The Crone

She              is 

                                                                          solid 

                                                                         and her limbs

                                                                                          like an old tree

                                                                                           are thick 

                                                                                          with memory

                                                                                                   Her beauty 

                                                                                                   is not in her curves

                                                                                                       — but her voice

                                                         She cuts 

                                                                    through posture

                                           with a coarse elegance

                                                     her lips spilling facts

                                                                                     as a handful of cherries

                                                                                      might bleed 

                                                                      under the weight

                                                                            of a dictionary

                                                        She writes poems

                                                                                                     sharp as toenails

                                                                                                   yellow as nicotine

                                                  Ha! 

                                                              She cackles 

                                                    over the washing machine

                                                       spinning its gears

                                                                        Beauty is in the wet linens

                                                                        spent in a silent tub

                                                                        table cloths on top of underwear

                                                                       Water wrung out of it all

                                                                       clothes, flesh, dreams

                                                                             and plans

She has done what she came to do

and there is still more mischief                                        to be done.

(from Sleep With Me: Lullaby for an Anxious Planet. Janet Vickers. Ekstasis 2020)

Stop!

 

"If we can learn anything from Bissonnette’s horrible crimes, it’s that we need to fight right-wing extremism, whether in fringe organizations or on mainstream media platforms, and not expect it to go away now that Donald Trump’s presidency is over." Nora Loretto, National Observer

Bissonnette - was the young man who went into a Mosque in Quebec and murdered six people sitting in prayer. 

He was wrong, he is a murderer, but worse than that are the systems which leave many people alienated. It's no accident. Power massages the vulnerable aspects of human nature by holding up the contemptuous results.

Stop treating the universe as though it's a game. Stop treating this planet and all the varied forms of life who depend on its survival, as though it is a toy. Stop pretending that humanity is in control, that we are the highest form of life and that everything is here to serve us. 

Stop glorifying the trinkets we have made as though it's proof of our supremacy, and worth more than all of nature born and created by the life that came before us. 

Stop speaking of this vast, complicated, creative network of vibration and light as though it was born from one anthropomorphized deity, who needs our prayers to survive. 

Stop organizing this mystery into a pecking order, self aggrandizing our place.

Just be grateful and humble and love the world as it unfolds each day.

A Life's Purchase

 

70 years of life for a hundred thousand dollars

Light falling over the tin roof

A flowering lilac bush

Crocus among the first pea shoots

Pots of soil covered in green leaves

New born babies

Parents besotted by tiny limbs

Butterflies in the wind

Skin warm and soft

Fragrant like mint tea

Lemon slice and ginger root

Daughter running towards the goal

Son smiling on his wedding day

Vanilla sponge cake carried from the oven

Short clicks of humming birds

Warm eyes of a friend

Pouring coffee into a cup

On the table for you

When you feel you have failed

To win a lottery somewhere

In comparison to that poet laureate

Everyone talks about 

All or nothing

Fame or Anonymity 

Applause or silence

And nothing exists between

The sum of your wisdom

Your tears and laughter

Your whole unique life

Buried under thin certificates

That cannot define your achievements

And all the wars you won 

Unnoticed.

The Far Horizon

"It is one of the most counter-intuitive acts in the history of leadership. Moses did not speak about today or tomorrow. He spoke about the distant future and the duty of parents to educate their children. He even hinted – as Jewish tradition understood – that we should encourage our children to ask questions, so that the handing on of the Jewish heritage would be not a matter of rote learning but of active dialogue between parents and children." Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. 

This is quite different from the Sunday School experience of some faiths. One woman recalls asking a question from the Sunday School teacher who then replied that she was not to question the words of the Bible but to obey.

How did that work out for the people? Through the centuries those who expressed an opinion that was not in keeping with the teachings were either scorned, banned from the congregation or put to death in public. 

Unfortunately this is still happening in some places. 

In Iran Nasrin Sotoudeh has been jailed for defending the right of women to choose whether or not they wear hijab. Amnesty International supports the rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression, including the right of Muslim women to decide whether to wear the hijab or other forms of Islamic dress. 

Throughout the centuries incredible stories were used to explain the unprovable. The Witch hunts burned women at the stake using incredible "logic". If a woman was suspected she could be tied up and plunged into water - if she drowned that proved her innocence, if she survived it was "proof" of her guilt, then she would be put to death. 

In Europe anti-semitism was promoted using the blood libel which claimed Jews kidnapped children to drink their blood at a special ceremony. 

If a child was born with unusual limbs, the child and her mother would be banned from the village because it was the mark of the devil and their presence would bring bad luck. 

Not so long ago a white woman could randomly accuse a black man of rape and without a trial, a posse could hang him from a tree. 

Earlier in the twentieth century a young boy from the Sto:lo nation was seen walking near a house where a dead man had been found. A posse was rounded up to hunt him down and string him up from a tree before the police officer could put him on trial.

In the 20th century a Canadian University, used studies that blamed domineering mothers for homosexuality in men.

In politics equality was blamed for breaking up families and welfare was blamed for a weak economy because workers could not be threatened by starvation. 

Children were taught never to touch their own genitals because it would cause blindness. 

Refugees today are blamed for inner city crime. The Evil Eye was  blamed for bad things happening to good people. Giving birth out of wedlock was blamed for the shame of an entire family.

Teaching children how to question beliefs, stories and theories, enables them to grow up healthy and well in societies that value curiosity. Teaching all of us to think beyond the popular beliefs and values of any given age not only protects innocent people - it keeps our world from being traumatized by acts of violence towards a hastily chosen scapegoat.  

White Supremacy is a Mental Illness

When men and women support movements of hate, such as white supremacy, is that because they are desperately trying to shake off the feeling they are redundant in a culture that values the GDP more than human survival?  Or is it a desire to find a really deep hole in which to place all their rage and disappointment?

What is it about being white that makes us special? What has the white “race” achieved?

Colonialism, brainwashing that enabled invaders to destroy the aboriginal culture and call it discovery? Enslavement of African people and the ideology of race based on skin colour? A violent hierarchy that demanded absolute obedience to the pecking order? Capitalism that placed a higher value on possessions than life itself?

These things were not invented by white people - we inherited these practices along with science, law, medicine and education. Over the centuries we have refined the worship of power. We constructed class, race and gender. We promoted and normalized a virtue called the work ethic. But this could only work by cooperating with others, by creating a cohesive narrative to "explain" why the world is the way it is and how we have "conquered" it.

The problem is that capitalism reinvented then trashed and denigrated community, for the drive to get to the top, as quickly as possible. Whoever possessed the top position had the right to demean, judge and dismiss our human need for dignity. The conscientious leader is replaced with the trickster.

Cities are blown up, water is poisoned with chemicals, the air is polluted, trees cut down, territories dug up.

In this environment we are all marginalized refugees. This is a state of ideology. Nature, water, land, air and men only exist in terms of the economy and the only measure that your isolated ego can win are the little contests along the way.

White supremacy like misogyny, anti-semitism, Islamophobia - are symptoms of a mental illness brought about by centuries of abuse that has emotionally and spiritually starved our species of our human needs:- food, shelter, belonging, dignity and respect. When people are denied these things, when children and adults are routinely humiliated through neglect and the commons has been purchased by international corporations, the power of the isolated ego can only be felt through revenge.

We can acknowledge our feelings and use that awareness to restructure engagement in community that values life, good health, clean air and water, kindness and honest communication. The only true power we have is to help others be happy - not by violence but by the voice of integrity. We are vulnerable and fragile. We are not lizards and guns.

As soon as we fall back into ideologies of race, gender and class, we create monsters who must be fed by our neuroses and endless human sacrifice.

Gabor Mate: Two major forces contribute to hate: racism and inequality.

Two major forces contribute to hate: racism and inequality.

"The research is absolutely clear," Maté says. "The more inequality in a society, the more hate, the more dysfunction, the more mental illness, the more physical illness." It should come as no surprise, then, that we see more addiction and more mass shootings since "the inequality is rising all the time." Violence against racial, ethnic, or religious groups "is a manifestation of a society that foments division amongst people and sets people against each other." Gabor Mate.

Warning from Umair Haque

 

The political point began with “If you beat us at the ballot box, we will come for you with guns and rifles and bombs, right in the heart of your democracy.” But it didn’t end there. It said, also: “We will profane your democracy’s most sacred and historic symbols. Because we don’t believe in them. We don’t believe that everyone deserves to share in them. All the power in this society is either ours, or it will be no one’s.” Umair Haque

So it seems that the only way to save our democracy is to get rid of all those who support Trump and his followers. This is the first step -- put them in prison. Of course it won't stop other fascists - the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and it won't stop the fascists after they have served their term or escaped prison.

The endless return of finding solutions to the problem that is violence, our violence, but there is no return from fascism according Haque. 

Dear reader - we all have different tasks in this endless war - but the first and last is to pay attention to what is happening from the national to the local.

What feeds the heart and mind that seeks authoritarian solutions? What feeds the fear that keeps us from engaging prior to the hatred? 

What makes the drive to win at all costs? How much do we, can we, understand about ourselves?

Where do we begin?

Sleep With Me: Lullaby for an Anxious Planet (Ekstasis Editions 2020)

If anyone is interested in purchasing a copy of this book please email me at lipstickpress@shaw.ca

What are people saying about this collection of poems, released earlier in 2020 by Ekstasis Editions? 



Leah Hokanson (Vocalist, Conductor, Facilitator) says of this collection: Janet's poetry is like a cold shower and a warm towel all rolled into one. Website: leahokanson.com 

“Let me begin with a warning” heads one of Janet’s poems and readers should be warned that not all these poems are lullabies. Many home in on truths that sear into the mind and might disturb sleep. That, after all, is the job of a poet. These poems also offer: the balm of hard-won compassion for self and others, a wisdom sad and sweet, and always startling turns of phrase that pull readers to attention and possibilities for their own voices. As Janet’s poem for Greta ends, “Now the rest of us must find/ our instruments before dawn.”
~ Sonja Arntzen, Professor Emerita, University of Toronto

These poems come forward in a tense time. The apocalypse appears to be upon us. Yet Janet’s serene poetic voice calls out to us as a mother to her child in the night, reassuring us that we can act against the forces for destruction, and that when we need respite from the intense struggle to maintain human decency, we may take it. And then persist once more – a wonderful accomplishment.
~ May Partridge, community organizer, retired post-secondary teacher of English and sociology. 

The trenchant poems in this book use the word 'Lullaby' as an ironic metaphor delivering incisive commentary on our capitalist society. Never predictable, the lines roll from one to the other, crashing on the headland of the mind, challenging our concepts of the world around us. Combining passion and wit, Janet's probing questions and observations are a must read for those who want a keener look at ourselves and our cultural milieu.
~ Dave Neads, author, poet, social activist, loving life on Gabriola.

Life was not created to feed the economy.
I am in a relationship with the vacuum cleaner and it’s a problem
These two sentences display the breadth of Vickers’ poetry. With deep wisdom, carefully chosen words, kindness and wit, she invites her readers to consider the state of the world and some of the cruelties humans commit. But lest we become too despairing she shares her delights with trees, eagles and lizards, her joys with her husband and children. And, she lets us know about her very unique relationship with her aged vacuum. Come one, come all, there is something here for everyone.
~ Lynda A. Archer, author of Tears in the Grass, a Finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award.

Janet Vickers was born in the UK, came to Canada in 1965 and became Canadian by the love and friendship of other Canadians. She married in 1969 and celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary to her husband Tony, last year. They have three children, three in-laws, one grand-dog and four grandchildren. Her previous books include Impermanence (2012) and Infinite Power (2016) published by Ekstasis Editions.

The cover image is a dragonfly by Debbie Goodman a wildlife artist working out of her home studio in Nanaimo, British Columbia. She creates her pieces entirely from cut and layered art papers sourced from around the world. This technique is derived from the Japanese art form chigiri-e, or painting with paper.  All proceeds from Debbie's artwork are donated to organizations supporting wildlife conservation and animal welfare including Ducks Unlimited Canada, Nature Trust of British Columbia, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Since 2010, she has donated over $100,000.  Debbie has also written and illustrated a children's book entitled 'Wild Observations.' http://www.debbiegoodman.com

Is there a cure for white supremacy and hate groups?

“In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.” ― Hannah Arendt, On Violence.

 "Mr. Trump has given racists in his country the cover they were looking for. Now their voices are louder and more dangerous than ever. And they are destroying America." Gary Mason, Globe and Mail.

The individual conscience is bowed by big trends, 'ghosts' you and I didn't start, yet they hover over us, accuse us without asking for a response. (such as all whites being held responsible for anti-black racism or white privilege) And we must respond even though our efforts will not garner the "lead" if it doesn't bleed.

No I'm not advocating violence, I'm advocating deep self-reflection, a self-disciplined response. Integrity, compassion, empathy and deep listening are worth more than ever now.

Christian Picciolini tells a personal story of how he was recruited into a Neo-Nazi group in Chicago. He was 14 at first contact, lonely and naive, and this video reveals his vulnerability along with the clever tricks some movements use to prey on innocent minds to make them violent, hateful, forces. It's worth listening to because it is  personal  and does not use generalizations. 

If white supremacy is a mental illness as revealed in a social movement — what is the cure?

Here is the story of a five year old, Shane Johnson, who received two hours of daily Bible study from his dad. Not the King James bible or the Hebrew bible but the doctrine of “Christian Identity,” which holds that the enslavement or extermination of all nonwhites will usher in the second coming of Christ. 

In Kindergarten Johnson got in trouble for refusing to sit next to a black child. He dropped out in seventh grade to dedicate himself to the march toward racial Armageddon. “We was told we’d go to eternal damnation if we didn’t fight Jews and blacks,” he says.

"The deradicalization movement combines insights gleaned from social work, 12-step programs, psychology, neurochemistry, and the personal experiences of “formers” who have left extremist groups ... (f)ew extremists make clean breaks with their past. Many liken hate to an addiction—hard to quit and easy to relapse into. The process is slow and one-on-one; it doesn’t promise to defeat hate groups so much as chip away at a movement that includes more than 400 organizations with thousands of members, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center—not to mention fellow travelers in the alt-right and online hate communities. 

Mind control, or socialization, has been used for many centuries. It's not that the majority of people are inherently racist and violent, but that it is complicated to find our way through it even if we know we must.

My take-away from this, is the need to teach our children and loved-ones to think, to question, and to ask who benefits from the world in which a long-standing pecking order has dominated our sense of who we are. Arguments don't help where people have not signed up for a debate.

Generalizations don't help either. Judgements don't bring others to question their views. Threats of violence simply keep the status quo even if it purports to be progressive.

The human condition is multi-faceted and fragile. We are not comfortable with pain. These are generalizations too but all I can suggest, if I am conceited enough to offer advice, is loving kindness. This includes connecting with our eyes and ears.

Ten Tips on How to Save the World - first published in Episyllogism 2013

Ten Tips on How to Save the World

first published in episyllogism SEPTEMBER  2013

The instructions are simple. Learn from the bees, use your caring mind to gaze at the world, reclaim your power, reclaim your nature, hold onto curiosity, celebrate your creativity, give up blaming, live from a place of love, acknowledge your political self, and honour your spirit.

1. Learn from the bees
Marilyn Hamilton, CEO of Integral City, told a children’s story not long ago, that is easy to remember. Three key strategies enable bee hives to survive, which can teach us how to sustain the human hive – take care of you, take care of others, take care of this place. Our ancestors learned how to do this but sophisticated social systems have alienated us from our own capacity to manage the hive. However, world crises show we must re-engage in the process now.

2. Use your caring mind to gaze at the world
Look closely at the operating system, or the ‘apparatus’ as Simone Weil put it. Read ideas and opinions wherever you can find them. Ask yourself who benefits? Expand your gaze beyond your own immediate interests. Prepare to be disturbed but not defeated.

3. Reclaim power
Power and all its parts: politics, wealth, language, science, economics, institutional religion, are not evil. They are tools of a civil society. What is evil is the way these institutions have been corrupted to centralize power, to make it a zero sum commodity. Infinite power is natural, loving and intelligent.

4. Reclaim our nature
We are resourceful workers and stakeholders in our society. We are not a resource or a job description. We are not left, right, conservative or liberal – we are organic, politically mobile beings. Labels are assigned to influence and understand. We have courage, fear, anger, love and wisdom but they are not commodities, they are strengths that emerge and hide. The deadliest weapon of oppression is that which turns humanity and all of nature into a thing, a resource.

5. Hold onto Curiosity
This is what keeps us exploring, examining, interrogating the conditions we live under or in. As long as curiosity is alive we shall never be content with serving an oppressive and corrupt social order.

6. Celebrate your Creativity                                                                                            Music, theatre, farmers’ markets, poetry, gardens, maps, new political parties, conversations – are the means of expressing and sharing our humanity. Art is the what, where, how and who of our species as it yearns and evolves.

7. Give up blaming
Blaming is not problem solving and the problem is not what other people do. To solve problems we need to re-engage our power to care creatively, with curiosity and love.

8. Live from a place of Love
The habits and preferences you perform for your family, whether  blood related or chosen, is your place of love. How you surround yourself to survive, persevere and inspire happiness with all that you can, is a place of love. Adopt this practice outside your door, to your neighbours, your country, your cohorts, your congregation, and your local grocery store. Break apart the structures of false hierarchies. It demands attention to suffering, violence and calls for healing. Love is what drives great minds to take courageous stands outside of their particular disciplines for the greater good. Love is the openness to pain that makes injustice, corruption, cynicism and oppression unbearable.

9. Life is political.
You are an integral, intelligent, reflective part of a larger organism. Whether we survive as a species depends on protecting our earthly home from a system that enables a few egos to hold this planet ransom for the sake of temporary profit. There is no escape from politics. Its apparatus has been built on a grandiose delusion that refuses to see the natural world as sacred, and ourselves dependent upon its health. To be apolitical is to be a doctor standing at the bed of a dying patient, refusing to be involved because the disease is dirty. To dismiss the world stage and your part in it is to lobotomize the future.

10. Honour the spirit
The spirit is our energy. It imparts our intentions before we see them. It allows us to dream and care for the world beyond our own life. Imagination and love is the immortal legacy we leave for our great-grandchildren.

These are just my thoughts. What are yours? What would you list as the top ten tips on saving the world?

Is Love a Thing?

"(T)he opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” ― Elie Wiesel

William Shakespeare's plays struggle with conscience as many of his characters queried how they should respond to conflict. As we watch these humans search for truth within their lives-- it's mostly about how they should live, what do they owe to their family, their town and to themselves. He was not indifferent.

How did he maintain the passion to keep writing the twenty eight plays we know of. Why did he spend so much of his life writing? Was it a love of life or love of theatre?

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken".

We are just creatures who have evolved on a planet that provides life with air, water and food for our survival but not guarantees for our happiness.

Lao Tzu wrote  “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” 

For a newborn baby to survive the trauma of birth, she needs love.  The imprint of a mother in the first minutes of birth. Vibrations of belonging.

Belonging to what? Her tribe? We could call that love, the need for protection and food. You may be thinking that is a selfish need to survive. Love is what you give not what you take.

So what if I was adored for my art or music, my style or clothes or wealth? What if I was worshipped as a great leader? That requires fear and obedience not love, although some may believe it.

I love some pieces of music, some plays, poems and paintings - although I have nothing to do the people who created them.

There is a difference in my life since I married and gave birth to children, and met my grandchildren.

When I first held the first grand-child in my arms, wanting to stay there forever, I asked the universe how could it be? This bond when I had not suffered the labour pains or the tension of seeing my son or daughter anxiously waiting for the birth.

After the birth of my third child, holding her in my arms while she suckled at my breast, I remember the feeling (not a thought but a sense that my skin knew) I had achieved all I needed to and would be satisfied to die when the time comes.

After living well for another twenty years, I knew that love supported me between troubles and triumphs, and that something connected everything I had lived through, and everything that was given by support from my husband, children, friends, co-workers, health professionals, teachers and ancestors has given me the place where I belong. 

In the eyes of those who care about the quality of life there is something invisible yet strong as the mycelium highways beneath the grass and stones of this earth. Like my neural substrate I know what sustains and what destroys me. 

My world is made up of things and senses of things. I know what it feels like to be part of a project where my life is not valued and I can leave those times freely.  I also understand there are people who stay even after they have been diminished because the connecting strings can be brought together again.

Feelings can be cut and mended but feelings are always present in some way or other. They guide us and help us when we listen to them. If someone tells you you're too sensitive or that your feelings must be overcome, it's because a world of things and rules no longer support the truths of our lives.

If someone tells you to be professional you must ignore your feelings, you are working in a toxic environment. Your senses must hide and you create false narratives even though you try to control your relationship to your world as best you can.

But depression, anxiety, anger and tears are your body's response to the sub-conscious rejection of situations that are not good for beings who survived because they are sensitive.

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” 

― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

The Ormsby Review - Calling All Passengers

https://ormsbyreview.com/2021/01/02/mackie-calling-all-passengers/ 

This is new to me but have subscribed and look forward to getting the first edition.