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Jeremy Jackson: A Rude Awakening on the State of the Oceans
This piece was and is very very disturbing to me. I am an ocean child; born and raised and always drawn to the coastlines and islands of the world… I do not handle ‘inland’ well. It’s not that I don’t love mountains, I just prefer them in the sea. Or at least near by. Because I am in my early 50’s I am near enough to this man’s age to have borne witness to what he speaks of… I went out on a deep sea fishing boat as a child in the ’60s. my catch was not so impressive, at 22lbs, but to me it was the world. Today’s catch…
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Cycles and Circles
So much algae bloom: strip of blue green singing to the sun. Winter winds blasting oceans into high mist against rocky coastlines. Still night air holding back time in some vast oasis of dark silent space. We are captured in its presence. Then moving on again. So it is with life. breaths in and out So consistent they become rhythmic So invisible as to be persistent. Pattern. Becomes Always now. We ride like blind champions. Never, often, even becoming aware of the presence. It comes and goes. Sometimes early, sometimes late depending on and compared to our perspective. Somehow we know still we come. We gather ourselves up And toss…
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Threshold… s
It is as if at some point so far unknown to you until it reaches present time Things are unfolding. On some level of being some place of knowing things are happening But lie unseen to the common observer (which as it happens, is you, at the time) Motion, co-motion e-motion stirring moving beneath the surface. But not so deep it is in-discernible It is there. You know it is. When, seemingly, ‘out of nowhere’ it appears everybody gasps. But you knew. knew it was coming, if not how or what it would look like, when it came. You can live from the place of the great mystery unravelling upon…
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The Case Against ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy as Social/Political Remedy
Listening tonight, to Temple Grandin’s audio book on using the mysteries of autism to translate animal behavior, I was struck by her explanation of why zero tolerance in the meat packing industry doesn’t work. It’s the same reason, really, that it doesn’t work anywhere we apply it – from schools to courts to employers and employees to government: it is not designed to work. Quite simply, zero tolerance is designed to fail. Oh, perhaps not intentionally, but fail it will, and every time. Why? Because it is the direct application of what Grandin would call abstracted thought to real life situations. It is, indeed, the result of a non –…
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Seems to me You’d Stop and See How Beautiful They Are…
Isn’t it funny how things capture us? Well, I’ve said for years this is not the age of information, but the age of attention – it is, after all, where our attention goes that determines the probabilities of our outcomes… This line was in my head all day … the sweet little lilt of it.. the clarity. so… I had to go find it – various places, various voices and arrangements, and found myself here, loving it best of all in its most child like form… 😉 Inchworm…this etheric version won out in the end. And so – with all the information out there – it’s this, for whatever reason…
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Principles, Laws and Cognitive Process
What is a principle? I had not thought of it so directly in a long time. Principles are those observations of the process of engaging the natural laws through experience. In other words, principles are not static, immovable things – though our language may give that impression. Rather, they are the actualizing of personal interaction with basic laws of nature and of the spiritual reality behind nature which culminate in tenets, truths, or systems of comprehension in thought. “Things” which, in our individual process, we have the power to “prove” to ourselves through experience. They are different than laws – yet arise directly from them; which is perhaps why, in…
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Eva Cassidy – A Treasure & a Tragedy All in One
Eva Cassidy – Somewhere over the RainbowIrene | MySpace Video The first time I heard her voice it felt as if my heart stopped. I didn’t know if I could breathe. It was so pure, so clean and so incredibly beautiful. She was singing Over the Rainbow, on an online video – who knew? yes, that’s the one, above – live at blues alley in dc 1996… and then there’s her actually recorded for the album version here, still sweet and fine but nothing like that live sore throated real version above… It was as if I was transported to another time and place and everything I had ever thought…
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Gene Burnett – Irreverent as Hell and That’s Probably Why I Love His Work…
This one came to me through a few different sources all at the same time and I have to admit that while at first I was reluctant (or was that politically self conscious?) I cannot stop humming the song – and the refrain will be stuck in my head now forever. Gene Burnett has a great blog and web site – and he’s in the midst of a musical experiment which seems to be going quite well – he’s just putting his work out there and watching to see what happens. If this video is any indication, he is on a great path to bigger and better things and I,…
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Juxtaposition
So many things within the context of day to day Hold us Whole Which, If suddenly eroded Through whatever cause Leave us breathless barely able to survive Thrown up upon these rocks uncertain of the tides And yet Even within this does Choice arise Always calling on us to decide We can ‘come up on life surprised’ in a quandary to know what to do or simply choose as best we can in any moment But to do that We must believe in our choice Choose, and believe Believe and choose either way We lean on our own behalf in a direction Or not Or doubt and doubt ourselves or…
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What We Could Use Here is a New Mark Twain
Standing in the freezing Talking about cops – and bribes and how they can be taken or not From Senegal to Santa Clara The language changes only. If we were doing that here – where- All you needed to know how to ask Was how to let him pay your fine “for you” – (If you, of course, paid him not a bribe – but to pay the fine ‘for you’) and in their dollars a 20 will do… Not here, where civilization has taken root Bred its spawn The simple offense (victimless) will take a year (or 2) of your time of compliance with their game of justification of…