D E E P I N T O A R T L I F E WEST

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

belief & hope

Good Evening Friends.  Here we are again, it hasn't been that long really, only two weeks as opposed to a real hiatus.  I prefer to call it a sabbatical because the word itself conjures something much closer to what I do offline.  I'm not sweetening it, actually sweet is too weak a word when you live in the continuous state of Present Shock where every twenty-four hour cycle is Halloween combined with April's Fool's Day.  The changes just keep coming, never think anything is static. Anything.  The energy fields have been bent to ramp it up. This week's watchword is BELIEVE. 

Last night, directly on the heels of our past few weeks into the fall semester, during which we were inundated, drip fed, rudely awakened from our physically and mentally restorative safe havens of creative vesselship, we were taught, in black and white, beyond all shadow of doubt, how foolish and irresponsible are the designers of spaceman hazmat suits, medical caregivers, mass transportation screeners and military scribes when it comes to pandemic preparedness.  Kinda like if western medical personnel and those just following orders have turned into the Malaysian Airlines copywriting staff for this one.  Why are we supposed to think that? 
I'd like to know what the military thinks it can accomplish by exposing its forces to Ebola, which brings me to Dublin Mick's bombshell post where he quotes Jim Stone on the massive wolf cry of Ebola.  I read it last night and noted the conversation in the comments on my previous post are quickly turning in that direction and feel probably a lot like everyone else which is:
I don't know what to believe. 

Only Jah know what going down.
Of course, I've been over it again and again and unfortunately we have some precedents for this kind of thing, enough so the boy who cries wolf appears to be typical of perhaps, a whining toddler trying to get
his/her way.  But we don't really know, do we.  There is a progressive negative aftermath to all that we've witnessed on our devices.  And for everything we've been thrown, really, there is no other way to think about it.  but still ... hope and belief come creepin' round.  run...

Things come across the internet that intend to produce an effect.  Through this medium, we are taught and shown examples of what is good and what is bad, regardless that these "things" are very often contradictory. 

Perhaps we need to stop believing in belief.  There is only one thing we can be sure of and that is ourselves, but even personal faith is sometimes unreliable.  When it is unreliable to us, we seek opinions from those we "believe" to be wiser than ourselves.   In Present Shock, this crazy, ruthless, over-intense, mind and body destroying avalanche of information can debilitate even the most trusted of our vanishing advisers. 

Because Hope is belief's accomplice.  Together, they are old habits of cowardice in concentration.  Delusional U-turns on a circular beltway.
We need neither to survive.  We never did and still don't.  I shouldn't have to point that out.

Real fact is helpful where you can find it.  Connected to our devices, the device on which you are reading this text, there is unfortunately little, perhaps none, to be found.  Thus, the marketing, development and continuous upgrading of these devices becomes the only way to manage seven billion hopeful believers while the planet is shredded into a million, quadrillion, tiny pieces. 




33 comments:

Unknown said...

Spot on. Typing this on a fancy new android device upon which big G's own you tube search function mostly refuses to work.
Of course, it plays their "selected" pop culture flawlessly.

Eliciting no more than "whatever" from an other one who expects nothing less from anything anymore

Among that googleplex particulate then lets stream dreams all flowering together from an interconnected palate of light.

Way I see it can't hurt.

RW

nina said...

Indeed RW. Dreams are based on 100% "interpreted reality" and come only from our own experience. We can trust dreams because we own them. I don't see that these can be taken from us, at least not yet, but science is working on it.

Unknown said...

Rain, light but appreciated, cooled the swelter finally. Looks like an Oregon winter for a welcome change.

I use my sons old Ti 30x random Integer generator to select one of these poems I've foolishly translated.


30


Tao assists king accordingly, he needs not animate dogs of war
Such affairs usually rebound

Dog soldiers circling in their goat head desert
Dig a dusty crater of desolation and famine

A skillful commander achieves objective and stops!
No endless animation for self aggrandizement

Approaches an objective without arrogance
Assimilates this objective without self acclaim
Acquires his objective while praising his troops
Achieves an objective because he has no other choice
This is accomplished without forcing

Sharpest thorns thus overgrown
Contrary to Tao is not sustainable

I woke today in Phoenix and you were already gone. Rising from the ashes a monumental temple to Petrosaurus, god of gentrification. Another town square dissolving in an ochre clad ant army dutifully following dictums. Hope and changed into drive thru caffiene and fuel dispensarys complete with state of the art facility for washing automobiles.

Where have all the showers gone?

Already Rays of Blinding Sun return vaporizing remnants of blessed sky love lest moisture penetrates.

On to Mohave I blissfully fly

As to commodification of dreams. One of those google "selected for you" you tube videos I mentioned previously was Box of Rain, recorded 6/21/89. That night my pregnant wife munched a handful of stems from a guy who repeated "its all energy" while we screamed "We want Phil"

So lately I've grown to seek and appreciate random randomness and do whatever it takes to steer clear of otherwise.

Your writing style has influenced and opened this beyond my wildest dreams and for that I'm forever

Grateful

Rain Waters

nina said...

RW, seriously, are you going to Mojave? A strange, eerie little whistlestop for graffitied NAFTA boxcars to only pass through and make a lot of noise. Big distraction. When you leave Mojave, you feel like you didn't go anywhere.

Perhaps in your travel away from gentrification you met Walter White at his car wash? Now that would be, somehow, more real than printed terror on the bad news box.

True the TAO has much to show us on leaders and war. I've posted a good bit of it already and link to it in my archives and left side bar library. Feel free to peruse.

nina said...

For RW, posted on 11 Feb 2012:

From Chapter 57, v. 1-7: The TAO

1. think of yourself as an empire to govern, explore, work and live in

2. a man stretched between heaven and earth governs the totality of the self with ritual action and intent

3. a man stretched between heaven and earth resolves conflicts within his border with surprise, creativity and the unusual

4. a man stretched between heaven and earth embraces the universe by not interfering with it at all

5. it is a matter of degree to see yourself as a ruler who governs according to a definite plan reacting creatively to the unexpected while also allowing your kingdom to unfold naturally

6. the ancient child asks where is this kingdom

7. the kingdom is within me
within each of us

izzy said...

Mojave just hasn't been the same since the Route 58 bypass. And it wasn't much before that.

Although it may take a while for ebola to get there.

nina said...

That is correct Izzy. Still, the storefront churches and state agencies for illegals and unwed mothers remain in operation, as does the regional CHP station, and a miniscule clinic or two. Because of the truck stop style motels and the handful of restaurants in Mojave facing the 14, its a major layover between SoCal and Bakersfield. A pandemic of any weight could make mince meat out of it in no time at all. Plus, you have to consider the transient AG workers in the southern Central Valley who overnight there. What are they going to do? Find their ways to Bakersfield by any means and watch TV in the ERs?

I would say just thinking on it these few minutes, it is a dangerous situation waiting to happen.

Mojave is by no means singular. This whole country has more Mojaves than cities and suburbs.

nina said...

RW said ...one of these poems I've foolishly translated.

If you didn't write it, who did? It brings up so many images for each strand of words that the subjective reader is free to make of it what he and he only, feels. I like that it has no rules and takes you in wherever it is going. It works.

Rain Waters said...

I'm headed just south of sin city. Someone pointed out the folly of blowing a lifetime investment on selfishly dropping out. I recall the word "blasphemous" being used, an instant upload of extreme value.

Reconnected with old friends who rehired me on the spot to work at one of their locations near LV.
My daughter and grandchildren are out of Texas, currently passing through a stage in Fort Mohave which is better than being over 700 miles apart for us.

I find writing is multi dimensionally enhanced in that desert. I walk way way out till noise fades and ahh. This is impossible for me at this stage within five miles of an I-5 corridor.

Yup, too many moths again. I left the typo as its even better Yes!

Another weakness I'll get over soon as it becomes a habit, which I'll then drop like most others.

81 Tao verses are a wonderful device cleverly disguised as poetry. The only way I came to this was through a decade long attempt to translate them into something "just exactly perfect".

Well we all know how that went.
Another work in progress, or it suffers the axe. . .

Ebola. Maybe failure to quarantine those known to have contacted the Texas case is due to the same twisted denial as failure to identify and quarantine the 5% or so of US human incarnates suspected of being prone to psychopathy?

A nobrainer which is in our face perhaps intentionally

I don't know!

I explain to my grandson that love is expressed fully by ones most honest admission of ignorance.

"I don't know" means "I love you" any fabricated response delivered due to lack of self esteem is instantly read by one of integral awareness as "I love me"

I really miss Neils randomness here. Thats what sustains life.

as we drift among the particulate

Anonymous said...

CLIMBING GREEN-CLIFF MOUNTAIN
IN YUNG-CHIA

Taking a little food, a light walking-stick,
I wander up to my home in quiet mystery,
the path along streams winding far away
onto ridgetops, no end to this wonder at
slow waters silent in their frozen beauty
and bamboo glistening at heart with frost,
cascades scattering a confusion of spray
and broad forests crowding distant cliffs.
Thinking it's moonrise I see in the west
and sunset I'm watching blaze in the east,
I hike on until dark, then linger out night
sheltered away in deep expanses of shadow.
Immune to high importance: that's renown.
Walk humbly and it's all promise in beauty,
for in quiet mystery the way runs smooth,
ascending remote heights beyond compare.
Utter tranquillity, the distinction between
yes this and no that lost, I embrace primal
unity, thought and silence woven together,
that deep healing where we venture forth.

Hsieh Ling-Yun

The key here yes this and no that and
Quiet mystery having to do with the way

BD

Anonymous said...

Honor your ancestors, your kids will honor you for that.
Heaven is not a closed loop wherein first and last do anything but fight for some damned management.

Of course, once there, then there is much OK stuff.

So what if that got blown up? Work with what is given freely. Of course, that is an unpaid internship.

They say that is neutral, but does not everything pass by?

And if that is where and when falling and rising and being another kid is the same thing, that is maybe the best okie dokie that is worked with.

nina said...

Anonymous 10.16, 4:35, I need a name please.
Thank you.

nina said...

Now we have a brand new Ebola Czar with no medical experience. Hmmmm. Have you ever been hired for a position for which you had no experience, but were lured by the fanfare, high pay and bennies? Can you say "Heck of a job, Brownie"? He'll be outta there in under 3 months and blamed for everything.

BTW, this particular pandemic has everything in common with AIDS so they should have been prepared starting with air travel controls. As it is, despite previous experience, they are going about this one as if caught off guard without precedence. "Gee, we never thought ..."

So we are back to thinking on our own, taking our own precautions, wondering.

And why the hell aren't the supermarkets dispensing sanitizing wipes before picking a shopping cart anymore? A handful did and ran out and don't bother to refill.

Today I am once again driving a friend to receive a health procedure and can tell you what I experienced last week will be exactly the same. Huge waiting room, wall TVs blaring CNN Ebola News, fifty or so people squeezed side by side and sharing the same single water fountain which has a handle or button you press to make it work. Our normal lives have thousands of gaps where Ebola could take hold.

And Halloween, candy distribution evening, is coming ...

I don't mean to get carried away here, but I am saying this so called crisis is exposing an incredible, actually an ASTOUNDING, lack of intelligence.

nina said...

No wonder the problem has been put under the management of an Ebola Czar. After visiting my friend's medical center as driver, I got a very clean glimpse that if any pandemic is rushing our shores, everything we do must change. The kind of change required is so gargantuan, there might just be only a handful of minds on this Earth with the desire, creativity and ability to deal with it properly.
At the rate we are going, we'll never make it. Its not something you can throw weapons at or make money doing, but it would create entire new markets for sanitary safety. Every restroom in existence would have to be rethought, every location where more than one person congregates redesigned. Architecture would play a primary role. As a test, it is enlightening for understanding the massive changes necessary, just put the word pandemic in your mind and take a walk around the area where you are at this moment. Be thorough, use a notebook if it will help.

The money required to make necessary changes doesn't exist. The will to makes these changes doesn't exist.

As soon as the glare of the spotlight and PR sessions are over, that new Czar is in for an extremely unpleasant awakening, that is if he is able to truly fathom what must be done.

est said...

-
for neil ...

i did not mean to leave
so quickly, so soon

it's just i had to be somewhere
there was no time to say goodbye

i want you all to know, i arrived
and it's all i thought it would be

quiet and peaceful,
beauty beyond measure,
i'll wait for you
-

nina said...

I would love to hear how that message came to you Est.

est said...

-
i wish i could tell you
if i only knew, myself

i did not presume to speak
for our gentle friend

the words went to the page
completely on their own

as in all cases, i am but a scribe, x o est
-

nina said...

Scrapsan, please see this: http://paintings-art.blogspot.com/2014/10/cadbury-castle.html

Visuals to accompany the verse of Hsieh Ling-Yun.

I suggest anyone else reading here who wants to just feel very, very good also see UK John's work on Cadbury.

nina said...

Est, like Socrates with his pen writing for Plato.

And as a painter, I know exactly what you are saying. That's why I asked you about it. It is a gift beyond measure.

Anonymous said...

yes checked out Cadbury, Very nice indeed. Also checked out est little site. Another fine place to rest. Seems like you change poetry> Really liked the ICEMAN
Scrap

Anonymous said...

My mistake the poems title is Awake. and I ask this question: is it autobiographical? reason because the email link does not work. i have said this and so has nina...some beautiful talented people hang out here. even if it is cyberspace i feel the vibe and closeness that exists here at Artlife West. Love to you too nina

Scrap

est said...

-
thank you, scrap

a friend put up the page
and i have no access

try esteban.f1.folsom@gmail.com

anytime

as i said, to dear nina
i write what comes through me, rarely edit and keep it simple

many things are self
referential, i've noticed

as in, referring to themselves [the words], not 'me'
so much

but yes, 'awake' is about me and my life
[they all are, really]

but you have to write what 'you' know

my love
to you all
est
-

nina said...

Here is our Mister S.T. Bahn's page:
http://www.artvt.com/poets/folsom/index.html

AWAKE got under my skins too.
S.T., you coulda been hanging out with the Beats at City Lights in a striped turtleneck and darkers on bongos between sets.

It is my hope that Mr. Kerouac who lives, retired in FL, reads those fine lines.

est said...

-
the beats - kerouac ?
you're much too kind

i had some other
names, on my mind

hesse, huxely and thoreau - dante, virgil

edgar allen poe
joseph conrad

william, bacon chaucer and the like

the books of the dead
bagavad gita the dhammapada

steinbeck faulkner
twain i'll say it again

orwell of course that one
and animal farm yeah that's it

all of bradbury asimov
ursula k leguin tolkien

frost emerson yeats
sappho browning and plath milne

cummings thomas milton whitman james

all good just need to
know how to read
-

nina said...

Ooooo, floored, humbled, at your service, Amen.

est said...

-
damn it forgot
>all of swift

plato and those
greek plays

diamond sutra
lao tse tsu

+ many others
no doubt
-

Anonymous said...

est, Du Fu said: The ideas of a poet should be noble and simple

Up before the sun
the moon still high in the open eastern sky
stillness all around
I sit under this moon going deeper



Little yellow prairie flowers
orange nectar nipple budding
pollinators buzz nearby

BD

est said...

-
it's raining here tonight
there's a chill in the air

the leaves are turning and falling
as i sit on the porch
in this chair

i wait for winter patiently
i know it's coming soon

the geese are headed south
i think their playing my tune
-

nina said...

What about the bioweapons labs' leaks, Dubs?

nina said...

Dubs, please see:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-23/exclusive-was-ebola-accidentally-released-bioweapons-lab-west-africa

Originally published on Washington's Blog, then Zerohedge and Cryptogon picked it up.

Well, now that the cat's out of the bag, regardless of how it got out, it damn well needs to be put back in and destroyed forever. This "scientific" collecting of samples and then blowing off the collections by whatever means is insane.

I really don't care how it got out, I care about the present and where it goes from here. Ten thousand infected, five thousand of that total, dead.

nina said...

This just in from our adventure seeking metal sculptor, Brian:

> http://chumbacruz.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/armageddon-is-an-empty-promise-that-the-lowlifes-disarm-you-with/

The world is ready for Chumba. Astounding timing. Its perfect.

john said...

Hi Nina

Many thanks for the link. Good to see so much poetry here, very enjoyable and encouraging that the muse of poetry is still working in these times. Good links from Dublin Mick and yourself there too, interesting stuff indeed, such terrible things going on.

nina said...

So good to hear from you John, yes these times just keep getting worse, but your photographs are a shining light in the madness. I am serious, I love your work! It is a blessing that creative people keep creating no matter what.