Ffolkes,
Frankly, I hadn’t wanted to be there at all, but there I was. A mature, employed, stable, responsible person, standing next to huge plastic clown, in the small hours of the night, waiting in the freezing wind to meet someone. Not just someone, but an alien. Not from Mexico, from Procyon 5, part of a Galactic Union consisting of thousands of worlds, all of whom were no doubt home in bed, like I should have been….

Well, that’s not bad…. I could punch it up a little, but it got the creative juices flowing, so we’ll just leave it there, with more questions than answers, and go do something else more productive. I know, many of you are now thinking, “What does he mean, more productive? I want to see the alien!”

Shhhhh!… you’ll wake up Murphy! He’s been asleep in my armchair since I got up this morning, and I’d just as soon he stayed that way for the time being. Things are difficult enough without his two cents thrown in….  What I mean is, I’m never going to complete the story that goes with that beginning, so it is more productive to start a Pearl, which I know I will finish…. and the alien can go fly a kite…. I didn’t like him anyway….

Now that the ice is broken, though, I seem to be a bit at sixes and sevens for material. Fortunately, having already spewed out a sufficient quantity to qualify, I can go on to the eights…. which may sound confusing, but is actually quite logical. So, with no further fussing about, we shall now go Pearl…. Shall we be off and about it?….
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“But whether there’s some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost. When a life spins out as joyfully as mine has done, then the price, once paid so painfully, is now recalled in gladness. I have received full value. Here among the shepherds, my cup is filled with the water of life; it overflows.” — Orson Scott Card, “Treason”

In thinking back over the Pearls that I’ve put out in the last year, my general impression is that I spend too much time dwelling on the negative parts of Life and Society. There are reasons, no doubt, which will thankfully not be brought out today; I want to speak to a different point. In concentrating on those negative aspects of Life, my usual purpose is to create in the reader a desire to see that negative turned into a positive, to show that one’s own actions have an effect on reality, even if we can only make real changes within ourselves. Those internal changes lead to changes in action, which, as we all know, can spread influence like ripples on a pond. In short, I’m recruiting activists to fight against the forces of Evil that are at play in the world today….

The march of history, and human affairs, possesses an immense inertia; it takes hard effort over a long time to make changes in the direction in which we are heading. The forces of Evil are directing us to extinction, without even knowing that they do so. If they realized what their actions would lead to, they would change, for they are cowards, and don’t want to die any more than the rest of us.

It is just that they are so convinced of their own rightness, and their own right to do exactly as they please, they will not listen to the evidence that is so plentiful. Thus, it becomes the responsibility of the forces of Reason to find a way to change direction, with that kind of opposition as one of the first and biggest obstacles to get past, or resolve in some way.

I wish I had an answer, all laid out in logical lines, with ideas for getting the ignorant to learn. But, I don’t. I’ve been trying all my life to get people to look at things that are not merely beyond the end of their noses, but in fact, may be entirely outside their experience…. and they don’t HAVE to be afraid of it, just because it is unknown to them.

My efforts have been rather ineffective in the larger picture, with minor successes on an individual level…. not extremely encouraging. But, I soldier on, throwing facts and truth out there into their faces, hoping one or more of them will make them open their eyes a bit wider….. and if that includes a boot in the ass to get them going, then by golly, they can have a boot!….  And always remember…..

Truth is God’s daughter. — Smart Bee
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Flower of Love

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had struck a better, clearer song,
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with some Hydra-headed wrong.

Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed,
You had walked with Bice and the angels on that verdant and enameled meed.

I had trod the road which Dante treading saw the suns of seven circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as they opened to the Florentine.

And the mighty nations would have crowned me, who am crownless now and without name,
And some orient dawn had found me kneeling on the threshold of the House of Fame.

I had sat within that marble circle where the oldest bard is as the young,
And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the lyre’s strings are ever strung.

Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out the poppy-seeded wine,
With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead, clasped the hand of noble love in mine.

And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush the burnished bosom of the dove,
Two young lovers lying in an orchard would have read the story of our love;

Would have read the legend of my passion, known the bitter secret of my heart,
Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we two are fated now to part.

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth,
And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth.

Yet I am not sorry that I loved you -ah! what else had I a boy to do? –
For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the silent-footed years pursue.

Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and when once the storm of youth is past,
Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death the silent pilot comes at last.

And within the grave there is no pleasure, for the blindworm battens on the root,
And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of Passion bears no fruit.

Ah! what else had I to do but love you? God’s own mother was less dear to me,
And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an argent lily from the sea.

I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days,
I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle better than the poet’s crown of bays.

Oscar Wilde

I don’t much care if anyone doesn’t care for this one, though I hope they do…. but, no matter. I love it, and as far as I’m concerned, Oscar is Da Man!….. The problems he had in his lifetime in dealing with a society that did not understand him do not, in my mind, detract from the brilliance of his writing. I would give a lot to have had the chance to converse with him over dinner, but, since I can’t, his poetry makes a decent substitute…..
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I’m going old-school here again…. Failing to find within me the correct amount of outrage to fuel a rant, I will resort to my old method of stimulating cogitation among the masses…. Together, these quotes will direct your thoughts to a conclusion, one that, hopefully, you will heed, and share…. and that’s enough clues for anybody….

“To be happy one must be a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one’s fellow men, and c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one’s taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am – a man of my peculiar weaknesses, vanities, appetites, and aversions – can be so happy as he can be in the United States.  Going further, I lay down the doctrine that it is a sheer physical impossibility for such a man to live in the United States and not be happy.” — H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), “On Being An American”

If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. — Fudd’s First Law of Opposition

“The land of the free!  This is the land of the free!  Why, if I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and that’s my freedom.  Free?  Why I have never been in any country where the individual has such an abject fear of his fellow countrymen.  Because, as I say, they are free to lynch him the moment he shows he is not one of them.” — D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.”  The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labor camps.  In those we see its final result.  But is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”– Preface to ‘The Screwtape Letters’ by C.S. Lewis

PAYCHECK: The weekly $5.27 that remains after deductions for federal withholding, state withholding, city withholding, FICA, medical/dental, long-term disability, unemployment insurance, Christmas Club, and payroll savings plan contributions. — Smart Bee

If this is a joke–I don’t get it. — Written on grave

They say the number of criminals is still rising.  Where are we going to put them all? Prisons and government are already overflowing. — Smart Bee

That’s probably enough…. any more, and it would be too obvious, and I may as well have ranted….   Enjoy Life, brothers and sisters, while we still can….
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Not too shabby for what felt like a throw-away…. Perhaps not a top ten contender, but readable. I’ll take it….. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…. and watch out for stobor…..    😉