Ffolkes,
Hmm….. The demise of Smart Bee as a resource for this blog is confirmed; there is something magical going on (translation: I don’t understand why it’s happening….) that is preventing SB from operating correctly, and I’m out of ideas of how to fix it. I’m going to have to think about this, seriously, and without delay; no other choice, if not the chicken-with-the-head-cut-off option. With no internet access on demand, quotes and poetry are limited to my library (non-digital), and a lot of old Pearls…. I may have to authorize some selective mining from that last source…. I do have a lot of stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day for a long time, and may just work again for inspiration….. Hmm….

Okay, I know I’m desperate when I start and finish a paragraph with the same word, especially one that isn’t even considered standard English. Of course, my English is anything but standard, I should hope…. Any who, I’m going to think about this now, and come back to it when I’ve developed a strategy…..

Okay, I’ve figured out the right approach….. I’m going to pretend it never happened….. Hey, if the GOP can base their entire platform on denial of reality, why can’t I base my blog on the same blissful ignorance? There’s obviously millions of people out there who will buy into that kind of rhetoric; witness the money collected by the GOP from people from whom they will proceed to destroy if allowed into office, to wit, lower middle class folks who are scared of the black man in the Oval Office, and will throw their support blindly to anyone who promises to get him out of there….. Denial is big-time politics, ffolkes, for sure…. and if it works for them, I’ll give it a try….

No, I won’t, don’t worry….. I couldn’t….. I don’t know yet what I WILL do, but, it will all happen as it is meant to do, so I’ll just write around the edges…… Shall we Pearl?…..
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Religion has never attracted me as a pastime that led to any particularly desirable activities. From the very first, even as a small child, I always thought the people at church were trying to get me to believe something that was not only hard to believe, but they wanted me to believe it, just on their word that it was true….. What they were saying wasn’t anything like what I perceived to be true about the world at large; none of it sounded like common sense, if you get my drift…. Plus, the more I resisted what they said, and asked questions that they couldn’t answer, the more insistent they became….. Most kids have a pretty good crap detector, and the whole church thing seemed based on fluff and wishes to me…..

Any who, it seems a lot of my saved up oysters have been on that very subject, i.e., religious dogma, and alternative ways of looking at the universe, and how it works, and what it means…. (you know, all the good stuff….), so I thought an old-school grouping would perhaps help ffolkes get a clue about what I do believe….. which can, I have to admit, change from one day to the next….. gotta keep room for new data, y’know…… shall we Pearl a bit?…..

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.” — Thomas Paine — The Age of Reason

“History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.” — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1972)

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.” — Albert Einstein

God:  What one human uses to persecute another. — Anonymous

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.– Robert Heinlein, “Job”, 1984

“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.  Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

“If the lord had meant us to have faith, he’d have given us lobotomies.” — Zlatko

“A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain, then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?” — Robert A. Heinlein

“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in     youth.  I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”
–Albert Einstein

“Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.” — Buddha

Well, there you go…. a complete mish-mash of different philosophies and outlooks, each with its own little piece to contribute to the whole, all ended perfectly with a piece of profoundly simple wisdom… not the virtual kind that is common around here, but real wisdom, that you can put in your pocket, take away with you, and use as needed…..
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November Dreams of Spring

Crass and cold, the beggar finds me swollen, so frail and fat
with painful stepping motions, running, like a Republicrat.
Building with straw and spittle, should artists come aground,
we all pay heavily, a billion for a bloody pound.

Too desperate, too ashamed to play such a part
We ask for belief, and sweet liberty, dressing up so smart.
It falls between the simple cracks, always in a hurry
To find a shrunken ego, ashen, swift, and full of worry.

Never there was a more penitent group, such a sterling way
To fast in luxury, making sure the guilty enter, but do not stay.
Forgotten gods can find their diffident suitors tonight
With dream-fitted convention, and a natural sense of delight.

For all the silken babies cried, to see the broken dreams of power
forgiven moments of certitude serve, filling up the maiden’s bower.
All the patient, loving veterans of ancient foreign time,
give up their first impressions, dying, dying for a rhyme.

~~ gigoid

Odd, isn’t it, how we sometimes fall into a trance to write…. or, maybe that’s just me…. ah well, regardless, enjoy!….
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Often of late, I find myself staring at the screen with a vacant expression, listening to the patter that passes for thoughts in my head. I can sit like this for a long time, just meandering here and there in my memory, re-living good and bad moments from what has turned out to be a lot more years than I ever thought about, really. Until I became 60, I had never thought about how it would feel to be that age, a discovery that surprised me to a certain degree. But, as I thought about it just now, I realized that I really had not considered what I might be doing in my 60’s, either as a career, or as a person. Part of the surprise, I know, is connected to the fact that I am currently without a life-partner, as the ones I chose as my supposed mate seem to have chosen to be elsewhere. This, being alone, was not part of my plan……

I had thought to be sharing all the joy, and all the pain that my life has brought me, with a person who I thought was as committed to that as I. Instead, I am left wondering, as Tom Robbins put it in “Skinny Legs and All”,  “How do you make Love stay?” His premise is is based on the idea that love is easy to find, but impossible to keep, given the craziness of the modern world, and the state of confusion and angst that seems to be the legacy of everyone these days. I’m not sure I completely agree with his final assessment, but I can see how it came to him, having had many similar experiences in my years. I hope he is wrong, and there are still people out there who can actually give their word to someone else, and mean to keep it….. If not, then the world is beyond hope, to my way of thinking, and we may as well just give up….

Of course, there is still that small part of me that won’t do that; I’m not sure if I should call it being stubborn, or stupid. Maybe it is what Emily calls Hope, that will not die easily. Whatever it is, it keeps me getting out of bed every day, with the view in mind to see what the world has to offer, whether it is more BS like I’ve been putting up with now for a few years, or whether there is some sort of justice to the world, and I’ll soon meet, or get together with, a person with whom I can share all of what I have inside me to give, and who will live up to whatever promises we can make to each other. And if not, well, I guess I’ll just keep flirting with the young lady at the coffee shop, and listen to her talk about her boyfriends, smiling to myself, grieving for might have been, and hoping for what might yet be…..

Leave the past behind;
leave the future behind;
leave the present behind.
Thou are then ready to go to the other shore.
Never more shalt thou return to a life that ends in death.
— The Dhammapada (c. B.C. 300)
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Whew! That last section turned on me…. it became quite a self-confession, didn’t it? Well, it’s a bit revealing, but it’s too well written to get rid of, so I’ll just have to suffer the embarrassment of hanging my laundry out for all to see…. and what the hell, it’s all true, so the chips can just fly where they may….. in the meantime, y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

Sometimes I sits and thinks,

and sometimes

I just sits.

gigoid