Walking in November Part II: the Barn, Some Clouds and the Blue Sky Chair

Posted on November 21, 2018 by

This gallery contains 13 photos.

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Walking in November Part 1: Holly and Trees

Posted on November 20, 2018 by

This gallery contains 11 photos.

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Last night I dreamed Roy Rogers died…

Posted on November 19, 2018 by

The First Gate

Roy Rogers was my first boyhood hero. For a time, around the age of three or four, I refused to answer to “Morgan,” insisting that my parents call me Roy.

Me as Roy, probably age 4.

No matter that any residual appreciation for him collapsed during the Vietnam war, after he came out as a hawk – Roy Rogers was the first person who carried for me, the imagination of what a life well lived might look like.

Upon waking, it seemed strange that I should dream of his death as a present day event, when it happened 20 years ago. Not so strange, after a moment’s reflection, as the nation watches, in real time, the complete collapse of any remaining shred of heroism among our ruling class and their paid minions in Washington. We still live in the world T.S. Eliot described in “The Waste Land.”

There is no…

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Posted in banality of evil, Being Human, delusions of progress, Dreamtime, Other peoples words, personal history, philosophy, thinking in words | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

In Spite of All the Hounds in Hell

Posted on November 18, 2018 by

 

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”

― Charles Bukowski,  Exerpt of Crunch from, Love Is a Dog from Hell

 

The human being can be very stupid, especially in the half-light of almost 2000 years of semi-christian culture where emotionally barbaric ideals are mixed through with educational systems of learning based upon national, regional, economic and status forces. The development of the pure mind in America is almost impossible unless a man is fortunate enough to spend 25 years of his life in a madhouse or in some other entombed untouchable state.

Charles Bukowski, from an interview for the L. A. free press in 1967

collected in Sunlight Here I Am

 With life there is always hope, but some days you just have to slog through the rain and stand your ground against the madness with your own madness. Sometimes you gotta be crazier than what comes at ya to just get through. That is why we need the ones like Bukowski who fight like hell to remain who they are for no reason in particular except that anything else would be surrender. We need to see that it can be done just to get through a day in which you don’t let the relentless slog break your spirit. You sit down and type or write or do whatever the hell you do that is your communion with life and death, yours to share or keep, sell or give away, and nothing but death can relieve you of.

 

Posted in All part of the process, banality of evil, Being Human, Books, Check this out, delusions of progress, mindworks, my museum of inspiration, Other peoples words, paying attention, philosophy, poetry, scenes on screens, thinking in words, visions from the dark side, Walking, working world | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Between the Lines Something Stirs Deeper

Posted on November 17, 2018 by

The lives of plants [are] more stirring than a detective story. The musculature of the back in motion dances a ballet. This piece of fabric should be set to music and that jar of preserves is a poem of ingenuity…You live. Eccentric. In integral solitude. In anonymous communion. With everything that is root and summit and that throbs, revels, jubilates. Phenomena of this congenital hallucination which is life in all its manifestations and the continual activity of consciousness. The motor spirals. The rhythm speaks. Chemistry. You are.

—Blaise Cendrars, “Profound Today”

 

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.
   

—Ludwig Wittgenstein

 

Both the song and the silence my beautiful country of joy.

    —Tristan Tzara

Posted in Abstraction, dancing, file folders and nut shells, internal landscape, mindworks, music, my museum of inspiration, Other peoples words, philosophy, poetry, Questions and riddles | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

21 Behaviors that Support Peace and the Free Exchange of Ideas.

Posted on November 16, 2018 by

 

inspired by tmlavenz

1. Be helpful and kind and go out of the way to assist other people in ways that will not impair your life to the point of dysfunction.

2. Keep your mind open as to motive and intent of what is read, heard and seen and attempt to view the issue from the point of view of the one communicating.

3. Encourage people around you to take reasonable risks and, if they fail, encourage them, to adjust their approach and try again.

4. Be accountable to any moral standards you hold without judging others for their standards as long as they are not imposing their beliefs and prejudices or violence on others.

5. Develop a calm center in order respond in a compassionate and more objective yet emotionally engaged way to emergent situations.

6. Work to change the world into a more compassionate and open minded interconnected community based on the best outcomes for everyone.

7. Be active and courageous in defense of those who are mistreated, abused or neglected.

8. Choose compassionate and caring language and actions whenever possible, and extend the hand of peace and love to anyone who is not actively harming others.

9. Use peace and love as grounding principles at all times.

10. Extend to yourself forgiveness and understanding of the learning process which you extend to others for their imperfections and mistakes they have made.

11. Maintain an open posture toward the world and engaged actively and thoughtfully in interactions with others to maintain effective learning relationships with people who may have different life experiences and points of view or to understand better those that are more familiar to you.

12. Tell the people that you love how much you love them and extend that circle of love as far as you can into the world.

13. Live in the present moment whenever you can do it responsibly.

14. Be generous in all aspects of life while having gratitude for all gifts you receive as well as looking for those quiet gifts that do not readily emerge in your everyday thoughts.

15. Be quick to forgive and slow to condemn remembering that forgiveness is mostly best for the one forgiving and words of condemnation are hard to retrieve once loosed.

16. Feel emotions fully, but act on them thoughtfully.

17. Acknowledge those who have honestly made sacrifices for, aided, or gave comfort to anyone in need. Sometimes it just takes one caring act to give someone the handhold they need to pull themselves out of a desperate situation.

18. Protect and defend the self worth and dignity of all people no matter the situation or the person. However, reserve the right always to disagree or protest or block the behavior of any individual or group who poses an existential threat or attempts to degrade others with no reasonable provocation.

19. Listen more than you speak.

20. When you speak truth for a righteous cause make sure you are heard then pause for a reply.

21. Be prepared to make adjustments in your firmly held beliefs.

From this point I am working on doing all of these things on a daily basis, I invite as many others to join me in making the world a place where more and more people can lead lives filled with other people who are working toward a world where everyone has a chance to live with dignity in peace.

Posted in Being Human, Check this out, lists, make your own world, mindworks, Other peoples words, paying attention, thinking in words | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Tarot #78: Ruin, it’s not necessarily the end.

Posted on November 15, 2018 by

“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”

― Rumi

 

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Even if destruction and tribulation rain down upon your life, hope remains with life. From the ruins, despair or determination or acceptance or all three can grow. As long as determination is there, in even slightest amount, it will soon overwhelm the other two, for life is insistent and clings tenaciously to the most precarious foothold, and transforms dust into soil, rock into shelter, and hope into the future.Image result for 10 of swords mary el

Fearing what may be can bring upon you, in your precaution and desperate maneuvering, that which you are hoping to avoid. Building fortresses to ward off potential doom leaves less resources to create a life worth protecting.

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You are only finished when you give up or your dead and everything looks darkest before the dawn, and all that. When you start to dance just keep on movin’ til the music stops and then make your own music out what you can salvage from the debris.

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“you have experienced fear without being destroyed….

The choice is yours.

You can always leave the realm of your nightmares.

Put a stop to old patterns…”

Shadows come to rest

Banish fears to the darkness –

Dawn breaks every day.

Margarete Petersen Tarot, AGM-URANIA, 2004. 

Posted in All part of the process, Being Human, dancing, internal landscape, mindworks, music, my mystic toolbox, Other peoples words, paying attention, philosophy, poetry, Singing, the end is the beginning, thinking in words, visions from the dark side, whereever you go there you are | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment