Sunday, May 31, 2015

dos animales


el oso y la zorra
el prado, la montaña

el oso y la zorra
el río y la luna

la zorra y el oso
el grito, la mirada

el oso y la zorra
el vino y la uva

(inspirado por una obra de Greg Romero)


the bear and the fox
the meadow, the mountain

the bear and the fox
the river and the moon

the fox and the bear
the cry, the stare

the bear and the fox
the wine and the grape


Sunday, March 29, 2015

The Pacing Panther in the Shabby Cage

 It’s not your fault that you were born into a system that your biology did not evolve to accept: the stress, the isolation, the fear that seizes your solar plexus as you see time gallop swiftly away and your feeling you do not have enough time to do all you must do. The rage that ricochets within you – resembling those clips you've seen of the inner workings of the atom, with protons and electrons whizzing and colliding - a rage that surges in you most as you work a job that offends you on multiple fronts. 

You understand that your job, in some way direct or indirect, is furthering the assault on the planet.  You feel humiliated to know you are so much greater and more vast than the idiotic assembly of actions your job encompasses.  And finally, you sense that the entire notion of working to “get ahead” - as the US President constantly puts it - is mad.  Get ahead of whom or what? Your fellow earthlings?  Your friends?
Yourself? The present? The natural world and its perfectly calibrated cycles?  It seems the proposal of a moron or a criminal.

You are the pacing panther in the shabby cage, but with the added insult of having to hear that the cage is not there - and that, therefore, your stress, isolation, fear, and rage are the result of an illness you must harbor.  They are not. They constitute the life force extant within you -  the trajectory of 3.5 billion years of life and of what Arthur Schopenhauer termed “the will to live.”

Monday, March 23, 2015

Two Kinds of Learning

The point of schooling in the West is largely to teach children how to bear doing things that they do not like doing. It is a quality they must possess in order to work a job they will more than likely dislike when they are adults. 

The educational experience of children in  traditional hunter/gatherer societies does not consist of this.  Child rearing and education in such societies - as the psychologist Peter Grey has been pointing out in his wonderful series of recent blog posts for Psychology Today -  is, in fact, as distant from this teaching of children to suffer through tasks which they loathe as one can imagine.  The words “freedom” and “exploration” more properly describe the development process children experience in these societies.


I imagine that this is because the ability to daily suffer through tasks one finds loathsome, in environments one finds hideous and alienating is not an ability adults in traditional hunter/gatherer societies desperately need.  In the mass society of the industrialized West, conversely,  it may be the most crucial quality for an an adult to possess.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

GMO'S, Mass Society and Our Place in the World

Genetically modified plants represent the continuing effort to convert the world into one gigantic consumerist science experiment. The pursuit is insane. It is the imposition of the soulless dictates of mass consumer society onto the DNA of our fellow organisms.

Contrary to the claims of the priests of mass society, homo sapiens evolved within the larger Community of Life of the planet. Our persistent denial of this fact and our persistent placing of ourselves in some realm superior to our fellow organisms now spells our doom. Precious little time remains to disavow ourselves of this notion.

A future founded upon the radical manipulation and desecration of the natural world is a future that creates its own demise.


Monday, March 2, 2015

sweet home

4 dudes
on stratocasters
take turns
soloing
in front
of a giant
unfurled
confederate flag,
notes
and phrases
brought west
from africa 
on clandestine
ngoni
and
mbira

Friday, February 27, 2015

On the Non-randomness of Mass Shootings in the United States

 Mass shootings in the United States are not at all "random."  On the contrary, they happen regularly and consistently.  People go berserk not inexplicably, but because they exist in environments with insufficient love, support and meaning.  They exist in environments ruled by market values, by the deification of the commodity and, finally, they exist in environments defined by the commodification of the human soul.  In such a context, people will continue to go berserk and commit such atrocities. 

 Also in such a context, politicians' declarations of shock and expressions of grief ("... we will keep the family in our thoughts and prayers..") hold no actual meaning.  If they meant these words, they would be seeking to transform this country into a place that exists within the larger community of life of the planet and  into a place that values human to human and human to non-human relationships over  commercial transactions.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

BEINGS

Not only
HUMAN beings
but
BAT beings
WOLF beings
BEAR  beings
PANTHER beings

BUMBLE BEEings
ANT beings
MAYFLY beings
WORM beings

SWALLOW beings
SPARROW beings
EGRET beings
STORK beings

CRAB beings
CRAYFISH beings
URCHIN beings
CLAM beings

MINT beings
THYME beings
LAVENDER beings
SAGE beings

all  
BEING
transforming  
themselves
across time
and space
like us