The Left Column

Politics for Poets

Season of Emmanuel

Being down hearted is hard. So lighten up those hearts and be glad! easy to say. hard to do.

more excerpts from my newest novel:

commentary: the rebuilding of a building, a laudable idea

commentary: the rebuilding of a building that was used by ancestors for religious purposes was discussed in an on-line article. Following that were a collection of hate-thought posts about how, in past wars, various political people 'failed' to blow up other buildings of a different faith. There are many different faiths. And the people who hate, and discuss the way that things should have been destroyed (but that were not, thankfully) are the ones who really demolish the sacred temple of whatever faith. The knee-jerk urinary discharge of hate into a comments section of a newspaper may be just some sick-minded bot process concept: they draw out the ones who would hate the haters so much to say what they really think. In other words the hate-bot people might not even be real. The whole thing might just be a data collecting activity to find people who would be so motivated to comment on the imagined hate of others. Rebuilding a synagogue is a laudable thing to do, repairing a grave, remarking a grave stone when it wears away and you can't read the names anymore. There are plenty of other synagogues where there isn't anyone there left to pray in them. There are trust funds that run the place, fully endowed, and the heirs of the place feud about it because they want to have access to that source of capital. What was imagined to be a positive force for goodness and life instead becomes an opportunity for great sin. This kind of thing happens in any institution where great sums are allowed to accrue with little oversight, and in terms of religious institutions it can happen to any church, synagogue or mosque. It is just a sad fact: a display of how humans are corruptible by power and money. And so be not troubled by those on the internet who build a monument to hatred and pile stone upon stone of condemnation and slanderous accusations against whole populations of others. These people mirror back hatreds that they imagine are coming from other people. But they are only seeing these others through the lens of their own conceptions. And if their conceptions are wrapped a little bit by constant barrage of hate, or in the case of the Israelis in Israel (this little article was on JP daught calm) real rockets barraging on them from people who hate in a more anti-active way (I was going to say pro, but putting hate out there is very anti. I MOD-Down the whole leadership of that hate-filled organization that, of late, has been terrorizing widows, orphans, and everybody else within a 70 mile range of their ghetto.) It's a sad world. There are people who take the time to fill all comments sections with hate. Even for a story of news-release quality about anonymous generosity. They turned the conversation over to the idea that it would be OK to blow up . . . well it isn't their own hatreds and misconceptions that they want to blow up. That would be better: blow up your own hatreds. Demolish your own knee-jerk stupidities. Stop building a false temple of hate-stone-hard-falsehoods which becomes an obstacle course for anyone around you. But, again, maybe so rival government has mirrored the laudable JP daught calm site and has filled up the comments section with ridiculous parody points of view as a propaganda war against Israelis? Probably not. It's probably posted by someone who is sad and weak and probably shut in. It is probably someone who has 'good reason' to feel that things aren't going the way that this person would like. Most of the people who read the article don't even go to the post section. They say 'bless the generosity.' It can be anything, anywhere on the Internet where there are comments. These things can often be inserted by minds disconnected to the reality of what is

Page of Stones

These things can often be inserted into these comments sections by minds disconnected to the reality of what is happening on the street in the place where the newspaper is published. In this case Jerusalem. And lets be fair here: Jerusalem is a place, Zion especially, where there is a lot of fixation on, and what some would call devotion to, a specific spot, a 'sacred' space. Giant stones there are piled atop each other as a foundation. It is a spot that seems to call out and say 'here is where the holy thing needs to be.' And there were temples built there. Temples built there so far in the past far before King David decided to build one and there were people who looked to him and said: "you're not that favored of The Lord, Davy Boy. Don't you build that, you blood thirsty guy,you." So his kid did. Vanity vanity and chasing after wind.

What other temples get built in the Bible? There is that one that descends from on high at the end of time: New Jerusalem. Of course that isn't part of the Jewish Bible. The outer temple, the one that manifests in the world, is one that tries to reflect the inner workings of the human mind. It is a manifestation that people create. And it is not the metaphoric piling on of stones. It is a real construction made by human hands. It is constructed with the concept that it is somehow a vessel. But why would a vessel be needed for what is proposed to be contained? Why would G_d need a . . . containment field? I put a question mark here (?) because I mean no offense for saying these things. It is not really understandable why G_d would need to be contained. Some say that the ark was a radioactive device; or, at least, it was a giant capacitor or a battery. It certainly was configured so that it did not short-to-ground. And when people went near it, that ark is said to have caused quite a show and even killed people. Was it electrocution that killed these hapless victims? It certainly seems to have been a form of energy storage device. If that is the case then it was a form of car battery technology possibly. Of course this is being skeptical and disbelieving that the arc actually was a resting place in which G_d was contained. Given the strange and unusual nature of that arc, and the fact that it is 'missing' these very many years, it is interesting to be a skeptic in these matters. I was thinking as an agnostic on these things. I do not really know. I can only speculate. If there is a special building needed to contain the special person (who is praiseworthy,) a special building which is his home, then how would I know about it? At the point of conversion people are given a great gift of belief. The skeptic thinks of that as a curse. OK: I've gone off topic.

And so: building, tearing down. These are all things that humans need to do in order to construct the correct structures that help us to really live our lives. Many people try to build, and they do it with a sense of strong Beneh (charity). And then there are those who, when they witness this great giving of others, always have to put it into the terms of partisanship and rhetoric of causes or political factions. Every positive act is discussed in terms of negative acts that didn't happen. It is understandable how some will feel great enmity towards others who they perceive as being the agents of terror. But the need to then snark hate-thoughts off into the comments section of other people's websites: that is something that I don't understand. I guess I understand it in some sense. They feel hatred towards their enemies and they express it constantly. It must be hard to live in a war zone like they do. But that is maybe not even what it really is. Maybe the JP daught calm is being proxied by the enemies of Israel and hate-bot insertions put in it? Well, I know that is just a playful (and malicious) thought.

These are notes, they are only notes. If you come upon this page this is not a final draft. I am not piling stones of misconception in a forward facing place. This page is akin to a quarry: a big rock pile. Any stone here unsuitable for the final structure might be placed anywhere else. Do not haul those stones off and hurl them back at me. I am not giving these stones to you. You must take them from me. I am not saying to take these stones. It might be best to leave these stones here.

It would be nice if people could be inspired to work for peace. But we don't want peace, the kind that only lasts a few years. We want lasting peace. And how does that happen? There are so many people in the world nosing into everything that everyone else does. And then there are those who don't care at all how they stink up the whole world with their bad ideas. People are moved to try and 'change' things. But that same kind of person, the one who is compelled to move the stone, isn't always able to lay in rest while things remain static becuase the system is working as expected. The night watchman who starts a fire so he (or she) can find it an thus, through 'heroism' of putting out the fire, be deemed a 'hero.' How is that different than political personalities that build a 'fiscal cliff' and then joyously watch as they herd the public off of it.

Here is a clue about that: if there were a real cliff, like say at Yosemite or like places way up in the mountains of Vermont, the only people that would go there would either be guided there, or have hiked in afer being taught about the dangers of falling and killing oneself. I've seen it, in the cold, out at the edge of the frozen lake where land ends, a single frozen carcus of a young deer having been spooked out there by someone, the ice leads off towards Grand Isle and Mallets head. No one passes by without leaving somekind of a mark. That one had left it's whole carcas. I was only able to go there by walking along the frozen shore.

That was a real deer. It was really frozen and dead there at the end of Red Rock Point, laying there fodder for what ever feline or canine or carrion lover would happen by. That deer had fallen off of the cliff at the end of Red Rock Point. It is a real cliff. It isn't very high. It's not like the cliffs at Yosemite or other places.

If you are out alone in the wilderness and you come upon places that drop off usually humans have planned ahead to deal with the situation. The times that the necessity of scaling the difficult climb mandated a new category of career for militarily oriented guys. Guys (and, of course gals) can all learn how to scale the steep heights. In terms of fiscal things, if we want to extend the rediculous methaphor or analogy of thee 'fiscal cliff', there ought to railings along that precipice. And also, I suppose that it ought to be cordoned off. There ought to be strong speaking gals (and, of course guys) tasked with shoeing away the public from this terrify edge. Where there is no footing, where the slope is loose and one would slide down or tumble over the edge, there ought to be strongly spoken warning about amatures, without the proper gear, ambling down towards the edge where the ease of slipping and falling can happen all at once. Yes, there ought to be park rangers there and fully tasked, with the full force of Federal authority, to prevent idiots from falling in. Or just hapless people who stumble too close. Or someone who has brought their spouse to that far away edge as a way to let it all go down deep and in it. Stay away from the crumbling edge.

But like Navy Seals tasked with scaling great cliffs to route out nazi's and their captive minions (like happened in Italy during the 1940's), there are people who are equiped to go over that edge. They are called rock climbers! And so, at the fiscal cliff, there ought to be accomplished Economists and Rethoriticians, Statesmen all! (and some of them are women). Those great minds, who have been elevated by election to great status as servants of the public trust, are akin to the trained rock-scaling Marines and Seals. No amature ought to be allowed near the place. But, don't worry, it's a human created precipice. And if people get hurt the world has a system of accessing the liability and culpibility of people who amble out into wildernesses without proper groud support and base-camp aware coleauges who can assist and send search and rescue to save the sorry saps who might get stuck out on a polemical precipace, a grand hoodoo way up high without access to a way down because you slipped and conked your head. I've seen them practicing this, for real, at Yosemite. they send in these giant helicoptors. Then brave rescuers descended down to where the simulated accident happened. They lowered a basket. The guy who was being simulated saved was hauled off of the top of the giant spire in a basket and up into the angel arms of the crew and piolet. This is what government, for real, provides as a service at our National Parks.

So if we are going to go on and on with this fiscal cliff analogy I expect that the officers of our government who are charged with the rescue efforts to prevent loss of life or limp due to a cliff that they, themselves, made . . . those officers should take as much caare as the California Highway Petrol would in leauge with the National Park Service or any one of the very many National Forests that permiate much of eastern California (and western Nevada).

If there were a highway that everyone used and then, all at once, the government decided to build it so that it would have a giant cliff at a part of it so that people would drive off of it and kill themselves . . . what would happen to the individuals that devised such a braindead (and deadly) scheme? We don't have such a thing with this so-called 'fiscal cliff'. No one is going to be driving into a river because tax rates change (lets hope not). But the idea that things are set up to be a disaster so that people will be forced to solve it is very idiotic. The idiots need to fix things before people get hurt through their engineering a system designed to fail. If engineers built a bridge the way that politicians and economists write tax laws then those engineers would probably end up getting manslaughter charges. Why does the public allow the politicians to not perform their jobs and provide a consistant tax code that doesn't willy-nilly spike up or down and make it very difficult for people to plan for the future?

The answer is obvious: look to the money. I can't spell it out because I don't want to go down into all the reasons why some people like it when other people fail. They want to be there to scoop up everything at pennies on the dollar prices.

The guy who lit the fire so he could be seen as a hero was a real guy at a company I once worked for. He was found out. If there are some in government now doing the same kind of thing, they, too, will be found out. Let's have it that it is just conspriatorially minded that these people would want to have the country 'drive over' the so called fiscal cliff. Let's hope that if these people do not provide a solid fiscal course for our future that the public holds them accountable. Hopefully the idea that some want it all to go to sh_t is just a conspiracy-leaning idea that is unfounded. Hopefully the parties involve will deal in good faith. Listening to what some of them say makes me think that some flirt with the idea of letting it all collapse, cutting the military budget, axing all kind of programs. Well, the government workers aren't axing their own salaries. You think that they would offer up that. But no. So if everyone else is out of work and it is only government employees that still have jobs . . . you know who ought to be ponying up that big old charitible helping hand? They can expect a lot of hungry relatives knocking on their doors.

  Less is more.

Dec 2, 2012

well . . .

I think I've blogged enough today.

Life goes on.

Thank Veterans profussly and unexpectedly!

~ OK Now.

 
How many days
  in dream
   I sang your
      praise
   when you
   were not even
   by my side.
 what do I know of love
    except what I
   left behind?
 How many 
    nights in
     dream
   I tossed around
   to think of you
    as gone
  and searching far
    outside the house
 and way beyond
     the lawn?
 Out in those woods
   down the long endless slopes
    from here to
    far away
   across the hills,
    across the farms,
   and far across 
      the bay?
 How many ways I say
    to sing your praise
 that Jesus Saves
     and let the raves
   of lovers 
   keep  on raving on.
     Outside the forestt
     outside of time
    what matters
  and is not gone.

  I sing your praise!
  Hey, Jesus Saves!
    Hallalueah
       all night long
     Hallaleua
          all night long
   Howdy ho!
        all night long
    holy holly holy grove
        all night long! 
here is a song fragment:
 
  You know that Jesus
  isn't just at the
   deep end of the pool.
 What you say right now
   is what you testify
  you're an inspired
    loving fool.

  You know that hard truth
   isn't easy
    to testify to power.
  what seems to them just passing
    lasts forever if an hour.

  You know that swiming
    in the love of God
  always brings you to the shore
 if you need a shore
    to get to.
 You might be seeking 
     something more.

   Love is hard
     to do right
    when you get it wrong.
   And what you learn
  about the Lord
   can't be condensed 
    into a song.

  You know that Jesus
   doesn't need you
 calling out his name.
    but that that don't
      mean he doesn't like
  so keep calling
     just the same.

  Love is hard
     like the edge that cuts
  a necessary razor.
      And sometimes the one
   who is most concerned
    has his weapon
   as a tazor.

 Tazor of truth
    aloof
  and without proof
 if you get it wrong
     if they call you a goof
 if they tell you you were duped
    and made to seem as a fool;
  if they tell you you are nothing
 without them saying that you are cool;
  fear not, young warrior,
      ya, maybe you're not all right.
 But you know enough
    to stand your ground
   and chase off a fight.
 You know enough 
  to walk proud
     because you try to get it right.
  And if there is darkness
     and needing illumination
  you'll be the one that has the light.

 

  
  








Wake up!

The solution to bad governance is
   good people.