the silent life giverWhen I wake up most mornings I remember briefly that what is important to me is the "waking", and that the strange Uni-verse has gifted me with yet one more "bonus day". In those sometimes micro-moments I also remember that the thing called "news", spelled out on my browser, is, for me, not important. But my training for the last 52 years is to pay attention to all that Mother Culture's loudspeakers tell me is real -- those things that demand attention.
of worlds, what is most
important is the nonillusion.
morning breaks, the
friendly reds, the big
blues, hands full of leaves, noisy birds, fingers
in the hair, pigeons' nests
a rare understanding of
human struggle simplicity
of the senseless song
the folly of the wind in my
heart = don't let them rhyme girl
= sweet xocolatl [chocolate] of ancient
Mexico, storm in the
blood that comes in the through the mouth -- convulsion, omen.
laughter and sheer teeth needles
of pearl, for some gift on a seventh of July, I
ask for it, I'll get it, I sing,
sang. I'll sing from
now on our magic -- love.
My difficulty in posting something contemporary and "important" at ASZ in the last few days has been profound. I haven't posted. I voraciously read all the political "news" searching for something that doesn't seem to me like simple shadows upon upon a cave wall. I remember Emerson, his admonition to skate upon the illusions and not sink into them.
On Air America Radio right now Randi Rhodes said: "We are not making any progress in Iraq", and I think... "of course not". My idea of progress means that the US is no longer killing men, women and children in Iraq. Progress for the U.S. government means that they will no longer rain down death upon people in the name of progress. But, I don't read this at all after waking and turning on the computer and the radio. Instead I read and hear what to me is inane and insane ... the same old routine that wishes for an outcome that cannot possibly happen given the actions of the US government -- an entity that has little grasp of the law cause and effect.
So, in the last few days I fall back on what my just waking self knows -- that the minutiae of what politicians think and say is unimportant on the canvas of the "Big Picture". Their "fitness" to rain down death upon innocents is important. Waking up is important. A consummation devoutly to be wished for the interlocking system that is called life on the Happy Planet.
This afternoon I give you a link to the Iraq Body Count site. The count made the Associated Press today, but I can't find the article now. I thought, "wow! the sleeping AP woke up". If you can find it, it's a good read, for a mainstream media outlet.
Iraq Body Count. The count estimate of human deaths on the counter is: Minimum - 11,793; Maximum - 13,802.
" The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it."
Barbara Kingsolver, "Animal Dreams"
