lest we forget

In 2008, while his liberal devotees dried their eyes, Obama accepted the entire Pentagon of his predecessor, George Bush: its wars and war crimes. As the constitution is replaced by an emerging police state, those who destroyed Iraq with shock and awe, piled up the rubble in Afghanistan and reduced Libya to a Hobbesian nightmare, are ascendant across the US administration. Behind their beribboned facade, more former US soldiers are killing themselves than are dying on battlefields. Last year 6,500 veterans took their own lives. Put out more flags.

In Britain, the distractions of the fakery of image and identity politics have not quite succeeded. A stirring has begun, though people of conscience should hurry. The judges at Nuremberg were succinct: "Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity."

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where we are

I'm in Montana, but my sense of purpose here has been shaken.

In the future (near or distant), I envision myself in either a landscape architecture or a regional or city planning  program. The conservation of resources for future generations pulls me. Its an important cause to me, and I think that there is a lot I can contribute to this field of knowledge: the understanding we have of the relationship between people and their environment.

I think conservation is important because it represents a middle-path between the polar opposites of preservation and utilization. It recognizes that preservation is overly idealistic, in that people can not fully extricate themselves and their needs from the Earth. We will always be dependent on it for our survival. Recognizing our dependency reveals the crux. If we are overly dependent on the Earth, as has been the case in the past, we risk the over-exploitation and degradation of our natural resource wealth.

While trying to explain this to some of the other people on my crew, we get lost in debates over what our purpose is here. Conservation work is inherently only for people, which is odd because we are so rarely in contact with outside society.

I think that I've been resolving one of the bigger questions though. I want to work in the urban context; without the frame of people to strengthen my resolve, the work I do begins to lapse into existential questions of purpose and reason.
Q: Why am I here? What is the purpose of my being here? What is the purpose of this project?
A: I still don't know.

I am happy at the same time though, because I have answered a few questions which had bothered me before.

Q: Where am I? Where is my home?
A: This place is where I am, and that place is my home.

braver than blackbird

We have tomorrow

Bright before us

Like a flame.

Yesterday, a night-gone thing

A sun-down name.

And dawn today

Broad arch above the road we came.

We march!

I met a papyraceus (not in real life, but it was still real)

I inhaled deeply and smelled the scent flood my sinuses; a thick trickle of oh so sweet sensation,  practically dripping down my throat. At least for a while, I could taste the fragrance, and it spoke back to me:

If I seem so it's all because of them and how they have nurtured me.

do giraffes do yoga?

such elegance

such grace

Home is the Hunter

“…when the Cree speak of their land they mean more than just the ground on which they stand…..What they mean by land is the  entire multidimensional web of beings that occupies eastern James Bay: people, animals, plants, earth. So their story is one of place, but also one of  the complicated relationships --- physical and metaphysical, human and other-than-human --- that have shaped land and people together. The land is full of their names, their stories, their personal memories about these relationships, and all of these inhabit the remembered earth. These narratives, even if they remain something of a mystery,  a linguistic and symbolic world that we are as unprepared for as we are to make our living by hunting on the land of the bay, become a responsibility for anyone who wishes to speak about the Cree and their land. The responsibility is to remember that these stories are not curiosities, but, rather, have past and present meaning on the land.”

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complementary

that -
as he

- is indefatigable in pursuit of abstract truth -

so is she.

- in caring for the interests by the way

striving tenderly and lovingly -

that -

perish not one of the least of these 'little ones'

palindromic

“Traci, to regard nine men in drag,” Eric (in a play or an ironic art spot) warned, “I am not so bad.”

“I’d never even seen knees … never even did a Boston maiden raw,” tops Traci, “nor in a royal panic. I regard nine men in drag — erotic art.”

source

in time intimate intimidates (memories)

I am lying on my left, she on her right. We are facing each other, yet only I am awake. Her round face is composed and relaxed, eyes shut, mouth peeking open, and that silly nose ring shyly glinting in the soft darkness. From this close, I can see her lips softly tremble with each breath.

She is the sea and these breaths are the tide, creeping in and out across the expanses of sand and beach, slowly visible only in the tender roundness of her breasts and the curvature of her shoulders. Although each breath is only a single swell in the sea of her mind, I see how they grow in strength and number until the shift begins to happen as the tide creeps in.

I breathe deeply and my lungs fill with water yet I struggle to sink beneath the waves. Buoyancy keeps pushing me back to the surface as my tired mind resists the tide. I cannot fall asleep.

My eyes flickered open and it is here, now, for the first time, that while searching her  features for an answer, I see the omen: a premonition of the growing gulf between us as it would come to exist.

I knew it was inevitable, but it still terrified me. So as the lost sailor I am, still drowning in this ocean of emotion, I reach for her hand and bring it up from where it was nestled, deep beneath the ocean of blankets, her and my fingers intertwining to form a single fist.

Feeling the touch, she wakes up and brings my hand to her lips for a kiss. Our eyes lock, hers brown and tender with concern against the emptiness of the sea: the spray, salt, and spittle in mine. A whisper thick with the sleepiness of a long tiring day, she was still patient enough to press me for an answer: "What's wrong?"

"Nothing", I lied.

fuzzy (as in warm, but also as in sparks)

Like caterpillars we cocoon against each other, exchanging silken thread and pupa for flannel sheet and mattress. I twist round and around to make this: a shield of warmth, a shell of light. My armor against my other, a terrible darkness that seeks to sap me of my warmth and extinguish my flame.

The hairs on his neck grew as the air grew thicker and heavier, signs which he felt despite the elements resisting his presence: icicles forming on his beard, the rain pelting against his face and coat, and the wind almost pushing against his labored breathing.

"What a pisser," he thought to himself.

With a titanic BOOM, the promise of the static-laden air was fulfilled. He closed his eyes to the brilliant light, and let the thunder roll through him,

as if it were but echoes of his pulsating heart, 

murmuring off the mountains.

Stepson elegy + the story of the Cherokee Rose

I'm reading Alfred Corn's collection of lines: Present

                             ... Our next-to-last

Heart-to-heart you said you couldn't taste anything

Which reminded me how ...

                         ...-it's not a turban but a crown

You're wearing (see, I too have lost all sense of taste)

And not of white roses but of plaited thorns.

We are like penguins
during the Antarctic night 

drawn together by the warmth

perspective

At one point [we] slept in a tent, and at work, and in the car. We "showered" at work using a mug and standing in a cooler. 

A few years later I hear him mention "that time when we were homeless".

a cloud.

I was completely shocked as it was the first time I interpreted it that way. 

I had always thought we were living a cheap adventure.

Beauty is.

 

But the painters and poets could look at the world, safely, through the lens of religious subjects; Galileo, looking through his lens, saw the religious non-subject.

They looked at people and saw angels; he looked at the heavens, and didn’t. 

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There are very, very few areas of the country in which most Americans need to feel fear visiting or traveling through.

Personal Safety is not a feeling I encounter often, it is more often fear. From the guy in South Carolina who felt the need to carry a pistol while jogging to a housewife who carries a .38 while hiking.

This feeling of fear, seems to me to be emanating from the media outlets that sensationalize traumatic events. I get this strange culture shock in the US from people that things are "not safe". However, the internal opinion I get from people is that the US is the best place in the world, and the safest at the same time. 

Cognitive dissonance at its finest.

Photos from (I think)...

just in: anti-oxidants not as good for you as you think, or how to be an ubermensch

Eat a good and balanced diet. Don't eat too many carbohydrates. Eat legumes. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pay attention to your caloric intake if your metabolism slows and you gain weight. Don't smoke (too many) cigarettes. Don't drink soda. Don't constantly drink excessive amounts of alcohol. Do drink a glass of red wine every now and then. Exercise plenty, though in different ways to train your different muscle groups.

Then get hit by a bus and it's all been entirely meaningless anyway.

the den

Each step lay wary, for the shadows had began to linger, and I cast anxious glances over my shoulder.

This wasn't to say I was afraid. The dog was with me, and I trusted his keen sense of smell would catch any whiff of coyote scent. Even so, I would rather not test our senses.

My boot knocked against something hard, making that weird noise between a crunch and rattle which identified what I had disturbed. Already knowing, I looked closer anyways.

The browning frame of the bone, from a glance it looked a leaf, yet I knew it your decayed dinner. I turned it over with the toe of my boot. Behind, an owl hooted.

I didn't find your home today. Maybe I will tomorrow.

recurring space-cat bugaboo

Simple minds simplify signs

Genesis of the legacy