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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Hello Tanzania

Hello Tanzania. The stats say you are reading the post. What are you doing today. Can't figure how you found us. When I think of Africa I see dry plains of dark dirt with huts scattered close together. I see brush where herds of animals graze. I do not consider high speed internet part of the landscape. Just remembering Mr. Gates donating lots of computers, is that how you got here?

Africa, what does one do in Africa, the same as the rest of us, Food, clothing, shelter, everything necessary for health and well being. Work, a job for dollars, to pay the bills. Familly, to share the good times and the bad times.

Tanzania, I know so little about you it makes me ashamed. Of not knowing about peoples and their lives. Such a silly thought. Should I be responsible for knowing everything. Can life elsewhere exist without me knowing. The little child knows nothing exists except what is before their eyes. There is nothing else but the image before them.

I dream of far away places, the towns I will never see, the land I will never walk, the cultures I will never experience. You are out there, and yet to me you do not exist. Only what is before me do I know. What I can touch with my fingers, see with my eyes hear with my ears smell with my nose. My universe is before me.

Do you exist, are you there. where are you. In a town in a home in a safe place. In a happy place. I dream your whole existence, make your world as i want it to be, and I give to you what I want you to have, wealth, health and happiness. I dream your whole existence just because I saw a statistic that said you were here. Puff! You exist, you are now part of my world. Welcome.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

the 500

Quiet, hear the silence, the air is still, nothing moves.
Quiet, the absence of noise, still.
Quiet, not a sound to be made, the birds are at rest, the sun warm. The leaves on the trees do not move, the branch bowing to the green it holds. The soil keeps in place, the ant asleep in its nest.

A day of stillness, with the energy elsewhere, Indianapolis, the noise of the engines thiry laps to go. The crowd enmassed in the heat. The roar of the engines, the pit crews efficient. The test. The spectators waiting, watching, rooting, cheering, focused on the race, ignoring what else. The cars speed by, the excitement mounting. Two hundred miles an hour, we try to imagine, the reflexes, the eyes watching, theirs and ours. Zoom, zoom. The fastest, the most efficient, the person with the skill, with the machine the best, the luckiest. 'Man' taking a test, to be called the best, and we watch and we cheer, all the energy we share. We want them all to win, we are impressed with them all, we dream it is us behind the wheel, and we know we could not do it and we cheer them, those who can. And we wish them well. The test of the best,  the fastest, this weekend, the memorial event, the challenge, the test, . Everybody gets by,he spins out of control, circles, the car spins round, and they all miss the spinning machine. What a relief, the skill, the precision, the art. Wow that was great, nobody got hurt, fast thinking, good work, good skill, eighteen laps to go. A commercial breaks the tension, distracts the thought, stops the action.

memorial

rtgwekig

code, maybe
code, no
gibberish, just the fingers fidgeting

there is nobody out there
we are all alone
it is just me sitting here
with my thoughts

memorial
remember those gone
remember those here
remember

learn from their mistakes
so the mistakes you make are less painful

life, learning to live with the choices we make
life, looking back at what was
life, looking forward, dreaming what might be

life, living in the now
here

the sadness of memorial
the faces gone
those close, now distant
the hugs can't be made
the faces of the past
the smiles of days gone by
the people disappeared

the one's that made things better
the people who brought cheer
are they no longer here?

Are the dead really dead,
are they alive because they are still in our head.
Faces dancing, relatives prancing.

When  he is missed, just think, the face appears,
is it him or is it you, alas, he says nothing new.
Flash, a memory from the past, a face long gone by.

Memorial to him to her, to me, to yesterday
and what was to be, the reality of then and the
memory of now. The experience of the past, the way we saw it, changed to the way we want it to be.
Is that the past, or is it the present.
Living in yesterday today, putting them here, at our side. It is getting crowded, we all standing side by side.

The soldier, the sailor, the farmer, the banker the grandma, the cousin, the aunt the uncle. The pieces of our memory, that make us what we be. We needed all of them to come up to me. I would be different if it was not for....

The smile she gave me, the hug from him, the stern look, the scold, the show. We watched their lives, we watched them live, we read the history, now is it us who live, are we pieces of them gathered here, or am I me with memories in me, of who they were and what they did. The stories I tell, the tales I talk, did they happen, or did I dream them. Are you really there, do you know what it is you hear. Do we read it as it was written or do we make our own rules. Do we translate correctly, what in fact is correctly. Things happen, we see them from the corner of our eye, are we color blind or is that the color it is. Nothing is real. We make it real, only because we believe it is real. We make believe it is real.

We make the memorial, we make the memory, we make it the way we want it. no matter what it was, we make it the way we want it.

Our memorial, the faces the way we want to see them, the faces we want to see, Only those that are treasures to you and to me. The rest we never see.
The other memory, yours, not me.

Someone special, someone important, our treasures we remember, those we keep as memory. Treasures we hold, lessons we learned. Hearts, we need, hearts we break. We remember what was important, we remember what we want to give back. We give back what we want others to remember, what was important to us.

How about the bad guy. Lets memorialize the bad guy, because without them there would be no good guy.

Those we celebrate, who are they, why do we celebrate them. Some we celebrate we can not exalt without their alter ego.

But no, not today. We think about them, those we cherish, in our minds eye we love and hug them, because they make us and they made us feel better, feel good. They gave to our lives that which we needed to feel better about ourselves, to feel good about ourselves. They have given to us and we celebrate their gift. Memorial, we remember receiving something special, something only they had to give, something we are counting, that has added to our lives. We celebrate what we receive because it has made us bigger and grander.

Usually not, do we receive, on this day we celebrate we laud we count, that which we got, and not what was taken. And we hope someone remembers to give and not receive, to touch us for the better, and not take, wanting to receive. We want for all to feel better, and it is them we remember, those who have given, from whom we did receive.

To them we are grateful, to them we salute, to them we wish, some day, some one will celebrate us in memorial.

Friday, May 18, 2012

"We never really die, we just change."


The title is a quote from the movie "The Bitter Tea of General Yen", (1933). A predictable love story about a Chinese general and an American Missionary, Barbara Stanwyck in a tender role which she plays with a gentleness uncharacteristic of roles cast later in her career.

Aside from the anomaly of Ms. Stanwycks character the film portrays the east/west misinterpretation or misrepresentation that is also true of western culture today, and the assumptions acted upon.

While a word of caution to cultures,  as  a clash  in communication, needs, wants and sensibilities flavor the sets as well as the dialogue there is blossoming of art and nature budding throughout, coloring the black and white with the spring of existence. This film links the chains of DNA as one road everything travels.

Written by Edward E. Paramore Jr. and directed by Frank Capra with an international cast to compliment the theme of everything as one.

When confronting the finality of life a quote like, "We never really die, we just change" is a soothing tea to drink.

Monday, May 14, 2012

What we do



The terror of childhood is the thought of losing the anchor. That link with reality and security. The fear that the parents will die. It shapes the days and haunts the nights until adolescence, for at that time the wish is for the parents to die, for the young person to shed it's dependence and fly on it's own. It is the cry for freedom without the skill or knowledge to survive in the world, but the primal peak of puberty pushing for independence. When, then, the individual reaches adult and realizes that in fact the parents will die, and the mind begins to grapple with the inevitable.

As time passes, the individual then becomes aware of the ticking clock of his own mortality and chooses how to face the time. Choosing whether or not to ignore the inevitable or to prepare to put things in order or to leave a mess for someone else to clean up.

Decisions to be made, to clean up the circumstances of one's life, to put things in order, to sort through the years and the accumulation of unfinished business. The need to arrange for what is left behind.

The inevitable reflection on the years past and how they were played, the persons along the way that influenced the choices, and the choosing of choices whether helpful or unhelpful in living a life as one would have wished the life to be lived.

The dreams unfulfilled, the hearts broken, the legacy of a lifetime.

As the muscles sag, the hair thins, the wrinkles appear, the days lived are relived. without warning, the images coalesce into a past time, a different person, the same person. The visions of the drifting snow of memories snowball into days and years relived, and the decision to accept success or failure for those times. The judgement day we all hear about, but it is we who are the judge, we are the jury of our lives and how well we have lived them. We sit at the trial of our lives and pass judgement on ourselves and whether or not we have used our time wisely. For it is then, our time is up, and we have no more moments to rebuild repair or replay the days of our lives.

Friday, May 11, 2012

I

I am just a memory
a little bit of time
wrapped in a package
with a ribbon of days to remember.

The weave, stroked and coddled
by the edge of experience colored
with the threads of blue skies, white clouds
and misty nights.

I am just a memory
laces of laughter with drips of tears
then, more of the same.

A quilt of feelings wrap the surface
while warming the core.

I am just a memory
wrapped.
Stitched in place with patches of good and bad,
also colors of illusion and shades of reality.
Embroidered with a texture of damp musty visions
of the land, sea, stars and sunshine on a bed of
reality near the chair of meaning.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

No is the worst word I have ever heard
No gets the wall erected immediately
No stops everything in it's tracks
No is what you do not want to hear
No to everything
No more
No less
No where
No how
No way
No thing
NO NO NO

If you do not ask
You will not hear
the dreaded word
the door close
the end of discussion
the end of thought
the end

How many times a day do you say
NO

Does it feel like the end of a link
Does it feel like a shut down, a door closing
and end, the end

Maybe the word should be outlawed
How many brainstorms were thwarted
How many great inventions died
How many cures undiscovered
because some jerk said NO


Thursday, May 3, 2012

kindness

Being blunt is not necessarily what people want to hear when they are in the mood for pity and sympathy but when aging some of us are more inclined to be rudely honest or blunt. Our time is getting shorter and we find the fastest way to get the job done but we are not diplomats.

That is a fault of narccists. Me included. I have not learned the skill of selling. I have more importantly, important to myself of course, found the solution to a problem and relish that success. Not being able to convert the information to a sales pitch is a short coming.

For example, someone disabled went to a wedding and was bummed out by discovering that another person with the same disability was at the wedding. Ruined the whole event for the person. My comment was that the person was simply changing the event to making it about themself, instead of en joying the event. A purely selfish move, also, a waste of a perfectly good time. Also, a mistake because in life there are more bad times than  good times for disabled individuals so it was doubly wasted. What is the good of wasting a good time to feel bad. Save feeling bad for when you truly do feel bad. A wedding is a time to celebrate, it is a perfect excuse to celebrate. Celebrating is a time for the body to feel good. Like the song says, everybody, be happy. After the wedding you can feel as unhappy as you want. Besides the newly weds need all the good karma they can get, especially in these difficult times. Put yourself aside and share their joy.