“Why are you here, Findarel, walking with me this fine spring morning, instead of laying peacefully at my mother’s feet?” “She sent me to find you,” he growled. “She has had a vision….” Natomas’ countenance instantly grew grim, and he quickened his pace. “The same as the last?”, he queried anxiously. “She would not discuss it with me when she had it last week.” “She wishes to discuss it now….” the tiger answered, and leaped ahead, as the house among the trees came into view, knowing Natomas would not delay in following…..

Okay, so I like it too, and it’s too good a story line to ignore, so, I’ll be saving it, and expanding it as soon as I can; it promises to be interesting…. It will have to wait a week or two, as this coming week I will be heavily involved in the moving process, little baby steps at a time, so I don’t end up unable to do it at all…. This weekend has gone pretty well, all in all, and I’ve got about 85% of my stuff packed and ready to move… Most of what is left won’t be packed until the last minute, as it’s the stuff I use daily… no big deal, and I’ve already got boxes…. Piece o’cake…..

All things being the same, I could guarantee this blog’s daily appearance. However, since they are NOT the same, I may have to miss a day or two to deal with the transition from one ISP to another. So, if you don’t see a post here on Friday, or Saturday next, fear not, I shall return. New vistas are opening up…. I hope my vertigo doesn’t kick in…. That all said, it must be time to get started on today’s dive…. Shall we Pearl?…..
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“In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

In a perfect demonstration of the accuracy of Herr Nietzche’s assertion, I give you Senator Dan Quayle, a veritable paragon of Christianity, speaking, with absolute faith, and insane illogic, the rigid and hateful prejudices as obsessed over by the Church of the Brain Dead….. one of many such cults common to the not-so-outer-fringes of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and other religions, all of which are prone to creation of pockets of entirely too vocal enclaves of zealous fundamentalists, who spew their strident hatred and bigotry all over the innocent, and the different…. Dan said, and this is a quote….

“You’re a very strong woman… Though this would be a traumatic experience that you would never forget, I think that you would be very successful in life.” — Senator Dan Quayle telling an 11-year-old girl — why he would want her to have the baby if she were raped — by her father, 10/18/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

After you have recovered from the shock of encountering (again) such abject inhumanity, racism, bigotry, you name it and they are doing it (‘they’ being anyone who even listens to this tripe without gagging, and including any other religious zealotry as practiced in other religions beside the Christian cults) (cults is the correct word, trust me….), I’d like to scare you even further, so take a deep breath….

“If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.” — Mahatma Gandhi

The just released, official platform of the Republican Party for the 2012 election, lays out in clear detail the very spirit of what Mr. Quayle is quoted as saying above. Their stances on women’s healthcare, and the basic rights women to decide for themselves how to live, LGBT rights and marriage (in)equality, immigration, tax cuts for the rich, tax raises for the middle and lower classes, continued reliance on the same failed economic policies that killed the economy (trickle-down theory, supply side economics), cuts to and actual elimination of Social Security and Medicare for seniors, voter suppression techniques reminiscent of the post-Civil War era….all are designed to turn back the clock to the middle of the last century, and further, in the case of women’s rights, and voter’s rights for minorities (which are no longer minorities….).

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” — H. L. Mencken

The frightened white, rich bankers and politicos are starting to realize that they are no longer actually in the majority…. close, but not enough to matter, since many, many of us honkies are technically on the other side of the fence, having more faith in humanity and basic human rights, than in perpetrating religious zealotry, or spreading lies and fear under the guise of politics.

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleges, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.” — Tolstoy

This is so true….. It is insight like this, into the very nature of man, that frightens the beloved ruling class, and has since the time of Tolstoy, and before. The complacent culture that has derived from the young, energetic society of our forebears has lost the will to suffer change. They cannot imagine life different from what they know, and don’t wish to know.

Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for the rest of us here in the real world, there are now more of us than there are of them….. provided all of us who know, and care, get out there to vote in November. It is a matter of making the, to me, obvious choice, to take a path that leads to a future for all of us, instead taking us back to a time that no longer exists, and is meant only for a few….. It’s a no-brainer, to my way of thinking….

“Is a tattoo real, like a curb or a battleship?  Or are we suffering in Safeway?” — Zippy the Pinhead

Take care ffolkes, we don’t want to end up suffering in Safeway…… really, you don’t want to do that…..  I can testify…..

A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal.  “I would like to give you this personality test”, said the outsider, “because I want you to be happy.” Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster- “I wish the toaster to be happy too”. — AI koan
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Kubla Khan

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

What can be said, but, wow….. Wow…. Forgot how good this was/is…. Hope you enjoyed it, too…..
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Dreaming, I wait….

In the most patient moments of rationality
kindness flows smoothly in a special milieu,
fallow thoughts speed first from equality
to give no anxious fever, anger to eschew.

Indignant mothers and step-sons in-law
shall fade simply from brilliant to grey,
intoning ritual dogma, fresh, avid, and raw,
falling, falling, in massive pastoral disarray.

Safety lives not, save brightly in ignorant bliss,
it follows us all, silent and infinitely frail,
foremost too often, soft as a virgin kiss,
alive, always eager, willing, and pale.

Intimate knowledge finds only the bold few
with courage and virtue to gift, unbidden.
No solemn royal version may pass in review,
true love for man, never to remain unhidden.

Sweet feathers of Emily’s hope uplift,
calm, drowsy episodes bursting with light,
With final glad cries we set ourselves adrift,
swimming in the oceans of natural delight.

When sorrow is banished, in ages yet to come,
roots solidly anchored, cold and remote,
Ample supplies of kindness sit silent and dumb,
and the old stranger shrugs on his faded coat.

Dreaming, then, I wait with shadows in the night
aspiring to inspire, a message from the muse’s heart
Never forgotten images, framed in color bright,
tempt me only, grieving, steeped in serenity’s arcane art…..

~~ gigoid

And there you have it…. such as it is. I hope you can appreciate just how bloody a process this is for me… but, if not, I hope you at least enjoy the poem for its brave journey into madness…   🙂
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In the interests of honesty and full disclosure, most, if not all of this Pearl was composed yesterday afternoon, when I fell into a semi-trance-like state, during which I ripped out the rant in the first section, found, read, copied, pasted,and formatted Kubla Khan, and then opened up a vein and poured myself into the poem…. I’m not sure what I’ll do with all this extra time this morning, but I’m sure I’ll think of something…. Maybe I’ll change the dressing on my open vein….. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you….