Category: contemplative

“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

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)

And some of us 

Clamber, seek and be heard

climb any mountain

fly any bird

To launch the future 

To free the earth

The Key to the future is

Leaving the past

In time to be first

And not the last

Pioneer

…it may seem obvious, and probably already happening, but it occurs to me one could ply ones devotional expertise to ministering through blog pages, just stating principles on what it takes to make sense, meaning, purpose to life. A little more logic to heart, but mainly looking at long term outcomes. What then does one toil at? What energy required? Is there back up, network (of course)? Can this venture toward mental health? (I know I can have problem with pushing my world view) There are ways some groups NEED pressure. Maybe I need to look away, because their ways may not be my ways, but I can not guarantee my apprehension nor aspirations are 100% determined to be the truth or true result. So, wing it… go medium reserved, unexcited of events. Problem is I see the usefulness of some evil. I have not been brought forth for the favor of force. I side-stepped concern and panicked reactionary emotions from war and politics, by accepting a view that it was soon to be over, bringing a messianic new age to mankind and an end to sickness and even death. Man was I a sucker for that! But is that a bad thing? The same I wanted for myself, I desired for everyone. That is what I was taught growing up and in early adult hood. Local social unrest was enough for me 1960s and ’70s Oakland California. But I was in California, a little more advanced, dreamy and revolutionary. Well, particularly the Left here which always mostly sneer at the Right, but the problem with the right is they seem more concerned and qualified to make money. Well it does take MANY kinds to make the world run. And we all know what happens if we stop running…

To slow death
is to extend
torment
to ferment the accused
and
to neighbor, his enemy
to extend, to relief
to free the accused,
amen to sanity?
jezebel is ruse?

I don’t bebop
I do gemini
I don’t do death trips
I do hard harmony
some day
say me a prayer
the devil s on the loose
avoid his stare

song: “We won’t stone you in the streets!”

[Have you ever noticed, how like, some people,
are like, really BORN stoned!?]

DT man… the hep crowd don’t get you any more!
Keep cool and don’t clutter it with small stuff
have fun, steal a little
public money
keep it tight but
hang loose
you know how much
fun and out of control
can get.
Remember a great defense is
a HUGE offense.
hope those pay packets
get deposited properly

Hey, you could raise your pay to
pay off the national debt
by giving it back to the people
let them work out
the heinous math.

remember the greatest defense
is a greater offensive tackle the issues
headfirst after mighty fist
so heroic
so teutonic
so grabby!

Woe King Midas
must you remind us
everything
you touch
is loss

I’m not out here
for the good of my psyche or soul
I’m not sure I like
all the rules I could choose
to ignore.
Not all that matters…
…is gold

but I’ve been that way before
in a mother time not
so long a go
where gentlemen were mental and
all the women fair
it was that way
in our vision of
these affairs
it would be understood
these were battles for good
even if our good was
stored up in our ancestors’
uncommon good

beware of purity
beware of grace
much more important
my face my face!

I need some fresh feet
I need a road that knows me
and invisible legs
that are always strong
with no powdered wigs and
no jails around (to hound me)

man hold that peace pipe
nah its upside down
heck I know the locals
they don’t mess around…
much!
ha ha ha

jes listen to that chug chug
pulling in the yot tub
breathing the whole thing in
waving the tall flag
on rigging thats been sprung
i’ll give it to the CAL TRAN
that interchange
is a son of a gun

went escaping from the city
noise and havoc had me wrung
out the door to freedom
wrest from clutch of babylon

alternatives advance
the quiet healing moments
that sometime stretch too thin
reveal that tinnitus within

I wanted some thing more permanent
much more adequate
before I cashed it in

lord i don’t have money to go
preaching in the church
I seek the wisdom to know
when I’ve found
security and some fun

my preaching was proof
of their free will

just remember
I never convert on a first date

I’m a traveler
every 54 years I migrate to another county

the situation worked this way on me

What if I do, you know, think big thoughts,

I’m not sure I believe them, and what good is that?

And what if I don’t reveal them , then is hope lost?

I’m not working at being neurotic but, that’s the ghost

Theres just this place I’ve loved that is gone,

that is lost to a wrong guess

a mis-informed regret on this far shore

not sure what he meant

when he said

we got MORE

and I should have known better

but in fact I did.

HJM – January 12, 2009 at 11:52 PM

I don’t watch much television so Jason Silva is new to me. I learned of him via a post on Facebook. These days forms of edutainment seem to be the most used means of education.

Maybe we should be selective in which factories we bring back. Are they loose on environmental standards enforcement? What about labor unions? Fair wage could bring up the cost of production…are corporation willing to reduce their cut? Or are they just jerking the markets around? Property values go up? But fewer can afford them?
So many questions, so many factors. Are we going to be surprised the prisons are full again? Human misery is “good economy”? What did you fight for when you were 20 and 30 something? My generation wanted peace (well my local soft leftist high-school did) and more “field trips” out to the wildly relevant -Steam Anchor Brewery- No, we didn’t get to drink it (school accreditation at stake)
I guess we weren’t all that radical. and then again my first orientation with my new classmates was a field trip to Big Sur (why the school chose there,…I don’t remember because flow of time space changed, this was the occasion where I first experienced effective cannabis high whereas all previous exposure to the herb was dull and no more buzz than a cigaret (them foolish White Boys in Alameda) Further – more, on returning from the trip to Big Sur (where I sanded the top of my feet by standing stoned in the edge of surf) same classmates begged a sleep-over in the classrooms since many lived far away and would have to turn right back around the next morning to attend classes. I don’t recall