The Necessary Loneliness of Love

Painting by Sally Trace

“Loving, too, is good — because love is hard. For one person to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult thing we are asked to do, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is mere preparation. 

“That is why young people, beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: they must learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces gathered round their lonely, frightened, upward-beating heart, they must learn how to love. The time of learning, though, is always long and isolated, and so love, for a long time and far into the life of one who loves, is —: solitude, a heightened and deepened state of being alone.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

How to Spot an American Fascist

Take decades of pure fascist propaganda spearheaded by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, add zero opposition from the cowed "legitimate" news media and shake well. 

Viola! You've made a very dry National Catastrophe Cocktail! Serve over climate change.

"And Coming Up Next on Fox News: The Dunning-Kruger News Hour!"

Trying to get a Republican to understand the value of education is like trying to explain money to a dog.

Republicans always think that because they are ignorant of something, that makes it untrue.

“You can be wrong or ignorant," wrote Jef Rouner. "It will happen. Reality does not care about your feelings. Education does not exist to persecute you. The misinformed are not an ethnic minority being oppressed. What’s that? Planned Parenthood is chopping up dead babies and selling them for phat cash? No, that’s not what actually happened. No, it’s not your opinion. You’re just wrong.”

Ignorance is the GOP's Most Important Product

"Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.“

— Oscar Wilde, but he had it wrong. Ignorance is stubbornly persistent.

Phantoms and Fog

Watch mist ghosts swirling

Above a brown pond at dawn.

Ethereal waltz!

Corporate News Media Bias Isn't 'Liberal'

Conservatives have a name for well-researched, indisputable facts they prefer not to hear. It is "liberal bias." For example, right wingers branded the few news organizations that questioned Bush's extravagant claims of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction as guilty of "liberal bias." 

The fact that Iraqi HAD NO WMD was an irrelevant incidental detail.

The Chronicle of George Hilton Beagle

Feb. 22, 2010

Well, I just paid $41 at the pound to become the owner of a beagle. Toby or George? We’ll pick him up at the vet’s Thursday afternoon, after that little operation.

He was a stray, they said. He immediately stood up and licked my hand through the fence when I went to meet him, and I told him to hang on, that we would save him.

--

Feb. 25, 2010

Tomorrow, Larry and I pick up George, our new beagle, from the vet’s, as soon as I write them a $157 check. He’s named for our late friend historian George Hilton Jones and the dog in “Bringing Up Baby.” Maybe for Prof. George Falconer now, too, in the wonderful film “A Single Man” that Sally and I just saw. 

“One must always appreciate life’s little gifts.”

--

Nov. 12, 2010

I suspect George had a lonely, hard life at the beginning. Well, no more. 

He’s a plucky lad. He curls up on my lap routinely now when I’m at the computer, a warm little circle of sighing trust.

--

Nov. 25, 2011

I guess George is a seeing-eye dog now. He ate a pair of reading glasses.

--

Aug. 17, 2012

Tornado warnings started sounding throughout the area. My colleagues huddled downstairs in the hall as the Buzzard Building and campus alarms went off. I raced home under a weird, swirling sky to find George alone in a house that was completely dark at mid-afternoon, howling at the tornado siren that had started again. Boy, was he happy to see me. 

We curled up together on the sofa and I talked softly to him as we watched the weird weather lash at us.

--

June 23, 2013

Today, I’m going to take George for a ride to Mattoon to PetSmart for dog food. George loves car rides, and drags you right to the car as soon as you mention it.

I see George trotting jauntily ahead of me in harness, with his dish towel-sized ears bobbing, and think, “He’s just a little guy in a great big world.” 

That image symbolizes a kind of life-affirming bravery for me.

--

Jan. 10, 2014

This morning George stomped on my laptop in his eagerness to get a treat, locking up the program. I didn’t really yell at him, but he seemed to sense my displeasure and vanished to a bedroom to curl up by himself. 

Poor little fellow. He's remarkably thin-skinned for someone who barks so loudly.

--

June 20, 2014

I took George Hilton Beagle to Mattoon to buy dog food, and to the office to water Phil the Philodendron and his friends. George sized up the elevator, with its insidious sliding doors, as a trap.

The beagle is distressed to have the wet grass touching his paws. Call of the Wild, my ass.

--

July 5, 2014

The mist ghosts are waltzing on Blackford’s Pond this morning. George and I walked past them at dawn. They dance above a brown surface that shimmers with hints of green and blue.

When the beagle and I go walking, we see merely a suggestion of light in the east.  Nice to walk with the glow of the coming day growing in silence before you.

--

July 28, 2014

For the last week, George Hilton Beagle has been obsessing over and guarding his soft toy mustard pot, part of a set that my nephew Brian and his wife Alison got for him for Christmas. His devotion to these little toys is weird. He carries them around in his mouth for several days as if they were puppies, freaking out if anyone tries to touch them, and then “accidentally” splits them open. 

We named this little yellow fellow “Musty.”

--

June 19, 2015

So if I’m sitting in the middle of the sofa, George Hilton Beagle will now walk up to me and shove my laptop hard with his nose. That means I am to “raise the drawbridge” so he can stomp across me to the side of the sofa that is now suddenly more attractive to him.

--

Sept. 18, 2015

I made the mistake of saying the word “bark” to George again this morning, and he sprang up and ran to the window to look out. He always thinks I said “Bart,” his favorite visitor.

--

Nov. 10, 2015

George Hilton Beagle will not tolerate even the appearance of physical aggression in our household, not even in jest. He is like Gort.

Matt Mattingly interpreted for him, “I will reduce your sofa to a smoldering cinder. The choice is yours.”

--

Sept. 21, 2016

Yesterday, I took George for a stroll around the fairgrounds and he was fascinated by the horse trotting around the track, following it with his eyes. Perhaps the first horse he’d ever seen. I could tell he was thinking, “That's the biggest damned dog I've ever seen in my life.”

--

Oct. 28, 2016

George has gotten really used to having me around all the time since I got “Raunered” out of my university teaching position this year.

George Hilton Beagle is my perfect companion during the day. He listens attentively to whatever I have to say, and makes no reply.

--

Jan. 14, 2017

Everything is covered in a thin coat of immensely dangerous ice. I fell on the steps taking George out, but managed to do it gently.

--

Aug. 6, 2017

George Hilton Beagle and I took a Sunday drive out to Lincoln Log Cabin State Park, where we wandered about in the lightest little drizzle and looked at the sheep. 

“What in hell are those things?” George said.

--

Feb. 24, 2018

In a book by existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, I read, “These essays begin with a meditation on suicide: the question of living or not in a universe devoid of order or meaning.” 

Then the beagle straddled my lap, vigorously licked my face and waited to be petted. 

I’ve never seen a more eloquent refutation of Camus.

--

July 2, 2018

Every so often while I’m typing, George Hilton Beagle will stroll up to me and give me what I call “the Nose.” Peremptorily shoving aside my laptop with his muzzle, he’ll hop up on my lap in a move that means, “It’s time for my scritches, you!”

--

July 13, 2018

George and I drove to Mattoon to get him dog food and pill pockets. He looks happiest when we’re in the car moving, although he doesn’t like to stick his head out the window if we’re traveling 50 miles per hour or faster. Too much wind flapping his long ears. 

At stop lights or other delays, he whines a little. He wants to go.

--

Nov. 14, 2018

Waiting with George for an operation on his fatty growth today. He doesn’t understand why he hasn’t been able to eat or drink this morning, but he’s been pretty good about it, just watching me curiously.

--

Nov. 15, 2018

George is still seeping blood from time to time, and has a hard time lying down, so I have been sitting up with him, the poor little guy.

George barked twice in his sleep just now, loudly, something he rarely does. I suspect it’s a reaction to the trauma of his surgery experience.

All while the first real snow of the winter falls silently around the house.

--

Jan. 17, 2019

Every night, when Larry gives George Hilton Beagle the small rawhide treat we have so cleverly named the “boney bone,” George trots off to find me, drops it at my feet and growls softly. Then he barks.

This is his way of saying that this particular boney bone is HIS, and that I’d better not try to get it or there will be 

HELL.

TO.

PAY.

George seems to think that the treats we give him — so foolishly — are things we will immediately want back, once we regret the error of our ways.

Thus challenged, I naturally have to make a grab for it, but he snatches it up and dashes off to another room.

We run, we feint, we stop and stare at each other like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. 

“Drop it, bitch,” I tell him, and he drops the boney bone, tauntingly. 

At my slightest motion, he grabs it up again and dashes room to room to room.

“Tonight is the night I’m GETTING that boney bone!” I tell him, hot in pursuit. “Say goodbye to it!” 

I feel, strangely, a little like Wile E. Coyote.

Sometimes I hide behind a door, which worries him. A ridge of hair on his back rises like the spines of a stegosaurus, and he barks with mad, abandoned joy when I jump out from my hiding place. And we’re off again!

This kind of thing continues until I slow down and collapse on the sofa, muttering, “Okay, okay. Enough, enough.” 

Then George settles down happily to eat his boney bone, reassured that he is a streak of tri-colored lightning, much faster than any pokey old human.

George chews his treat with great satisfaction, knowing that I have once again been put in my place. And I rest gratefully until he finishes the boney bone, and it is time for us to go outside and pooty.

--

March 28, 2019

When I returned from shopping yesterday, I caught George staring at me, his eyes brimming with love. Then Paul told me that when I was in the driveway, George whined and moaned, missing me.

--

June 9, 2019

A clerk in Rural King said, “George, you’re perfect! You know that?” George Hilton Beagle seemed unsurprised.

It just occurred to me that I even love the word “beagle.” It has such a happy lilt built in.

--

Aug. 11, 2019

Paul had to pick up his mother at the St. Louis airport at 9 p.m., and didn’t get home until almost 1 a.m. George and I waited up for him.

George went to the door and windows and whined a little about 8 p.m. I think he was worried about why Paul hadn’t yet returned. I reassured him that Paul would be back, and he settled down to nap.

--

Jan. 10, 2020

Looks like it’s going to rain for 48 hours or so. Convenient for George, who likes to lick water off the deck steps. 

Deck water is like Perrier to him.

--

June 2, 2021

Now that George is getting older, I pick him up and carry him more. And when I do, I find myself resting my cheek against the warmth of his neck. 

He’s anxious to get where he’s going, but I want to keep him where he is.

--

June 30, 2021

George is sleeping deeply and peacefully on the floor right now, as he always does on spa days.

They didn’t give George his rabies shot because of his condition, but I authorized blood work on him. The vet thinks he has Cushing’s, an adrenal gland disorder.

Total cost today, $222, which is irrelevant because I’d do just about anything for my beagle.

--

July 1, 2021

Well, George has only six months to live. He doesn’t have Cushing’s, but some kind of liver disorder. We’ll treat it, but there’s a terminal point in sight. My beagle likely won’t see 2022.

--

July 28, 2021

Sometimes now when I have to leave the house for an errand, George whimpers with separation anxiety. He’s just old and he knows it and he’s afraid, just as I am sometimes. Two old dogs. It makes me feel even closer to the little guy, whom I now have to carry just about everywhere.

Carrying George outside to do his business, I hold him next to my head and whisper, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

--

Dec. 22, 2021

However bad a shape he was in, I decided not to mourn George as long as he was still beside me.

And then, one day, he was not.

A Shadow in Snow

Sun behind the house

Outlining on the front lawn

A shadow in snow.

Spider-Man: Home Is Where the Heart Is

Paul, Bart and I are just back from Spider-Man: No Way Home.

You know, good superhero stories are larger-than-life, breathless romantic sagas about rescue, betrayal, good and evil, love and hate, self-sacrifice and the joy and freedom of effective action. Operatic, really, yet with wit and style.

These melodramas are about ethical choices, because that’s what immense power must always necessarily boil down to. Even the refusal to exercise power can have dire consequences for others.

And above all else, these stories should have heart. They should not be nihilistic, because if even superheroes can’t win, what chance is there for the rest of us?

And this film has all that. It’s the complete culmination of 20 years of Spider-Man movies, satisfying on every single level. The people who grew up with these films will be particularly entranced, I suspect.

Why Is Fox's Fascism Forgiven?

You can measure just how bad the latest exposure of Republican corruption is by observing the length of time it takes Fox News to come up with lies to justify it. Their extended silence always speaks volumes.

A Mensch in Space

“Compassion does not just happen. Pity does, but compassion is not pity. It's not a feeling. Compassion is a viewpoint, a way of life, a perspective, a habit that becomes a discipline — and more than anything else, compassion is a choice we make that love is more important than comfort or convenience.”

— Glennon Doyle Melton

Fox News Trips Over its Own Forked Tongue

For some odd reason, Fox News hosts pleaded with Trump to stop "tourists" from going to the White House.

How Banks Feast on American College Students

Because this nation cozies up to ignorance and no longer values education, college students have become nothing but a cash cow to be milked dry by our predatory financial sector.

Students do not deserve to be enslaved to Wall Street greed for life because they had the temerity to want an education. 

I graduated from state university in 1977 with a student loan debt of slightly less than $500. Of course, that was when we all agreed that it was useful — in fact, even imperative — for members of an advanced, civilized society to have easy access to higher education. That was before we decided to chuck all that and just let greedy banks make a lifelong meal out of American students. 

As for paying for loan forgiveness, take it all out of the Pentagon's worthless, obscene budget.

The Cowardly Lyin' of the 'Both Siders'

Say your candidate is caught lying relentlessly, and reversing and re-reversing his positions on every major issue. If you reply, with blithe, self-serving cynicism, that “both sides lie,” then you are A) giving the worst candidate a complete pass for his dishonesty and B ) awarding the office to the most accomplished con artist, thereby turning a vice into a virtue and deliberately establishing the practice of handing power over to the most corrupt candidate BECAUSE he is the most corrupt. You could hardly imagine a more effective recipe

for national disaster.

The Elephant Is Hiding in the Tree

As Garry Kasparov wrote: "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth."

A Train Whistles Past

Painting by Emma Childs

A train whistles past

Wistful, mournful and happy

Hello and goodbye.

A Cloud of Sparrows

A cloud of sparrows

Making the popcorn dance like

A second popping.

Conservatives, the True Victims

When you want to invade some innocent nation, or beat some helpless party half to death, or rape them, it's always useful to first claim YOU are THEIR victim. Throws up a nice smoke screen.

Keep Fighting Anyway

The people fighting on the right side are always in the minority, and often don’t see victory in their lifetimes. The abolitionists were sneered at and spat upon by most Americans, remember. 

But the people fighting on the right side are the ones who matter, and there’s a satisfaction in knowing who’s right — the people whose goals are compassion and civilization — and who is so clearly wrong in the eyes of history. We must fight on with an untroubled spirit. 

And I have changed people’s minds. Not many, but a few. I also changed my own, which was my best accomplishment.

Fox News: It Really Is Scary

Fox News: That channel where all the vaccinated spokesmodels warn their audience about how much they should fear vaccines.

Unfrightened By Your Menaces

One of my top-ten quotes is from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

He also said, accurately: “Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”

Stuck in a Preconventional Society

My friend Jim Beamesderfer on how the Kohlberg scale relates to current events: “The graphic shows the levels of maturity in social and personal morality as a person ages. Anti-mask, anti-vax people are generally at level 2, with some use of level 4 as a weapon rather than accepting it as the way to behave in society. The upper two levels do not require strong religious beliefs, which tend to use level 1 as their motivation, but instead a mature acknowledgment of individual obligation to those around us, regardless of theological beliefs.”

Note that not everybody reaches Kohlberg's “adult level” of moral development. Whatever their age, many people remain stuck at the bottom, and they are the source of all our current troubles.

Long Afternoon Forgetting

the great mirage: time

long afternoon forgetting

how short it all is

- haiku by Brandon Hensley, painting by Errol Jameson

Try Telling Trolls What to Kiss

Right wing trolls always seem to think that you work for them, and are always demanding that you supply them a variety of carefully researched answers that they will reject out of hand if you were to be so foolish as to bother to answer them. I like to remind them to shove all that up their ass.

A Pathetic Little Boy Named Trump

So true. Republicans are so corrupt and/or stupid, they don't even understand the virtues they profess to admire.

The Painter Who Sells Stockings

“He who belies his talent, the born painter who sells stockings instead, the intelligent man who lives a stupid life, the man who sees the truth and keeps his mouth shut, the coward who gives up his manliness, all these people perceive in a deep way that they have done wrong to themselves and despise themselves for it.”

— Abraham Maslow

Hit the Republicans Hard, Then Do It Again

“Biden prefers to project an image of confidence and smiley-faced bipartisanship,” wrote The Week magazine. “But with Republicans committed to obstruction, ‘partisan and cultural conflicts’ are inevitable. And most issues, including mask and vaccination mandates, Biden has popular opinion behind him. For the good of the country and his presidency, Biden should drop the pretense that bipartisan agreement is possible, and ‘fight on more polarized issues instead of trying to dodge them.’”

I never want to hear that worthless, dangerous damned word “bipartisanship” again. Playing “bipartisan” with the Nazi GOP is the same thing as offering your throat to their sacrificial knife.

Hit them, hit them hard and then hit them again and again and again!

All Those Little Goodies Your God Gives You

Evangelical Christians will burn the whole Earth to warm their pie in the sky.

 

Arise Before the Stupid Stir

Impressionist landscape by Bart DeCeglie

Jim Hampton wrote: "A cool, early-morning walk in the sunrise does wonders for a person’s disposition.

"The dangerous stupidity of the world isn’t awake yet."

A Religion Born on Earth

'Colors of the Rain' by Xangzi Xu

“Among the founders of religions, the Buddha was the only teacher who did not claim divine authority in any form. He attributed all his realization, attainments and achievements to human endeavor and human intelligence. 

“His philosophy is entirely based on observation and reasoning. His characteristic doctrines such as impermanence and dependent origination have an empirical justification. 

“His rejection of metaphysical speculation is based on the philosophically sound insight that such questions are unanswerable on the basis of observation. For example, he compares the question, ‘Does the saint exist after death or not?’ to the question ‘(Has) the flame that has gone out gone north or not?’”

— Narayan Champawat

You Can Always Get What You Don’t Want

“Everybody knows the pain of getting what we don’t want: saints, sinners, winners, losers,” wrote Pema Chodron in The Places That Scare You. 

“I feel gratitude that someone saw the truth and pointed out that we don’t suffer this kind of pain because of our personal inability to get things right.”

Buddhist insights “...encourage us to relax gradually and wholeheartedly into the ordinary and obvious truth of change,” said the American Tibetan Buddhist. “Acknowledging this truth doesn’t mean that we’re looking on the dark side. What it means is that we begin to understand that we’re not the only one who can’t keep it together. We no longer believe that there are people who have managed to avoid uncertainty.”

The Quotation That Begins My Day

Stocism offered wisdom broad enough to appeal to both a philosopher-emperor (Marcus Aurelius) and the philosopher-slave (Epictetus).

 

To Those Who Use Science to Hate Science

“The minds of our young people are being poisoned by knowledge,” Stephen Colbert said. “And the source of this toxic cerebral sludge is our schools. They fill our kid’s heads with dangerous concepts like evolution and PE. Happily, there is one bright spot in education, Texas, the large hadron collider of denying science. I have long praised the Texas Board of Education for their valiant work rewriting our nation’s history textbooks. But now, I believe they’ve got some stiff competition from the Texas GOP, who recently put a plank in their 2012 party platform regarding children’s education, that says, and I quote, ‘We oppose the teaching of critical thinking skills.’ Amen brother. For too long we have blindly accepted the idea of not blindly accepting ideas.”

I've always said that I'm surprised televangelists don't give up broadcasting by technology created by that science they so despise, and transmit their message to the masses through that "Power of God" they're always going on and on about.

Surfing Your Brainwaves

Art by Wade Koniakowsky

Jiro Taylor: “The Alpha-Theta border area of around 8 Hz is recognized as being the signature wave state for flow states. This is unsurprising given that one of the standout hallmarks of flow is the absence of conscious thought. Many people have defined their ‘flow state’ experience as a zone where things happen automatically, so it stands to reason that it occurs at the Alpha-Theta brain wave, the border between the conscious and the subconscious.

“Alpha and Theta are also the brain waves most commonly associated with meditation, and as many people have noted before, flow sometimes feels like meditation. It’s fascinating that the voice of intuition has been linked to this same alpha-theta border, and it confirms my belief that synchronicity and flow are extremely connected.”

My Kind of Corvid

I love crows and ravens for their wisecracking voices and for that black-on-black gleam of sagacity in their eyes. They figure things out. They see us. They know us for what we are, which is why they keep a wary distance but remind us, with their taunts, that they are not overly impressed.

Saving Those Too Stupid to Save Themselves

Savvy wrote: "My mom broke down today. There were over 80 patients in the ER last night, understaffed, and today she had to hear family tell her COVID isn’t real and that feeling burnout makes you a terrible nurse. She just kept crying and said there’s no help to be seen."

Facing the Terrors of Theocracy

Irrational, inhuman tribal brutality can be washed down much more easily with a big dose of divine sanction. Always nice to know that an omnipotent being has your back and approves of your crimes, that his rod and his staff they comfort you.

This Is Where We Have Failed, Abjectly

I've been warning about America's obvious death march to fascism for 20 years, only to get sneers from people too cowardly or too stupid to face facts.

You never win playing "Mother May I?" with Nazis.

The Uncertain Fate of Certain People

"Certainty itself is really an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out far more information than it processes, which, of course, greatly increases its already high error rate during emotional arousal. In other words, the more certain you feel, the more likely you are wrong. 

“Life can be hard for the certain — reality simply won't cooperate with their view of it. Fortunately, life can also be exciting and more valuable for those who embrace its inherent uncertainty.”

— Psychologist Steven Stosny

Ancient Advice about the Right

Let's PLEASE abandon the pretense that Trumpettes know what they’re doing.

Baited by blatant racism, they were duped by corporate media propaganda into cutting their own throats to fill the jeweled goblets of America’s poor, victimized vampire billionaires.

Someone to Hold Your Hand

Painting by Claude Bernard

The day after I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I did something strange.

I got a manicure — the first I’d had since I was a boy in my Aunt Shirley’s beauty shop.

Leaving our ailing beagle resting at home, I stopped by the public library to renew my card, borrowing a Harlan Corben mystery and buying a handful of magazines — Esquire, AD, Veranda — for a dime each.

Then I went to Walmart to pick up some fresh bread for the birds and squirrels at our “feeding oak.” 

I looked around at all the people gliding through the store, many of whom seemed only half alive, and thought about all the times I’ve only been half-alive too.

But now, at this moment, I was sharply aware of being alive. The consciousness of your own mortality can do that for you.

Passing the nail salon, I thought of all the times I had idly considered getting a manicure, but rejected the notion as being silly. I didn’t even know what one cost.

I strolled in.

Sixteen dollars.

Not too bad.

Why not?

A middle-aged Asian fellow dropped my hands into a bowl to soak, firmly, efficiently. Cuticle trimming, filing, buffing, all pleasant and relaxing.

My hands haven’t looked so good since some previous century.

Biden Ends a War Meant to Be Endless

Pity the poor Pentagon. 

They thought they’d finally achieved it: permanent war against an unidentifiable, invisible and endless “enemy.” Untold trillions spent, progress never measured, nothing ever won. It’s the lifelong wet dream of the American military-industrial complex.

Remember, for a full fifth of a century, the bought-and-paid-for corporate news media were utterly indifferent toward the endless, pointless draining of taxpayer trillions into the sands of Afghanistan. 

But now that Biden has ended it, they’re “outraged.”

Of course, the messy job of getting us out of Afghanistan would never have fallen to Biden if the GOP war criminals Bush and Cheney hadn’t decided to invade and occupy the country in order to distract attention from their terrorist pals in Saudi Arabia. But that’s of no interest at all to the corporate news tools.

The U.S. bombed Afghan civilians to bits for 20 years, with nary a peep from the news media. Suddenly they weep lest a sparrow fall in Afghanistan.

In fact, Joe Biden is experiencing his own version of the “Dean Scream” — being condemned by an absurd media narrative that is relentlessly hammered home, day after day. 

That propaganda is why a majority of Americans wanted out of Afghanistan, yet now blame Biden for actually getting us out.

When Liberty Equals Death

 

The selfish and self-destructive refusal to be vaccinated in order to stop a global pandemic reveals the insanity dwelling at the bottom of the rabbit hole that is libertarianism.

The Strangely Selective Science of the GOP

Republicans may sneer at science in general, but they always remain eager to deploy its latest advances in service of those activities they truly value: Killing, torture, military invasion and police intimidation.

Oh, and they want to keep advanced medical technology for when they become seriously ill, revealing that they don't really believe in all the cant they spew about the healing powers of prayer.

It’s reason itself that the Republicans really and finally oppose. They’ve met their enemy, and it is sanity.

Flowing Past Fear

 

They say before entering the sea,

a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the way

that she has travelled, from the peaks,

the mountains, the long winding road

which crosses forests and villages,

and sees in front of her such a vast ocean

that entering it doesn’t seem anything else

than having to disappear forever.

But there's no other way.

The river can’t go back.

No one can go back.

Going back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk

and to enter the ocean.

It's only when entering the ocean

that fear will disappear,

because it’s only then

that the river will know it’s not about

to disappear into the ocean,

but to become ocean.

---

Fear by Khalil Gibran

Being Alone With Your Possibilities

“The ultimate test for the ability to control the quality of experience is what a person does in solitude, with no external demands to give structure to attention,” wrote Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

“It is relatively easy to become involved with a job, to enjoy the company of friends, to be entertained in a theater or at a concert. But what happens when we are left to our own devices? Alone, when the dark night of the soul descends, are we forced into frantic attempts to distract the mind from its coming? Or are we able to take on activities that are not only enjoyable, but make the self grow?

“To fill free time with activities that require concentration, that increase skills, that lead to the development of the self, is not the same as killing time by watching television or taking recreational drugs. Although both strategies might be seen as different ways to coping with the same threat of chaos, as defenses against ontological anxiety, the former leads to growth, while the latter merely serves to keep the mind from unraveling. 

“A person who rarely gets bored, who does not constantly need a favorable external environment to enjoy the moment, has passed the test for having achieved a creative life.”

Sitting Alone With a Dying Dog

Sitting alone

With a dying dog,

His soft snores a respite

From his waking fears.

Warm to the touch,

Brave as a beagle,

Eyes a little haunted, as

The far-away nears.

Parachutes Are For Cowards

How many of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who were slowly choked to death by the pandemic before a treatment was available would have given anything to get the vaccine now being refused by dangerous fools? 

Wabi-sabi: A Way to Look at the World

Wabi-sabi: seeing beauty in what is weathered and impermanent, in conditions beyond conventional symmetry. It’s an ancient aesthetic rooted in Zen Buddhism.