The Tools of Totalitarian Dominance

“ ‘(Totalitarianism) bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.’ Chronic unemployment, inflation and punitive taxation, the debasement or suppression of a public forum for action and debate, the dislocation that comes from moving from nation to nation or job to job, the imposed inconsequence of innocence and guilt, in groups and out groups, the threat of terror — all tools of totalitarian dominance — seem to prepare victims and bullies alike to undervalue their lives.”

— Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times by Anne C. Heller

Rumi and Rumination

TO BROOD is to wander through a grove

where one sheep strays

and a hundred wolves follow.

Why did I make brooding my vocation

when awe was an option?

Thought spinner,

mull the wine of wonder.

— Rumi (Sept. 30, 1207-Dec. 17, 1273)

I Am a Tree

I eat the sun, I drink the light.

I am a conjurer. My sugar is self-sacrifice.

I cut my arm to feed my leg.

I am waiting for nothing, needing for nothing. I am an army, I am the mother of them all,

I can regenerate.

I clone a nation from my foot.

I am a country of one.

I am a family; I am a household.

I have skin and I can bruise and I can bleed, and I can cry. I make my friends. We are connected.

We are inseparable. We grow intertwined.

We share the sky, we are agreed.

I can give, and I can care for.

I’ve got other mouths to feed.

They need me.

I am a tree. I know secrets that you will never know. I channel lighting. I see in color.

I make the air you need to grow.

I’m not a man, I’m not a woman. Surprisingly I’m both.

And when I know that I must die

I put the best of me back into the ground. I stretch for miles and miles and miles. And let’s not forget my leaves:

Clouds of green.

— Majel Connery