The Brain

Little cauliflower

You are my teacher
reporter, whistleblower and guardian 
without recognition.

You were the first ally

you egged me on to split 
and never stop multiplying.

You nag in the pit of my stomach

when I forget something
stored in the coils of history.

You pull at my eyelids

when I want to escape

to nocturnal pastures.

And now when it would be easy

to drift away in bed

by the window

you remind me

that life without muscle

is hard work.

Let me cry now and then
when I wake
to fuel these legs

last limbs to grow 
before  expulsion 
from the amniotic pool.

What does it mean?

What does it mean to be marginalized

 illegal, homeless, a blight on the landscape?

What does it mean when we risk polluting 

our water and food source for the economy?

What does it mean to destroy the air

we need to breathe?

What will our future be if we are willing

to sacrifice our home for quick solutions?

What if this planet is ruled by extortionists 

who silenced these questions

so that our taxes can pay even more tomorrow 

and the next day until there is nothing left

but solid rock glowing in a distant universe?

What does it mean when we are offended 

by people who have nowhere to wash

yet welcome those who hold all life as ransom

for the glory of their personal ego?

How to escape the mess we are in

George Monbiot expressed it so well.
Is it reasonable to hope for a better world? Study the cruelty and indifference of governments, the disarray of opposition parties, the apparently inexorable slide towards climate breakdown, the renewed threat of nuclear war, and the answer appears to be no. Our problems look intractable, our leaders dangerous, while voters are cowed and baffled. Despair looks like the only rational response.

The mess is the outcome of a long social and political fantasy - that dictates man must be in control of nature. This false assertion has disabled his ability to reflect on his relationship to the world. He cannot allow himself the vulnerability of feelings beyond the will to power. 

Every decade he invents more gadgets, weapons, and things to believe in, to possess, to give his life meaning, and every decade he creates new problems, new crises, wars, inequality, prisons, punishments and propaganda - to avoid the realization that he is not in control.

This torture has created the normalization of a mental illness, a game of elevating the self, competing with others for a fleeting sense of power. It demands that everyone exhibit the same values, the same mental illness, the same obsessions.

They are measured in new ages, new conceits and fashions - but ultimately it is about bringing an end to life - because life cannot submit to the game.  Life does not worship power over itself, unless man kills everything that refuses to submit to his will. 

The fantasy is that the eternal ruler will be the one who destroys everything else, including his own life.  The fantasy is that the narrative will be written in the barren rocks, fields and oceans.

It began with patriarchy, when men had to prove they were superior to women by overcoming their senses, by replacing their flesh with armour. Then having to keep those muscles in place by "discovering" other places, building temples, boats and doctrines. The mind had to be fought, wrestled into submission too. 

Masculinity removes man from nature, from the land, to that Zulu sentence-word that means "over there where I cry mother I am lost." Man must be broken in, taken from the protection of a loving family, from the comfort of his own nature to be the robotic soldier, the king, the executioner. 

Giving birth, love, nurture, compassion, healing, reflecting - all are dismissed as feminine, sissy, and wimpish. Death is for glory and life is for wimps.

The mess we are in is the breakdown of our own nervous system, our own eyes, our own hearts. The hatred we are asked to express is the contempt for our selves projected onto the other.

The way to escape this mess is by loving ourselves and through compassion for the suffering of others.

Requiem for the Goddess

She is a vessel that’s all

a seed from the seed that came before

a wave flowing out from the bang

a reverberating circle reaching out.

Once she was cherished

placed in the centre of the hearth

observed and protected from elements 

she loved no matter how rough.

Now she is tied between two poles 

her limbs cannot move 

or lay down to rest. 

How can she nurture the world 

when hoisted 

as a thing that bleeds onto the soil beneath

her legs forced open so that lost souls can rape 

with their hatred.

How can she see the unfolding drama

now her eyes have been gouged

and how can she offer advice

when her lips have been sewn together

or hear the lamentation of birds

when her ears plugged with the screech 

of a dead warrior is set on replay?

Who will witness the despair of her sons

and the exhaustion of her daughters

when there is no more art or music

only a silent screen capture of today’s

stock market?

How will the starving masses endure 

the endless pain when their hormones 

begin to eat their own organs?

How can she birth the next generation

when her torn uterus hangs

outside her body?

How will the mind remember that life

existed at all when all its seeds have perished?

What Does It Cost?

what does it cost

to not be wounded

to not admit wounds

to be stoic in mind and flesh

to have dry eyes

to be a ballerina in pain

to be a poet trying

with every inhalation

not to die

the cost is easy to figure

not with math or list

the cost is tomorrow

and all its rude honesty.

Do Not Be Daunted

Do not be daunted
by the enormity 
of the world's grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated
to complete the work,
but neither are you free
to abandon it.

The Talmud

The Greatest Gift

"We are heirs to a story that inspired a hundred generations of our ancestors and eventually transformed the Western world. What you forget, you lose. The West is forgetting its story. We must never forget ours." Rabbi Sacks.

 This is important because it is a story of a people who fled slavery in Egypt, survived pogroms and the holocaust.  It's a story of more than just survival but resilience that overcame despair, fear, and self interest.

I write this post because I want to pay attention to the stories we tell and live in, and this warning from Jonathan Sacks asks us what story guides our values today?

When I turn on the radio I learn of celebrities and politicians resigning because of charges of sexual harassment. I learn our Prime Minister who got elected on promises of integrity around consulting First Nations is approving oil pipelines across their territories. I learn of species dying because of pollution. I learn of people fleeing their homes because of fire, flood and violence.  I hear of thousands of poor homeless people dying of overdoses.

What does "the news" tell us about our story?

How will we survive when so many crises seem to loom on the horizon and leadership has been sold to the corporation. Where are our pillars of the community? Where is our social conscience? There are no stories of how we can help fix these crises coming from institutions that have national support. Whatever we had, no matter how imperfect and troubled, is being dissolved into isolated egos competing for more material wealth.

There is an article by Umair Haque on Why We're Underestimating American Collapse.  He lists the social pathologies that America is suffering and then asks us to look at what may happen  "should the world follow the American model — extreme capitalism, no public investment, cruelty as a way of life, the perversion of everyday virtue".

Suppose we write a story about a tribe who cease to care for one another, who, instead of doing what needs to be done, simply congratulate those who find new ways to exploit the vulnerable? What if the story ends with future generations so enamoured with entertainment and new technology they are unable to have real live conversations.

Imagine feeling convinced in ways we cannot articulate, that there is nothing left worth saving.

The greatest gift is the story that reminds us of joy we have felt and that without the love of life we would not have experienced it.  Poems that witness the joy of another. The pain of realizing how much contempt for humanity has been broadcast in order to create "the market" of today.

Deliverology and the road to Hell

Andrew Nikiforuk delivered another insightful article on the Tyee, November 28. Now I confess I haven't read much about Deliverology  but I am familiar with narratives that organize reality into fragments of manageability.

Michael Barber is apparently the author of this 'technology' which began in the UK.

Writes Nikiforuk "Barber argues there are “five paradigms of system reform: trust and altruism; hierarchy and targets; choice and competition; devolution and transparency; privatization.”"

This is how the economy is placed in the centre of life. For many decades I was impressed with new ideas and technologies, seeking ways in which we could all agree to do the right thing. But no matter how smart we are or how squeaky the newspeak - things get worse, not better.

I have never managed to be altruistic enough to change the world - why is that? Because I packaged the world as a whole living construct with one design, one nature and one purpose. But one in which I and my loved ones would be okay.

That is to say, I was willing to sign on to a movement as long as my self interest was protected. The nightmare is - coming to terms with my own fearful ego. Holding back on what is good because I don't trust that it would work.

Systems development separated me from the authority of life and its power. We are fake managers. I keep talking to myself about how to save the world as though I was a separate entity, as though I was above that which I spoke of.

This is how good intentions become crippled and shady and how dangerous narrators internalize their demise. They are not in control of the universe because none of us are. But rather than come home to that family it is easier to seek scapegoats to blame.

What we really need is enough nutritious food, health services, and homes. We need parents who have time to love and nurture their children. We need friends who will listen to us and share good advice. We need to honour the organic wheel of life with kindness and inclusion. We don't need experts to deliver that. 

Humanity, Wealth and Social Justice

In 2017, 112 were killed and 531 wounded in mass shootings in America, according to a chart published by Mother Jones and Times Magazine. (Deadliest Mass Shooting US History). The chart covers 35 years and in 1982 only 8 were killed and 3 wounded. 

Why is it important to record this? Probably because the NRA and US Government refuse to ban guns no matter how many news headlines make us feel unsafe. And the proliferation of social media where anyone with a connection to internet can broadcast their favourite theories - like this one, needs some facts for the balance.

Also because numbers seem to have authority over general perceptions.

But what does it mean for the future of our species? 

We are not about to become extinct - there are 7.6 billion of us on this planet. I can imagine (unkindly) some folks in their well funded think tanks congratulating the murderers for killing off some of the population without them having to pay for it. The victims of mass killing are usually poor and unknown. Not that war killed off rich white men - the front lines were filled with working men and boys. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Japan, Europe - the dead were mostly from the unknown mass.

And I haven't even mentioned the deaths from drug addiction, alcohol, cancer victims, diabetics, and those killed on the job.

Looking at it this way you can see why there might be a resistance to medicare for everyone, or safe work site legislation, or welfare, or investigations into food safety, or affordable homes.  You can see how effective capitalism has become in convincing the masses that we get what we deserve, and how easy it is to justify anyone's worth through economics.

Our political and social habits that value some for what they own or what they do has fallen to discredit humanity by broadcasting articles that show us in madness and despair, along with entertainment glorifying infantile rage, cruelty and violence. It's all a steady diet of blood and guts on screens and a mindless quest for getting to the top and shaming those that fail.

This is not a meritocracy or a democracy, and although many of us in the West have it much better than our ancestors did - every one  must ask what we are winning and losing and who is responsible for making the world better, if not all of us.

What Does Life Want From Me?

 Reading Rabbi Jonathan Sacks "Judaism's Life Changing Ideas" I was inspired to ask a question that he posed, through the work of Viktor Frankl who survived Auschwitz and who turned his experiences there to create a new form of psychotherapy based on man's search for meaning.

"His view was that we should never ask, “What do I want from life?” but always, “What does life want from me?”"

Woman's and Man's search for meaning  is upstaged by family needs. The task of caring for one another is really what life most wants from us all even though it is not mentioned in the main cultural arguments.

The shallow commerce of our hyped up consumer society is best revealed in Chris Hedges article "Faces of Pain, Faces of Hope.

"Popular culture celebrates those who wallow in power, wealth and self-obsession and perpetuates the lie that if you work hard and are clever you too can become a “success,” perhaps landing on “American Idol” or “Shark Tank.” ... The vast disparity between the glittering world that people watch and the bleak world they inhabit creates a collective schizophrenia that manifests itself in our diseases of despair—suicides, addictions, mass shootings, hate crimes and depression. Our oppressors have skillfully acculturated us to blame ourselves for our oppression."

What would this world want from me? Hope for a better world?

Hedges writes "Hope means walking away from the illusion that you will be the next Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian." 

Most of us who are older than 40 have already learned this. So I know that life does not want  another self-absorbed  "famous" ego. I know the celebrity cult is as man made as Halloween Candy. I have learned that "the maniacal creation of a persona" is more than just irrelevant - it is toxic. Like all the other devices that tell us we are powerless and that meaning can only come through a certain kind of power.

Reading Hedges reveals to me the despotic power of capitalism gives no value to your life or mine.

Reading Sacks reminds me that I have work to do for the sake of life and that loving life, nurturing the wounded, listening to the lost, expressing gratitude for those who have cared for me - is the only thing worth living for. 

Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" reminds me that the only power I have is one flight.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Greatest Mental Disease of Our Time

The primary mental disease of our time exhibits many habits and symptoms, but two come to mind here: 

Entitlement. The idea that we have more because we earned it.

Power. The worship of force, power-over, that is dislocated from the life force it seeks to control.

Entitlement and Power are instruments of oppression developed over centuries. Each of these create systemic violence within constructs of established and new fantasies.

Village folk, having learned through generations of civilization, understand we would not survive beyond infancy without love and cooperation. Language, literature, and knowledge are the trinity of civilization. Now with imagination and technology we have created higher standards of living. But these are soon lost if we adhere to a propaganda that promotes selfishness exclusively. Our wealth and intelligence becomes more powerful when its shared with the whole Universe to sustain and protect our ecosystems.

Taxes are investments in the human future. Roads, hospitals and schools are vehicles to richer lives.  We take these vehicles of infrastructure for granted if we succumb to adolescent ideologies that worship the winners and express contempt for everyone else.

Entitlement blinds us to the centuries of socialization that has invested in our well being.  Who will benefit by this ideology? The arms industry?

Power that continues to rape and pillage - physically, spiritually and emotionally is a power that eats life - through forced labour, racism, misogyny, poverty and pollution of the planet. This leaves the conscience and consciousness feeling powerless.

Driven in this way, we destroy nature, the planet, our families and friends, and our own future. We destroy our nation just as the Nazi's destroyed the country they claimed to love. The routine torture and murder of unarmed imprisoned people is the result of this madness. Power is as stupid as it is brutal.

Because we allow ourselves to be oppressed by the devices we created to prove we are entitled to have power over others,  we have made our own lives contemptible.

And the word was Life

Let the ‘L’ gently come from the tongue
as it touches the upper gum of your tender mouth
let the ‘I’ fly lightly toward the fricative ‘F’
and let ‘E’ be the silent witness.
‘Life’. It’s easy to say.

Authentic and yet unassuming, non-judgmental.
It precedes ideology and makes every assumption
a conceit.

Say ‘Maisha’ like the mothers of Africa.
Say ‘Shxweli’ like the people of the river.

(from Infinite Power, Ekstasis 2016)

Evil is Live spelled backwards

"I recently listened to an interview featuring psychologist, Andrew Feldmar, on the subject of evil, with Dr. Mia Kalef (my partner).  He reminded me that evil is live spelled backward. Evil is anti-life. Life is exploited to serve ends other than the sheer joy of existence, the love of others, and the beauty of the world. All life, beauty, love become means to a sinister end, which is ultimately death—specifically, the cessation of the life force in others to illustrate one’s dominance by the perpetrator, whether state or individual."  Bruce Sanguin, Home for Evolving Mystics.

How to Win the War

Foyle's War is a TV drama written by Anthony Horowitz that takes place during and shortly after WWII.

So far I have only seen up to 1944 but I am impressed with the high quality of this production because of several reasons.  First the characters are not simply foils to the plot - they are written and acted as real people living in difficult conditions. Second the program does not stray from the context of that time. Third what is revealed is the many ways in which war oppresses people, even those who are rational, ethical, well educated, living in highly developed societies.  Each episode reveals the destruction by showing us how the characters deal with the difficult situations.

The most heart breaking episode is "Broken Souls" which tells the story of the mental health of soldiers and civilians.  It focuses on a psychiatrist who is operating at a very compassionate level even though he has lost his home and family.  Coming from Poland to England he works with ex-military men whose lives have been interrupted by mental illness. Like the character of Foyle he is an example of a deep commitment to life and the moral standards that demands.  We watch the souls breaking and being broken by the conversations and conflicts between each character, and each character deserves compassion.

(This compares to blockbuster movies - where the good are magical and the evil mechanical robots who struggle for power with high tech weapons.  Watching a fine production such as Foyle's War really contrasts with the modern propaganda for the arms industry.)

In the "Broken Souls" episode the good doctor discovers that his wife was killed in a death camp, and filled with remorse for surviving his family he attempts to kill himself.  His suicide is interrupted and he is rescued.  But later he discovers through a Pathe News Reel the conditions of the prison camp his family were taken to.  Distraught he leaves the movie theatre and walks by the river where he is knocked down by a young German prisoner of war trying to escape.  It is while he is down in the mud that his reason is overtaken with rage just for a few moments and he picks up a rock, throws it at the German, killing him.

It is the doctor's retelling of this event that is the poetry, the illustration of how a soul is broken.  It is the narrative of every fine soldier, healer and human who survives the break down of the world around them.  It is the door to our understanding how no-one wins the war in the end. There are always broken souls who seek to mend them by causing the next war, and the next, and the next - and so it goes.

The only way to win the war is to value life more than power. This too is not an end to war forever, not a lasting solution, because once we attempt to control the lives of others, we step back into the devil's deal of power and move away from life. This is a principle of our evolution not a strategy or an ideology.

Mental Health of a Species

Having been conditioned to believe that great empires are measured by the number of other nations it has conquered, and great leaders are equal to the destruction they leave in their wake, we witness the many victims of those values today.  They come in the form of six rapists mutilating a young woman on a bus in Delhi, a young man entering an elementary school in Newtown with an assault weapon and killing twenty unarmed children along with six adults, and the NRA proposing that all schools should have armed guards rather than gun controls.

Is it enough to say that those who seek power, whether it be in business, government or media, are psychopaths who have wrought this dystopia upon the land where the unnamed must duck and sweat in the hope of surviving? Or have we all been made sick and sorry creatures? Is there anything healthy that can come of us if our minds have been invaded by this power imperative?

As long as 40 percent of those who live in "democratic" nations believe they shall be spared by siding with the biggest bullies, they will never know who they are and who they can be through their own potential. As long as they feel part of the club through race, gender or religious identity, the sickness will become more severe and difficult to treat.

How can we say that killing is caused by the dissociated ego when the popularity of Presidents and Prime Ministers supposedly increases (as revealed through dubious polls) when they send their nations to war and organize the killing of millions? How can we be afraid of someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder when we blindly follow ideologies that come from the planning departments of arms industries? How can we expect our children to grow up healthy, when we think we build our economy by purchasing stuff that will be thrown out within a few years, yet dare not invest in the future of people?

Fortunately, many of our young minds have diagnosed the sickness, as have the marginalized who have been abused by it.  This is most tragically illustrated by the protest of Chief Theresa Spence.  She is saying to Canadians and Canada ~ here is your system: here is how life means so little to the structures of power, that your prime minister cannot spare a few minutes to stop the dying of a woman. See how quickly the media and its professional trolls, will dismiss her as manipulative. See how many people will blindly deny this has anything to do with them.

See.  Look.  Hear.  Feel.  This is your home.  This is your planet with its rivers and mountains. This is your family. It calls to you again and again, day after day, with its brave attempt to heal itself by reclaiming the power of life as its own.

Oppressive Power Needs Enemies - People Don't

As soon as the death of Osama bin Laden found its way to the media, 'experts' were interviewed to identify the next in line. A new book by James A. Baker (who served under Reagan and George H. W. Bush) was published about a week later, titled Beyond Bin Laden: America and the future of terror.

In Uganda there is a bill threatening to make homosexuality punishable by death. Recently, John Cummins, running for leadership of the Conservative party in BC, said he believes that homosexuality is a personal choice and does not need protection under the Human Rights Act, as if to appeal to socially conservative religious groups who have openly identified as being anti-homosexual.

The treatment of women in Afghanistan, and other middle-eastern nations, makes them public enemies by requiring garments that cover their face and bodies, thereby making the feminine illegal in public. 

Terrorists, homosexuals and women are all enemies created by authoritarian interests. Of course there is a great deal of difference between those who blow up innocent people and those who love members of the same sex. However, left unchallenged to their ultimate conclusion they are treated the same. Enemies maintain the status quo, the justification of hierarchy by creating fear. Oppressive power claims ownership of the world and all its vassals by exploiting human emotion.

We need to revere life, to celebrate it, to nurture it, to create laws and systems that allow it to thrive. We need dialogue, education, music, art, poetry, transportation, work, housing, food and water.  This is enough to fill the air waves with noise as we struggle to find peace through social justice after centuries of dysfunction and violence. The task is overwhelming enough.

We don't need control, we need guidance.  We need thinkers and listeners more than charismatic speakers. We need community more than IPads and game apps.  We need wisdom through experience in conflict resolution as we learn how to live with one another, rather than hours of escapist entertainment.

We need to develop our own counsel more than we need hundreds of news channels, sponsored by a few powerful interests.

We need love, starting with self-love.

Wherever there is a heightened rhetoric around good and evil, there is an enemy-creating industry mandated to keep the masses living in fear and feeling powerless.

Yes this is apple pie, naive, idealism, written millions of times before, like a letter from a kindergarten class. But here is the clue - children get it! What happens to the minds and hearts of those who have been cleverly subjected to propaganda in all its packages, that we think preserving life is silly.

Every City Has a Kathryn

A person who always has room for you to stay the night at the last minute, who will open their home for the writer's conference and feed everyone too, who will organize the food bank and who will exhaust herself caring for those who need it.  These Kathryns don't make a lot of noise about what they do, they don't tell others what to do either. They are not likely to spend much time on Facebook or twitter or developing PR  strategies because their lives are taken up with the needs of nurture. Their impact on their cities are like gold in the bank but they don't have much of that metal in their accounts.  Their influence on their communities are like the Reverend Doctor in the pulpit but you won't hear them preaching. They will be out there dealing with the most difficult and contentious issues without complaint. They are strong but not domineering, they have a message but do not shout.  Every city has at least one Kathryn and if they left you would feel it, although most of them don't receive awards or much notice of any kind - in fact they probably eschew applause and praise. Not all of them are named Kathryn - some are called Mary or Jack and you can sometimes recognize them by their manner - the word "I" doesn't find its way into daily small talk.