Saturday, May 19, 2018

two of our compaƱeros, two statements, both worth a hearing

One brother tells it stark: Christopher Hitchens was once asked where he gets his free will from. He answers "From the acceptance of my solitude, sole responsibility. I cannot refer my problems up to a dictator."
(42:10 into clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuX028G9oBo&t=1000s)

As a counterbalance, here's a brother who knows how to preach:
Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. delivered an impassioned sermon at the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgluP3BkVaA
You've got to love the freedom and ability to listen to, hear, and cogitate what our family is saying.

Friday, May 18, 2018

time's right

A friend will marry in Belize in June.

How kind of him to go where I will not.

My gift to them was Hitchens tonight.

Inchoate vs innate, daimonium throughout.

me, an I? (ng!)

A

Cross

Word

omg, is that the right word

No.

One

Can 

Stop

These people



From their 

Appointed tasks

And so

We

Wait to

See



How it

Will end

Because



It will end

Hopefully

The bloodshed 

will

Be

Minimal



And you, 

yes

You

Survive

In tack.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

non sum qualis eram (latin)

 Horace, translated as, "I am not as I was."
The title of Dowson’s poem is taken from the Roman poet Horace, and specifically from Book 4 of his Odes. It means ‘I am not as I was in the reign of good Cynara’. (Cynara, by the way, means ‘artichoke’ in Greek.) That phrase, ‘I am not as I was’, points up the poem’s speaker as somebody who is past his prime, whose best days are behind him. As we will discover, the speaker of the poem is lovesick: ruined by the hopeless love for a woman. 
(--from, A Short Analysis of Ernest Dowson’s ‘Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae’, in interesting literature)
I heard the Latin phrase while listening to Christopher Hitchens give a talk, his last public appearance.
On October 8 2011 Christopher Hitchens received the Richard Dawkins Award at the Texas Freethought Convention on behalf of Atheist Alliance of America, presented by Richard Dawkins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFqIiddsoKM 
He died 15Dec2011. He was intelligent, and colorful.

Another Latin epigram has interested me. At times, to the consternation of some:

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Quotidie morior from the Mysterium Cosmographicum, 1621 edition.
Epigram attributed to Ptolemy
The commonplace of dying I admit 
but when I ponder Heaven's form close-knit, 
My feet don't touch the ground. 
Instead, with ZeusI taste ambrosia, sip celestial juice. 
               translation©2002 Leonard Cottrell

*Epigramma Ptolemaeo adscriptum 
Quotidie morior, fateorque—sed inter Olympi 
Dum tenet assiduas me mea cura vias, 
Non pedibus terram contingo, sed ante Tonantem 
Nectare, divina pascor et ambrosia.
...   ...   ...

This epigram has its use in a different metaphor, namely, I must decrease.

I tire of my and therefore the culture's insistence that puffery and bloviation, celebrity and notoriety are the crowning achievements of an individual. We seem to love the Royal family or presidential family pomp and drama. We marvel at the 25+million per year salaries of athletes and media personalities. We are attracted to the loudest and most outrageous person in the room.

I prefer decreasing and disappearing.

Death refers to life.

So death, i.e. pointing attention to life, especially life in its subtle origination in each moment and its passing away in the next, interests me.

I wish to assert nothing but life itself.

I am not as I was.

I am as I am.

Inshallah!

all there is

We walk around in narratives.

Stories we tell ourselves.

Interpretations that seem reliable and familiar.

We've heard them before.

What if we dropped our narratives?

Stopped telling ourselves stories?

Ceased interpretations?

No longer listened to the voices in our head?

I don't know.

What would happen if everything was merely itself?

Would we walk around as itself?

In itself?

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

difficulties and quicksand

Watching old debates between Christopher Hitchens and individuals aligned with religious faiths.

Listening to news shows telling latest breaking of ethical or legal precedents by the current president or his attendants.

Religion has its difficulties.

Politics is quicksand.

It is a task to try to maintain equilibrium in wobbly realms of religion and politics.

today is today

I wake up. It is Wednesday. Birdsong. Sunshine. Cool air comes in open windows. Foolish news from radio.

Silence now.

I look back on days where it mattered what priests or ministers rabbis or imans elders or pundits presidents or congresspeople ceo's or actors celebrities or athletes local cop or school principal loud knowitalls or experts of any stripe those who claim to know and those who don't know but have power to influence -- those days no longer exist.

Today is today. That's all we know.

No one knows anything other than whatever is emerging in the moment just now.

Birdsong.

Sunshine.

Your eyes.

Breath.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

whatever vanishes

Yes

Whatever happens

Whatever you say

Whatever failures

Whatever vanishes

Remains

Yes

Monday, May 14, 2018

trying to de-fence the injustice they receive and the injustice they distribute.

Our smiling political first family are safe and sound in Jerusalem.

On the other hand:
"   Israeli forces killed 55 Palestinians on the boundary fence with Gaza on Monday...""More than 2,400 people were injured, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, including 1,200 from live ammunition. " (Article, Washington Post, 14may18)
...

HAIKU        
               (a proportional response) 
Ivanka, Jared 
are OK. They celebrate 
their new embassy

The inmates of Gaza Strip, and the inmates of the Trump administration, are trying to de-fence the injustice they receive and the injustice they distribute.  

'yes' is saying nothing other than presence

Someone at Friday Evening Conversation recently said they'd been watching a Netflix Documentary titled "Wild, Wild Country" about Rajneesh, Antelope Oregon, and Ma Anand Sheela, his secretary.

An interview with Sheela posted on Vulture:
Were you ever surprised by his requests? 
In the beginning, I was and I questioned him. His answer to me: the way you are on television, you will protect the community by deterrent. You will become the deterrent. 
He said also that outrageous performance will bring more interest from other television companies or television channels or news media. Media is very expensive, advertisement is very expensive, so every performance must bring new performances. Nowadays you see this on a daily basis with Trump. 
I was going to say that, yeah. 
He creates every day a new sensation and media gets exhausted what to do. Every day — five, ten breaking news. I think Trump is a better student of Bhagwan than me in that sense.
The Daily Beast compared you to Kellyanne Conway, but you didn’t seem to like that comparison. 
No I don’t like it. What I’m saying is a joke, and I’m not comparing Bhagwan and me to Trump under any circumstances. 
But the approach is similar. 
Because people only understand sensation. They don’t understand, other than negativity and sensation. People remain stuck in negativity. 
By appealing to that, aren’t you just propagating that quality? 
You can look at it that way. You can also look at it that the negative approach brings you more media, and you want to remain on the tubes for self-protection. 
I can tell you something. A small story. There was a man who goes to a master and says nobody pays attention to me, everybody ignores me. That hurts me very much. And master said: Next time somebody starts talking, you just say no. No to everything. It will create a counterreaction and then everybody will pay attention to you. The man tries this thing and suddenly he becomes a big important person from simple “no.” That is our mankind’s stupidity. When you say “yes” nobody listens to you.
(from, Wild Wild Country’s Ma Anand Sheela Did It All for LoveBy , Apr.23, 2018)
This recalls the line in "Man for All Seasons" where playwright Robert Bolt has Sir Thomas More, on trial for his life, say, "Qui tacit consentiri, the maxim of the law is, Qui tacit consentiri -- Silence means consent."

It suggests to me that all the news and hoopla about and from Rajneesh and Trump, the din and drumbeat, distractions and incessant caterwauling comprising our contemporary culture -- is our way of saying NO to what is true and beyond obvious, meaningful and nourishing to our lives.

Silence, the silence of mere moment within itself, is what YES sounds like -- affirming, forgiving, and allowing unadorned emergence of what is guileless humility to stand without pretense in the light of day and be unafraid of the womb of night.

May we be blessed with nobody listening to us!

Yes is saying nothing other than presence.

qui tacet consentiri

Morning.
source silentium 
creative verbum 
listening actus

Monday.
quies ab initio 
conversatio in creatio  
movere auscultare

Mnemosyne. 

Sunday, May 13, 2018

there

is no

         time --

like the

        present