suggestions. The point of this article is to generate a discussion. So read them and leave your comments. Did Zuma’s shower quote make the list? Malema on nationalisation? Mbeki on Aids? Read on and find out. Also, leave your thoughts on Twitter, I will use the hashtag #ANCQuotes
___________________________________________
Please read it, it's frightening because as the author points out, these are all unopposed by the ANC, not their usual foot in mouth disease, denied within hours. These statements stand historically as the ANC's official standpoint on certain items. Some, like AIDS, is now history, but all have impacted mllions of South Africans negatively, ongoing and getting worse by the day.
By: Gareth van Onselen
FEATURE: I have compiled into a list what I consider to be the ANC’s 10 most disturbing quotes of the last 18 years. Each one made a significant impact on current affairs and, significantly, revealed the ANC’s real thinking, so they are worth documenting and recalling. But I am open to suggestions. The point of this article is to generate a discussion. So read them and leave your comments. Did Zuma’s shower quote make the list? Malema on nationalisation? Mbeki on Aids? Read on and find out. Also, leave your thoughts on Twitter, I will use the hashtag #ANCQuotes
___________________________________________
Please read it, it's frightening because as the author points out, these are all unopposed by the ANC, not their usual foot in mouth disease, denied within hours. These statements stand historically as the ANC's official standpoint on certain items. Some, like AIDS, is now history, but all have impacted mllions of South Africans negatively, ongoing and getting worse by the day.
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Life for Rent
"Life For Rent"
I haven't ever really found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize once again I'm not in love
But it's not as if I mind
that your heart ain't exactly breaking
It's just a thought, only a thought
But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
I've always thought
that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
and live more simply
I have no idea what's happened to that dream
Cos there's really nothing left here to stop me
It's just a thought, only a thought
But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try
Well how can I say I'm alive
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
I haven't ever really found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize once again I'm not in love
But it's not as if I mind
that your heart ain't exactly breaking
It's just a thought, only a thought
But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
I've always thought
that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
and live more simply
I have no idea what's happened to that dream
Cos there's really nothing left here to stop me
It's just a thought, only a thought
But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try
Well how can I say I'm alive
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
___________________________________________
No idea why, but this song has been on my mental playlist for the last few days. Very soothing.
Tuesday, 5 February 2013
Skating away
http://lifeissavage.com/2013/02/05/footage-of-cape-town-skateboarder-setting-off-kloof-nek-speed-camera-goes-viral-video/
This skater is now a legend!!!
Monday, 4 February 2013
Cut away
In 1978, Soviet geologists prospecting in the wilds of Siberia discovered a family of six, lost in the taiga
Siberia Family
The silence was suddenly broken by sobs and lamentations. Only then did we see the silhouettes of two women. One was in hysterics, praying: 'This is for our sins, our sins.' The other, keeping behind a post... sank slowly to the floor. The light from the little window fell on her wide, terrified eyes, and we realized we had to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Siberia Family
Then, Pismenskaya said,
beside a stream there was a dwelling. Blackened by time and rain, the hut was piled up on all sides with taiga rubbish—bark, poles, planks. If it hadn't been for a window the size of my backpack pocket, it would have been hard to believe that people lived there. But they did, no doubt about it.... Our arrival had been noticed, as we could see.
The low door creaked, and the figure of a very old man emerged into the light of day, straight out of a fairy tale. Barefoot. Wearing a patched and repatched shirt made of sacking. He wore trousers of the same material, also in patches, and had an uncombed beard. His hair was disheveled. He looked frightened and was very attentive.... We had to say something, so I began: 'Greetings, grandfather! We've come to visit!'
The old man did not reply immediately.... Finally, we heard a soft, uncertain voice: 'Well, since you have traveled this far, you might as well come in.'
beside a stream there was a dwelling. Blackened by time and rain, the hut was piled up on all sides with taiga rubbish—bark, poles, planks. If it hadn't been for a window the size of my backpack pocket, it would have been hard to believe that people lived there. But they did, no doubt about it.... Our arrival had been noticed, as we could see.
The low door creaked, and the figure of a very old man emerged into the light of day, straight out of a fairy tale. Barefoot. Wearing a patched and repatched shirt made of sacking. He wore trousers of the same material, also in patches, and had an uncombed beard. His hair was disheveled. He looked frightened and was very attentive.... We had to say something, so I began: 'Greetings, grandfather! We've come to visit!'
The old man did not reply immediately.... Finally, we heard a soft, uncertain voice: 'Well, since you have traveled this far, you might as well come in.'
The sight that greeted the geologists as they entered the cabin was like something from the middle ages. Jerry-built from whatever materials came to hand, the dwelling was not much more than a burrow—"a low, soot-blackened log kennel that was as cold as a cellar," with a floor consisting of potato peel and pine-nut shells. Looking around in the dim light, the visitors saw that it consisted of a single room. It was cramped, musty and indescribably filthy, propped up by sagging joists—and, astonishingly, home to a family of five:
The silence was suddenly broken by sobs and lamentations. Only then did we see the silhouettes of two women. One was in hysterics, praying: 'This is for our sins, our sins.' The other, keeping behind a post... sank slowly to the floor. The light from the little window fell on her wide, terrified eyes, and we realized we had to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Karp Lykov and his daughter Agafia,
Agafia Lykova (left) with her sister, Natalia.
Dmitry (left) and Savin in the Siberian summer.
A very moving story, but most of all, look at the light in the old man's eyes. There is much to learn for us from this simple story, most of all to realise we are the enemy.
Another small note, the family is referred to as "lost" ... what an astonishing error.
Another small note, the family is referred to as "lost" ... what an astonishing error.
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Life and mountains
Sometimes it feels like we're all out on a walk, all of us, trekking across some great distance. All have our own roots, and most of us have a vague direction we're heading in, but mostly it's like some great herd criss crossing the plains and mountains in no particular order. Some are in a furious hurry, rushing to get to some imagined point, and others dawdling, just walking wherever the mood takes them.
And sometimes we find ourselves near others, perhaps a similar starting point, or destination, but it suits us to walk together a while, share food and thoughts, help each other over the difficult bits, and make the journey a little more pleasant.
But sometimes one of us just needs to sit awhile, and rest, or just take in the view. It is strenuous, this hike we're on, full of unseen holes and large rocks, steep rocky hills and wide fast flowing rivers. The views are sometimes incredible, and sometimes dreary, but ever changing sky and land, seemingly endless.
And we sit, perhaps chew on an apple, or roll a cigarette .. there isn't actually any hurry, is there? But you sit and survey, and remember the last part of the journey, rugged mountains and treacherous paths, the friends you've walked with and those you left behind. Is nothing worse than some then berating you for abandoning them? Or accusing you now of giving up? Or telling you of their fears of walking alone?
What is it with us humans that we constantly need re-assurance from others? As if forgetting the sun rise ceremony would prevent the sun from rising? As if when a day passed without some magic ritual the world would implode? Sometimes i truly despair ... these constant expectations we impose upon the world. As if the world actually cared.
Only we care, you and i, and raging at each other over the emptiness of the rest can never resolve the pain we create inside ... because we rail at them, but we want to be them, we want to be like them, we want to be liked by them. We care, you and i, but caring is listening, and listening is caring, and caring is feeling and goddammit feelings hurt.
I sit quietly awaiting dusk, savouring the smoke and hot african afternoon air, listening for the silence, patiently hoping that the rest will find a quiet space long enough to see what i am seeing, to hear what they can't hear yet.
I'm sitting down for a while, and you can all sit with me, plenty of space out here. But for gods sake stop making all that noise. I'm here, in the flesh. Ranting about the idiot over the hill is spreading the stupid, that's all it's doing. Stop that, bad for us all.
peace and love and quiet to you all
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