Tag Archives: Tao Teh Ching

Insert non-standard cliche here…..

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Ffolkes,

The following is the post that was intended for posting yesterday, October 18th; it was written in time, but Reality intruded to prevent me from getting to an internet access point before the end of the day…. ah well, twice in a year and a half isn’t bad…. Enjoy, and I’ll do my best to see that I get posted tomorrow as well…
Wild horses, I swore, are not getting me up early again…. but, that was before the silly beasts started in with their neighing at scream volume, and pounding hoof beats. And what is with the ropes and shit, dragging my butt onto the floor?….. Any way you look at it, I lose, it seems…. At least today, I made it to 0700 before having to give up and get up, once more in the grip of sleeplessness, and more going on in the head than I care for this early…. Ah well, I’ve had it thoroughly drilled into my awareness that Murphy gives not a sh__, er, whit for what I care for, or about…. So, off I’ll go, into Pearl land, seeking, as always, excellence and enlightenment….

Yesterday, I read a pearl, in passing, that said something like, “You know you’re getting old when…. reading the obituaries is like reading a high school yearbook….” A bit grim, I know…. but, it reminded me that such events are catching up to me, as more of my peers, from high school, and beyond, are starting to bite the dust with alarming regularity….. And, in today’s day and age, other calamities can strike without warning, bringing sorrow and fear with them….

One of my friends, the wife of my oldest friend (we’ve known each other 52 years now, since grade school, and they’ve been married for over 23 years….), was very recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and will be having a double mastectomy on Friday, I believe…. My friend, of course, is very upset and afraid, though he is holding up well; he is an honorable man, and intends to be strong for his mate….. The prognosis for the surgery is good, as they caught it early-on, and have found no traces of spreading into the lymph system yet; this type of cancer has a very good survival rate, when caught at this stage, so we are all hopeful those statistics hold true….

So, any who, I only mention this so I can ask for you to send out good thoughts and, if you are so inclined, prayers for her good deliverance during surgery, and for many more years of sparkling (she’s good at that….). I’m not sure where the surgery is being done, so if you would just send them toward Northern California, I’ll make sure they get to the right vicinity…. thanks very much, she deserves, and needs, all the help she can get…. as can my friend….

Well, there’s a way to get the old juices flowing….. bring on a spate of tears, and the old metabolism just jumps right up into work mode… a bit harsh, though, I think, to have to put one’s self through that to find a muse…. But, then, when have we ever done things normally around here? That’s correct, that answer would be…. never…. Shall we Pearl?…..
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Herein you will find a recipe for Life Well-Lived….. the first ingredient is illustrated here:

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

— Tao Te Ching

The second ingredient needed to add to the first is here:

Hug O’ War

I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

— Shel Silverstein

When these two parts are smoothly integrated into a malleable state, add this:

“I was standing in the kitchen one day, fixing a sandwich or something, when suddenly I heard a very distinct “sneeze” emanate from the fridge. Naturally curious, I opened the door and scrutinized the various food items. Suddenly, the mayonnaise began to scream, “The ketchup did it! The ketchup!” Of course, I was stunned. This, after all, was an inanimate object. And, truthfully, to this very day, I’ve never been able to coax the ketchup to say or do anything and have concluded the sneeze was my own imagination.” — Smart Bee

At this point, nearly uncontrollable giggles should emanate from either the substance being mixed, or from the mixer; both are a good omen for the success of the dish…. Now we can add the fourth ingredient, as below:

“The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions.” — Dave E. Smalley

As any good chef or artiste knows, harmony comes, strangely enough, in odd numbers…. and thus with this final ingredient, blended well with what has gone before, you will find yourself in the presence of true beauty and grace…. This is a two-medium ingredient, textual/conceptual and visual….. (picture by Carol Welsh, from her blog at WordPress, here: http://carolwelsh.wordpress.com/  )

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living…. and above all, those who live without Love.” — Albus Dumbledore, from J.K. Rowlings’ Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows”
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I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.

~~ Emily Dickinson
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Here are some examples of the astounding depths of Stupid that can manifest in humans……

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” — Pat Robertson, Man of God and serious Republican presidential aspirant, in a letter to supporters
(My calculator broke when I tried to count how many wrong things there are in this statement…..)

“Trees cause more pollution than cars ever did.” — Ronald Reagan
(I had a hard time believing he actually said this in 1982, or thereabouts, but, there it was, right there in the newspaper…. and, in the annals of history, as it remains as the record for the stupidest thing ever said by a US President…. though Ronnie’s VP, Gerry Ford, later made some valiant attempts to break it, during his own stint in the Oval Office….)

Where Mind and each believing mind are not divided,
And undivided are each believing mind and Mind,
This is where words fail;
For it is not for the past, present, and future.

— Seng-T’San (540?-606 A.D.)
(Actually, this may not be stupid…. but I can’t tell for sure, because it is so opaque, and hides its meaning so deeply in complexity, it sounds stupid…..and is therefore subject to the Duck Test…. i.e., if it quacks, etc……)

“Facts can be used to prove anything that’s even remotely true. Facts, shmacts!” — Homer Simpson
(Come to think of it, ANYTHING Homer says could be included here…. I regard Homer to be the absolute incarnation of Human Stupidity, and thoroughly regret his popularity, though it doesn’t surprise me at all….)

Kinsey: “Oh, please. Given the chance, half of all American citizens won’t even vote, and the half that do vote are too stupid to know what they’re doing.” — from Stargate
(I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that, if you heard it on TV, it must be true…. or, in this case, be a pretty clear reflection of society….)

This kind of search, for pearls of real stupidity, as opposed to their opposites, is a slow one… Not that there are fewer examples of this kind of thing available, but, Smart Bee tends to lean toward the other end of the spectrum, keeping and displaying the most valuable and elegant aphorisms uttered through the ages, rather than these demonstrations of humanity’s other talents. So, here is a last example, which will, no doubt, be welcomed with open arms…. Just remember not to use these as Pearls Of Virtual Wisdom, or for goodness’ sake, real wisdom…. I won’t be responsible for the outcome….

I met a fool i’ the forest,
A motley fool.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), As You Like It — Act ii, Sc. 7
(In this case, what we see is a double dose of stupid…. one, what is written…. and two, all the fools who fall all over themselves to say that Shakespeare was so wonderful…. when what he was, was the best hack of his time, with a good PR man…. People still fall for this crap!…..)
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You may have noted a certain lack of original material in today’s Pearl…. which is not surprising, given my current state of mind….. It was all I could do to come up with commentary for this morning’s efforts, as I’m still a bit groggy from the hour, and quite empty of anything but the barest skepticism, my constant companion…. On days like these, I depend on Smart Bee, and the wisdom of others to carry me through this process, trusting that routine, of sorts, will produce an acceptable group of pearls. All in all, I don’t think I did too badly, and, as is the standard rule here, it’s done, and it’s not getting done over…. So be it…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Uncertain signs of capitulation….

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Ffolkes,
Well, I’ll tell ya…. there is nothing quite like being shot from sleep into instant wakefulness by a leg cramp. It’s not too pleasant, either, to spend the first couple moments of that wakefulness screaming in pain while trying to ease off the cramp. Fortunately, it was in the calf, rather than the thigh. I don’t know if I could stand a thigh cramp…. how do you get it to stop? With the calf, you can grab the toes and pull up hard… this will usually stretch the cramping muscle enough to cause it to stop. But, a thigh? How are you going to remember how to stretch it while screaming in pain?  Gotta be worse ways to wake up, but, I’m not aware of them….. thankfully….

Well, now that I’m up, and while I’m waiting for coffee to brew, whom should I assassinate, character-wise? The curmudgeon in me is on full alert, actually a bit disappointed that Murphy wasn’t around to attack and rend into small pieces…. and fortunately for my apartment neighbors, my screams didn’t last long…. Ah, coffee is ready…. I’ll be back…..

Blessed blood of all programmers and geeks! Composers, too, from what I’ve heard; Bach composed an entire set of musical paeans to coffee, complete with lyrics, in one case. There is another unique sensation for you…. that moment when the first sip of coffee brings the entire universe into focus…. Like a leg cramp at night, there is nothing quite like it. And, to be honest, I’ll take the coffee over the cramp any day…..

If you couldn’t tell by now, waking up this way has thrown me off kilter a bit; I don’t know what to do with myself yet. Certain parts of the morning’s routine are out of order, and it’s really messing with my mind. I don’t want to attempt diving if I’m not fully alert…. it may not be under water, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous….. there be some strangeness out there on the web, folks, and it’s a good policy to have one’s wits on hand and fully engaged before diving in…. and, no, don’t ask why I know this…. it’s too hard to talk about…..

I suppose I can only stall so long, though…. I’ll have to give in and just get on with it eventually, so we may as well do it now, since there are good reasons to get done early today. I’m not sure what they are, but there are always reasons, for anything….. sort of like statistics, they can be made to explain almost anything at all….. any who, Shall we Pearl?…..
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“Two-thirds of help is to give courage.” — Irish proverb

To me, this is the very best kind of pearl of virtual wisdom. Nine words, if you count all the short ones, that tell a story that is a lesson, an insight, a truth, and, in the best sense, an admonition, all packaged in a short phrase that burns itself into memory. This can also act as help itself, as just the statement itself gives the courage of which it speaks, to any who doubt as to whether or not help is to be found.

Often, merely the offer of help is enough to aid the one who asks to reach a point where the help is no longer needed; just the knowledge that it is available can give one the strength needed to finish the task alone. We humans are very social creatures, whether we admit it or not, and we are all aware that when two or more people get together to perform any task, the work is lessened thereby, by more than the mere factor of how many are involved in helping. I am constantly amazed at what people can do when they act in concert; often, the very people who join together for a task are surprised by how much they can accomplish together……

I’m not going to say much more about this one; it is what I like to call a stand-alone pearl, that needs no adornment beyond its own contained self. But, I will add one more idea to our understanding of this concept, and that is this…. I say it is an admonition, and it is, because not only does it speak to the effect on the person who has requested the help, it also supplies good reason to offer help to others, by acknowledging the importance of the support, rather than the actual help. Just the fact that the help is forthcoming supplies most of the emotional strength to the act, thus acting as a spur to those who might hesitate to jump in otherwise….. I love it, and hereby name it a classic pearl of virtual wisdom…..
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“Simonides calls painting silent poetry, and poetry speaking painting.” — Plutarch (46-120 AD) — Whether the Athenians were more Warlike or Learned, 3

I like this one….. it is, just by itself, a wonderful little word painting, is it not? And it gives a clear statement of how poetry affects me, and how it always has…. For many years, during my junior high and high school years, I tended to keep my taste for poetry to myself; boys growing up can be a bit sensitive about being sensitive, and it would have been a crushing social blow to have that particular liking brought to light. Only in certain circumstances could it be admitted, and those were few and far between….

Once I left for Berkeley, it became the other way around, as being an artist of any type became a more acceptable goal, and one could, back then, assume the pose of a manly poet (see Ginsburg, Silverstein, etc….) But, at the time, my own poetry was really bad stuff, and I’m glad that very little of it has survived to embarrass me.

For many years, I continued my life-long habit of reading an average of a book a day, and I worked at a couple of jobs where writing ability was prized, so I tried to develop my writing chops using prose. I suppose I did pretty well, but it hardly seemed challenging to become a good writer of nursing notes. The fun and education of it came when I started writing yearly reports, using numerous disciplinary reports, from social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, MD’s, recreation therapists, etc.,  to combine into a complete planning document for treatment. It also provided a solid self-education in desktop publishing techniques, using printers, copiers, and computers to produce detailed reports and documents in the psychiatric field….

A month or so ago, after over a year of copious prose writing, (over 1000 pages of material) I decided to try my hand at a poem, something I’d avoided for almost 40 years; it didn’t come out too badly, and was a vast improvement over what I wrote in my teens. So, I tried another, and another, and now they keep popping out of my head every couple of days, seeming to get a bit better with each one….

I guess the point I’m trying to express here is that it seems that others also are enjoying what I’ve written, so I will continue to write poetry whenever the whim strikes me…. and I can only hope that what I write is as well-accepted as what has been done in the last few weeks…. I hope you all enjoy them, they are little pieces of my soul, and I’m proud and happy to share them…..

“Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?” — Benjamin Franklin

Intelligent Crimes

The value of wit is often said to cause harm,
for those who think, such is its greatest charm.
The new and the bold cannot be fulfilled
if innovation and change is left unwilled.

Society behaves at its base as a mob
conformity and submission its primary job.
Any sign of rebellion against the mob’s rule
is met with resentment, naming such rebel the fool.

Intellect and talent are looked at askance,
expressing artistry stands nary a chance.
To stand out from the rest of mankind
is fraught with danger, for body and mind.

I often stand and watch in solemn dismay
as beauty and joy are left by the way,
ignored and reviled by the unwashed masses
who prefer darkness, and acting like asses.

With shouts of derision the normals make known
their fear of intelligence, greater than their own.
They hope to stop all semblance of progress;
for thoughts and ideas, they couldn’t care less.

The world struggles on in spite of all opposition,
managing to maintain its advanced position.
Pulling the foolish along in spite of reluctance,
helping each to learn the survival dance.

Hard though it may be to keep up with the future
genius manages its plans to develop and nurture.
In the final analysis, those who live by reason
enjoy life the most, from season to season.

~~ gigoid

Idiot (id-ee-it) n.- One who disagrees with you. — Smart Bee
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Yesterday I wrote about a thousand words or more discussing a wide range of philosophy and the human experience, taking a shot here and there at my two favorite targets, politicians and preachers. It was fun, but exhausting, from a mental standpoint; my mind seems reluctant today to go too deeply into much of anything…. so, we’ll resort to an old-school pearl, of sorts…. here is a group of quotes from various sources, for which,  all in all, a case could be made that it is a summary of what was written yesterday in section three…. of course, you don’t have the advantage of my prose to pick at, or to blame for the content, but, in general, this should take you down some similar paths…… and with less verbiage to wade through….

“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

“For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.” — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, ii, 14

“Forward goes the vanguard of the lunatic fringe, tickling the death clowns of normality.” — HealNorm

“I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation.” — Dr. Albert Hoffman

Always we hope
Someone else has the answer
Some other place will be better
Some other time it will all work out.
This is it.
No one else has the answer
No other place will be better
And it has already turned out.
At the center of your being
You have the answer;
You know who you are and what you want.
There is no need to turn outside
For better seeing.
Rather abide at the center of your being
For the more you leave it
The less you learn.
Search your own heart and see
the way to do is to be.
— Lao Tzu

“I’m sitting on my SPEED QUEEN..  To me, it’s ENJOYABLE..  I’m WARM..  I’m VIBRATORY..” — Zippy the Pinhead

And after such a powerful quote from Zippy, what more could possibly be necessary to add?….. Enjoy!
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Okay, so things got a bit strange today, at least at the ending…. that’s what happens when I spend too much time in my own head. Maybe by tomorrow, I can have a bit of social interaction with someone, and get a firmer grip on what is real, and what is not….. Right now, that is a bit of a chancy choice for me…. but, I’ve been in worse straits, so…..  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Without shame, Queen Sally proclaimed her sanity….

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Ffolkes,
On what is supposed to be a brisk fall morning, the sun also rose, sans foggy accompaniment, thus promising us another sweltering day here in the ever-pleasant confines of Northern California. The last two days, October 1 and 2, the temperature has exceeded 90 degrees here by the Bay, thus putting the lie to those idiots who insist that pumping millions of tons of carbon monoxide into the air on an hourly basis, isn’t having any effect on climate. Such bullshit…. and too early in the day to have to start whining, whether justified or not…. so, I’ll desist…..

Whining aside, it still promises to be another hot one, so I’ll be spending another day in front of a fan, and balancing air conditioning with how well I can tolerate heat, so the cost of it doesn’t eat into the food budget….. always a joy to find, if one is looking…. and one has had the training I’ve had, in curmudgeonry and its techniques for finding fault, in whatever situation one finds oneself. Like the school motto says, “Even the best of beds has bugs…..” right? Besides, complaining gives me something to do, other than sit around and brood, which, as we all know, is bad for both the state of one’s mind, and for one’s karma, leading as it does to negativity, and sloth, and probably lust, or other bad things….

In spite of how it might seem around here at times, bad things are NOT what we do…. not for fun, anyway. So, we’ll put all that incipient curmudgeonry aside for the nonce, and get on with the proper morning’s affair, to wit, the search for pearls, and the subsequent composition of a Pearl of Virtual Wisdom…. not to be confused with the real thing, of course. Wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt or anything like that….. Who knows? Maybe there’s another poem floating around in there somewhere….. we can hope….. Shall we Pearl?…..

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the  experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” — Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
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What is the mind? Where is it, exactly? And how does it work?….. These are questions that have been asked throughout time, without ever finding answers on which all can agree…. Oh, there are many ideas, and every sage and his brother’s cousin’s friend’s uncle has a theory about it…. Finding pearls that discuss the matter was pretty simple, actually, as they just kept popping up in front of me…. for example, here are four that I found, all of which have an important part of the idea to discuss…..

“Whether time is long or short, and whether space is broad or narrow, depend upon the mind. Those whose minds are at leisure can feel one day as a millennium, and those whose thoughts are expansive can perceive a small house to be as spacious as the universe.” — Hung Tzu-ch’eng (1593-1665)

“An intelligent mind is a mind which is not satisfied with explanations, with  conclusions; nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another  form of conclusion. An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind, a mind that is  watching, learning, studying.” — J. Krishnamurti

“Hypotheses are not to be multiplied without necessity.” — Occam’s Razor (aka, the K.I.S.S. axiom….) (see Hanlon’s Razor, aka Heinlein’s Corollary to Occam’s Razor) (See logic) (See Dick and Jane run….) (Just wanted to make sure you’re paying attention….)

“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve the problems of life not only theoretically, but practically.” — Henry David Thoreau, American Philosopher (1817-1862) in Walden

You probably noted that one of these four was not like the others (Sesame Street teaches critical thinking well, does it not?….). Occam’s Razor has done more to advance science and philosophy than any unified field theorem, or any other wide ranging thought that mankind has come up with over the years. It cuts through the bullshit, and reminds us to concentrate on what is important, to not to go off on tangents that detract from the final outcome.

It’s a way of approaching science and the fields of knowledge, and even Life, that offers the superiority of having been proven true over and over, in every experiment, in every field of science since it’s publication, sometime around the Renaissance period. William of Occam was, reportedly, a mathematician, and no doubt a very good one, as his assertion regarding hypotheses implies a certain impatience with bullshit; he likely wasn’t one to put up with foolishness for long….

Of course, there are always a few who don’t have the intelligence, or the courage, to stand up to Life, and they too have had their two cents worth put in for consideration….

“Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.” — Karl Kraus  (Seconded, I’m sure, by Homer Simpson….)

An obvious proponent of the entitlement crowd, this guy has expressed clearly the lack of courage that it takes to really retreat from life as can be done. These are the Republicans, the non-thinkers, the men and women who prefer to hide their heads in sand rather than meet reality with any dignity or bravery. Ignorance is their status of choice, as they don’t have to bother themselves to ever check things for truth, or even make up their own thoughts….

They just accept whatever the pundits, religious or political, tell them, because those pundits are the ones who are immoral and unethical enough to take advantage of their ignorance, and will tell them anything they want to hear, in order to soothe their bigoted fears, and, as a happy side effect, take all their money…. which they willingly give away, proving the old saw about fools and money…

I didn’t mean to get into a political rant, but I suppose it isn’t an ill-conceived idea at this point. Tonight will be the first of the Presidential debates between Obama and Romney, and a discussion of mind vs. no-mind seems appropriate somehow. We will get a pretty good picture drawn for us tonight, as one of the greatest speakers of our time, the POTUS, faces off in debate with one of the worst speakers I’ve ever seen, Mitt the Twitt, who has a proclivity for dropping bombs on himself, and speaking without evidence of giving any thought at all to what he has just said to some group. This is an occupational hazard for someone who relies on lies and misrepresentations for the major portion of their message; it’s hard to sound true when one is obviously false…. No matter how much it gets dressed up and taught to sing and dance, a pig isn’t going to win any music contests with its squealing…..

“I’m not imaginary–I’m ontologically challenged” — Smart Bee

As might be guessed, the above is a joke, intended to poke fun at those who choose to live their lives without the benefit of using their minds…. to live one’s life in ignorance to me would seem to be the actions of a fool, by definition as well as practice. One may as well BE imaginary, if one is going to retreat from reality to the extent of turning off all curiosity, all doubt, and never using the mind for that which it was designed (if one believes in design….), or happened to evolve into…. The mind is our best, and possibly our only, ally against the harshness of reality, and it would behoove all of us to keep it in good working order, as befits a tool of such high quality…… T’is marginally better than treating it as a red-headed step-child, leaving it out to starve in the cold, harsh light of reality…..
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A Seasonal Approach

Absolute stillness grips a frozen field,
anticipating dawn with such patient yield
morning burgeoning in dark winter’s hold
brings promise of tales yet to be told.

Lengthening days of pale sun unto night
slowly tell of time’s subversive flight
bringing such original songs of natural fire
with melodies complex in casual attire.

The months are certain they will always win
it is just the way it has always been.
None may argue, nor yet slow life down
Nor dim the eternal beauty of nature’s gown.

Winter evolves from fall into spring,
sending flocks and hearts ever awing.
Summer follows suit, t’other way ’round
Spring into fall, often without a sound.

Life is meant to be lived, beginning to end
choices abound, and change can be a friend.
Yielding with grace to reality’s compelling ploy
fills our plain existence with honest, clean joy.

~~ gigoid

As I sat sweltering in yesterday’s heat wave, I got to thinking about winter, and how I’d really like to see it about now…. hence this little paean to the seasons, and living with them as a touchstone for inner serenity and maintaining a connection with life and nature….. I hope you enjoy it….
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In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don’t try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

— Tao Te Ching

I had originally intended to use this excerpt from this most excellent book as the springboard for a discussion on life in general…. but I noticed just how simply and beautifully the concepts had already been expressed. So, I’ve decided to let this one go as a stand alone pearl; it really has no need of embellishment or explanation from me, so I would feel like I was gilding a lily, so to speak. Taken all by itself, this passage will give one the tools and concepts needed to live life with dignity, and honor, and all the joy that living right brings….. so, enjoy!…..
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Some day’s the process works, and other days it is less efficient…. this one seems to have hit the middle ground fairly well, so we are going to let it fly, as is….. So be it….. It may not be Ibsen, but it’s Art…. not Harry, Art….  I’m done for the day….. deal with it…… I am…….  Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Tether ball rules still apply….

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Ffolkes,
Yesterday was a wash, computer-wise. I managed to post, by going to the library, but had no extra time to read any blogs, or answer any comments, as life intervened to eat up all the extra time I thought I had. But, that event also brought in a bit of cash, so I can spend more time today, at the coffee shop with the Wi-Fi node, and even enjoy a bagel with my morning writing and surfing. Also didn’t have time for email yesterday, as the library network isn’t appreciated by my email browser, so that will be another task for today’s session….

Chatty housekeeping done, we should probably just go on to the diving portion of the program, not that diving is very deep, what with no Smart Bee to peruse. The old, unused pearls are there for a reason, that reason being that they didn’t make the grade the first time around, and it’s a longer process to find something usable. It’s a good thing I am a patient man, in the final analysis, or I’d be my own worst enemy….. Shall we Pearl?…..
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“Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.” — George Santayana

This observation by Mssr. Santayana seems to me to explain most of the movies that come out of Hollywood, or anywhere else. Each of us, though we cannot always say what we see as beautiful, knows what it looks like when we encounter it; every movie made is an attempt to attract people with visions of commonality, beauty that all can agree on, and, of course, pay money to see. It’s a manufactured market, only there because people want to experience those feelings, and are convinced that they can by participating in the public viewing of someone’s idea of beauty (or comedy, or evil, or any other intriguing related emotional experience)….

It reminds me of the concept of perfection…. We all have heard that “nobody is perfect”, or “nothing is perfect”, and there are numerous philosophical treatises that attempt to prove that perfection is beyond human attainment. My question for these people is this: if there is no such thing as perfection, then why do we have its image in our minds? It seems more logical to me that perfection is merely very rare, but examples of it are bound to occur, just by the law of averages, and when it does, we have the perceptive ability to see it, to acknowledge and appreciate its perfection….

The statement also can be viewed as another way of looking at the nature of reality, or the Tao of life. Is not the very first line of the Tao Teh Ching a paraphrase of the above? “The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.” It touches on the very base of natural law, of how reality is not what we can say of it; it is more than just the description of it. By observing what is real, our perceptions remove the part of what has occurred that gives it body and substance, what makes it real…. If Albert Einstein’s God is the true one, then He left clues to this aspect of reality all over, but especially in physics, as noted by the famed Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which so poignantly points out the folly of placing one’s total faith in what is perceived…. because by seeing it, it has already changed, to suit another of reality’s aspects, Change….

Axiom # 2 of Peruaosophy states: “The Nature of the Universe is Change. Unpredictable, innovative transformation of Reality is the Norm. If you have a problem with this, you are in for a rough ride.”  Since Peruaosophy is my own philosophy, I can tell you, without fear of lying, that the axiom is absolutely true. It has been tested by every method I could think of, all through my life, and I can assure you that it is a factual statement. Trust me….

Okay, so you don’t have to take my word for it…. test it yourself. If you can find a single time when you can say that it is untrue, you document that, and send it to me. I’ll check it out, if any are sent in, but I have serious doubt that I’ll get any replies, as I’m confident of the axiom and its veracity. It doesn’t mean it is better, or more real than any other viewpoint or world view, but I’d wager it stands up to any of them without flinching or looking away….

Now see what I’ve done? I’ve talked myself into a corner, and can’t figure out how to tie all this mental meandering together with any aplomb. I’m sadly short of quotes, so we’ll have to make do with whatever I can come up with on short notice….. let it suffice to say that I believe in beauty, as little as it can be described, and I believe in perfection, in reality, and in the nature of everything….

After all, to be perfect, one would need to also be perfectly imperfect, else how would one tell?  And I know for a fact that many of us are imperfect; at times, I am so myself, on rare occasions…..  🙂  Besides, nature itself is full of examples of perfect beauty, anyway…. just take a walk in a garden when it is blooming with roses, and you will find any number of physical examples of the concept……

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart: the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned….

— William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

His head,
Not yet by time completely silver’d o’er,
Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth,
But strong for service still, and unimpair’d.

— William Cowper (1731-1800) — The Task, Book ii, The Timepiece, Line 702
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A new (to me) poet, talking about my favorite gems, in metaphor, of course…..

Chain Of Pearls

Mother, I shall weave a chain of pearls for thy neck
with my tears of sorrow.

The stars have wrought their anklets of light to deck thy feet,
but mine will hang upon thy breast.

Wealth and fame come from thee
and it is for thee to give or to withhold them.
But this my sorrow is absolutely mine own,
and when I bring it to thee as my offering
thou rewardest me with thy grace.

Rabindranath Tagore

From Poemhunter.com….. Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region’s literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse”, he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; his seemingly mesmeric personality, flowing hair, and other-worldly dress earned him a prophet-like reputation in the West. His “elegant prose and magical poetry” remain largely unknown outside Bengal.
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A while back, I wrote a comment regarding another blog, concerning the proposal made in that blog of writing some new amendments to the Constitution. Most of the suggested amendments made good sense, as they removed most of the entitlements that Congress had awarded itself over the years. However, there was one suggested change with which I wholeheartedly disagree…. this is the response to that suggestion… the address of the original blog is included, in case you want to read it first…..  To wit:

In Response to a Proposed 35th Amendment

From the blog site at:

A Proposal for a New Bill of Rights

After reading the above blog, I posted the following comment:

Sir, or madam,

Excellent post, well reasoned and presented…. I have a few comments, if I may….

It has long been a delusion in human society that morality can be enforced, or induced at all, by legislation. This is, as proven time and time again throughout thousands of years of human history, an idea that is doomed to fail, every time it is attempted. That is not speculation, or guesswork. Look it up…..

Therefore it is my suggestion that you forget #35, in favor of the Second Amendment already in place in the Bill of Rights; this concept is based on a false assumption, and making a flat statement of what (YOU believe) my rights are, or should be, is not acceptable to me as a citizen of this republic, or as a human being responsible for my own actions .Bearing arms is not a privilege, nor will I, and most likely at least 150 million, or more, other people in this country, accept that idea for a moment, a fact that should be obvious to any one with practical understanding of reality. I do not, nor will I ever believe that Federal, State, or Local jurisdiction have either the right, nor the authority to say differently, and I doubt seriously that there are very many in this country who do believe that. I reject utterly the statement that they, or you, or anyone else, has the right to decide for me what I will or will not own, or keep, or use in my defense. After guns, free speech would be the next to go….any bets?

That, my friend, is a fact of life, and of human nature. We only have those rights we can defend…. and this is merely another doomed attempt to legislate morality into human nature. Violence exists. Period. Get used to it, because you are not going to remove it from people’s core nature, or from reality, any more than attempting to remove guns will stop crime, or killing, or the tendency toward violence that is part of the nature of Man. Better to understand the impulse, and work toward educating people in how to cope with that part of themselves constructively, rather than destructively…..

The rest of your amendments are perfectly in alignment with what I believe is needed to improve the conditions of inequality and elitism so prevalent in today’s society, and would receive my full support.

To be honest, up to recently, I never owned, or saw a need to own a gun. As one who has followed the Warrior’s Path since my early teens (and probably before; I was raised on army posts from birth to age 10), a long-time student of martial arts, and the theories of war, I learned how to deal with violence in many ways, with many techniques, a large number of which I had to apply in my work for years, physically controlling out-of-control psychotic mental patients, without hurting them, or getting hurt. I got pretty  good at it, especially in recognizing it before it manifested fully, and diverting it.  I am very familiar with violence, in a great many of its guises. So, I can generally deal with whatever physical violence may occur in my immediate vicinity.

Now, however, I’m not as fast as I once was, nor as well-conditioned; I’m better at foresight, it comes with age. And I can foresee a time when I could conceivably need the equalizing factor of a weapon like a gun, in order to live up to my standard of handling events without injury, as far as I can…..so, I’m probably going to buy one or two… because of that, and even more, because of insane (sorry, don’t mean to flame; but, it isn’t fully sane to attempt to change human nature) talk such as this, of watching society willingly slip on their slave collars… it is NOT going to happen in my world….

If anyone, or anyone’s brother, or anyone else, tries to take away the Second Amendment rights I now have, well, I can only say, good luck with that….. and bring lots of friends…you’ll need them….

Oh, and I’d keep in mind…. those folks like the police in Sanford, Florida who were complicit in covering up the murder there,  aren’t going to disarm themselves, now are they?…. How far will you trust them to behave with honor, and respect for YOUR rights? Get real…..and I don’t mean that disrespectfully, but in hope that you will open your eyes to what is plainly there to see….
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It took some doing, but it all got done, and done well, as far as I can tell…. but, then, it’s mine, so what do I know?….. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Moments of regrettable histrionics…..

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Ffolkes,
Morning again brings itself to the forefront of consciousness, as it tends to do about this time every day. Not that I have a problem with that, but I wasn’t quite done sawing logs when the phone rang, and reality came rushing back in…. Hence, I am now up, staring once again at the keyboard, with an empty head…. I should most likely sit and let the coffee work its magic for a bit……

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that balances are correct.” — from “Manual of Maud’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

I can testify that delicacy is hard when one’s blood sugar is out of balance; my own reaction to being bothered before having consumed sufficient quantities of caffeine and sugar is to bite, or at least bark loudly, at whomever has the audacity to approach before I’m fully charged. Even though I know it isn’t their fault, they pay the price, if only to allow them to learn the correct lesson. Survival of the fittest, right? Right…..

“I don’t think you’re ready for what I think.” — Fox Mulder

Maybe that’s why I live alone now…. though I try to make an effort to accommodate anyone I live with to a degree, it probably gets old after a while; I know I certainly did. Get old, that is…. I can feel it now, as I sit here, struggling to remain fairly straight upright, as typing is tough when one has to lean on one elbow. Someday, I’d really like to speak to the person responsible for printing and distributing the manual we are issued at birth. You know, our Life Manual, that tells us how to do stuff with our bodies, and gives maintenance directions for upkeep. Most folks lose theirs, before they ever get to an age where they would pay attention, but I can say for sure that there isn’t a word in it that gives any warning about how to deal with the aging process, and all of the challenges that getting old provides…. if it did, folks might even keep track of it better….

“Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ah well, pain is life, for some of us, and our days are measured by how much we can keep it from getting to the point of needing to whine about it. Suffering is supposed to teach character, and strength in the face of adversity; somehow, one who suffers is supposed to be noble…. but, I say, piss on it, I’m in pain, so stand back, while I try to drug myself insensible…. I take enough medication to knock most folks right out, and still manage to keep my head in the game, so, I figure I’m doing okay…. If nothing else, it keeps me off the streets….  after a fashion…..

Ah, the hell with it…. let’s go dive in and look around a while, eh? Shall we Pearl?…..
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It is popularly supposed that between those who use the word “God” and those who do not there is some great gulf.  But the gulf lies elsewhere.  It lies between those who dogmatize, either positively or negatively, and those who recognize in great humility that something within them bears witness to realities which may be momentous in our lives, but which lie beyond the grasping net of our categories of thought. — Smart Bee

Yet more proof of Murphy’s presence in Life…. or, in my life, anyway….. Yesterday I wrote about this subject, expounding as I am wont to do, with no little enthusiasm, trying to bring some clarity to a naturally murky subject (it’s hard to pin down anything solidly when the subject under discussion is a matter of conjecture, not physically present to be examined….). Then, later in the day, I come across this one short paragraph, that summarizes my 3-400 words succinctly in three lines, and very clearly, for all its brevity. SIGH….. So much for originality, eh? Though I don’t know who said it, I salute them….

“In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.” — Edward P. Tryon

Once more, I have to agree with the author, especially as it gives a sort of pat on the shoulder to the paragraph above, as if sharing an obvious point. Serendipity, I say, and well met….

“When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.” — Bernard Bailey

This one, when viewed in light of the previous two quotes, made me smile, big….. now, why is that? Because when he says a lot, he means, A LOT OF PEOPLE!…..

“And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways, Yossarian continued There’s nothing mysterious about it, He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?” — Joseph Heller, Catch 22

Funny how people under stress always get so close to the truth; it makes the one who hears it more nervous and upset than he who said it…. or it that just me? Of course it is…. Why shouldn’t it be me? What’s the matter with me? Don’t you like me?….. Sorry…. any who, let’s see what else the magic can find….

“Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. But what shall we substitute in its place? you say. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast and you ask me what you shall put in its place?” — Voltaire

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

— T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

I’m not sure why, but this excerpt from T.S. Eliot seems to be the perfect finishing line for the above meandering treatise…. and it is as close to a verifiable point as we’re going to get today, I can tell…. so, best leave it be for now, and go on to something else…. Or, in this case, to something the same….
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Portrait of a Lady

Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself–as it will seem to do–
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, though his hair and fingertips.
“So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.”
–And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.
“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it . . . you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you–
Without these friendships–life, what cauchemar!”

Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite “false note.”
–Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half and hour and drink our bocks.

T. S. Eliot

I don’t care what anyone says…. this is some good stuff….. a worthy goal to shoot for, wouldn’t you agree?…… Not in hope of exceeding, but merely to equal the power of this man’s work is worthy of any effort…..
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A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other. — Smart Bee

I guess the political scene is taking a short break, gathering its momentum for the big two-month push to the election… Both parties have officially branded their candidates, and the Party Platforms have been printed up and sent out…. It is significant to me that, of the two major parties, one’s platform talks of reform, and rebuilding, and celebrating diversity, whereas the other talks about defensiveness, and divisiveness, about negatives, and the return to old values that have already proven themselves as destructive. I don’t even have to say which is which, and you will know; that is how clearly divided the two are this time….

I don’t fully trust any of them, but at least the Dems are trying to help out the little man, rather than aggrandizing the rich. Every Republican platform plank serves to secure the strangle-hold the rich have over the poor; it amazes me how many poor folks are following him, just because he promises to bring Whiteness back to government, even though it means stepping all over the weak and vulnerable. As long as the scary Black man isn’t elected, they think they’ll be happy, not realizing that the scary Black man has already improved their lot, and will make it even better if allowed to actually pass some legislation designed to aid the middle class instead of the 1%.

These closet racists are so incensed that they have to listen to, and even admire, a black family in the Presidency, they are willing to cut off their own noses to get a white man back in the White House. They grab onto the most egregious lies, and repeat them endlessly, as if the repetition will make it true. When they are corrected, with irrefutable proof of the lies, they switch to attack mode, and call the fact-checkers communists, or socialists, or bring up the tired old “birther” conspiracy. One Republican actually said, after being corrected about a lie told during the Republican convention, “We aren’t going to let ‘fact checkers’ dictate our candidacy!” Honest, it’s on video….

“The fantasy which serves as a support for the figure of the Stalinist Communist (sub: Republican Party Platform for 2012….) is therefore exactly the same as the fantasy which is at work in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.” — Slavoj Zizek

At this point, I actually am feeling somewhat lucky not to have a TV, since that will prevent me from having to watch all the loaded political ads, from both sides of the election process. I won’t have to experience the repeated disgust at the nasty, underhanded tactics being used by the conservatives, or worry about over-dosing on sugar from the ads from the Dems. I still get to see the public’s reaction to the ads, by reading about them online; if I really WANT to see one (for some unknown, and unfathomable reason….) I can check it out on You Tube, where everything ends up anyway…. it’s the best way I’ve found yet to get through an election without all the emotional drama that plays out over the mainstream TV airways….

The internet is also playing a new part in this election, one that has so far been under-reported, or just ignored… The stories one reads on the Net are a good way to measure the reaction of the public to the various claims by both sides of the contest; in addition, it serves as a dispassionate fact-checking service, as many, many sites now publish the truth or lies that each side is stating, usually within minutes of the first report. This has turned out to be a thorn in the side of the Republicans, as they are relying almost totally on lies and made up statements for their rhetoric. They don’t really have anything they can show as being an improvement in the way things are going; only their wild claims of, ‘feed the rich’ and wait for the money and jobs to trickle down from heaven, like manna….

Very few folks are buying that, as the economic policies they espouse have been refuted repeatedly by independent researchers and experts, and the results of eight years of that sort of policy are painfully obvious. I imagine that by the time the election actually takes place, there will be very few actual voters left who haven’t been driven away by one of their lies and/or fables….. and a landslide election will be the result…. I certainly hope so, as then maybe we can actually make some headway at dealing with the issues that are important to people, instead of focusing on the conservative right’s need to soothe their racism…. instead of having to deal with their unfounded, and cowardly, fears…..

The sage manages affairs without action
And spreads doctrines without words.
All things arise, and he does not turn away from them.
He produces them, but does not take possession of them.
He acts, but does not rely on his own ability.
He accomplishes his task, but does not claim credit for it.
It is precisely because he does not claim credit, that his accomplishment remains with him.
— Lao-Tzu
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All things considered, this hasn’t gone too badly…. a bit of old/new school meandering, some mild ranting, and a good poem. What better way to start one’s day? I’ll take it…. please wrap it to go, and I’ll be on my way….. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Hobbies and habits of wild mundanes….

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Ffolkes,
Today promises to be interesting….. and I say that with some caution, lest it turn from merely interesting to INTERESTING, as in “oh what an interesting wound! Does it always bleed so heavily?” This is more like, “oh, what an interesting new book! I’ve always wanted to learn about that!”  Well, at least that is how I hope it transpires…. As you know, Murphy tends to hang around here in the mornings a lot, and things can go strange at any moment….

That being said, I want to make it clear…. I am a Whole Ass…. This is purely a subjective judgment, you understand; it has nothing to do with reality as a whole, and is only of concern because it can affect my writing, to a degree….. We won’t let that hinder us from getting on with the morning’s business, but I thought you should know, in case something I said comes out a bit harsh. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m like that all the time; I just do it well when I do…..  Just sayin’…..

I’ve been busy the last day or two, but have managed to find some pretty nice pearls, so I think we should cut this a bit short today, and get right into the meat of the matter…. besides, I’m still a bit light on stuff for this intro, so I’ll save what I have for another morning, when I don’t have so much material to work with….. So, shall we Pearl?…… (Gotta love that artistic license, as applied to grammar…..)
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All life is a conjugation of the verb “to eat” — Smart Bee

I’m not sure why, but I like this a lot….It isn’t true, of course, unless one is metaphorically literate, as we all are here at Exploring Consensual Reality. If one is clear on the power of metaphor, then it becomes a really good one-liner, both amusing and, in a strange way, true as the day is long. Unfortunately, it is also extremely subtle, in that one must look deeply into the meaning, past the normal, and into the layers below the surface before its truth becomes clear. Shallow thinkers need not apply…..

I find the above statement to be very eastern in its subtlety and depth, which leads me to think of other examples of this type of statement. There is possibly no better western interpretation of an eastern idea than this passage…..

“The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people — eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and the dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good–death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can hurt me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it. These, Govinda, are some of the thoughts that are in my mind.” — Hermann Hesse, _Siddartha_

Such passages as this have helped me to understand both sides of the concepts involved here, eastern and western alike…. It is one of only a few such pieces of literature, books that capture the essence of what is in the eastern view of reality, stating it in the words of our western culture, thus helping us to understand ideas that our culture approaches much differently. When one reaches a certain level of understanding, then passages such as the following become not only words of beauty and elegance, but words of depth, bringing a new level of comprehension to our minds….

“The sages of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.

Aware, like a fox crossing the water.
Alert, like a general on the battlefield.
Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests.
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood.
Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves.

Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?

The answer exists only in the Tao.”–Tao Teh Ching

From either source, east or west, the search of inner peace begins in understanding, and for understanding one must “eat words”….. and learn how to conjugate…..
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Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

~~  Sylvia Plath

I’ve never read any of the poetry of Sylvia Plath, but I have a feeling I’ll be reading a lot more of it…. Enjoy!
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Here is what I call a synthetic pearl…. I realized just a moment ago that I haven’t ranted in a few days, about either of my favorite targets, victims, subjects, politics and religion. I’m running very late, for me, and I don’t really have the energy to give a rant my best. Instead, I give you two brilliant pearls on the subject, followed by a statement of conclusion, in the form of a pair of questions, from Lao Tzu…. If this doesn’t stimulate some brain cells, then I’m afraid I have bad news for you…. you died yesterday, and forgot to clock out….. For those who are still present, and conscious, I give you this beautiful, yet not organic, but, rather, synthetic pearl, finely crafted in the cavernous, well-equipped laboratory I call my mind….

“And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways”, Yossarian continued, “There’s nothing mysterious about it, He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?” — Joseph Heller, Catch22

“Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.  Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness *positively*, by uniting our affections, the latter *negatively*, by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.  The first is a patron, the last is a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one….” — Thomas Paine, opening lines of _Common Sense_ 1776 — *asterisks denote Paine’s use of italics*

“Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right actions arises by itself?” — Lao Tzu
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The above posting may seem like insignificant rubbish at first glance, but if you read between the lines, you will be surprised to discover the annals of Burt Bacharach, world peace, Oxford Advanced Readers Dictionary, quantum physics made easy, and an easy-to-use step-by-step walk-through on how to make a time traveling device that actually works. — DISCLAIMER

I am almost certain that I can’t possibly create any more confusion, or inflict any more damage today, so my work here is done. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Emerald green tofu makes better ballast…..

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2

Ffolkes,
All attempts to establish routine are now considered futile; only random acts that resist routine will be allowed. And damn! I wish I could find a comfortable chair in which to sit…. Yes, I know that sounds stilted and pompous, but grammar is grammar, so whattya gonna do?

Any who, back to routine, or lack thereof….. Waking in the middle of the night, sobbing over a dream, is not what I’d call conducive to making a routine. It took me an hour, and two or four solid shots to get back to a state where I could fall asleep again, and consequently gave me a late start this morning…..SIGH…. (That’s a west-county Irish sigh, a long full breath, and slow exhale, accompanied by a sorrowful expression and a sad shake of the head….)

I should probably be getting used to this randomness in my life; not having to work, or to spend any significant time worrying about what other folks need or want, is both the greatest perk, and the most stinging curse of retirement. The outer world no longer has a say in when I do something, or even what I do. I make my own schedule, and thus have no one to blame if it doesn’t suit me…. which, I’m sure you can see, is a reflection of that blessing/curse relationship. Ah well, such is life….

Since I’m late, and will be later, given the upcoming events this morning, we should get to the searching portion of the process, as it is the most time-consuming part. So…. shall we Pearl? Anything has got to be better than what has been happening thus far…..

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” — Lao-Tzu, Tao Teh Ching
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The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. — Old Testament — Job i, 21

I don’t know if it actually was Job who first said this particular phrase, but, given what God eventually did to him, all on a bet with Satan, it could have been…. If so, it goes to show, one shouldn’t go too long in the desert sun without finding some shade….

Here we have a statement that purports to provide reason for worship, a justification of why we should bow our heads in prayer to the heavens…. in short it says, “God is unpredictable, and omnipotent; it makes good sense to kowtow to Him…. he likes appeasement.” Well, maybe not, but you get the idea. We are theoretically in the power of a mad God, one who will fuck with his creation at the drop of a hat, just to entertain himself and the Devil over a wager.

He put Job through some outrageous times…. boils, plagues, genocide, hordes of locusts, deformity, God really did a number on Job, trying to see if his mind-conditioning would hold…. Since, according to the story, Job did hold out, and suffered all he did at God’s hand, and still wouldn’t curse him, we see that it did hold fast. What a dolt he must have been! No, I meant Job, but you may be right…. God surely acted like a dickhead in this one….

Sorry, but along about the third time God took everything away from me (had I been his chosen target instead of that stubborn boob, Job…), I would have started trying to figure out some way to fire back a few warning rounds, just to let Him know I’d had enough of that kind of treatment. A certain amount of leeway should be given, of course, but nobody gets more than three, I don’t care who they think they are…. By the act of persecution of Job, in my mind, He gave up any rights to worship, or even belief…. and He ought to know that, as he made me the way I am (according to the theory as given in Genesis).

I’d make this piece longer, but I think I’ve probably offended the Christians out there enough for one day…. also, the next section is a great poem, by my favorite poet, and I’d as soon you read it all, long as it is…. onward…..
___________________________________

This poem is rather long…. but I hope you read it all; it’s a great follow to the previous pearl, and well worth the time it takes….. enjoy!

A Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor

The hands of the clock were reaching high
In an old midtown hotel;
I name no name, but its sordid fame
Is table talk in hell.
I name no name, but hell’s own flame
Illumes the lobby garish,
A gilded snare just off Times Square
For the maidens of the parish.

The revolving door swept the grimy floor
Like a crinoline grotesque,
And a lowly bum from an ancient slum
Crept furtively past the desk.
His footsteps sift into the lift
As a knife in the sheath is slipped,
Stealthy and swift into the lift
As a vampire into a crypt.

Old Maxie, the elevator boy,
Was reading an ode by Shelley,
But he dropped the ode as it were a toad
When the gun jammed into his belly.
There came a whisper as soft as mud
In the bed of an old canal:
“Take me up to the suite of Pinball Pete,
The rat who betrayed my gal.”

The lift doth rise with groans and sighs
Like a duchess for the waltz,
Then in middle shaft, like a duchess daft,
It changes its mind and halts.
The bum bites lip as the landlocked ship
Doth neither fall nor rise,
But Maxie the elevator boy
Regards him with burning eyes.
“First, to explore the thirteenth floor,”
Says Maxie, “would be wise.”

Quoth the bum, “There is moss on your double cross,
I have been this way before,
I have cased the joint at every point,
And there is no thirteenth floor.
The architect he skipped direct
From twelve unto fourteen,
There is twelve below and fourteen above,
And nothing in between,
For the vermin who dwell in this hotel
Could never abide thirteen.”

Said Max, “Thirteen, that floor obscene,
Is hidden from human sight;
But once a year it doth appear,
On this Walpurgis Night.
Ere you peril your soul in murderer’s role,
Heed those who sinned of yore;
The path they trod led away from God,
And onto the thirteenth floor,
Where those they slew, a grisly crew,
Reproach them forevermore.

“We are higher than twelve and below fourteen,”
Said Maxie to the bum,
“And the sickening draft that taints the shaft
Is a whiff of kingdom come.
The sickening draft that taints the shaft
Blows through the devil’s door!”
And he squashed the latch like a fungus patch,
And revealed the thirteenth floor.

It was cheap cigars like lurid scars
That glowed in the rancid gloom,
The murk was a-boil with fusel oil
And the reek of stale perfume.
And round and round there dragged and wound
A loathsome conga chain,
The square and the hep in slow lock step,
The slayer and the slain.
(For the souls of the victims ascend on high,
But their bodies below remain.)

The clean souls fly to their home in the sky,
But their bodies remain below
To pursue the Cain who each has slain
And harry him to and fro.
When life is extinct each corpse is linked
To its gibbering murderer,
As a chicken is bound with wire around
The neck of a killer cur.

Handcuffed to Hate come Doctor Waite
(He tastes the poison now),
And Ruth and Judd and a head of blood
With horns upon its brow.
Up sashays Nan with her feathery fan
From Floradora bright;
She never hung for Caesar Young
But she’s dancing with him tonight.

Here’s the bulging hip and the foam-flecked lip
Of the mad dog, Vincent Coll,
And over there that ill-met pair,
Becker and Rosenthal,
Here’s Legs and Dutch and a dozen such
Of braggart bullies and brutes,
And each one bends ‘neath the weight of friends
Who are wearing concrete suits.

Now the damned make way for the double-damned
Who emerge with shuffling pace
From the nightmare zone of persons unknown,
With neither name nor face.
And poor Dot King to one doth cling,
Joined in a ghastly jig,
While Elwell doth jape at a goblin shape
And tickle it with his wig.

See Rothstein pass like breath on a glass,
The original Black Sox kid;
He riffles the pack, riding piggyback
On the killer whose name he hid.
And smeared like brine on a slavering swine,
Starr Faithful, once so fair,
Drawn from the sea to her debauchee,
With the salt sand in her hair.

And still they come, and from the bum
The icy sweat doth spray;
His white lips scream as in a dream,
“For God’s sake, let’s away!
If ever I meet with Pinball Pete
I will not seek his gore,
Lest a treadmill grim I must trudge with him
On the hideous thirteenth floor.”

“For you I rejoice,” said Maxie’s voice,
“And I bid you go in peace,
But I am late for a dancing date
That nevermore will cease.
So remember, friend, as your way you wend,
That it would have happened to you,
But I turned the heat on Pinball Pete;
You see – I had a daughter, too!”

The bum reached out and he tried to shout,
But the door in his face was slammed,
And silent as stone he rode down alone
From the floor of the double-damned.

Ogden Nash
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The following is an old-school pearl, with a specific thought in mind for you to deduce….. for the sake of everyone’s blood pressure, that specific thought will be revealed at the end…. I don’t usually, but thought I’d give a treat, just ’cause I’m a nice guy…. really, I am……

Child:  “Supreme Being, why is there evil in the world?”
Supreme Being (Sir John Gielgud in a Savile Row suit): “Oh, dear, I can’t remember, exactly. . . something to do with free will, I believe.”
— Terry Gilliam, _The Time Bandits_

“The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is “ambiguity”: the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces — both individual and social.” — Paul Tillich

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn’t any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I’m not at the bottom,
I’m not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.
— A.A. Milne

“Belief gets in the way of learning.” — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.” — Oscar Wilde

“SANTA CLAUS comes down a FIRE ESCAPE wearing bright  blue LEG WARMERS.  He scrubs the POPE with a mild soap or detergent for 15 minutes, starring JANE FONDA!!” — Zippy the Pinhead

You may be asking yourself at this point, just what have I gotten myself into? Well, relax, it’s no big deal….. all of the foregoing is intended to lead you to the following….. which WILL be on the quiz…..

An it harms none, do what thou will. — Wiccan Credo

Alternate answer, also correct:

There’s little in taking or giving,
There’s little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest’s for a clam in a shell,
So I’m thinking of throwing the battle —
Would you kindly direct me to hell?

— Dorothy Parker

“Birth, school, work, death.  About sums it up, I think.” — Smart Bee
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For a rush job, this didn’t come out too badly…. it will have to do, anyway, so let’s get on with it….. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you……

Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

The Grand Vizier wishes to be disturbed….

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3

Ffolkes,
Yesterday afternoon,  I sat down with the urge to write. A number of fleeting images chased each other around in my head, vying for who would be first to fly…. after some negotiations, I wrote what appeared to be a paragraph of prose in an abstract style, re-read it, scratched my head, and left it alone for the night…..

This morning, when I sat down to start today’s Pearl, the paragraph was still there…. but it had changed somehow in the night…. I don’t know if it is my mind that changed, or the paragraph, but all of a sudden, it wasn’t a paragraph….. a few strokes, a couple of format and structural changes, and voilá, it’s a poem!  Completely finished, too, needing nothing more from me…. I’ll call it….

Serendipity Morning

My mind wants to fly,
my soul wants to hold close, the source,
strong, the moments of time;
each as precious as golden thread,
binding together such elements of longing desire.

Love hovers, always patient,
seeking the open heart,
reaching for the promise of tomorrow…..
only for one, only for now, only what is real….
Dreaming, the morning calls,
heavy with mordant belief,
replete, and eternally alive…..

gigoid

I just love it when a plan comes together…. especially when there is no plan…..  🙂     Shall we Pearl?…..
___________________________________

“I want to dress you up as TALLULAH BANKHEAD and cover you with VASELINE and WHEAT THINS..” — Zippy the Pinhead

After starting with a poem I wrote myself (a rare occurrence, indeed….), the universal law of dichotomy comes into play, as things will become unbalanced without some alternative, oppositional action, and what better candidate for that than Zippy? Just look at this quote….. absolute nonsense, in terms of the real world, yet you, and I, will both check our supplies of both Vaseline AND Wheat Thins, just to be sure…… You don’t want to let Zippy loose in your cupboards to look for himself, believe me! I did one time, and never did find my coffee maker, or my toaster…..

Zippy has brought many an hour of relaxation, and a grin to my face for as many years as I can remember, which is, sad to say, a lot of years now. After a hard day of dealing with the vicissitudes of life (love that word!…. vicissitudes… it just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?…..), I know I can come home, pull off my shoes and socks, and know that a few minutes of Zippy will soothe and soften my fevered brow, even better than beer….. though not better than bourbon…. but, then, what is? Nothing, that’s what….

Of course, I can’t afford to drink bourbon too often any more, and not just because of finances…. I find myself of late not merely not enjoying the buzz that comes with a couple fingers of the beast, but actively disliking the physical symptoms that go along with any such imbibing…. not to mention the morning after, which nowadays hits me like a runaway train. If I consume more than two cocktails, the headache and body malaise the next morning is like a short visit to Hell, without the extreme heat, but with the pain and anguish, and a heavy feeling of regret…. So, these days, rather than live with either regrets, or hangovers, I’ve pretty much curtailed most of my alcohol consumption, an act for which my liver is probably dancing for joy….

Now that we have meandered down some rather unbeaten paths in my head for a time, I think maybe we should go on to something a bit more constructive… or at least funnier…. I don’t know what it is, but a dose of Zippy brings out my pedagogy, along with a tendency toward pomposity, that shows up in what I write, no matter how silly I get…. but four paragraphs, all about nothing, really, is quite enough for one day…. So, let me leave you with one more Zippyism, and we’ll go on to bigger, better things, or at the very least, something else….

“I’m having BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS about the INSIPID WIVES of smug and wealthy CORPORATE LAWYERS.” — Zippy the Pinhead
___________________________________

Come On In, The Senility Is Fine

People live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa,
But you don’t have to live forever to become a grampa.
The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild,
You only have to live until your child has a child.
From that point on you start looking both ways over your shoulder,
Because sometimes you feel thirty years younger and sometimes
thirty years older.
Now you begin to realize who it was that reached the height of
imbecility,
It was whoever said that grandparents have all the fun and none of
the responsibility.
This is the most enticing spiderwebs of a tarradiddle ever spun,
Because everybody would love to have a baby around who was no
responsibility and lots of fun,
But I can think of no one but a mooncalf or a gaby
Who would trust their own child to raise a baby.
So you have to personally superintend your grandchild from diapers
to pants and from bottle to spoon,
Because you know that your own child hasn’t sense enough to come
in out of a typhoon.
You don’t have to live forever to become a grampa, but if you do
want to live forever,
Don’t try to be clever;
If you wish to reach the end of the trail with an uncut throat,
Don’t go around saying Quote I don’t mind being a grampa but I
hate being married to a gramma Unquote.

Ogden Nash

A little paean to my new age-group…. age appropriate, I’d say, but not yet dead….. Enjoy!……
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“Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.” — Lao-Tzu

Water…. the power of water is unmatched over time; just ask the Grand Canyon. Water ties us to the universe; our physical make-up depends on it for survival, as well as mere existence. It is so soft, and yielding, yet cannot be destroyed at all; one can only cause it to change form, from ice, to water, to steam, all of which hold the same properties as the middle state, though slightly differently interpreted. Most important, to the scholar’s mind, is its nature…. emulating its spirit, becoming like water, is the goal of almost all meditation practice, as well as a goal of the martial artist….

“My writing is like a ten gallon spring.  It can issue from the ground anywhere at all.  On smooth ground it rushes swiftly on and covers a thousand li in a single day without difficulty.  When it twists and turns among mountains and rocks, it fits its form to things it meets: unknowable. What can be known is, it always goes where it must go, always stops where it cannot help stopping — nothing else. More than that, even I cannot know.” — Su Shih

One of the most powerful of concepts in martial arts is the emulation of water. The student is taught to learn how to move like water, to move with the rhythm of the universe as energy flows from one point to another. One of the most valuable techniques I’ve seen to teach this lesson is one where the student stands in a balanced stance, one foot forward; the arms are held in front of the body, as if holding a large ball. The student then moves his weight from the back foot to the front foot, then back again, while moving the ball in a slow circle, pushed away when moving forward, and brought back when the weight shifts to the rear….

The trick to learn is to be like the tide, accepting the water as it flows in to its highest point, then moving with it as it irresistibly flows back into the sea, as the weight moves to the front foot. A smooth shifting of the weight, and finding the correct rhythm teaches both balance, and strength, and the power of moving like water…. Learning to use gravity as an ally, instead of a limitation, gives one an unimaginable advantage over one who does not know how to do so….

In addition to the physical lessons that water has to teach us, it also provides the intellect with a subject of study, to find the nature of water in its most real state. Learning the nature of water brings us closer to an understanding of all nature, and how we may fit into it with the most benevolent, and beneficial attitudes.

The path of least resistance, followed by water as it flows downhill, teaches us to learn to find the same path for ourselves. The immutability of water teaches us how to resist changes to our nature, while remaining in touch with those parts of the universe that are within all of us…. And the flexibility of water teaches us to remain flexible ourselves, to learn to recognize when it is time to be ice, when it is time to be steam, and when it is time to flow like water in its normal state…..

Joshu asked the teacher Nansen, “What is the True Way?”

Nansen answered, “Every way is the true Way.”

Joshu asked, “Can I study it?”

Nansen answered, “The more you study, the further from the Way.”

Joshu asked, “If I don’t study it, how can I know it?”

Nansen answered, “The Way does not belong to things seen: nor to things  unseen. It does not belong to things known: nor to things unknown. Do not  seek it, study it, or name it. To find yourself on it, open yourself as wide as the sky.”
___________________________________

It’s another fine mess I’ve created here this morning, I think….. It really doesn’t matter, because I’m posting it no matter how it looks from this end; I may even go back to bed afterwards…… Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you……

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

 

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Malevolent nannies spotted in Cannes…..

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7

Ffolkes,
I lost a day somewhere…. I looked up at my little desk calendar thingie, and noted that the day was wrong…. which always disorients me until I get it right….. I’m also running very late today, and have a bunch of stuff I need to get done toward moving at the end of the month…. meet the new landlord to sign a lease, clean my floors so company coming later in the week won’t puke on sight of it, and a couple other tedious little chores like that….. so I’d best get right to putting this Pearl together…..

Actually, I’ve just now decided to pull an old literary trick out of the hat…. let me check this out…. be right back…..  Okay, this will work…. I’m late and in a hurry, and I’ve got over 800 pages of material from the last year here…. so, without further ado, I give you now the Pearl of Virtual Wisdom from January 3, 2012…..

Any Use of This Product, in Any Manner  Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe. — PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW

Ffolkes,
I plan on living forever.  So far, so good. (It’s a joke, okay? Sheesh…) As of yesterday, however, reaching that goal may become problematic in the relatively near future, especially for those of us who disapprove of the way the government is doing things. They (yes, they…) took away my rights day before yesterday. Yours too. The United States Bill of Rights, comprising the first ten Amendments to the US Constitution, was figuratively vaporized; the rights guaranteed therein were declared null and void by the National Defense Authorization Act, as signed off by the President of the United States, effective January 1, 2012.

Under the provisions of this act, I, and/or essentially every other American citizen (i.e., you…), may legally be taken from their home by the US military, and taken to an undisclosed location to be tortured for whatever information I might possess, merely for being “suspected” of traitorous activities. Which activities are defined as traitorous are not specified; ‘they’ are the only ones to whom it must be justified, they need not report to anyone.  Nor are ‘they’ required to tell anyone at all what their suspicions are.  No lawyer for the accused, no court of law, no oversight. Just you (or more likely, me), them, and the waterboard. I tell you now, if any of them come for me, I will not go quietly, and that is a plain and simple fact…..let’s go on to more light-hearted matters, shall we?……

“It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.” — Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Judge

If the government doesn’t trust us with our guns, why should we trust them with theirs? — Smart Bee  (Now, there’s a thought…..)

Ned, draco braz mento; compile 13….command 003: Insert brain, then type…..
___________________________________

“Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man’s task.” — Epictetus (c. 60 AD) — Discourses, Book i, Chap. xxvii

What a wonderfully obtuse little word salad! Epictetus outdid himself here. This takes the mind on a beautifully complex, winding trail of thoughts, stopping here, looking over there, and generally winding about with no seeming purpose. Then, if you can wind your way to the end, it’s all tied together with a cute little bow, and voilá, instant wisdom.

Though its a bit painful to use, this Pearl is one of my favorites. I say painful because you have to exercise mental muscles that don’t often get much of it, and there will be some stiffness and soreness to let you know they don’t appreciate it. You must ignore that, and work them again tomorrow, lest they fall back into apathy, which is easily done; they’re lazy, just like the rest of us.  This inherent laziness has its evolutionary purpose; it drives us to find easier ways to do things, and as such can be valuable. But, mostly it just reinforces our genetic tendency to loaf whenever possible…….
___________________________________

I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts.
— Lord Byron (1788-1824) — Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iii, Stanza 113

I often feel this way in today’s society. I have all these thoughts running through my head, and when I look around me, I can see that everyone else has their own inner promptings to pay attention to as well. But, when I observe their actions, it becomes clear that what they were thinking, and what was going on in my mind, are two entirely different universes. What did you say was the name of the planet you live on?

It’s a rare day indeed when I encounter anyone whose thoughts run any deeper than wondering what to wear on their date tonight, or how to keep the kids entertained while cooking dinner. I’m not saying that what is going on in my head is any better than what they are considering. Far from it. In fact, in some respects, I am jealous, and wish that I didn’t perceive the evidence all around us that our society is dying.

I wish the leaders of the world weren’t so obviously motivated by avarice, prejudice, and fear. I really do wish I could spend my mental energy on something a bit more comforting. But, I can’t. And I won’t. It’s getting really dangerous out there, folks, for anybody who is the least bit different in their outlook, and I will keep shouting out the warning as long as I have breath to shout….
___________________________________

“Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?”
“Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs ARE in color. It’s just the WORLD was black and white then.”
“Really?”
“Yep. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930’s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.”
“That’s really weird.”
“Well, truth is stranger than fiction.”
“But then why are old PAINTINGS in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?”
“Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.”
“But… but how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their paints have been shades of gray back then?”
“Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the 30’s.”
“So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?”
“Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?” — Calvin and Dad, “Calvin and Hobbes”, 29 October 89

Brilliant! Absolutely, positively, not a damn doubt, ruddy frzlicxz brilliant. If more fathers had the courage to be so creatively honest with their sons, the world would be a far, far different place than it is now, wouldn’t you agree?…….

“A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.”– Willie Wonka
___________________________________

“Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.” — Rousseau

I won’t regale you with further long, outrageous reports of today’s menu of political chicanery; there’s plenty enough out there for you to see without having me shove it down your gullet. But these two quotes are important to remember, mainly because, if there is a chance at all to deflect some of the chaos that is coming, it will have to come from us. Those individuals who can think, and do, will need to stand up for our right to do so without censure or threat, and we’ll need all of us to do it. So, please, take heed……

If you wanna be free, keep your eyes open and think for yourself.– Smart Bee
___________________________________

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength.
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of will power.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.
— Lao-tzu (c604-c531 BC)

Obviously, this requires nothing from me to make it complete. Nor does it request my comments; just as well, I have none, as none are needed…..
___________________________________

Another fine mess I’ve created here, eh? A veritable hodge-podge of mixed metaphors and clever cliches, and colorful to boot! What more could I ask for before breakfast? I suppose I should start cleaning it up….. in the meantime, stay alert. Y’all be careful out there….

___________________________________

In case you are not confused enough by now, this is me again, speaking from the future…. or at least from the present…. it’s only future in relation to the most excellently long Pearl above…. I think it was a pretty good one…. how about y’all?

Tomorrow, I’ll be back, caught up enough to compose a fresh Pearl…. at least, that’s the plan. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Not only the penitent are forgiven….

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6

Ffolkes,
Pinched, grim faces peer through the windows as I wash the dirty feet of the Tupperware solicitors. Leering, jeering, they make their obscene gestures in vain, rather pathetically cheering each other’s futility. Parcels of latent importance linger on the threshold, waiting for delivery, independent and proud of their clean lines and ruler-straight packing tape. In the midst of all the chaotic motion, a small, silver dreidle spins hypnotically, focused and free of the detritus so common to such games as played today. Not for nothing did they salvage their given names, to show to the inspectors, in direct opposition to the rising sun, hopeful of another hour, another day to find Reality…..

Which, apparently, has retreated to the background, not wanting any part of the previous paragraph, a sentiment I can completely understand. That there paragraph is even weirder than usual, even for this space. But, I kind of like it, sort of, maybe…. it does have a certain charm to it, even if it doesn’t make any sense. And it did give me the opportunity to use the word “dreidle”, as well as “detritus”, two words that seldom see the light of day. I do enjoy getting these seldom-used words out for a workout; they’re always so appreciative…..

As you might be able to tell, my relationship with the English language is one of mutual admiration and support. We get along pretty well most of the time, and that is completely due to the fact that we are always formally polite with each other, and never ask the other to perform tricks that are embarrassing or immoral. It is a somewhat tentative and careful relationship, because we both understand each other’s needs and desires, and want to be careful to preserve the good relations we enjoy. After all, where would either of us be, without the other?  Nowhere, that’s where….

With that ringing endorsement, let us now wend our way down to the edge of the water, and begin today’s search for pearls….. shall we Pearl?…..
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If they make you not then the better answer, you may say they are
not the men you took them for.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Much Ado about Nothing — Act iii, Sc. 3

A man whose blood
Is very snow-broth; one who never feels
The wanton stings and motions of the sense.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Measure for Measure — Act i, Sc. 4

The eftest way.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Much Ado about Nothing — Act iv, Sc. 2

Like Niobe, all tears.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet — Act i, Sc. 2

So, there I am, cruising along in my database, searching for pearls, and what keeps popping up in front of me, getting in the way and wasting my time? You guessed it…. more drivel from our old friend and charlatan, Will Shakespeare. These four pieces of nonsense popped up one after the other, within two minutes of each other.

Taking this as a sign from the gods of literature to carry on my campaign to educate the public regarding the relative value of his works, I am reproducing them here, as a reminder to everyone to be careful with Will’s stuff. It can be dangerous to those who don’t understand the power of human idiocy.

I mean, just look at those four quotes. I consider myself to be pretty smart; if not smart, I am at least over-educated, for sure. But, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what the hell he is talking about in ANY of these quotes. Sure, they’re missing some context, but good literature should be able to provide its own context…. These only provide an excuse for scratching one’s forehead in confusion….. and don’t even do that well….

Just as a test, for the rest of today, while searching for stuff about which to write, I’ll save and put in here all the little pieces of dung from Will’s pen that get in the way…. You will begin to see why I think he needs to be downgraded as an icon, to reduce the amount of his work to which we are forced to be exposed in the normal pursuit of our life’s objectives…..

Some griefs are medicinable.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Cymbeline — Act iii, Sc. 2

Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Macbeth — Act i, Sc. 3

Come not within the measure of my wrath.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), The Two Gentlemen of Verona — Act v, Sc. 4

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnets & other Poetry — Venus and Adonis, Line 145

Okay, so the last one isn’t so bad…. I guess 7 out of 8 gives a pretty clear indicator of how he SHOULD be graded…. Enjoy, so to speak…..
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Immediately after writing the above section, I went back to my search. I felt a bit disappointed, in that the first section was teaching by poor example. This is a legitimate technique, but is less satisfying than making the same point by a good example. As I thought of this, an excerpt from one of Alexander Pope’s poems flashed up, which led me to go search out his page at Poemhunter.com, to see what else could be used…. and there it was…..

His Essay on Criticism is the perfect next act in this circus I call my blog…. It is, however, about 20 pages long, an epic poem, with several parts, each with its own introduction by the author. That is a bit much to expect you to take in in a morning read with your coffee (or, looking at the clock, as a lunch-time dessert….), so I picked out the most relevant stanza I could find on short notice, and offer it here, as a contrast to the above pile of dung from Shakespeare….

From Part II of “Essay on Criticism”

The vulgar thus thro’ imitation err,
As oft the learn’d by being singular;
So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng
By chance go right, they purposely go wrong.
So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damn’d for having too much wit.
Some praise at morning what they blame at night,
But always think the last opinion right.
A Muse by these is like a mistress used,
This hour she’s idolized, the next abused;
While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,
‘Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.
Ask them the cause; they’re wiser still they say;
And still to-morrow’s wiser than to-day.
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons no doubt will think us so.
Once shool-divines this zealous isle o’erspread;
Who knew most sentences was deepest read.
Faith, Gospel, all seem’d made to be disputed,
And none has sense enough to be confuted.
Scotists and Thomists now in peace remain
Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Ducklane.
If Faith itself has diff’rent dresses worn,
What wonder modes in Wit should take their turn?
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current Folly proves the ready Wit;
And authors think their reputation safe,
Which lives as long as fools are pleas’d to laugh.

Alexander Pope

There you have it…. If you have the time, head on over to Poemhunter.com to read the entire piece. It’s well worth the time taken, in my not so humble opinion…. the address for the rest of the above poem is   http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-essay-on-criticism/

Enjoy!
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Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
— Tao Teh Ching

Often in life, we find ourselves at a point where we feel frustrated with how reality is unfolding, and allow the weight of the world to sit on our shoulders. We grasp to our breasts the complaints and insults we have heard or expressed, holding on to all the wrong things that have happened, to justify our own irritability.

It is at these times that the Tao Teh Ching can be most helpful, especially to us Westerners. Our culture looks at stress differently, at least in terms of how to deal with it. In this case, I find the Eastern way of approaching this issue works much better, allowing one to overcome the stress that builds up, offering release from the headaches and tension that can come with such feelings….

The solution is extremely simple, once learned…. just let go…. No, not just say no…. Just let go…. Don’t hang on to those feelings of urgency because your work isn’t done…. just finish the work, and be done with it….. Don’t let money determine your feelings. Don’t let your worries fill your mind so you obsess and worry; allow them to pass through you, as all feelings eventually do, if we don’t hang on to them….

Just let go…. and find yourself already serene….
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Well, that works, I think…. It will have to do, because I’m NOT doing it over…. Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!