Fuck the World
(or, A Worldcentric Libido Descends on the Sands of my Ocean Home)
All things must pass.
If this burning sand beneath me
were fired into glass
I’d smash it back to a thousand granules
and remember.
All things must pass.
With time as no constant,
I’ll fucking seize those mysteries
which lay beyond the boundary
where sea meets sky
and, I’ll take my position
both wonder and thorn
within and between
your moist and speckled thighs
and, I’ll cavern and soar
and advance and deny
and take what, for only then,
will appear to be mine
and on this ground,
which faces
past time,
only I,
will
draw
the
line.
All things must pass.
If this ocean’s call
were harnessed at last
I’d channel the song of a million sons
and remember.
All things must pass.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Magic
I never did believe in miracles,
but I've a feeling it's time to try.
I never did believe in the ways of magic,
but I’m beginning to wonder why.
- Stevie Nicks
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Obama’s Hairy Struggle - Geoff Elliott
From The Australian - 14 July 2008.
(http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/geoffelliott/index.php/theaustralian/comments/obamas_hairy_struggle/)
BARACK Obama might be a political candidate for the times, appealing to an ideologically ambiguous internet generation, but he will not escape the culture wars of the 1960s easily.
The battles of yore keep popping up in this 40th anniversary of the biggest year in US culture wars, when the shape of modern US politics and its players were forged. In 1968, the civil rights and ideological battles reached a nadir when leaders Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.
Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, tries to fly above the fray, vowing to move the US beyond those fights and establish a “new kind of politics”.
Jesse Jackson, the leading civil rights activist of that era, this week let slip into a microphone what he thought of Obama’s post-ideological appeal. He wants to “cut his nuts off”.
Obama, 46, is attempting to appeal across the US’s racial milieu, and key to his message is to talk straight to African-American men, saying they share a responsibility in the social ills that affect the black community.
It’s the antithesis of the Jackson message. He attributes the problems of high crime rates among blacks to the country’s slave-trading past, poverty and the bloody struggle for rights.
But Jackson’s whisper that turned into a roar this week was just another example of US leaders fixated on the cultural battles that were waged so intently 40 years ago. Not just civil rights, but also the anti-war era and advent of ultra-liberalism that found its expression in free love and drugs and the Woodstock phenomenon.
Republican candidate John McCain, 71, is making the ‘60s a centrepiece of his campaign. He makes much of his failure to attend the 1969 Woodstock festival because he was “tied up at the time”. It is a reference to more than five years in captivity during the Vietnam War.
McCain’s record as a war hero while young Americans at home went psychedelic was the message behind a campaign advertisement he launched this week.
It starts with images from the ‘60s, showing student protesters, long-haired hippies and Woodstock. Then it cuts to the famous grainy images of McCain while he was imprisoned and then of him saluting when he finally landed back on US soil. The script opens: “It was a time of uncertainty, hope and change, the summer of love. Half a world away, another kind of love, of country: John McCain, shot down, bayoneted, tortured. Offered early release, he said: ‘No.’ He’d sworn an oath.”
Just what any of this has to do with Obama is unclear. He was six years old at the height of flower power and living in Hawaii.
But the ad attempts to make a link. The announcer says McCain will tell Americans what they need to hear. “Beautiful words will not make our lives better,” the ad says in a clear swipe at Obama’s speeches. “But a man who has always put his country and her people before self, before politics, can. Don’t hope for a better future, vote for one.”
Obama has tried to bury the ‘60s. To beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he cast new generational appeal. He said she would be unable to bring change, partly because “Clinton and others, they have been fighting some of the same fights since the ‘60s. And it makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done.”
Obama says he will reach across the aisle to bring about big changes. Rubbish. What he is banking on is big Democratic sweeps through Congress that deliver him power not only in the White House but wide majorities in the legislature as well.
Obama’s appeal should help herald those big gains. And there’s the rub. This could be the best chance the Democrats have had since the ‘60s to bring about the changes they long for, including their nirvana of government-sponsored healthcare.
Obama’s hidden message is that he wants to end the culture wars, all right: by smashing the opposition and winning them.
(http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/geoffelliott/index.php/theaustralian/comments/obamas_hairy_struggle/)
BARACK Obama might be a political candidate for the times, appealing to an ideologically ambiguous internet generation, but he will not escape the culture wars of the 1960s easily.
The battles of yore keep popping up in this 40th anniversary of the biggest year in US culture wars, when the shape of modern US politics and its players were forged. In 1968, the civil rights and ideological battles reached a nadir when leaders Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.
Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, tries to fly above the fray, vowing to move the US beyond those fights and establish a “new kind of politics”.
Jesse Jackson, the leading civil rights activist of that era, this week let slip into a microphone what he thought of Obama’s post-ideological appeal. He wants to “cut his nuts off”.
Obama, 46, is attempting to appeal across the US’s racial milieu, and key to his message is to talk straight to African-American men, saying they share a responsibility in the social ills that affect the black community.
It’s the antithesis of the Jackson message. He attributes the problems of high crime rates among blacks to the country’s slave-trading past, poverty and the bloody struggle for rights.
But Jackson’s whisper that turned into a roar this week was just another example of US leaders fixated on the cultural battles that were waged so intently 40 years ago. Not just civil rights, but also the anti-war era and advent of ultra-liberalism that found its expression in free love and drugs and the Woodstock phenomenon.
Republican candidate John McCain, 71, is making the ‘60s a centrepiece of his campaign. He makes much of his failure to attend the 1969 Woodstock festival because he was “tied up at the time”. It is a reference to more than five years in captivity during the Vietnam War.
McCain’s record as a war hero while young Americans at home went psychedelic was the message behind a campaign advertisement he launched this week.
It starts with images from the ‘60s, showing student protesters, long-haired hippies and Woodstock. Then it cuts to the famous grainy images of McCain while he was imprisoned and then of him saluting when he finally landed back on US soil. The script opens: “It was a time of uncertainty, hope and change, the summer of love. Half a world away, another kind of love, of country: John McCain, shot down, bayoneted, tortured. Offered early release, he said: ‘No.’ He’d sworn an oath.”
Just what any of this has to do with Obama is unclear. He was six years old at the height of flower power and living in Hawaii.
But the ad attempts to make a link. The announcer says McCain will tell Americans what they need to hear. “Beautiful words will not make our lives better,” the ad says in a clear swipe at Obama’s speeches. “But a man who has always put his country and her people before self, before politics, can. Don’t hope for a better future, vote for one.”
Obama has tried to bury the ‘60s. To beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he cast new generational appeal. He said she would be unable to bring change, partly because “Clinton and others, they have been fighting some of the same fights since the ‘60s. And it makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done.”
Obama says he will reach across the aisle to bring about big changes. Rubbish. What he is banking on is big Democratic sweeps through Congress that deliver him power not only in the White House but wide majorities in the legislature as well.
Obama’s appeal should help herald those big gains. And there’s the rub. This could be the best chance the Democrats have had since the ‘60s to bring about the changes they long for, including their nirvana of government-sponsored healthcare.
Obama’s hidden message is that he wants to end the culture wars, all right: by smashing the opposition and winning them.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Deepest Blue
In the absence between foregrounds
only inference, only faith
protects me from the uncertain plummet
that skirts the edges of this plateau.
To you I return to say my goodbyes.
To you I return to wash in redemption.
To you I return. Deep. Blue.
In sunkist daydreams I leap every time,
factoring consequences only modestly at best.
There’s finally nothing as the mind enmeshing
this defeated body irrevocably drops to eternal solace.
And to you I would return,
To again welcome the edge of my redemption.
To you I return. Deep. Blue.
These shifting sands are your solitary promise.
I have nothing left but will and clamour.
You will take what you will today, I’m certain.
And for a moment I'll float –
buoyant in the saltwater which obstructs my horizon.
And you will return me. Deeper.
only inference, only faith
protects me from the uncertain plummet
that skirts the edges of this plateau.
To you I return to say my goodbyes.
To you I return to wash in redemption.
To you I return. Deep. Blue.
In sunkist daydreams I leap every time,
factoring consequences only modestly at best.
There’s finally nothing as the mind enmeshing
this defeated body irrevocably drops to eternal solace.
And to you I would return,
To again welcome the edge of my redemption.
To you I return. Deep. Blue.
These shifting sands are your solitary promise.
I have nothing left but will and clamour.
You will take what you will today, I’m certain.
And for a moment I'll float –
buoyant in the saltwater which obstructs my horizon.
And you will return me. Deeper.
The Mind is the Cause of Bondage and Liberation - Amrita-Bindu-Upanishad as translated by Georg Feuerstein
The mind is said to be twofold; pure and impure.
The impure has desire and volition; the pure is devoid of desire.
The mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation for humans.
Attached to objects, it leads to bondage; devoid of objects, it is deemed to leas to emancipation.
Because liberation of the mind devoid of objects is desirable,
The seeker after liberation should always make the mind devoid of objects.
When the mind, freed from contact with objects and restricted in the heart,
becomes nonexistent, then that is the supreme state.
It should be checked until it meets with destruction in the heart.
This is wisdom; this is meditation. The rest is diffuse speculation.
- Amrita-Bindu-Upanishad
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Common People
Rent a flat above a shop,
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
cos when you're laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all.
You'll never live like common people,
you'll never do what common people do,
you'll never fail like common people,
you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.
- Jarvis Cocker
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
cos when you're laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all.
You'll never live like common people,
you'll never do what common people do,
you'll never fail like common people,
you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.
- Jarvis Cocker
Sunday, July 6, 2008
More on threads, weaves, robes and carrying spirit on my bloodstream's current...
I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.
If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,
and sleep.
- Rumi
Pity the Nation
"Pity the Nation"
Khalil Gibran
Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave,
eats a bread it does not harvest,
and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.
"Pity the Nation"
Khalil Gibran
Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave,
eats a bread it does not harvest,
and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.
"Pity the Nation"
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(After Khalil Gibran)
(After Khalil Gibran)
Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerers
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
The Eye of The Storm
I was one of thosebreathing tornadoes
but now I live at the
eye of the storm.
- Ben Lee
I'm finding a self (or 'kind-of' no-self) in the space between conceptual dualities which I have brought down into by body and healed of late. I've got a lot more energy to battle the roar and rattle of those self-concepts which don't want their home in the mind to be exposed to the light of embodiment, which is revealing whiffs of what seems like the accounts of buddha nature I've read. As always, merely glimpes, but what a wonderful new beginning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
