Monday, June 30, 2008
I Think I Like What I Don’t Know About You – Tim Rogers
This whole day was useless
Next one's gonna be worse
Cos I'm wearing this badge of fortune like
A criminals wears a curse
I want to chase that rabbit right off the rails
And rip this metal keeping my mouth in check
But I need that muzzle like a razor and a stubble
Cuttin' all this history from my neck
Do you remember the gear I first saw you in
Eating Mexican in '92?
In between your folks and a birthday toast
It was black from your fringe to your shoes
I'm picking apples out of paintings
And making record covers in the sky
I missed my boat sitting here imagining
Your face when you cry
Don't be cruel, come on be sugar in my tooth
I think I like what I don't know about you
This whole day threw up some tickets
None I'd ever choose
The sky's so heavy it hangs like a beer gut
Spilling stuff on my shoes
Don't get me wrong, I ain't complaining
I still got my legs like a cheap Christmas tree
But if I got faith why am I so scared
Of everybody dying on me
Don't be cruel, come on be sugar in my tooth
I think I like what I don't know about you
Don't be cruel, come on be champagne in my shoe
I think I like what I don't know about you
Fish and chips stall down the south coast ready
I can show you what I'm worth
So set me up a bottle and salt and vinegar
If you get there first
I said if you get there first
Don't be cruel, come on be sugar in my tooth
I think I like what I don't know about you
Don't be cruel, come on be champagne in my shoe
I think I like what I don't know about you
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana
Chin Up
I'm pissed at you because you're supposed to be my bro'.
When your blood met mine we made a promise,
a promise that that we'd always sweep eachother's path.
A promise.
Between us.
A promise that's now little more than a hazy memory…
… oh, a hazy memory
and the asshole of this elephant in the room.
We worked fucking
hard
to get so hardly fucked, and I don't want another
lesson in how to suck it up.
I don't want another lip to chew.
I want a shoulder to cry on.
A shoulder whose veins carry my spirit
when I'm too weak to remember it inside.
I mean, c'mon motherfucker!
If I dared swallow the panacean advice you snore at me these days,
my chin'd be so 'up' that the rest of me might take flight!
Ah, wait on.
Is that it?
D'you reckon I'd be better off without my feet on the ground?
Better off forgetting the root of this longing?
Better flying in the cloud of dreams and belief with
everyone else fighting
for a payrise and an extra week's rest leave?
They're OK clouds, man.
Honest.
I'm happy for you.
Honest…
… but honestly, can't you hear us both looking for a place to land?
Don't you remember when it was you dreaming?
Way back before they started writing the stories for you.
Please tell me you do, bro'
'cause I'm not sure I do.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
When all is done
when all is done,
when our boyhood strivings
venture beyond their zenith,
when our grandest deeds
and our best laid plans
come to pass and leave us to remain,
when the wound of our youth
and the labyrinth it sews
is walked to its centre,
when all is done,
old friend, when all is done,
what will remain?
Monday, June 23, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Varieties of Religious Experience - William James
Siegfried Woldhek, 2008Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The More Things Change…
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint."
Hesiod - 800-720 BC.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Nathan Barley
Today I realised that:
My favourite character, Nathan Barley, from my old favourite website, tvgohome.com, has been
mIGHTY B OOSH
\http://www.tvgohome.com/
http://thegestalt.org/simon/cunt/ compendium!!
Friday, June 13, 2008
The Mystical Cookbook
"The only good function of a book on Zen should be to persuade the reader to engage in zazen.
In the same way, the only major purpose of a book on mysticism should be to persuade the reader to engage in mystical practice.
It is precisely like a cookbook: You give recipes and invite the reader to go out and perform the recipe, actually do it, and then taste the results. You are not supposed merely to learn the recipes, memorise the recipes, and then claim you're a cook".
Ken Wilber
Eye to Eye
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Who is he?
Is he waiting for civilisation or past it and mastering it?
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Skeletons - Ollie Brown
... and if we forgetall our ways
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Newton - William Blake
From Wikipedia: "Blake's Newton (1795) demonstrates his opposition to
the "single-vision" of scientific materialism: Newton fixes his eye on
a compass (recalling Proverbs 8:27) to write upon a
scroll which seems to project from his own head".
"Energy is Eternal Delight"
- William Blake
Spiritual - Johnny Cash (famously covered by Spain)
I don't wanna die alone
Jesus, oh Jesus
I don't wanna die alone
My love wasn't true
Now all I have is you
Jesus, oh Jesus
I don't wanna die alone
Jesus
If you hear my last breath
Don't leave me here
Left to die a lonely death
I know I have sinned
but Lord I'm suffering
Jesus, oh Jesus
If you hear my last breath
Jesus,
I don't wanna die alone
Jesus, oh Jesus
I don't wanna die alone
My love wasn't true
Now all I have is you
Jesus
Oh Jesus
I don't wanna die alone
Jesus
Jesus
All my troubles
All My pain
Will leave me
Once again
All my troubles
All my pain
Will leave me
once again
All my troubles
All my pain
Will leave me
once again
Once again
Monday, June 9, 2008
Smirking at the death rattles of Howard's failed culture war...
It's hard to miss the welcome return of socially democratic leadership since KRudd's landed. Despite a minor slip-up on the Bill Henson debacle (a debate which might have been a touch ultra vires for our reliably nerdy, Christian diplomat - especially with Killface in the Arts ministry), a questionable approach to the working conditions of his staff, and a mere mismanagement of media when Brendan Nelson thrusted his flimsy foil around FuelWatch (check out that double-headed alliteration!), I've been consistently feeling the relaxation reflex as our lower quadrants get the Rudd treatment.
After all those years of disquiet while Brows ruled the roost, the relative warmfuzziness of our honeymoon's almost daily dish of progressive policy initiatives is just what my doctor ordered... which is a stunning segueway into the point of this post: Today, reading my daily Capital Monitor feed from the Federal Government, I noted Nicola Roxon MP (Federal Minister for Health and Ageing) announcing that the Government is developing Australia's first ever National Men's Health Policy "in recognition of the fact that men often have poorer health than women, are likely to die earlier, and are at greater risk of suicide".
I was chatting about it with my friend Simon at lunch today, and we were both genuinely surprised to read in the press release that:
- Men are expected to live 4.8 years less than women
- Men are three times more likely to commit suicide
- Men experience 70 per cent of the burden of disease related to injury
- Men are over-represented in deaths related to HIV/AIDS.
- The health of Indigenous men is also significantly worse than for any other group in Australia, with an average life expectancy of only 59 years – some 20 years less than non-Indigenous Australian males.
I was a touch turned-off by the narrative of the press release. Notwithstanding my strong support for measures like this, I found it a little disheartening that the Government saw it necessary to explain the "specific health needs and challenges" of Australian men by reference to women. I'd feel far more comfortable with a position that merely recognises discrete gender observances which generate from census data without pitting it against the other.
But, my petty nitpicking on narrative issues aside, the broader import of the initiative is wonderful. To mark the start of International Men’s Health Week, the Minister is launching the paper "Setting the Scene: Developing a Men’s Health Policy for Australia".
As an initial downpayment on a broader approach, the Government will invest:
- $122,000 for the Men's Health Information and Resource Centre Men's Shed, University of Western Sydney;
- $80,000 for the Toowoomba Older Men’s Network (TOMNet);
- $150,000 for OZHelp Tasmania, a workplace program;
- $117,000 for INCOLink in Victoria to undertake suicide prevention with apprentices in the building and construction industry;
- $460,000 to help prevent suicide in men, through the National Suicide Prevention Strategy; and
- $95,000 to encourage men to see their GP.
That last measure rang alarm bells for me. As is well documented on this blog, I'm recovering from terrible bout of illness born largely from a (completely unconscious) macho zero-self care policy I held for many years. I was discussing it only yesterday with a friend of mine who at 30 has just been diagnosed with testicular cancer. He'd been noticing his testicle increasing in size for about a year, but maintained a "she'll be right" mentality while the cancer took hold. It's shocks like these which are bringing me so deeply into my own of late. Shocks which remind me, at this thankfully crucial crossroad of age and development, that I need to take good care of myself.
So why don't we? For me, it's been the recognition that I'm not superman, and don't have to be. The recognition that I can be loved without first performing. That I don’t need to overwork myself. That I don't need to be everything to everyone to receive affection and affiliation. It’s taken years for me to realise that, after being enculturated to cop it on the chin and keep moving. I feel deeply for all those who don’t realise it before they’ve crossed over the point of no return. I see them everyday, broken, alone, overworked, confused, and I’m scared of them – scared of what I could have so easily become.
Simon and I spoke at length today about a core manifestation of this take-no-prisoners approach to living: our respective bouts with work-addiction. It’s cost us both a lot more than we’d bargained (or earned in the process). Like me, he was depressed and anxious for three years while his clumsy pleas went unheard by those he loved most. Busted, broken, forgotten, we weren’t of any use to eachother either. We were both talking about the dismay we’d felt in coming to terms with the way a public sphere dominated by conservative social policy permeated our private spheres so silently. We both lamented the aspirational pressure we’d felt trying to fit a mould we weren’t raised fit in: demanding careers, failing families and financial uncertainty despite hitherto unimaginable incomes. We both buckled to the bemusement of our hypnotised friends and families. He said beautifully: “They didn’t know either, they didn’t have experience with ‘those words’ coming from ‘my voice’”.
But the conversation wasn’t all doom and gloom. He’s got help, like me, and things are on the up. We spoke about the how the promise of our new outlook, our new jobs, our new loves, our new leaders, our new dreams – of the new times – might actually finally bolster us in our new selves.
And then we paused together for a moment, for what seemed like the first time since we were boys (from Bankstown).
I Remember
what was get in the way
of what's next.
Oh, don't forget
that what's to come
hasn't come yet.
- Devendra Banhart
Friday, June 6, 2008
Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell
But the moment never came
All the billion other moments
Were just slipping all away
I must have been tripping
Were just slipping all away
Just ego tripping
I was wanting you to love me
But your love it never came
All the other love around me
Was just wasting all away
I must have been tripping
Was just wasting all away
Just ego tripping
I was waiting on a moment
But the moment never came
But the moment never came
- Flaming Lips
Light - Ben Lee
You are a dream I've had forever
You know exactly what I'm wishing
You're gonna love me into submission
Feelings I had
While at your feet
Those kind of things
I cant repeat
You're gonna fill their world
With light
You put the point in exclamation
You took a day to build a nation
You're gonna teach me how to live
You're gonna teach me how to give
Feelings I had
Well who can say?
I cant explain them
Anyway
You're gonna fill their world
With light
You're gonna fill their world
With light
- Ben Lee
Dirty Work
"Keith Thompson, in one of his essays, described himself at twenty as a typical young man "initiated" by women. His parents divorced when Keith was about twelve, and he lived with his mother while his father moved into an apartment nearby.
Throughout high school Keith was closer to women than to other men, and that situation continued into college years, when his main friends were feminists whom he described as marvellous, knowledgeable, and generous, and from whom he learned an enormous amount. He then took a job in Ohio state politics, working with women and alert to the concerns of women.
About that time he had a dream. He and a clan of she-wolves were running in the forest. Wolves suggested to him primarily independence and vigour. The clan of wolves moved fast through the forest, in formation, and eventually they all arrived at a riverbank. Each she-wolf looked into the water and saw her own face there. But when Keith looked into the water, he saw no face at all".
In all its requisite partiality, I found a deep resonance with this passage from Robert Bly's Iron John and a few recent stations on my journey, when I was reading it last weekend. He was discussing the absence of old man initiators in contemporary Western society, and the documented effects this has had on the acceptance, ownership and growth of a healthy masculine in young men.
I've felt such absence of support, and therefore a tiring defiance, around this in my life. My Father was a hard-working and loyal wage slave for thirty-five stiff-lipped years. He didn't have the nurturing, social evolution, financial backing, economic climate, access to diverse educational outlets, travel opportunities, and freedom I've been gifted, to know how to claim his golden ball from the Wild Man's cage. My Grandad had also fought that long, lonely battle, alongside the Gentleman's error of play-acting civility and denying the fire in his belly. That left me at the mercy of the well-intentioned, but fatally-flawed maternal therapy culture of the 1970-80's, and its enemy #1: Wild Men's wisdom.
"When women, even women with the best intentions, bring up a boy alone, he may in some way have no male face, or he may have no face at all. The old men initiators, by contrast, conveyed to boys some assurance that is invisible and nonverbal; it helped the boys to see their genuine face or being".
It's been an interesting battle. I've claimed my face, but with a very hard fought theft of the key from under my Mother's pillow. In that defiance, I had to battle many destructive forces on my ego and relationships, which were in addition to the road of trials that the standard birther of wild wisdom faces. I've looked for mentors in the wrong places, I've wound up desperate and listening to false prophets, and I've gone it alone to the edge of annihilation… and I've done it without trust or care. It's been a powerful journey of challenge, but I often wonder whether the battle needed to be as difficult as karma had decided.
Like suffering a simultaneous existential crisis and ego-dissociation/borderline regression without any therapy in the third world for half a year. Like spending $200,000 of savings on trying to mend old wounds and serve the highest ethic I could, and coming out with jack shit beyond knowing I've stayed true to my (longing) centre. Like having a broken jaw, dismantled back muscle structure, inverted spinal problems, and pinched nerves, and continuing to work to pay for my life against all alarm bells and warning signals to pack it in. Like doing fucking furniture removal work with a broken shoulder when I'm a practicing solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW! It's a question I can't seem to answer rationally… it was crazy… but it mended the alienation. I needed to run with my wolves.
"There's no sense in idealising pre-industrial culture, yet we know that today many fathers now work thirty or fifty miles from the house, and by the time they return at night the children are often in bed, and they themselves are too tired to do active fathering.
The industrial revolution, in its need for office and factory workers, pulled father away from their sons and, moreover, placed the sons in compulsory schools where the teachers are mostly women. D.H. Lawrence described what this was like in his essay "Men Must Work And Women As Well". His generation in the coal-mining areas of Britain felt the full force of that change, and the new attitude centred on one idea: that physical labour was bad.
Lawrence recalls his father, who had never heard this theory, worked daily in the mines, enjoyed the camaraderie with the other men, came home in good spirits, and took his bath in the kitchen. But around that time the new schoolteachers arrived from London to teach Lawrence ands his classmates that physical labour is low and unworthy and that men and women hold strive to move upward to a more "spiritual" level – higher work, mental work. The children of his generation deduced that their fathers has been doing something wrong all along, that men's physical work is wrong and that those sensitive mothers who prefer white curtains and an elevated life are right and always have been.
During Lawrence's teenage years, which he described in Sons and Lovers, he clearly believed the new teachers. He wanted the "higher" life and took his mother's side. It wasn't until two years before he died, already ill with tuberculosis in Italy, that Lawrence began to notice the vitality of the Italian workingmen, and to feel a deep longing for his own father. He realise then that his mother's ascensionism had been wrong for him, and had encouraged him to separate from his father and from his body in an unfruitful way."
It's been terribly hard – perversely so – and yet, there's always been the wild man inside who holds the wisdom and knew what needed to be done. My karmic pit was trans-generational, and there's nobody to blame (I still think we should all Fuck the Man for certain, even if I now know there is no Man). I was gifted the circumstances to develop the power of foresight, of the longview, and the strength in many facets of my being to be able to do the deep work of healing my ancestors didn't have the conditions to face. As acutely painful as that has been.
Where to from here? Physical work, mental work, spiritual work. Isn't it obvious?
It was a fine synchronicity to receive an email from Trevor Grey this evening calling Men who've been through his Trusting the Masculine to farewell our "initiation ground" at Thump Boxing on June 18. See you there.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
More from Gilad...
He was lamenting some sad aspects of the collective interior which arose while inside the Big Mind process. He especially emphasised an upsetting anticipation which was revealed among the retreatants of their fragile individual and collective peace being dismantled, and how their self-structure and the culture defended against that with an aggressive, discontented scepticism of others, and a guilt about enjoying life and opening to fun.
The way the ice was broken on that painful space was simply hilarious: “As was said in the Big Mind session, as the voice of the chosen people: "Fun? We, the chosen people? We can't have fun. Fun is for Italians!”.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
White People for Peace - Against Me!
Ben Lee recently did an acoustic cover of the whole New Wave album by US rock outfit, Against Me!. I heard him doing two covers on the radio about three months ago and got hooked. They've been on heavy rotation ever since. Here's the lyrics to my favourite cover, White People for Peace.
- - - - - - - - - -
East and west could not agree
So their generals gave a call and gathered at the border
With guns ready, drawn and aimed
each side was praying to a god to bless them with strength and courage
it was in his name that artillery lit the sky on fire
the people sang protest songs to try and stop the soldier’s gun
Protest Songs in a response to Military Aggression
Protest songs to try and stop the soldier’s gun
But the battle raged on...
Sirens filled the air and the ground shook with war
Civilian casualties has been a cost that was predetermined
when interviewed for report victims pleaded in frustration
Their claim: That this was a war without reason
Bureacrats enraged in debate to try and reach a resolution
the people sang protest songs to try and stop the soldier’s gun
Protest Songs in a response to Military Aggression
Protest songs to try and stop the soldier’s gun
But the battle raged on...
The Broadcast like their prayers went unanswered and ignored
god, like the rest of the world, just watched in silence
There was purpose to be served, there were fortunes to be earned
before a peace could be called to stop a war
Protest Songs in a response to Military Aggression
Protest songs to try and stop the soldier’s gun
But the battle raged on...
- Against Me!
Subtle Body Abuse
- Sofia Diaz
Integral Centre in Sydney Launches
Monday, June 2, 2008
TagGalaxy
I searched my name, and sure enough it came up with a litany of Skywalker links. One stood far above the pack, however. Oh, yes it did.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Amusing (and this time, embarrasing) Errors in Predictive Text Messaging #3
Mate, that’s never been my responsibility. They decided in January to ship that off to Asian.
Flying Solo
Check out http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/ for a mature offering on the nature of small business, and for collective intelligence and support in the process.
Also check out this link, for news on how to get a copy of the book written by the website’s owners. It looks excellent for this kind of thing, and even has a word of support from Carl Honoré, author of the lauded book, In Praise Of Slowness.
