What was the point?

In this excerpt from Pilgrims:  A Wobegon Romance by Garrison Keillor ©2009, Norbert Norlander speaks of his mother's communication with the ghost of her son Gussie, an Allied soldier who was killed in World War II:

She said, 'How was it, Gussie?' He said, 'Not like you think it was.  But it's all over, it doesn't matter,' he said.  And then he'd moan.  That made her cry and he'd say, 'Ma, they all died and it didn't matter.  Nobody cared.  It didn't change a single thing.  The world goes on.  They just went up the road and died in the mud and the filth and then life went on and it didn't matter.  The Germans didn't want Italy and neither did we.  It was all for show.  A big opera except they shot the orchestra.  What was the point of it?'

Maybe it's hitting harder because I just finished Catch-22. 

But it seems like maybe the Nazis really were that bad, but maybe we weren't all that good.

Pointless

"If the point of having a society isn't to care for each other, to ease suffering and realize each life's potential, literally what is the point?  To hoard wealth?  To build empires on other people's throats?  Life is brief, nothing lasts.  Wealth and empires are pointless violence."  ~Michelle Allison, @fatnutritionist

Consistency

"If one contends, as we do, that the right of every fetus to be born should be protected by civil law and supported by civil consensus, then our moral, political and economic responsibilities do not stop at the  moment of birth.  Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us:  the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker.  Such a 'quality of life' posture translates into specific political and economic positions on tax policy, employment generation, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs, and health care.  Consistency means we cannot have it both ways.  We cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fiber of the society or are beyond the proper scope of government responsibility."  ~Cardinal Joseph Bernadin, from a lecture at Fordham University on December 6, 1983

I do not believe that life begins at conception; certainly independent, sentient life does not.

But it's especially galling when conservatives tear up at the thought of the poor little unborn babies, then build a wall to keep out the hungry, the fearful, the desperate.  In those cases I think "pro-life" really means "pro-patriarchy"; the point is domination and control, not the preservation of life.

I do not believe Cardinal Bernadin falls into that category.  I think he's genuine.

I can respect that, even though I disagree with him.

The Nature of Evil

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men.  Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”  ~Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials

Margaritaville

Raul Malo's version is just achingly beautiful:

 

Not

 

(clicking imbiggens)

Aplomb

"Most people are dead long before they are buried, that’s why funerals are so sad. Most people quit too easy, they accept the short end, they compete for small prizes and become small. I don’t expect everybody to be a genius but I never guessed that so many would rush to idiocy with such aplomb." ~Charles Bukowski

You See,

 

(Clicking Imbiggens)

All You Can Do

Grief will come to you.
Grip and cling all you want,
It makes no difference.
Catastrophe? It’s just waiting to happen.
Loss? You can be certain of it.
Flow and swirl of the world.
Carried along as if by a dark current.
All you can do is keep swimming;
All you can do is keep singing.

~ Gregory Orr

You Will Find Me

The Kingdom of God is inside you, and all around you…
It is not found in a building of wood and stone.
Split a piece of wood
I am there…
Under every stone,
You will find me…

~The Gospel of Thomas

There are certain quotes that you should never take at face value.  If you see one attributed to Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, David Bowie, or The Budda, always check the source.

The Gospel of St. Thomas falls into that category.  There doesn't seem to be a definitive, primary source, and every translation is different-- sometimes only slightly, sometimes not.

So take the version above as you would a poem.

¡vive!

Alguien me habló todos los días de mi vida
al oído, despacio, lentamente.
Me dijo: ¡vive, vive, vive!
Era la muerte.

Someone spoke to me every day of my life
to the ear, slowly, slowly.
He told me: live, live, live!
It was death.

~Jaime Sabines

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

There is a wonderful interview with African author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o available at Los Angeles Review of Books, online HERE.  Here are two notable excerpts, one about language and one about education:

I reject a hierarchy of languages where some languages assume themselves to be higher than others—especially within postcolonial countries or countries that experience any system of oppression whatsoever. At the same time, I believe that all languages are very unique. Each language, however small, has a unique musicality that cannot be replaced by another. I like to compare them to musical instruments. A piano has its own specific sound or musicality, which you cannot mistake for that of a guitar. You cannot destroy or diminish the importance of other instruments like the guitar or the violin and leave only the sound of the piano. When different instruments work together, they produce harmony, orchestras—just like languages.

···

We need the world to empower all people, not just a few. We have a tendency to think of knowledge as belonging to professors and writers, but everybody has their own knowledge. I’m a distinguished professor of English and comparative literature, but when my lock and key don’t work, I don’t think, Oh, let’s call my fellow professor for help—I find a locksmith. The same goes for the working person in the factories. Again, because of the nature of the society in which we live, the hierarchies of everything are also reflected in education and knowledge systems. We assume that some people have the knowledge and others have to kneel down and ask for the knowledge to trickle down to them. Instead, we have to find a system in which we harness the knowledge systems that people have. You don’t put knowledge up in hierarchies—it’s communication, a give-and-take. Then, we can truly advance.

Leo

“Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.”  ~Leonard Bernstein

It's a nice quote, but thanks to REM any time I see "Leonard Bernstein" I hear LEONARD BERNSTEIN!

Know what I mean?

Full lyrics HERE.

1958

"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling."  ~Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums ©1958

The problem with Jack Kerouac is that he will write something absolutely gorgeous, then follow it up a few pages later with a casual mention of how much he loves having sex with children.

I guess in 1958 that was considered acceptable, but it's certainly jarring today.

It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world..

In the 60s Lenny Bruce sneaked a stand-up routine about sniffing glue on to the Steve Allen show.  It turns out the censors were so out of touch they had no idea that sniffing glue was drug abuse.  They just thought it was an odd thing to do, like sniffing watermelons.

I used to hear this song on the radio in East Texas in the 70s. The only thing I can think of is that it's the same thing: they didn't really understand what they were playing:

 

Tell Everyone

 

1

"I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit."  ~Khalil Gibran 

And that reminded me of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Any Day Now

 

Full lyrics available at BobDylan.com.

Careful!

 

(Clicking Imbiggens)

 What would your nine icons be?

 

This Too

 Everyday is not an opportunity to improve yourself.
Some days are just there for you to accept yourself and look at the clouds.
This too is growth.
This too is rising.
Just existing is enough on some days.
The flowers do it everyday and make the world more beautiful just by being here.
So do you.

~ Nikita Gill

Go Ask

 Excerpted from MYCO ECO MYTHO Storytelling by Sophie Strand:

Go to the oak tree and ask for its story.  Go to the river and ask for its story.  Go to the goldenrod and ask without saying anything.  Ask with your nose, your belly, your eyes.

The answer won't always be words.  Won't always be sound.  Sometimes it will be a feeling in your body.  Sometimes it will be a smell.

Stories don't belong to human beings.  But human beings belong to stories.  Let's enter back into the complex, tangled work of letting go of authorship and letting ourselves be told.

Clutching

 Excerpted from The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano, ©2008:

Mathematicians call them 'twin primes':

They are pairs of prime numbers that are close to one another, almost neighbours, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from really touching.  Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43.  If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer.  You encounter increasingly isolate primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of numbers, and you become aware of the distressing sense that the pairs encountered up until that point were an accidental fact, that their true fate is to remain alone.  Then, just when you're about to surrender, when you no longer have any desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching one another tightly.

Not In Nor In

Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

~Kabir

Like Right Now

 Yes
by William Stafford

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon.  It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know.  That's why we wake
and look out-- no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

1,000,000

 

"Sería capaz de reconocer /Tu cara entre un millón de sueños…"  ~Elvira Sastre

 •

"I would be able to recognize / Your face among a million dreams…" ~Elvira Sastre

Focus

"'Let's think about how to get warm and browned bread' instead of 'Let's make a new toaster.' All kinds of possibilities can be created just by rephrasing it. This is an important way of thinking in most of my work. ”  ~Hiromu Nishiuchi

Communion

I like the idea of communion.

I don't mean in the limited, Catholic way of eating a wafer.  I mean more with everything, everywhere.

Acknowlege Cumbersome

There are certain words, like "cumbersome" and "acknowledge," that you don't often hear in songs.  So it really stands out when you do:

 

Words

“Goals like 'maximum happiness for the greatest number' are called double optimism in mathematics. Mathematically, it is known that the double optimum cannot be solved in general. In other words, in general there is no ideal state that maximizes two variables at the same time. Therefore, the greatest happiness of the greatest number is impossible from the beginning.”  ~Masayuki Osawa

I feel like this should be a conversation about policy, not about semantics.