The taste of medicine

Not a promise (CAI 2023)

I never promised I'd be sweet.

Maybe I am the taste of your own medicine
dosed by the universe today 
through the play on words that is our exchange
maybe
your experience of me
is what you asked for, what you need
and I am just a tool of your subconscious evocation
the me you see not real at all
not even me, you see, not at all
just what you called, what you need someone to be

right now

If I've allowed a confrontation

what a gift! what a cost to me. 

You're welcome. 

Working through something

Early Days (CAI 2023)

When words are as exhausted as I am

When even paintings seem too verbose

When the people with the most understanding misunderstand substantially 

and like their version better

Does it even make sense to express? 

So it must be for me, I guess

I must want to for me or I wouldn't be here, typing

I wouldn't be here, trying 

when trying hasn't gotten me as far as one might expect. 

I'm working through something, that has nothing to do with anything

but my own experience, my own gut, my own integrity 

in a body of limited lifespan on a planet at a moment of history 

in a place I've chosen

cloaked and hidden in my warren

expressing through the illusion 

my own little versions of truth

Not for you, but maybe for you

if you're here, if the universe sent you.

Out loud is the price of my privilege to speak. 

Disappearing

Presence (CAI)

Disappearing seems to require

some kind of announcement 

because it's not about disappearing

it's about our absence

being

noticed

Breadcrumbs

The Tunnel (CAI 2024)

I never re-read what I write. You know my aversion to backwards. 

But I imagine if you happen here unexpectedly

for no reason I can think of but Chance 

you might wonder at my wallowing

which makes sense, after all

this is where I wallow 

Wallow and push. Wallow and push. 

Like Labour, which taught me more than just how much pain I can take, like

anything is possible 

achievement comes at cost

with grief and loss and gain

everything ends 

but it's just a change of the same

pain comes in waves

relief demands sacrifice but commits to no promises 

just dangled potential that glimmers in and out of focus.

dignity is impossible.

having literally no choice is the best driver when 

what I am doesn't cut it and

who I expected is still a stone's throw away

but now is happening today and everything is nothing

like I thought and I couldn't have guessed what I would do

until it's done. And that's what I did. 

Here is where I bite and tear and chew and swallow and expel

leaving behind

the breadcrumbs and excrement of my cored self

in case they are ever helpful for you. 

Listen to Happy Rhodes. Here's a familiar song to get you started: https://youtu.be/WoNGpa9tJkg?si=azfqeWSjVT4nhV1n

Advice to the young and to myself

Ya Comin'?

What I try to tell my kids

what I wish I could tell myself, is this:

pay attention to the glimmers where you feel most free to be

where you draw yourself in, what you're doing when

you forget the day the week the planet and just do it

the thing you're doing - that's it, that's something

you can learn to see

like a formula or constellation

build your life around them 

center them and focus from that hub

learn the landscape of others on your hunt

don't be deterred because you can't see what job will own you

don't be deterred when doubted by your friends

don't be deterred by skipping common milestones 

don't be deterred because you can't see around the bend

just centre what calls you, what you melt into, what feels like purpose

get curious, play, learn the soft edges and sharp curves 

imbibe what it takes to embolden your nerve

find and learn the tools that let you shape and express back

into the world. 

and if you can avoid the longing for things you might never have wanted if you knew what it cost to get them

and focus on staying with what matters to your heart

a living will follow the art you inevitably build through 

focus and 

practice and 

pure curious intent

a living as secure as, and maybe more secure than, an eroding traditional path

and a life, oh, a life that's full of what you love most, most of the time;

if you must strive, strive for sublime.

Just be logical

The Inbetween (CAI)

If you just look at it logically, leaving feelings aside - 

leaving feelings aside? 

just look at the ground, ignore the sky?

Feelings are a huge part of who we are. Separating from our instincts, looking only at logic and not valuing the information of feeling, is what prevented us from making decisions that would benefit all life on the planet at every step through every generation that tried it, to the tip of destruction, yet we still worship at the alter of logic, or instead, ignore logic to worship at the alter of feelings; either way we fail fail fail fail to see the ground and the sky and EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN WHICH IS WHERE WE LIVE. 

But then, I see it, so you see it, so everyone sees it and still here in the inbetween we are told look up or look down but don't see what's in front of our eyes. 

It's time to take the gun out of life - Badly Drawn Boy https://youtu.be/qYdLoCt3tRs

Helping Hands

Blurred Intentions (CAI 2023)

When a person offers help it's natural they

imagine they know what will help;

imagine what the person receiving help  will feel when they are properly

grateful 

and from that deceiving entitlement

to a nebulous outcome they may feel

terribly affronted

by any deviant end to their well-intentioned, oh-so-generous

help.

You have so much potential!

Raw Potential (CAI 2023)

Why not tap into your greatness?

What do you fear?

That's clear. I am afraid

that opening myself to what's in me

will break my heart with impossibility

rendering life an intolerable 

mundanity 

the resulting explosion maiming all those around me

leaving them broken; leaving me 

with nothing at all.

It's not small, this fear

It's not nothing and it doesn't lie

I know all too well how truly committing to I

explodes the world. 

Wretches Gone Awry (CAI 2021)

(ps. potential has a shelf life - CAI)

An Open Letter to Martha Wainwright

Martha Wainwright, 2023 Northern Lights Festival

Dear Martha,

I keep thinking about how I let myself not meet you, and now we never met. 

How I didn't consider that meeting me wasn't just for me, it was for you, too. That if I had nothing else to give I could have given you my stone

that my heart-sister brought from Vancouver Island when she improbably came to renew me, the stone

that I carried when I travelled alone for the first time since
my body failed me, no cane, triumphant to the heart of America where I swore I wouldn't go

to attend a show that I thought would never happen, the stone

that I gripped when the airplane stifled, the stone

that I held warming in my hand through Happy's every song, gift after gift, my tears streaming I never thought I would see her live her music changed me and still unlocks my soul, holding the stone

that I thought I had lost at the airport

but found again at the bottom of the bag that holds my horizon and grounds me home;

and you probably wouldn't have thought I was some deranged stranger handing you a rock from the ground and wanting it to be special

you probably would have understood that I was giving you a thousand songs

and the heart of my musical heart

you probably would have been very glad to meet me, after all. 

But I held that back from you. I played small. 

Twenty feet away and I let myself  be washed out with the crowd into the mundane nextness of the day after you sang your soul away to a mediocre crowd with your family and your wholeness and even still I didn't make myself known, I didn't offer you my service or my smile

I thought I was shy but I was nervous and playing myself like a quiet instrument that doesn't deserve to be heard 

by someone who has made themselves you. You. As if Me is no one at all. 

It's my habit, to seem small, nothing special, pre-empt the presumption I'm not worth the time I'm taking. 

Still, and all

I want a second chance to let you know me, take what is here in me that's for you, to agree that I can be of value too, to you, as you have been to me. Your music and movement set something free. Maybe something in me could have done that for you, if I'd stepped up, come through, if I'd passed the test, been there for you

who knows but even so, I want to give you my stone 

that stone, and my promise that you are not alone

while I'm here. 

Prepared

The Watchers (CAI, year after year)

To say I walked into the world unprepared

would assume there was a way to prepare me

to prevent me from mistaking me

for human

from expecting me to be like them, and 

- the true blind side -

expecting them to be like me;

that there might have been a way for me 

to hide; 

to spare me 

from reducing me to please;

from pulling my skin to pieces trying to make it fit better

for the ease and comfort of literally

anyone else but me;

that I could have been more ready to face them

to face me, even thrive if I'd gone in expecting

knowing and prepared, to be

an alien in human skin

playing to stay alive,

trying to have some fun

a million to one.

(Listen to Happy Rhodes: One Alien )

Stepping carefully

 

Watch where you step!

In the field my giant feet wreak havoc

each step trampling more unseen life than I can count

be accountable to

accountable for

more than I could ever pay

back.

So I give more care in how I go

place heel to toe, nice and slow

apologizing as I go

giving everyone plenty of time

to get out of my way.

And, hey, isn’t that just how I live?

I’d sure love to play 

in your meadows

running roughshod with the glee of being me

with you

but I’d trample your tender wings before you even had a chance to fly

so I try to be careful

I try.

In case you wondered what the hell they're thinking

People are animals with a temperament to match so we shouldn't be surprised that they behave in ways we don't like. However, there is the expectation of those engaged in the "civil societies" of humanity that we learn, develop, grow, strengthen, and exercise a certain level of self-control, of restraint, to maintain peaceful co-existence. Some people really resent that expectation. They see any request about learning or strengthening or growing their self-discipline as a direct attack on their humanity and their preference that they be allowed to react and behave just as they feel, authentically, in line with their temperaments. It feels like an attack on self to be asked to hold oneself in check. They already resent that they are expected to be polite to the bumbling cashier, not shout at the annoying children, choose more careful words when addressing some people, put aside their distaste for others and act like everyone is equal. When they do begrudgingly try to conform to the constrictions of "civil society" they are told it's not enough, more is required, ongoing learning and developing and growth and exercise, more restraint across more categories. They feel overwhelmed, attacked, unvalued, and afraid, because if they can't live up to the required level of "civility" that keeps shifting and moving further from comfort, they may face social consequences, and we are trapped in the social systems in which we live without alternative, with those systems increasingly controlling and starving us. So they go on the attack. They demand their right to be just as they are, human in temperament, and act just how they feel, and be accepted without any work or modification on their part to accommodate people whom, when they are truly honest about it, they don't really care about and in fact, disdain for needing "special treatment" and resent for highlighting yet another way that civil society can demand a constriction and a growth. So they forget, in all that, who they really are, what love looks and feel like in their hearts, and empathy is banished unless it applies to them and their own. And from that context they believe and act in the only ways that make sense in that context, and cling to that context because it encompasses their identity, now, and is required to allow them to feel okay. 

But people do better when they are not in scarcity and fear. That is what needs to be tackled first. 

Right Here

All Lines to Light (CAI 2023)

So much of love is proximity

would you love me

if I were closer
if I were right there
would you care to know
me deeply truly madly as I am?
Would you see what no one sees and
BAM!
be mine?
Or pass me by as too familiar
not quite special
close to home?

Is it me or opportunity that keeps us so unknown when we both contain the multitudes of being in our bones and it's calling calling calling us to join hands and walk home

together?
What if I were right there?
Would you love me then?
Here I am. 

The Universal desperately wants to know itself through life. That's the purpose of life. As me, as you, as them, as grass, as molecules, as bacteria, as dogs. Desperate isn't the right word - passionately? encompassingly? yearningly? The Universal is being itself. We are cells in that body. 

The Universal takes joy in knowing itself by being. 

The Universal takes joy in knowing itself by being
from Midjourney

Earth is a tender morsel, a tiny delight that fills the mouth.

god knows

(Inside - from Midjourney AI)

You are meat and bone and sinew, tenuous

tenacious glued parts and pieces

receiving direction

from god knows where

Spending time

 

Time contains a life (CAI with Midjourney AI)

Time is the only currency of our lives

one of the only things we spend 

without knowing how much we have. 

Ordinary Magic (A Maverick Missive)

Lacey Decorations (CAI)

 He asks me, 

is this world's ordinary not extraordinary enough

for you?

how would one miracle more be a cure for your incessant longing?

it's true,

but in that sneery way he has of always being right

so right away I turn away

unwilling to quite accept his flayed refrain

its insult contained in the idea that I could 

- like taking some kind of potion -

that I should

twist my heart and mind and notions

refine myself until I feel

- actually feel - 

complete and joyously ecstatic, 

bearing witness

to only ordinary magic. 

Life's funny that way

All is light (CAI 2019)

 We live in a system that has co-opted all of the world's resources into the game of capitalism, to the harm of the planet and the unwellness of the majority of the world's living, conscious creatures. Shifting that system towards wellness requires significant re-thinking of the relationships among governments, service organizations, for-profit organizations, citizens, and resources. The people in charge have no incentive to rethink those relationships, except one: self-interest. And so they do think constantly about reshaping those relationships, to the further detriment of Earth and all life here, while we just live our lives, not wanting to think about all those hard things, while they dismantle the bits of progress that have been made and put a stop to any movement in the right directions, while actively changing our systems to suit the top 1% regardless of the harm to anyone else. The majority of people being harmed would fight tooth and nail to keep it this way. That is the nature of the planet on which I stand. That is the nature of the creatures I live among. It's baffling, and it's terrifying. Everything is made of energy. None of this exists. 

The taste of love

We serve our love with the flavour of our maturity. 

Some of us taste like blue cheese 

Maturity (CAI)

Futile flailing

As above so below (CAI a long time ago)

When I read The Time Traveller's Wife (which I hated, btw), the thing that struck me about all those miscarriages is that she kept trying. I had one miscarriage and it devastated me in a visceral way. It kept me from letitng myself feel ready to love another pregnancy until it was at a point where it might live on its own. I was lucky, my next two pregnancies produced two amazing humans that I am honoured to be raising. But if I'd had another one, I think there's no way I'd keep trying. I would reconcile myself to a childless life before going through that again. 

But I may be wrong, based on how I live my life. Because when it comes to my creative birth, all I have are a series of miscarriages - projects began with love, holding such promise and my heart, but unable to make it past the first trimester because of money (mostly), time (also mostly) and energy (see time and money). I had a stillbirth project, nurtured and loved over a dozen years, taken to the brink of birth, only to die off due to lack of oxygen. Or, money, time, and energy. Or, Covid. I grieve.

Now I have a new project struggling in the first trimester, and I can't help but notice, I'm exactly where I've been for 15 years. I changed every single thing about my life, but somehow all the fundamentals are exactly the same, and I am in precisely the same place even though it looks completely different. No closer. Further off, because I don't have the joy or hope of a new project, just the drudge-dread feeling that I've been here too many times and I know how this story peters off and lets me down. My hope starts sounding hollow to myself. I can't even bring myself to talk with people about my project with excitement; in fact, I sound a little dejected, as though I'm embarrassed to be seen with it, as though it's already failed. Like what I'm trying to do is too big and also, no one will even get it, and anyway, I will probably never finish it or even get it past prototype. So. 

And the weird thing is, I am still fucking writing it. 

Silent Agreement

Community (CAI 2021)

In relationship, chosen or imposed, we encounter difficulties and irritation with other people. Some personalities simply don't work well together, and for the most part, we choose to build relationships with people where that isn't the case. But we all have plenty of relationships, between work, neighbourhoods, and family, where our lives are entwined with people who have personalities that we find difficult, or who don't like us. 

When difficulties and irritation arise, there are two groups of responses - to address, or to ignore. 

If we choose to address, we risk conflict, so we often choose to ignore. 

If we ignore, we are responsible to LET IT GO. If we ignore and do not let it go, but instead add it to the Pile of Resentments, the pile will grow until it is too big to ignore. It is an important step of maturity to learn to Let It Go. For real. Truly. Not pretending to, not being the bigger person but secretly holding the resentment, not telling yourself you've let it go when really, you're still holding on. It involves self reflection. It involves employing empathy and compassion. It involves curiosity about the other person and caring about them. It's work. Work we do when we are in relationship with someone.

When we are stuck entwined with people we aren't well matched to, where it's hard to get along, we can assume a silent agreement between us, to use the years we will be entwined to better know each other so we can find more parts to respect and like; to use a thought-filter that gives the person affection and compassion; to actively look to build empathy for that person's experience; to give that person space to be themselves even when it's uncomfortable; to recognize where we're imposing expectations on that person and creating our own disappointment; and on, and on. Relationship happens over a long period of time. We will have many opportunities to practice these things, stumbling together with the trust that we are building relationship. Many chances of difficulty or irritation are bound to arise. We are bound to each other, so we must face them together. 

If our silent agreement is in place, the decision to address or ignore is made in that context. I may ignore a lot of things, and let them go as best I can, over time, and try to keep my resentment pile from growing. I may address important things, so that we can talk about what I'm feeling and what might help, risking offense, risking conflict, because the relationship is important enough to be worth working through conflict, with the silently agreed-to goal of mutual understanding and the silently-agreed rules.  I can actively try not to blame them, to look more fairly at my own part, be willing to deal with that. 

But what I can't do, what a relationship can't withstand, is Ignoring AND Holding On. Because that is a breach of the silent agreement. That is a failure to apply the rules of mutual understanding to the situation. It's a failure to keep the resentment pile from growing, and it will lead to Big C Conflict instead of the small conflict that could have prevented it, because the Conflict will contain all our resentment, everything we failed to Let Go because we failed to do our own work in the relationship by working on our own thinking. 

I think the silence of the agreement is the first part of the issue.

 

This wokening snowflake has boundaries and won't be gaslighted.

I’ve been horrified to see how the quickly the bully culture co-opts and destroys language before it can be useful in people’s growth and healing. The victims finally have a language and the bullies don’t like it. 

When I was growing up I didn’t have the words for how I was bullied - gaslighting! Now I have a word that captures the sinking feeling of being shown how wrong your very instincts must be, again, to feel that you’re being harmed in any way when the person you admire, even love, is telling you that it’s all in your head, that what you remember didn’t happen, that what you know isn’t true. Gaslighting. That’s a thing, it’s not my imagination, there’s a word for that! What a relief, to have a way to name it quickly, that nebulous, slippery set of symptoms that don’t quite add up to something you can prove and put a stop to. Thank you. Now I can see it, name it, recognize it, consider it and not dismiss my inner knowing. 

Think about all the insults - Snowflake! Liberal! Woke! 

Like considering yourself unique and special is laughable. Like being open minded to new ideas is despicable. Like paying attention to the experiences of other people means you’re not authentic. 

We had those words, finally, a way to shorthand very important, key learnings on a journey of personal growth, and they have turned them to insults, actions to be avoided. While we, ever the victims, put our heads down and tried to avoid their fists.

The bullies are doing to our language what they do to everything we love about ourselves. They belittle and sneer. They turn our words into weapons of shame, just like they do our differences, because they are bullies. They use whatever weakness they see to get an upper hand, feel strong, and sway the stupid, following sidekicks to do the same. Whatever reasons, whatever work they’ve done in their lives to grow up so this manifests in more socially acceptable ways (such as controlling a conversation, talking over someone, belittling their experience, teasing them about their stutter or appearance, laughing when they make a mistake, telling people not to be so sensitive and it’s just a joke), at the end of they day they have a bullying personality. So they will bully. They will look for weakness and poke at it, and they will look for strength and try to take it, turn it to weakness, weaponize it against us. To feel in control. For whatever fucked up reasons have fucked up their minds, hearts, and spirits that has NOTHING TO DO WITH US. For these reasons they don’t even know, they have successfully been stealing the words we use to describe how their behaviour affects us. Ooooh, whiny snowflake, did someone step on your BOUNDARIES and then try to GASLIGHT YOU? Boo hooooo hoooooo. They are silencing our voices, or worse, getting us to pre-emptively silence ourselves. They are undermining our ability to describe our experience. 

Anyone who sneers at another person who is trying to describe their experience is an asshole. Even if we love them. So don’t mind if I don’t let them decide what words I use to describe my experience.

Reaching for the pot from the fry pan

CAI & CDG, sometime ago

My guardian, my pimp, you left me here to navigate this plane alone, and I may never forgive you. 

I already have. You never left. 

Far enough to let me breathe becomes too far to keep me whole. Oscillation drags us down.

What is left? Left to do, now, what can be done, what will doing do, now? Left is right. Can we right what's left now?

When will you lift the heavy you use to hold me down? You say, that is death. You may be right. I may be left here yet. I've waited for the time and the time passed without coming. I've waited for the means but that means I'm always waiting. 

What do I want, anyway? A quite life, to waste away the days breathing life and playing? Yes. Yes. Yes. And loving and making. Not doing. Not doing and taking and doing some more. But don't we all? Want that? Doesn't everyone want peace?

Why should I have heaven while others live here in hell? How can I make my peace while the world burns?

Listen to Happy Rhodes. https://youtu.be/kCu5rPSQdDE

(Open Letter) to Joan Cusack

 Thank you for being a touchstone at every point in my life. You appear in more of my favourite movies than any other actor. You consistently choose films and characters that offer insight and range; you are completely your characters and completely yourself. You work with your brother which leads me to think you have genuine affection, which warms my heart and gives me hope. You seem like a person who cares deeply and also doesn't give two fucks, which attracts me like honey. I would know your voice anywhere, I pick it out all the time, and it's like a little gift, a reminder that you're out there, in the world, existing and creating beauty and curiosity around you just by existing, every time you unexpectedly show up. I even kind of remember you in movies that you weren't in, but should have been. I can reimagine every movie I've ever seen, and every movie I ever will see, with you in it. You always belong. I love that you're real. 

Misted

Sometimes I catch the mirror

or it catches me; I stop

arrested by the sight of me, my beauty

a surprise

always a surprise to see.

I face me, head on

eye to eye

clear blue shining life crinkles warm with love for me

and I wonder: can anyone else see what I see? 

or is this beauty just for me?

hidden in plain sight, a missed surprise

a mist between my beauty and their eyes.  

(it's no coincidence that mist and missed are the same word)

An Open Letter to Catherine Keener

 A Wind in the Door (CAI)

Dear Ms. Keener,

Do you realize that you may be the coolest person alive?

with warm regards,

CAI

 

Doing anything is hard

Horizon (CAI 2021)

Doing anything is hard

like

anything at all.

When anyone does anything

like

anyone at all

they should be honoured

proud

we should celebrate that something

anything at all

actually

got 

done

when

we 

make 

it

so

hard

to 

do

anything

at

all.

Divvying up the pie (last slice)

The entire world economy is currently worth $87.55 trillion dollars. There are only 87.5 trillions in our entire world economy. Please note: 

Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world with a net worth of $107.1 billion. will be the first billionaire to become a trillionaire in 2026 at the age of 62. 

Xu Jiayin will be the second billionaire to turn a trillionaire in 2027 at the age of 68. 

Jack Ma, will be the third man to hit one trillion Dollars net worth in 2030, at the age of 65. 

Ma Huateng, also known as the Pony Ma, will become a trillionaire by the time he’s 61 years old in 2033. 

Mukesh Ambani, is expected to hit one trillion by 2033 by which time he will be 75 years old. 

Bernard Arnault will probably become a trillionaire by 2032 at 84 years old. 

Mark Zuckerberg will be the youngest person to make a trillion at the age of 51 years in 2036. 

Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, is also set to hit a trillion in 2040 when he will be 83 years old. 

Michael Dell will have made his first trillion by 2043 by when he will be 78 years old. 

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are both set to hit $1 trillion by 2051 at the age of 77 years.

That's 11. Of 87.5. Owned by 11 guys in our lifetime. In their lifetime. And forever after tied in inheritance, never again part of the world economy the rest of us share. We're down to the last pass on the Monopoly Board and there are only about a dozen people on Earth who will win if we keep letting the systems run us. 

(source: Business Insider India, October 3, 2019, "Here’s how long it will take the world’s richest billionaires to become trillionaires.")

Disposable

Unfinished & Tangled: A self portrait (CAI 2020)

I am not disposable. 

But maybe I am. I guess I am.

I haven't earned the right to know where I stand

to trust where I stand

I haven't earned the true esteem of a friend

When people look at me they see

what? not much. Not much here to see, to be

If I try to share what's here, I impose

If I don't, I withhold

and it's not very interesting, anyway

Never enough, always too much

Alone, in the end, 

alone again

even among friends

still 

alone. 

Crow's taunt

(strange bird created by CD Good)

On our first day here, we saw a fox

large and orange and confident, trotting, just off 

in the distance, and I thought, 

we are closer to nature

we will have to watch the pets, I thought

but in the silence since

no animal has crossed my line of sight

all is quiet, day and night

save one, rare crow who sometimes shows his wings

flying off, he sings a croaking taunt my way 

saying, see, you are alone

even here

you are alone

Hope can be too demanding

 

Long View

I understand that hope can ask too much

how comforting to sink back, let the rush

float away, spend the days

not caring

I see 

I see it's not just easier; sometimes it saves your life

to forget to try, just wait to die

confine yourself to basics.

When effort falls flat what inspires more effort?

When trying draws judgement but not support, when doing sucks dry your precious stores

When experience tells us the prize will cost more

than it's worth

Abandoning hope can be a warm blanket safe haven 

a kind of birth

Free, finally, from the strain of striving suck me dry try try try

treadmill hamster-wheel life of strife hanging on by broken nails

the carrot always miles 

away

I see why, today, you might decide despair is a better friend

and in the end

I can't dissuade you, even though I see 

I see

there's something always lost in translation

I can't shake your ambition free; it's hard enough to do it

for me.

But I implore you,

Do. And I will too.

Gash

A gash in the sky

The wound of belonging
knicked open clumsily

gashed open suddenly

a gift reversed, transaction gone wrong

then the burst

head roaring outrage chest fire lava bubbles skin hot stomach

punch

knife pierce right through the eyes

I sigh

because here it is again

not overcome, not won against

not vanquished 

not gone, just scabbed over

raw red, throbbing, vulnerable, waiting 

to be ripped open

and I wanted to be zenner than that. 

Purgatorial oppositions

The Grey Zone (CAI 2020)

I enjoy meat. I hate eating dead animals. I love sugar and cheese. I hate being overweight. 

What a funny pergatorial planet, where everything is available but all of it bad for you, except what's good for you but unappealing. That's just its nature. I mustn't let it bother me so. 

Integrity's balance doesn't mean the oppositions are balanced equally, and it also doesn't have to mean choosing to exclusion. Integrity can sway, swing, lean in a direction. It must, to offset and create movement. Otherwise we just teeter in place until we fall. 

Freeloading

Freeloaders

 I get tired when people warn that you can't guarantee a base level income because people will get used to "sucking at the teat" and won't work. I believe they believe that, but it doesn't matter because they are hypocrites. Those with significant means have been sucking at the teat of other people's desperation, need, skill, talent, and knowledge for all of capitalism's reign. They just don't want to share it. The whole point of the entire miserable, exacting, system is to improve the quality of life. Create stability and prosperity. Allow for the pursuit of one's purpose or, dare we, happiness. That's why we, as a society, agreed to it all in the first place. Lots of us never agreed. Now, finally, automation is here, but instead of increasing our pay and decreasing our hours, you're just dumping us wholesale or finding all new ways to exploit us. No, un uh, that's not how this works. Social benefit commensurate to profit. As the common resource owners controlled by a government of resource stewards, we stand entitled to dividends through wealth taxes and limitations on corporate profits, returned to us as cash to do with as we see fit. If we want to work hard for the system, we will, because humans are work and play animals. They work when they find work they want to do, or work that matters to them that needs doing. If we want to earn enough for a "better life" however we define it, we can. But if we're going to build an entire economy based on exploitation with the promise that we are working towards equitable opportunity for all, Canada and then, beyond, at least some of those profits need to create the kind of stability that lets humans feel peaceful enough to avoid intoxicants, seek education and purpose, take care of each other and themselves, and participate without fear that failure to accept exploitative practices could put all of that in jeopardy. It's only a pipedream because the people in charge choose to make it so, and the vast majority don't question the systems or choose to push governments to provide a minimum standard, because they think that the "freeloaders" will suck at the teat. And around we go. You'd think that it's about time some of the freeloading went around, that hard working people got more than just hard work, fear and promises. But time is funny, because it never does seem to be time, and suddenly we live in the world of opposite, where people refuse to accept it when what's good for them is also good for everyone, and that it goes both ways. The species is doomed to repeat the same tragic patterns, every generation in its own way. In a system designed to funnel most of the resources out of the system and into a special, VIP space where a few have everything and more, while the rest struggle and devolve, we have come improbably far, an improbably high number of times in human history, and that is a hope I hold tight. 

One thing today in this direction, check in on myself for where I limit my imagination of what's possible on Earth by what has been built by evil men. 

Is that all I can do? Probably not, but it's one thing. 

The same Sky

The same sky

a few degrees of rotation

a world of story different

what to expect, what to enjoy, what to fear

actionable morals of alternate moralities

a small head-twist apart

a shift of the eye

across the same sky

and I still don't know which way to turn

 

Try, try again

Do you understand the extent of what you've done?

What makes you think? What makes you so?

Taking another go!

at a meaningful life.

True self

 The sun doesn't "come out" - it's always there. Just like the true self. 

Another day another proof

What makes it most laughable, of course,
is that sex with demons won't affect your body
at all
but your spirit
on the other hand
may enjoy
the change of pace.

Hard days come

Destructive Doing

Some days are harder than others.
Most days I just look away from it
the fear
the truth

that my efforts are worse than waste
because they cost more than nothing would have cost
took more than nothing would have taken
and gave nothing back that I wanted

just pain and futility and more certainty that whatever I try
next
will end the say way
in nothing

and I can try to see it from another angle
I can tell myself another story and turn my cheek but it doesn't matter
because the ends are the ends
the means remain unjustified
and I'm not even sure what I'm doing here
in the end
after all

anyway

I can't remember what I was thinking
to have tried and tried again
I reach back to myself and find only an empty
sad naiveté
a story full of plot holes and pointless, endless dialogue
saying nothing at all.

I can't even feel sorry for her, that me
she invites my disdain more than my pity
why did she ever think
anything she did might matter?
how much delusion did she eat for breakfast every day?
spoonfuls, bowlfuls
of sugar-coated sand.

Don't try to reassure me
I mean, what's the point?
But you won't. Anyway.
Because there's no reassurance to explain away the facts
there's no story that makes it all fine with me.

It's not fine with me.
The good bits and pieces don't counteract my failure.

The idea it was a choice
is the farce
that deflates all attempts, in any case.

I'm not even allowed to feel what I feel
while there's something to cling to, some consolation to grasp
to invalidate this knowing and let you feel comfortable saying that
I'm wrong
even though, I think on some level you know,
I'm not wrong at all.