“I know the great tragedies of history often paralyze men with encroaching horror. They stand rooted to the spot until, one day, the Gorgon devours them.
But I mean to convince you that there is only an illusion of impotence. That intelligence, strength of character, and courage are enough to stop fate and sometimes to reverse it.”
— Albert Camus, Nobel Prize speech
It doesn’t make any sense
Too much money involved
My life unhinges
On the future
Of every
Writing on the wall
Every number in a stall
Each nightmare
Staring into the sun
And she stands
So tall
Riding on that Beast
Makes me fall
On my knees with
Shock and awe
embarrassed by it all
Oh Gloria,
Mary warned me
About you
Excelsior!
[A woman who lies saying she is a virgin when
The child is evidence of some entanglement
in ancient times]
he can not see whether what you do is right
you can not correct the mistake by doing more wrong
you can not stop the pain by creating more
you can not teach love with hatred
I still have to reconcile with the animals I eat
I have to trust the mechanism that feeds me
but maybe you’ve just torn me from my mother
and alienated me from my brothers and sisters
maybe you have broken and not mended
maybe you grind all of those under your feet
who think they should strive to share
what grows up from underneath
protect the young with open arms
and not with barbed wire and grinding teeth
I feel the world rustling and churning
making steel grow like bramble
skittering to and fro
making nothing but more things to do
more to understand
more to wobble out of control
nothing to know about something so lofty
as to be beyond the compassion of men
a heart with stuttering valves
exausting toward oblivion
blocking light and choking air
suffocating peace
-HJM-
by Longbow on January 23, 2011
Here I am looking at you all and wondering what to say
I’d say we’ve had a turn at things and we turned and walked away
all the memories don’t amount to much
when you try to figure out what it means and such
I had a quest to answer every question
but i found many answers
just left more doubts
I wouldn’t find myself in the past
I barely knew myself then
and now that I think about it
I wonder about us still
Have you had your fill
of opportunities gone by
are you happy with the chosen
making it hard to get by
Well I have, and I feel a little ill
I’ll have another go, ’till they find my body still
I won’t keep a pet obstacle
I’ll eat it and have my fill
So where are you now
Have you reached the top?
Have you looked at the principle
and calculated the cost
leaving you cautious now
because of what you’ve lost?
We never had it all
advantages were almost nill
but we made the most of it
and we’re having it still
So I beg you to enjoy the quiet
and keeping smart as well
cause when it gets to going worse
its just a living hell
– HJM
[blurb I wrote for Lovingnative.com…back then]
by Longbow on December 12, 2010
Anyone trying to define social / cultural influences and affiliations in this town would be hard pressed to trace those topologically (topographical/meteorological), let alone show the streams of thought flow. Maybe a strong feeling of connection comes from these tensions indicated by welcome concern for the town, augmented with the desire to do more than just pay our bills. There are many versions of “fun” here. I mean like, there is even a Casino in town. Oddly that seems to be a growingly common feature in counties up here… Is it latent “White Guilt” to “legislate fairness”? ( I don’t understand this gambling stuff, or any other thing that is supposed to be fair to Indians) (hey what about the Mexicans?”) One of its (Willits) histories is along several environmental action fronts, such as seeking to prevent some disasters to forest and streams. Another is the desire to preserve the local food security, ie assured supply. (Hmm, sufficient for 30 days? What about getting through a whole season like a full scale agricultural community does? Well maybe one step in the right direction is local Grange Grains. (There, a feeling restoring a Spirituality to farming, a Pearl S Buck moment) How about when times get that financial “low’ feeling or jobs are twenty or more miles away. That being said, the town seems basically “happy”, by and large pulling things together (by the strings) despite State and local service/funding cuts. Been a number of changes in shops closing and opening, some making good ops in change of location. The post office parking is the worst experience in this town for me personally and for many I am sure. I’m thrilled they at least now have one drive-up curbside drop-box well outside of the carnage of that lot.
As far as that goes, I don’t see how any large metropolis does it. So many groups, influences and money. How hard times do torture and warp mens souls. Yet I read that in a real disaster, studies have shown people act better and are more involved in emergency response than they thought them selves able.
[Since this is something I wrote for Lovingnative.com in 2010 the links may be dead]
by Longbow on December 29, 2010
(This is a rant I wrote two years ago. now I’m wishing for an iPad, mainly for readability and music apps)
I’m not an early adopter apparently. I cringed at the term podcast. Pods were something alien and creapy like in an Alien movie. I wasn’t looking to join a group of whales either, even if they were cool white Belugas. I had no need to stick plastic in my ear to drown out the world while commuting to work. Maybe I would have adapted to the technology change sooner had I remained a cubical encased web drone for a while longer. The dot-com bust came and that was the end. I resisted the artificial world of pod music so I could stew in my own thoughts or watch and listen to people in the daily transit chaos. I had very strange taste in music anyway. I wanted intricate complicated compositions that didn’t involve big beats or sawing guitars, but I didn’t want classical music either. I suffered the screaming wheels of mass transit with nothing else to calm my disease but an occasional book… and usually non-fiction at that.
So it might seem odd that I’m writing this to express my excitement after five years of resistance. Something has come along that broke through. Something that whittled away at my sense of practicality. Something that was more akin to a swiss pocket knife, with many blades for different tasks, but all hand held and ready for any challenge of survival.
This miracle tool and bastion of entertainment cracked my skull with applications beyond mundane. I became seduced by the Apple iPod Touch.
Not everything is sexy. It has a few handicaps.
No physical (tactile) response (IE click). Few buttons. Shiny face that obscures vision on occasion. Small. Slippery(without a case). No Adobe Flash. The pricing on protective cases can be oddly high (@ $30), but needed to reduce chance of scratches, or worse, dropping. With few moving parts the drop won’t kill it but a dent or crack would be sad.
Options to add on GPS positioning and map use turns it into navigation tool and finder. Coming soon, stand in front of a store and see if they have online catalog, ordering, phone number lookup etc.
Though usable in any location with Wi-Fi, the main transfer of song, picture and video data is though hookup and synchronization via iTunes on a desktop computer. A music browser application “Songbird” also claims to be able to synchronize songs and playlists.
Local in home or public access Wi-Fi hookup to Pandora and other discovery services without firing up your computer And SHAZAM!
(dead link) ***http://www.simplify****.com/ (stream from your home computer via iTunes, Winamp, Rhythmbox (Linux)