Words to live by

Tony Benn, President, Stop the War Coalition, had this to say to John Bolton during a recent television forum in the UK:

"I was born about a quarter of a mile from where we are sitting now, and I was here in London during the blitz, and every night I went down into the shelter. 500 people killed, my brother was killed, my friends were killed. And when the charter of the UN was read to me (I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship) 'We, the people of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has caused untold suffering to mankind...' That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation, and you've tore it up. And it's a war crime that's been committed in Iraq, because there's no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber--both kill innocent people for political reasons. And that's why in Britain there's a majority against--in America--worldwide... There's no support for the United States in this, worldwide. You're a declining empire, as we were, and you'll learn the truth. You were beaten in Vietnam. As you said yourself that's why you didn't want to serve there, you said you didn't want to die in a Southeast Asia rice paddy. And you'll be beaten in Iraq, and I'm afraid that's the truth."

Mr. Bolton was, as all moral and reasonable human beings must be when faced with God's honest truth so spoken, speechless.

spring

it occurred to me, already wistfully missing the receded portions of the ice on the charles, that most people don't experience the seasons as i do. in the chalky white half-moon of what barely survives, i saw in that moment a hanging question:

why do people so clearly and so dearly welcome the passing of winter?

yes, all obvious answers--like it's warmer in the spring, and how so much dormant life returns to bloom in the spring, and that winter is hard, and so cold... yes, i can imagine how the first warmer days of the year would once swell hope in the breasts of the natives and then the subsistence colonial farmers... (who would come to murder them with their guns and their germs and their steel, nods to jared diamond, for the bounty of it all...) yes, i can relate to the elements of it, and i can understand that much...

but i live in a privileged time, when snow's silent meditation connects us to the world in a way that clear roads and sunshine can never. The air is cleaner. The skies are clearer in a way they can never be at any other time of the year. The insects and the rest of nature's assault on the human condition are reduced to their simplest elements--the wind and the weather--and the two are both larger than us and astounding in their beauty to a degree never matched in the warmer days of the earth's traverse.

winter dies, i am sure of it. it takes life in the lengthening shadows of autumn twilight, and it lives a solitary and exquisite existence outside our frosted windowpanes. it accompanies all intrepid and worshipful souls that walk within it, carrying neither pity nor malice. it swallows up sound and life in the same breath, and waits quietly, always, for that is its place. when the rotating orb and its seasons turn once again to drive the stake of harsh spring sunlight through its soul, it hardly whispers dissent. the frost simply recedes, the ice melts away, and the stillness that made cathedral of all the world thus passes away once again, and we are left with the dirt and the mud that are life and the rest of our lives.

chrysalis

after the catarrh and the catharsis, the chrysalis...

the suspension in between states, where all is still and lifeless, yet still possessed of all potential...

i've been saved today by a gal named amie.

walking down your street (the bangles)
the sunny side of the street (singers too numerous to mention)
the street where you live (rickie lee jones version is my favorite)

amiestreet.com

catharsis

i remember the moment vividly--sitting, alone, since my parents had gone up to receive communion, listening, truly listening, to the words of the liturgical call-and-response--"for his great love, is without end". and what did my ears discover among the reasons to conclude that "for his great love is without end"? it still amazes me and galls me and leaves me just an ocean full of righteous indignation short of dumbstruck that hundreds of congregants could have sung the words without ever hearing them... a paean to the death of children... a celebration of an entire collection of other horrible plagues... and then to realize that hundreds of thousands of congregants must regularly raise their voices in praise for the very same butchery in hundreds and thousands of other churches around the globe every week...

so this week i've again been reminded of my childish innocence lost, once again agape at the words that people will say, and the ideas that people will try to coerce upon others. don't like what they make you do at your job? be a man. return to your desk and get back to your piece-work. it's important to feed your family. want to confide in your family the toll it takes upon you? selfish man... it's your job to put bread on the table, and the quality and abundance of that bread is the sole measure of your worth...

"wax on, wax off" (audience snickers optional) was mr. miagi's method to teach stillness of mind to one impressionable karate kid. the dharma of ones occupation is an easy conceptual step from there, to be reminded that all jobs are simply to be done, not questioned. and so i think of the very same "love" (dharma? zen?) that leads the world to simply work, and thus enable those whose direction we follow in the pursuit of our occupations... and i think, just as we have followed bush to war, and much like others have followed their own leaders to war before us, we make the sacrifices necessary to wage such wars as a part of our "jobs" as citizens, and we accept the certain compromises we are asked to make in order to continue our diligent toil... the hyperbole is easy: to allow those in power to suspend civil rights... (not our job to question). to allow them detain without warrant or due process... (if we raise an objection, are we not stepping beyond our place?) is it so far a path from there to standing guard at the camp, and rationalizing to ourselves that we are simply the guards, and have no duty beyond simply being guards, and not to question?

nah, that's all mind-fuck bullshit. just shut up and bring home that paycheck.

i made a terrible mistake. i made many. i will pay for them for the rest of my life.

but i'll be damned if i'll make more in the name of dr. miagi.

i quit.