Somber Dignity

I used to be shy.
You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.
Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit
on my mat and pray.

Now children run through
and make faces at me.

~Rumi

Lovely

 

(Click Image to Imbiggen)

Bob the Angry Flower is on the web at AngryFlower.com.

Sam Gaillard

Jack Kerouac mentioned Slim Gaillard in On The Road, so I looked him up.  He's mesmerizing:

 

Jack and Rita

Excerpted from On The Road by Jack Kerouac, ©1957:

Then I went to meet Rita Bettencourt and took her back to the apartment. I got a her in my bedroom after a long talk in the dark of the front room. She was a nice little girl, simple and true, and tremendously frightened of sex. I told her it was beautiful. I wanted to prove this to her. She let me prove it, but I was too impatient and proved nothing. She sighed in the dark. "What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls. 

"I don't know," she said. "Just wait on tables and try to get along." She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn.I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad. We made vague plans to meet in Frisco. 

My moments in Denver were coming to an end, I could feel it when I walked her home, on the way back I stretched I out on the grass of an old church with a bunch of hobos, and their talk made me want to get back on that road. Every now and then one would get up and hit a passer-by for a dime. They talked of harvests moving north. It was warm and soft. I wanted to go and get Rita again and tell her a lot more things, and really make love to her this time, and calm her fears about men. Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk-- real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.

I don't think the problem is with "God" or "society."  I think the problem is that Jack is a dishonest, selfish jerk.

Wonderfully Chaotic

 John Lydon on politics, excerpted from his his autobiography Rotten:  No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, ©1994:

Around the time of the punks, socialism wasn't working in England. The Labour party were unimpressive and tedious. The Conservatives, the same. It fluctuated from one party to another, four years of this, four years of that, and you wouldn't notice any change. Young people-- in fact, most people-- just walked clean away from politics as if it were a waste of time. A cloud of apathy had truly set in. Of course, that's exactly the environment the Conservatives want. That's when they can strut their stuff using prejudice, hate, family values, all the nonissues of political life. Grim.

—•—

I'm not a revolutionary, a socialist, or any of that. That's not what I'm about at all. An absolute sense of individuality is my politics. All political groups that I'm aware of on this planet seem to strive to suppress individuality. They need block voting numbers. They need units. It doesn't matter if it's left or right, sometimes the tactics are the same. The things these people strive for is mass uniformity. The feminist movement became oppressive very quickly. Gay liberation is not after equal rights at all. It's to be accepted as this one great lump. If a homosexual inside that movement dares stray away from what they term as the norm, then they victimize that person. It's replacing the same old system with a different clothing. I hate all these groupings, any kind of gathering like that. It destroys personality and individuality. Maybe a roomful of people having very different ideas is chaotic, but it's wonderfully chaotic, highly entertaining, and very educational. That's how you learn things-- not by everybody following the same doctrine. I don't suppose my kind of world could really exist at all because there are so many sheep out there that need leaders. Let them bleat among the flock, that's not for me. I'd rather be the lone sheep out there fending off the wolves. It's much better. When you grow up in a working-class environment, you're supposed to stay inside and follow the rules and regulations of that little system. I won't have any of that. It's all wrong, equally bad.

Only a Shape

 “An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.”  ~Madeline Miller, in Circe ©2018

Good

"More harm is done under guise of goodness than ever realized by foul deed or evildoer.  Nevertheless, I wish I was good."  ~Herbert E. Huncke

And that reminded me of this:

"You made me forget myself.  I thought I was someone else-- someone good."  ~Lou Reed

Full lyrics HERE.

Live a Little

 

What's That?

(Click Image to Imbiggen)

Man Looking At Something

by L.S. Lowry, 1962

Condemned to Repeat It

 

Old Women Knitting Quilts

 Excerpted from John Lydon's autobiography Rotten:  No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, ©1994:

I'm not a social snob; I can move inside any group and feel comfortable, I don't care if it's old women talking about knitting quilts. It's all about human beings. I can find that as fascinating as anything else. Sid, Paul, and Steve had a very hard time understanding that. "It's not rock 'n' roll." Of course it is! Rock 'n' roll is supposed to relate to everybody! If everybody isn't involved, then it's sectarianism. The people who condemn and slag you off do so because they have little knowledge of you. If you confront them and give them that knowledge, things will change. That's the whole point of living! You can learn off each other and enjoy.

Aunt Rose

Aunt Rose
by Jim Culleny
via 3QuarksDaily

… the last
20 yrs
of her life
after her
mother
died
she sat
at that
kitchen
table
hating
the irish

drinking
scotch
mist

&
clipping
obits

loneliness
spread out
in front
of her

like
family
jewels

&
now
years
later
i remember
i had no
kindness
for her

Every Single Thing

 

I wished I lived someplace where people wrote things like this then hung it on a wall for everybody to see.

In East Texas all we get is profanity and crude drawings of genitalia.

Oh, Well

 Somewhere in heaven, Bob Welch is grinning ear to ear:

Cubes

 

This is one of those images that has been posted and reposted for so long that the original artist's credit has been lost.

It's a shame, because it's a clever idea.  It's surprising how many foods are recognizable from a small sample of color and pattern.

Tom T Hall (1936-2021)

Full lyrics HERE.

There's no one genre of music I prefer over another.  When a song packs an emotional punch, that's what attracts me.  Tom T. Hall was a master at that.

There's a nice write up of the man and his career posted to Variety, which you can read HERE.  Here's an quote from that article I thought was particularly nice:

“The first guy who came up with a religion was sitting out under a tree by himself. So I thought the best way to get a real good religion is to go out and sit under a tree by yourself and let it all happen. …  Great idea. So, I have a weird kind of religion. But I guess it’s a good one. I’m gonna find out some day.”

Happy?

 Nuha Kahn writes of "toxic positivity" for The Walrus:

It’s an experience most people can relate to: forcing a smile, holding back tears, saying “I’m fine” when you’re far from it. In a survey by Science of People, over 75 percent of respondents said they had rejected or ignored their emotions in an attempt to be happy.

Trying to live through a glossy Instagram filter can shame us away from experiencing real emotions.

You can read the whole article HERE.

We've been taught to separate our emotions by category; happiness is "good," and almost every other emotion is "bad."  And that's a mistake.

I'd much rather be happy than sad, but there are times when sadness is the appropriate way to feel.  That's when you lean on your friends.

There's a line in the Bob Dylan song "Forever Young" that I keep coming back to:  "May you always do for others, and let others do for you."  Everybody wants to be in the first category, not the second; but paradoxically, sometimes letting others help you helps them.

(Pete Seeger did an amazing cover of that song, which you can listen to HERE.)

Choke

 

“Don’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me: choke those little bad days. Choke ‘em down to nothing.”  ~Tom Waits

And I Feel Fine

 Roger Crisp asks the question, "Would extinction really be so bad?":

In recent decades it has often been said that we are living at the “hinge of history”, an unprecedented period during which a catastrophic event such as rapid climate change, nuclear war or the release of a synthesised pathogen may bring an end to human and perhaps all sentient life on the planet.

Most people think that such extinction would be bad, in fact one of the worst things that could happen. It’s plausible that the process leading to various forms of extinction, and extinction itself, would be bad for many of us, given that our lives are, overall, good for us and that, all else being equal, the longer they are the better. But it’s also plausible that extinction would be good for some individuals…

You can read the whole article at New Statesman, HERE.

I suppose an asteroid will get us in the end, but I think humans will survive climate change.  It's only the advanced civilizations that will collapse.

When the pandemic hit, the supply chains for toilet paper and furnace filters collapsed.  That was inconvenient.  But what happens when the supply line is cut for food, water, medicine?

That's when people die on a massive scale.

In that scenario, which I see as inevitable at this point, the civilizations that survive will be the Third World countries where people still know how to grow their own food and bind their own wounds.  A civilization of specialists isn't going to make it.  There will be no post-apocalyptic demand for hedge-fund managers and lawyers.

Years ago, then president (and still idiot) George W. Bush said that he wasn't concerned about climate change, because he believed that someone in the future would invent something that would save us all.  And he was sort of right, because the technology exists to eliminate fossil fuels and replace them with green alternatives.

It's not going to happen, though.  Then president (and still idiot) Donald Trump gave huge subsidies to the coal and oil industries in a desperate attempt to keep them profitable.  Current president and idiot Joe Biden recently gave a huge subsidy to the coal industry and has called on OPEC to increase oil production.

So we're doomed.  I think the current generation will be mildly inconvenienced, the next generation will be majorly inconvenienced, and then it all goes to hell.

So it goes.

17

 

There are some television shows, like Seinfeld and The Office, that are dialogue-driven.  They're great if you like clever wordplay or quoting lines.  They lend themselves easily to memes.  

But the shows I really like are ones like The Andy Griffith Show; big on heart.  Nobody even tries to create shows like that anymore.  It's a lost cause.

The problem is time.  The Andy Griffith Show had twenty-seven minutes of show and only three minutes of commercials; some episodes of The Big Bang Theory are only seventeen minutes long.  My favorite Andy Griffith episode, "Man in a Hurry," has a lovely scene where Andy and Barney quietly sing a favorite gospel song together while they relax on the porch.  TBBT could never do that-- with only seventeen minutes, they have to cut to the chase.  Recite your line, cue the laugh track, and cut to commercial.

You lose a lot that way.

Two Quick Thoughts on Afghanistan

1. The Afghan government had over 400,000 soldiers-- an insane amount for such a small country-- and the Taliban had only about 58,000.  That's nearly a seven to one numerical advantage without even factoring in superior weaponry and an air force that flew unopposed.  The government could certainly have defeated the Taliban if they had wanted to.
2. The occupation of Afghanistan was ostensibly a NATO operation, but I didn't see any European countries raise their hands and offer to take over the responsibility. 

Soul Got Happy

In his latest offering, Reprise, Moby reimagines and remixes his older songs for performance by an orchestra.  When it works, it really works:

Full lyrics HERE.

Moby seldom tours anymore, and that's a shame.  I can only imagine how immersive the experience would be to hear this performed live.

Prophecies

 Excerpted from the article "Fear of Math" by Ashutosh Jogalekar, posted to 3 Quarks Daily:

But I don’t want to digress from the bigger lesson that I learnt and which I have tried to communicate to students I have met over the years. This is that being “bad at math” has very little to do with innate intelligence and everything to do with psychology and self-confidence. The vast majority of us can be reasonably good at math if we try, and some of us can be very good. Unfortunately a bad teacher can hobble that self-confidence while a good teacher and self-motivation can restore and inspire it. But the most important thing is to believe in yourself, have confidence and try, and discourage your family from joking around too much. That’s why I think parents should never allow their kids to believe that they are “bad at X”, whether X is math, music or sports. Self-fulfilling prophecies by definition have a way of coming true.

You can read the full article HERE.

History

"In the past I have been a cloud, a river, and the air.  And I was a rock.  I was the minerals in the water.  This is not a question of belief in reincarnation.  This is the history of life on earth."  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

And We Could Dance

 I think if Ian Curtis had lived, Joy Division would have been as big as the Talking Heads.  They were fresh and innovative, and doing things first that other bands later caught up with.

Full lyrics HERE.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

 Mona and I went to see the Aretha Franklin movie, Respect, yesterday.  It was unexpectedly boring.

Part of the problem is that hers really isn't a very inspiring story.  She was born wealthy and talented, by the age of 25 she had nine albums under her belt and a very lucrative touring career, then she switched record labels and had a lot of big hits.  The only obstacles she faced in her life were overcoming the consequences of her own bad decisions.

But more than that, it's just poorly written and very stereotypical.  The Black men are all abusive and promiscuous, the only Jew is smarmy and money grubbing, the White men are largely rednecks.

We saw this scene play out repeatedly:

Aretha:  "I want to do a thing!"
Record Producer:  "No!"
Aretha:  "I insist!"
Record Producer:  "Okay then!"

It just didn't ring true.

Two thumbs down.

Could Be Better

 

Savage Chickens by Doug Savage is on the web HERE.

and sigh

“I’m a very romantic person. I don’t mean romantic in a flowers and chocolate kind of way. It’s more like if it’s raining, I’ll go up to the window and press my nose against the glass and sigh at how beautiful it all looks.”  ~ Amy Winehouse

WHIP

First Simone Biles said she was overwhelmed by being the center of attention.  Next she said that she had inexplicably lost the ability to orient her body in space.  Finally she said that she was sad because her aunt died.

I don't know which one is the truth.  Maybe all of them, maybe none of them.  I can't imagine why an elite athlete would put in all the time and effort to get there, then pull out of the competition at the last minute.  Before this year I'd never seen it happen even once, but already in 2021 it's happened three times.

I know this, though:  mental illness is a privileges only the rich are afforded.

Simone Biles didn't have to give back any of her endorsement money when she refused to perform.  Her net worth is still measured in millions.   But imagine if the chips had fallen differently in her life: imagine that she worked in a grocery or retail store.

What do you think would have happened had she called in and said, "I'm sad and overwhelmed, so I'm not coming in today?"

She certainly wouldn't be on the cover of People magazine with the words "brave" and "courageous" emblazoned alongside her photo.  It's more likely she would have been unceremoniously kicked to the curb.

I'm not saying that's good or right.

I'm saying Wealth Has Its Privileges.

Web

 I found the image below posted without credit, and was unable to locate the artist's name.  It's a pity, because a spider web is not an easy thing to draw accurately.  I can tell the artist spent some time looking before picking up a pen and creating:

He's Here

 

"I see him in my dreams all the time.  I hear him when I'm on stage.  I would say I can't talk to him, but I can.  I don't miss him, he's here with me."  ~Bob Weir, on Jerry Garcia

I'm glad he has a connection that endured beyond death.  But I'm envious.

The people I've lost are just gone.  I don't feel their presence, they don't visit me in my dreams.

And I wish they did.

Wasted Time

 

Oliver Burkeman has written a book about distraction, Four Thousand Weeks.  Below is a very short excerpt dealing specifically with the dangers of social media:

What’s far less widely appreciated, though, is how deep the distraction goes, and how radically it undermines our efforts to spend our finite time as we’d like. As you surface from an hour inadvertently frittered away on Facebook, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the damage, in terms of wasted time, was limited to that single misspent hour. But you’d be wrong. Because the attention economy is designed to prioritise whatever’s most compelling – instead of whatever’s most true, or most useful – it systematically distorts the picture of the world we carry in our heads at all times. It influences our sense of what matters, what kinds of threats we face, how venal our political opponents are – and all these distorted judgments then influence how we allocate our offline time as well.

If social media convinces you, for example, that violent crime is a far bigger problem in your city than it really is, you might find yourself walking the streets with unwarranted fear. If all you ever see of your ideological opponents online is their very worst behaviour, you’re liable to assume that even family members who differ from you politically must be similarly, irredeemably bad, making relationships with them hard to maintain. So it’s not simply that our devices distract us from more important matters. It’s that they change how we’re defining “important matters” in the first place. In the words of the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, they sabotage our capacity to “want what we want to want”.

You can read a longer excerpt, and order a copy of the book if you like, from The Guardian.

Burn Baby Burn

 “You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”  ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov ©1880

ChooChoo

 I check the obituaries at Variety.com fairly regularly.  That's not as morbid as it sounds.

There are a lot of fascinating people who, although well known within the industry, are unknown to me.  Variety is a great resource to learn their stories.

Case in point:  Variety recently reported on the death of Charles Connor, who created a whole new style of drumming, "choo-choo," to fit the unique style of Little Richard.  You can read his story HERE, and hear his style below:

Neutrality

In an article posted to TabletMag.com, columnist Blake Smith argues for more neutrality in our lives.  Here are a few excerpts:

Conflict has all almost all our cultural heritage in its favor, Barthes complained: “the Western tradition is a problem for me in this respect … it makes conflict into a nature and a value.” That is, we are told both that life cannot be otherwise than a cacophonous clash of opposing views, one of which must triumph—or, more radically, that it is a universal struggle among competitive individuals, who strive to dominate all others. But we are also asked to see this “natural” situation as somehow desirable, and those who perform most effectively within it as possessing exemplary qualities. Our heroes are the warrior, the entrepreneur, and the activist, not the neutral parties. Neutrality appears cold, lifeless, effeminate, weak, and suspect.

•

Such sweeping polemical binaries are not merely self-interested rhetorical ploys by shallow pundits, but essential structuring assumptions of the ethical tradition of the West. In the Gospels, Jesus warns that “whoever is not with me is against me,” refusing the possibility that one might receive his claims to being the Messiah with something other than either faith or hostility. That we could meet such a grandiose assertion with bemusement, skepticism, or simple indifference is denied to us in advance.

That doesn't mean we have to drift through life apathetic and uninvolved.  Refusing to pick a side in battles that don't matter frees up more time to engage in the fights that do.

You can read the article online HERE.

Purpose

 I like the idea that our purpose in life might not be Grand and Exulted, it might be something quite simple.

Will Rogers (might have) said, "We all can't be heroes, for someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by."  (source)

LunarBaboon, on the web HERE, put it like this:

We'll see what we find…

 

I don't know what the source is for that painting.  I'm guessing 60s or 70s pulp fiction.

But I couldn't look at that without thinking of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Eyes

I think this video appeals to me because it's the 80s viewed through the eyes of a 70s guy-- like me.  I also like the way he wails like an air raid siren at about the  2:43 mark.  :)

Full lyrics HERE.

Tragically Terrestrial

"I leaned back on my palms, looking at the Milky Way spilling in modest grandeur across the sky. A fountain of stars frothing over, surrounded by a mist of stardust. It looked like raw magic, like the glimmer I’d spy in a shadowy corner where the sun skimmed off invisible particles, reminding me there was a whole hidden world tucked inside this ordinary one. And it was up there every night, offering its mute beauty while we sat here with our heads down, tragically terrestrial."  ~Leah Raeder

No Hard Feelings

Just beautiful:

Full lyrics HERE.

You Do Not Have To Be A Monk

"Some people think there is a difference between mindfulness and meditation, but this is not correct. The practice of mindfulness is simply to bring awareness into each moment of our lives. Mindful living is an art. You do not have to be a monk or live in a monastery to practice mindfulness. You can practice it anytime, while driving your car or doing housework. Driving in mindfulness will make the time in your car joyful, and it will also help you avoid accidents. You can use the red traffic light as a signal of mindfulness, reminding you to stop and enjoy your breathing. Similarly, when you do the dishes after dinner, you can practice mindful breathing so the time of dish washing is pleasant and meaningful. Do not feel you have to rush. If you hurry, you waste the time of dish washing. The time you spend washing dishes and doing all your other everyday tasks is precious. It is a time for being alive. When you practice mindful living, peace will bloom during your daily activities."  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Done Your Job

 One of the hardest issues a pet owner has to deal with is expensive veterinary bills.  I like the way Gwen Cooper talks about it in this excerpt from her book Homer:  The Ninth Life of a Blind Wonder Cat, ©2015:

Animals are luckier than humans, because animals get to live in the now.  They do not fear death, or torment themselves with questions about what comes after.  No cat has ever desperately hoped for one more year of life so she can finally see Paris, finish her memoirs, or watch her grandchildren graduate from high school.  I genuinely believe that, if our animals could understand such things and talk to us about them, they wouldn't want us to spend ourselves into bankruptcy for the sake of trying to stretch fifteen years into sixteen, or even six years into twelve.

Cats know when they feel happy, when they feel comforted, and when they feel loved.  None of us ever knows how much time we'll have, and you weren't put in your cat's life to guarantee him a certain minimum number of years.  You were put in his life to provide him with happiness, comfort, and love.  If you have given your cat (or dog, or bunny, or horse, or guinea pig) a life built on these things, then you've done your job, and you've done it perfectly.

Deeply Held

 

(Click to imbiggen)

Stephen Notley's Bob the Angry Flower has really been on point lately.  You can follow the comic HERE.

Too

 "Every word has consequences.  Every silence, too."  ~Jean-Paul Sartre

It took me a while to find a source for this quote.  I eventually found it HERE.

It was originally written in French, so is has been translated in different ways-- but the translation above is accurate.

Homeostasis

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”  ~Maya Angelou