Evil

"The only thing necessary for the persistence of evil is for enough good people to do nothing." Edmund Burke


The Remulah temple in Krakow has many similar remembrances and one might be inclined to see that as a sign of remembrance. Then you pay your 5 zlotny to walk through the cemetary and you see the far corner is being demolished to make way for a hotel. Stones broken during the war have to some extent been incorporated into the cemetary walls but this demolition is indiscriminate, with broken stones laying toppled in the cold winter mud. The cemetary fared better during the war, having been buried itelf to keep it's being hidden from the nazis, and now with full knowledge of what is here the bulldozers scrape and dig, toss history aside in little pieces.

I saw this marker at Auschwitz, located in Oswiecim, Poland. The country fought to change the name from Auschwitz back to Oswiecim in an effort to distance itself from the atrocities of the place. It is illegal to refer to Polish death camps; they are "German-run death camps in Poland." Old Jewish areas of Polish cities are marked on maps should you want to visit, and this week the Warsaw Ghetto boundaries were marked. I saw few practicing Jews in Poland and the temples are as much or more museums than places of worship. It is illegal to deny the Holocaust in Germany but each year there are more neo-Nazis with increased membership.

The oddity of a country feeling it mecessary to criminalize denial of history -- is there anything else like it?

Slow Blogging

Today's NY Times had an article about "slow blogging" as opposed to what ...? I thought blogs were designed not for immediate gratification or feedback but more as a meditative exercise in the sense that what i have to say i can say (or write) and put it out here to be read by anyone who cares to do so. I can leave it as long as i like or change it every so often. I can write what may or may not pass as a poem simply b/c that's what i want to do and not b/c anyone else cares one way or another. I understand there are those who blog for others, and some who blog with an eye toward some particular community, cause, profession, calling, etc. but the democracy of the net allows those like me with nothing to say to say it the same as those with important things to say. Sure i'd heard of blogs like huffington post and such but those seem to me to fall into a different class than blogs for the sake of blogs ... and otherwise it never occurred to me there was any need for a "slow blog" movement. Then again, i never really got the "slow food" movement either since i've always grown at least some of my food, picking berries, canning excess, trolling at the local farmers' market. I guess maybe i'm kind of naive, esp. considering most of my life i've lived in the 4th largest metro and tend to think i keep up with the world as well or better than most. But it never occurred to me that we needed someone to tell us where food came from, what was entailed in its production and transport farm to market, that we could pay less and eat better if we grew/picked our own ... and here's an idea, how about we cook It ourselves too? I read another article about the pre-made home meal replacements where you go and spend too much for something someone else in a factory setting put together so you can take it home and put it in the oven -- or probably the microwave -- and then have a "home-cooked meal." It would be "home cooked" yes, but but not home-made. I don't really get it, other than perhaps the "take and bake" pizza (it takes a good 30 min to make pizza dough). Along the same line, what happened to supper? I saw BB King at House of Blues on Friday -- he's not playing so much but what he plays he plays like no one else; more than that he has lots of fun. We'd been talking the other day about what ever happened to supper -- it disappeared. Now it's breakfast (i understand that's what some people eat in the morning), lunch (an excuse to leave your work mid-day to eat) and dinner (in the evening). Growing up we generally had breakfast (aka cereal), lunch and supper. When we lived in the country we had breakfast (eggs we got that morning or the day before from the chickens), dinner and supper. Dinner was the midday meal when we'd been working in the fields, in the garden, and with the chickens -- unless i was killing chickens that day dinner was the main meal and usually hot, with meat, veggies we'd grown and probably just picked, some sort of bread and milk/tea. Not that we had much time to eat -- esp in hay season we had to get back to work fast to bale or move hay to the barn before rain or night came. Today if i ate like that in the heat i'd probably get sick but then it worked; we were exhausted and hungry, no fears of dying if we ate [that's for another time or never] and then we went out and worked 'til dark at which point we came for supper --a light meal of whatever was left over from dinner. BB talked about it as a cultural thing -- at his hotel they told him they served breakfast, lunch and dinner; since he was being polite he never asked why they had lunch and dinner but no supper but recounted that in mississippi they have breakfast, dinner and supper. I never lived in mississippi but i also never ate dinner at night 'til i was past grown up; we grew up having supper and so did all the other people i knew.
Somehow this is all connected - things were simpler even when they were harder. The slow food movement says fast food destroys local traditions and healthy eating habits; that food should be local, organic and seasonal. Anyone who ever ate a store-bought tomato or was tempted to buy $3/lb mealy peaches in the winter already gets it -- or should. The slow bloggers are said to believe that "news-driven blogs" are the equivalent of fast-food chains in that they meet some need for instant something but cannot sustain us; seems to me if i'm looking to a blog for sustenanace i'm already in trouble. Todd Seiling wrote a "Slow Blog Manifesto" in 2006 stating such wisdom as "slow blogging is a rejection of immediacy" and an "affirmation that not all things worth reading are written quickly." As Homer Simpson might say: "D'oh!" Did we really need any slow movement to tell us any of these things? Are we really so afraid to think for ourselves, so lacking in ablity to discern, form our own opinions or employ common sense that we need people to tell us to slow down, to think before we write, to choose what we eat and read? Apparently, since an article on "slow blogging" gets an entire page in the Sunday Times. Me? I guess i'm happy i don't really get it, and sad for the world that people apparently need to be told such basic life principles. And since i blog for me [though readers, comments and some sort of connecting via blogging would be nice] i won't need to worry about immediacy or sustaining others or any other tenets of the slow blogging manifesto.
I'll just go pick some tomatoes and basil and chives and make a little supper.

Trust and God, Want and Fear

From Bogner's "Catholicism, holiness and spirituality:
"What is it in our lives that keeps us from getting closer to God? What's in that space between us and God? There are all sorts of theological answers, I suppose, but theology is not the answer here. The answer lies within each of us – is it fear, or is it laziness? Is it our self-loathing, or is it mistrust? Maybe it is doubt and cynicism born from the failures of the past. Or maybe we're just tired of making the effort. I think that distance is unique to each of us, ..."
---------------------------------
Yesterday was the 30-year anniversary of Jonestown, today just another day. Not much is changed. Folks live in community in El Dorado in an idyllic self-sufficient community of like-minded people supporting each other. Or maybe El Dorado is an oppressive confinement where spiritual leaders command allegiance, demand obedience, and young girls are given to men who pretend it's not rape ... Certainly some at El Dorado grow fat and happy of spirit while others are there for pure hedonism and others are trapped in voicelessness ... just like the rest of the world. No doubt more than a few at Jonestown believed to the end that Jones was their savior, the only one who understood or cared, the only one who ever tried to help ... nothing much has changed.

What creates such distance from god is "us." Distance keeps us a part from and shrouded in secrecy so we have a place to hide just in case. What if we go to god no one is there? What we did and didn't do, the things they said we did, the things we failed to do .... for all these reasons, when i go looking maybe god won't be there.

Some might say it's not a matter of god being "there" and that god is always "here" or "with us." I know i'm not good enough, god knows i'm nowhere near good enough, so he is not here with me. Dare I put forth the effort searching for that closeness we (I think all) hunger for on some level but which i know is not mine to receive? How do I know it is not for me to have close relationship with god? God eludes me because i'm not good enough. You told me all my life i'm not good enough; i believed you. Why wouldn't i? You said you were my friend, that you wanted what's best for me, that you were in my corner. You said i should trust you. You said you wouldn't hurt me, that you would take care of me. You said you loved me (not really, i just wanted to be loved). But you bit and hit and kicked and slapped. You burned and raped and raged and threatened. You beat us up, then put us down. You dared us to tell, cause no one would believe us -- this was a family that went to church and had the priests and nuns to dinner on sunday. You taught me i was a liar, sneak and thief -- i pretended to be happy and so proved you right. You passed us round when you were done ... burning and shamed we stayed quiet, we closed our eyes hard to keep from seeing but there was nowhere to hide.
Every day we went to church, the priest said god was watching. Every day we went to school, the nuns said god was watching. When we were young enough to think, to hope, someone might care, just enough to help, the nuns and priests they called us liar, assigned our penance and said we're going to hell. When they told you what we said blows rained down and hell could be no worse. We were made an example by those nuns and priests who we knew were full of only god's love; then everyone knew our badness and fun was made. It is not okay to be a bad girl. It is not okay to be afraid of parents who go to church and invite priests and nuns to dinner. It is not okay to ask for help if you are a liar. You are lucky to be alive and have parents who love you so much when you are as ungrateful as me. You are not worthy -- of life, of love, of god -- if you are me.

We have plenty of space ... too much space. The brain says what they taught us isn't true but there's nothing to replace it. We look and ask and listen and wait because we think maybe they might have been wrong, even though we still believe we are who and what they said. Parents, classmates, teachers, nuns and priests ... of course we still believe everything they said. We know they were right, but now we only believe all of them some of the time, but all of the time we believe some of it. We've made some small room for other possibility but we believed the other for so long ... and so we are empty, the space between us and god.

A child's warped and innocent belief, an ignorant confusion of words and deeds, unseeing of god ... both the problem and the answer ... to reconcile what was beaten into those tiny young brains with what we want to believe now: "It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in humans. It is better to take refuge in the lord than to trust in princes." - Psalm 118: 8-9

I don't trust god and that's an empty space. I fear god; god knows everything we say and did and am. God sees and knows and judges and all i am is not enough. So of course i am afraid.

Guayana Punch - Jonestown + 30 years

for some
the grass
is
always greener
with someone
else
taking care of
everything,
everybody ...

thinking optional
discouraged
go along,
get along
a whole
nother meaning
or is it really?

same ol
same ol
another day
another Jones

the jungle green
until it ran black
with blood-flecked foam
of cyanide-laced
baby's
soft lips
and then
it wasn't
very green
anymore

and did they
then
reincarnate
to higher
lower or
nothing at all?

enlightenment
a relative term
what does it mean?
whatever
we
want
or
they say

freshen up
if not
pure
then
clean
take the wax
from your ears
for the coming
of
the savior
whatever
the form
this time

how will we know?

what would buddha do?
probably
nothing
at all

here in texas (a squatter)

here in texas
we're
pretty
efficient
about this sort of thing

here in texas
everything is
bigger
even
evil vileness
swallowing what's left

here in texas
are many
languages and colors
none so white
as pure
nor so pure
as to be admired

here in texas
everyone
goes
to
new york
sometime or nother

here in texas
peaches blossom
while lettuces wilt and
sweet peas
sour
on the vine

here in texas
some is wrote down
more is left
unsaid
the easier
to lie about

here in texas
we sing
songs to our sons
dead
along the rivers

here in texas
close
to the end
free at last
of civilized needs

here
texas screams
at her frozen limits
nothing
a few mega-vitamins can't cure
or a free floating life raft

here in texas
minds are sane
souls mad
another wren perches alone
in the city

here in texas
hidden away
pulled away from the world we knew
writing stupid nonsense
like
here in texas

Boycott ignorance, buy el Eid stamps

Way back when I was in a scout troop -- mostly we camped and hung out, not a lot of badges or scout stuff going on. Earlier this week we all 6 of us -- what was 4 kids and 2 adults and are now 6 people of legal age -- had a reunion of sorts. In the process of this being set up email was used to connect. A day after we met I got the following email:
------------------------------------------------------
How ironic is this ??
They don't even believe in Christ and they're getting their own Christmas [this is the first clue] stamp, but don't dream of posting the ten commandments on federal property?

USPS New Stamp [a beautiful blue design celebrating the Muslim holiday el Eid]

REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of Pan Am Flight 103!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the military Barracks in Saudi Arabia!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the American Embassies in Africa!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the USS COLE!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM attack on 9/11/2001!
REMEMBER all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those vicious MUSLIM attacks!

Now the United States Postal Service REMEMBERS and HONORS the EID MUSLIM holiday season with a commemorative first class Holiday postage stamp.

REMEMBER to adamantly and vocally BOYCOTT this stamp when purchasing your stamps at the post office. To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors.REMEMBER to pass this along to every Christian and/or Patriotic AMERICAN that you know !!!
---------------------------------------------
Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah building and killed hundreds of innocents based on his view of American patriotism learned or strengthened by his military experience. A Pope denied the Jews and did nothing to expose or oppose the Holocaust. The Catholics used their religion to torture and kill millions during the Inquisition. Let's not forget the Crusades either. Some priests and other religious figures are pedophiles.

I still go to the Veterans' Day parade and I still thank members of the military -- regardless of one's view of this war or any other -- they did and are doing a job they signed on for. Christmas is a purely Christian celebration so far as religion goes and is widely celebrated (complete with USPS stamps) -- even if mostly on a secular level -- despite the millions who have died based on extremist views of the Inquistion, the hypocrisy during the Holocaust, the sexual abuse of thousands of children, etc. Why denounce an entire group based on the acts of a few? There is a small faction of extreme Islam that supports and funds terrorism -- denounce these individuals and even that small faction of extremism but not all Muslims.

I don't denounce all military because of the extremism shown by McVeigh. I don't denounce the Church or Catholics because of the Inquisition or the complicity with Hitler. I don't denounce all southern Christians because a majority of the KKK is comprised of southern Christians. To promote hate and intolerance of all Muslims because a small handful of the billions of practicing Muslims engaged in despicable acts is no different than the hatred shown by that small handful of the billions of Muslims blowing things up.

Have you ever read the Quaran? You might be surprised to know it mentions Jesus more times than Mohamed and with just as much respect. You might also be surprised to know how tolerant its message and how many similarities there are with the Bible and the Torah. The Quaran recognizes the validity of Christian and Jewish tradition.
We are all tribes of Israel -- the Muslims, the Jews and the Christians so it only makes sense there are many more similarities than differences.

None of us can be free unless all of us are free.

What about what we want?

From br tom's scatter:

"According to [Silvan S.] Tomkins, natural selection has favored distinct classes of affect for the preservation of life and for people. Tomkins argues that the "human being is equipped with innate affective responses which bias him to want to remain alive and to resist death, to want sexual experiences, to want to experience novelty and to resist boredom, to want to communicate, to be close to and in contact with others of his species and to resist the experience of head and face lowered in shame."Kaufman and Raphael, Coming Out of Shame: Transforming Gay and Lesbian Lives, 1996. 26 "

From wiki:
"Disagreements among theorists persist today over Tomkins’ firm insistence that there were nine and only nine affects, biologically based. The basic six are: interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle, distress-anguish, anger-rage, and fear-terror. Tomkins always described the first six, and one that “evolved later” (shame-humiliation) in pairs."

I find it both odd and jarring that there exists a theory of natural selection based on "classes of affect for the preservation of life and for people" and that shame would be included as an innate bias. Shame - humiliation strike me more as gifts to ourselves, from man from our fellow man -- and i have never seen shame as good for much other than as a powerful tool to beat down the weaker, younger, oppressed, victimized, or those who in any other manner are not the "status quo" but who may challenge it and so need to be squashed.

I have a close relationship with shame-- one monolithic shame which I accept and which is part of me. It ran (runs) my life and made (makes) my choices for a long time. It sprang from the words and deeds of others -- totally extraneous to me -- at least in the beginning. "They" did things for which I faulted myself; it was b/c of my failings, my badness, my status as less than that entitled them to take advantage and abuse me. I may not have started out as less than but that's what I became. I should say i am no longer less than and have moved beyond my past but it would be a lie. I hide my past by boxing it up, compartmentalizing, denial and learning to "say the right things." Still I fall prey with some frequency to my shame and don't know another way to be. Intellect to the contrary I know I played a role in and was responsible for my own abuses. My status as lessthan continues with self abuse once extraneous perpetrators are done and gone. I still think (or fear) there is something inherently bad and wrong with me but I would never view another in the same way.

Never would I blame any other child for their own abuse or their self-abuse. No other child is inherently bad or deserving of abuse. But me? I am less than, not entitled to or capable of treating or viewing myself with any empathy or understanding. This is my gift of shame for which I can thank mostly my parents.

Of course we want to live (or most of us want to live most of the time, anyway) -- and I guess I can see that bias for sexual experience would be included as innate at least for procreation but it must also be for intimacy; otherwise those who are not hetero or who do not want or cannot conceive would have no bias for sexual experience. An innate bias to be close, to communicate and in contact ... this is what i hunger for. This is something that can come only from interaction with people ... to be close, to communicate, to "be" in contact ... to be known.
And it is the shame I carry -- no matter how deeply and how hidden it is -- that pulls me away from these other "innate affective responses." For my shame I declined any choice in matters of sex -- I would have joined a convent to avoid voluntary sex except I figured I was already damned beyond hope for all I had done (or been done to me) and I knew avoiding sex was no reason to join a religious order though it was something i was very pulled to for what felt like right reasons. For the shame I hide and clothe myself in protective secrecy that allows only an illusion of closeness and contact. I am deep inside where no one can touch me. For the abuse I speak in circles and lie even to myself about what is real.
This is what i hunger for, something that can come only from interaction with people ... to be close, to communicate, to "be" in contact ... to be known. I try or I think I try or I try the best I know to communicate, to be close, to be in contact but i seem to not be getting it.

I do not see that shame has done me any favors. I do not see that it has any interest in my remaining alive -- quite the opposite. I have never seen any positive outcome of shame. Why then would shame be innate? What would be the biologocal basis? Is it instead the capacity of man to inflict and embrace shame and humiliation that is innate?
Why in the world would we have an innate capacity for something so numbing, so painful, so damaging to the human relation and connection that are the bases of the other innate biases?

2 months post-Ike

September 13 Ike came -- I'd been though hurricanes before but Ike was more than I expected. The one and only thing I ever really wanted - the only thing I do want -- is a home. Ike had different ideas. We lived here almost one year exactly when Ike came and the damage ... I wasn't prepared. Living in this swamp my whole life with never a flood I never dreamed my house would flood but there's a first for everything. It's amazing what a foot or so of water can do to a building... It's not like we'd realy gotten all the way moved in and things taken care of -- there was a lot of remodeling the house needed that we didn;t get finished before we moved in, there was still a lot of stuff in boxes, hadn't painted, hung pictures, etc. No more boxes though -- Ike tok care of them and they're still sitting out on the patio waiting to be trashed.
But I digress... imagine that.
2 months to the day we had Ike and what a storm it was. It was phenomenal and terrifying, majestic and devastating. It was nature unleashed at its best. 17 days without power. But the ground was nice and soft so it was a good time to plant the trees and such we'd had sheltered from the hot sun waiting for a better day. Today one of the peach trees bloomed, right next to the orange tree with the few fruits left hanging after Ike. Across the way tomatoes and peppers like crazy. So everything looks normal enough at least outside. Come inside and the floors are like a crazy house, cupped and wavy every which way. Just waiting for the insurance check. It will be the first time in my adult life I will live in a house without wood floors. I can't explain it, but that's a loss.
It's not that bad in retrospect. We need new floors throughout, we ought to replace all the kitchen and bathroom cabinets (but we're not going to so we can save some of that money for a new roof that the insurance didn't cover), we have to take out the sheetrock (but that means we can insulate). It doesn't make any sense for me to feel bad about it -- it's just a house, a thing. I wanted it to be a home and it never made it, at least not yet. Not a magazine picture home, no, I want a lived-in home, a place with "our stuff" from "our trips" and "our lives."
I guess that's a lot to ask 'cause except for a relatively short time I've not been able to accomplish it -- instead I live in warehouses filled with all kinds of magazines, papers, ill-fitting clothes, too many books (is that an oxymoron?) and boxes filled with only god knows what.
What I have is a house with potential.
One day I will not worry every time it rains.
One day the sheetrock will be new without any mold or mildew
One day we will have a new pvc floor that won't buckle, cup or swell when it floods.
One day is in the future
There may never come a day that R trashes the old papers but maybe one day te stacks won't bother me so much
There will almost definitely never be a day that people coming in the house don;t just drop stacks of mail and work and papers and books on the first empty surface
But maybe when we get a floor and sheetrock and repair the flood damage the house will look and feel so much better that the crap all over the place doesn't bother me so much
For now I still feel very much displaced and that this place where I awake and brush my teeth is no part of me -- nor I any part of it -- it is just a space.
I am full of space inside -- sometimes too much.
I don't need space -- I need a home.

On the way to point reyes, having passed through the fog, rolled through and around the mountains, i'm not sure exactly where this was other than between john muir woods and point reyes ... but who cares? does it really mattter where geographically i was? There was only one road and it went this way and the other, and all i had to do to get back where i came from was turn around, so all a map was good for was the names of places ... but i've never been so good with names. it was there, the light was just so and that is the point to a road trip after all, at least for me. I always thought it would be neat to do the blue highways of William Least Heat Moon but even that may too structured a road trip for me. what can be better than your music, a camera, a tank of gas in a car that goes? i guess i couuld drive to this same place again given the opportunity but it wouldn't be the same.

if i could come back as anything i would be the rain....

Stinson Beach ... beach the way it's supposed to be unless i guess you think skin cancer and wrinkles and all are cool ... not me. I'm a white slug sort though still wrinkled and imperfect of skin and all other ways ... we digress. i could live on a beach if it was like this but bringing in the sun and all its accoutrements -- not for me. lots of dead jellyfish on the sand were kind of neat to look at but no shells at all ... and no tar, no garbage, no plastic bags, no plastic bottles, no animals strangled in netting still clothing their corpses, no broken glass or wasted beer cans.

No people.

apologies in order

why do people blog?
why do people who read other people's blogs decide to create their own?
why, after deciding to try to start a blog, does one tell another whose blogs they read and from which they get smething, tell that other that they are finally starteding to try a blog. an endeavor given much thought and held back by much fear of both lack of know how and of anything to say
dont forget there were some questions there about how or why this or that...
and what then when that other offers some suggestions and asks to look would the one decline in the interest of anonymity?

so i say -- to one who's been encouraging me to go for it and see what comes ot it, and telling me how easy it is and he was right -- it's easy to set up so far anyway -- hey, i finally started a blog but it's a secret, amonymous blog ... i'm not telling you where it is -- what an ass

anonymous is only so good as far as it goes ... and it really can't go so far at that.
The whole thing is an exercise in narcissism to be totaly honest, but who ever heard of an anonymous narcissist?
I thought to blog would be neat because i hope -- i'd like to think -- maybe someone somewhere might read it and more than that comment, some exchaneg might be possible ... guess you can;t do that it you write in secret
like who cares anyway? no one knows who i am and the few who might read this and know of me probably already know there's not much to me anyway so why the hesitation?
partly maybe bc i hope you will think more of me than is deserved but chances of such slim as words are left behind. Pigeons are pretty til you see all the crap they leave behind and how it eats the paint from your car; peacocks are breathtaking til they squawk and leave piles of poo. I am not so pretty as a peacock and can't coo so softly as a pigeon, but otherwise ...

I want to blog like those who blog whose blogs are read ... whose blogs I read ... but it can't be one of those blogs or it wouln't be mine.
Things I read -- blogs or otherwise -- are interesting, enertaining, they touch or inspire, and what if I have none of that? I'm pretty basic -- nothing special about me. I work, I'm married, I have a kid, I have some dogs and cats and like to grow stuff and take pictures of things. No fancy exciting job with accompanying stories. Great smart kid who's done well despite me, she knows how to think and reason. Wonderful husband I don't deserve but maybe he'll pretend to not notice. A few friends who know me fairly well and stay friends anyway.
I am not a writer
I am not a photographer
I am not a thinker
I am not a schoalr
I am not a problem solver
I am not funny
I am not special
I just am.

I was an ass to not tell where this is (but I did send a later email) but ass is something I am and not infrequently -- though I don't try to be one and whenever I am I feel really bad.
Ass and bird poo ... seems like a theme

Maybe I should not blog
maybe I am better off to read the blogs I read
(and probably to limit my comments there too)
maybe you won't be mad for long
maybe i will decide that blogging is not for me
maybe in the meanwhile i'll just play
maybe i'll just be
(but try to be not an ass)
n see what happens
if anything does.

meanwhile mea culpa
i didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings and esp not yours
i just don't want you -- or anyone -- to read it and see what a stupid ass i am
what the hell, i guess i'll leave it here for a while anyways and see how it grows
or withers as the case may be

we know what we're saying
not what we're doing
they think we're committed
that's not the case
a week ago
that would have been inconceivable but now
we have all the problems we never even foresaw
Without your approval
it makes no sense at all
and all you need to do is say "goodbye."

when you said those things we were wrong to believe
but we were a good child and followed along
tearing at our flesh
attached though it stayed
beyond our reach
but easy prey for you and them

Always a happy human being he was
but only because he died so young

For the others happy is made of scraps
left over from our
ordinary lives and fragile stupidity
willing the next breath
and the one after that
at least til
the air is sucked out by the lies we live
the life we lie
we who sidle through the shadows
hidden from you, yes,
but mostly from our self.

so this is how easy

not a tech sort ... much to my consternation received an iphone for my birthday today and yeah, it's cool but i'm really not smart enough to fgure it all out. Thank God for 18-year olds who know everything and then some.
so everyonse said it's so easy to do a blog, just do it and allow comments if you want and see what happens so now, don't you know i have nothing to say?
I frequently have nothing to say -- to be honest honest -- but less often i have the honesty to be quiet and say nothing which is exactly what i have to offer on most topics.
so then i guess the question would be - how does anyone find this stuff? I stumbled across Br Tom's a while ago (which is how I got here by the way, there was a "dashboard" on his "scatter" so I clicked and then I clicked one more time)
What is it anyway that makes us put out there for others the things we don't even want to know about ourselves? I guess at times putting it out there makes it true for us and sometimes we need that honesty but more than that there seems to be a primal need for you to know me, for you to know some of my experiences, my thoughts and feelings, and the why. Narcissistic no doubt though I never thought I was much concerned with what anyone else thought so long as they thought enough negative to stay a distance and not try to be chummy. Now most who read this (if anyone does) won't know who or where or what I am, so why not bare all? I don't have an answer to that but I also do not plan to bare all.
Hmmm