MUSIC: LISTENING TO THE OLDIES
There’s a reason why it’s still here
That “old” music, emblematic of all our firsts
History, instrument-etched
Rhythmic scorching guitars
Saxophones – longing or lucky
Pianos running us up and down
ranges of emotion
Bass and drums defibrillating
beatless hearts
All spooning with words
That led us in that timeless
Continuous dance
Along the Watchtower
Among the purple flowers
In that Purple Haze
There’s a reason for “oldies stations”
Sanctuaries for melodic reminders, telling us
Passion, its usefulness, is deathless
As long as humans prevail
“Old–school” music will continue
Demanding answers to questions
That should have been asked
Of the past
FOR THE CHEER LEADER OF SCIENCE
The non-fiction writer said *art will not fix the global crisis and the vengeance
Neglect is reining down upon our dirty greasy planet.
I beg to differ.
I want to dip Mr. Bryson in the waters of
Huxley, Orwell, Atwood, Carson, and the words of
Colette that tell the world of the corresponding
Smells of the betrayed, jealous and lovesick.
Science has a fix but a “fix”
Denied its beauty – resolution
Because there is no profit
Ensuring the earth remains
Healthy for everyone.
Right here,
Right now,
Money’s to be made
Fat capitalists sucking the earth
Dry of its natural resources
Sadly, ironically
With the help science.
In revolutions over time
Knowledge and passion is
Ignited by art
And the time is neigh
When art reveals the capitalists deniers
Who catch the money flung at solutions
Hiding it away in the pockets of those
“Rapture ready”
With no need of a future world.
Art, in freedom
Will save us
When science, in chains
Will not.
* “An arts graduate is not going to fix global warming. They may do other valuable things, but they are not going to fix the planet, or cure cancer, or get rid of malaria.” ~ Bill Bryson
THE MUSEUM OF LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING
Where we keep our humanity
Hermetically sealed
And in the future they will come
Down long google-glassed tunnels
To collect artifacts
Heartless facts from
Our artless landmarks
Blind to the act:
Giving succor to the enemy
Night on the battlefield when mountains
Of hatred became mere
Mounds over which we stumbled with gifts
The weight of humanity too great
Too heavy for the light of day
A light used to make way for
The resumption of war
CHILLIN’ AT CHIPOTLE
The following 26 questions by Jonathan Safran Foer were found on drink cup from Chipotle in Ithaca, NY. The story behind this thoughtful Disposable Literature campaign can be read at chipotle-experiments-with-disposable-literature.html
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1. What’s the kindest thing you almost did?
2. Is your fear of insomnia stronger than the fear that awoke you?
3. Are bonsai cruel?
4. Do you love what you love or just the feeling?
5. Your earliest memories: do you look through your young eyes, or do you look at your young self?
6. Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent, or that there are people with more talent?
7. Do you walk on moving walkways?
8. Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong as you were doing it?
9. Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter?
10. Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone?
11. How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life?
12. What would you tell your father if it were possible?
13. Which is changing faster, your body or your mind?
14. Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis?
15. Are you in any way angry at your phone?
16. When you pass a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, look at your reflection, or neither?
17. Is there any thing that you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it?
18. If you could be assured that more money would not make you the least bit happier, would you still want more money?
19. What has been irrevocably spoiled for you?
20. If your deepest secret became public, would you be forgiven?
21. Is your best friend your kindest friend?
22. Is it in any way cruel to give a dog a name?
23. Is there anything you feel a need to confess?
24. You know that a group of crows is called a ‘murder of crows’, likewise a group of buzzards is called a ‘wake of buzzards’ – but what is a group of ravens called?
25. What is it about death that frightens you?
26. How does is make you feel to know that the answer to 24 is an “unkindness of ravens”?
MAY I HAVE THIS DANCE?
I write because I cannot dance.
Oh, I can shake a hip or two, moving my hands to suggest I know what I’m doing. But to dance, really dance would be to lift a long trim leg into the air and hold it there until you are out of breath. I want to swirl through the cracks in your heart blowing open the doors to the reality of movement. I want to leap weightless across your stage landing softly upon your consciousness and wriggle my shoulders free of life’s shawl.
Because I cannot dance – I struggle to teach 26 letters the art of holding, swirling, leaping, landing and wriggling free of life’s nasty decorum.
ASSESSING THE DAMAGE: A Writer’s Almanac, NYT Headlines, and Triathlons
In 1974, James Baldwin’s book, If Beale Street Could Talk, was published. About a young couple who find themselves about to be parents when the young man is accused of rape and imprisoned. Baldwin was accused (by some) of sounding too bitter in the writing of “Beale Street…” I have to ask –
How do the disparaged of the times
escape bitterness – escape even its sound –
when innocence dines at a table set
with rotting images –
marinated in vinegar ?
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On August 2nd in 1932 American Physicist Carl Anderson discovered the first physical evidence of anti-matter. My heart stutters at the idea at measuring matter – much less what doesn’t. I am transported into last week where I read a NYT piece about a lower west side condo approved for a system of double entry: The condo association provided one door for the owners of the million dollar condos above and another entry for the affordable housing of the merely middle class.
There are those who matter
And those who spend lives in the
Measured existence of anti-matter
They matter not to king, god, and bomb
Certainly not to those entering the golden
Archways living cloud-high quarters
Immeasurable in size and matter
There are those falcons loosed from
the widening gyre of definition
bullets spattered across time and distance
where class and doorways don’t matter
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Yesterday I spent the morning volunteering at a local triathlon event – my job was to count the swimmers exiting the lake
Making sure the number agreed with the number of swimmers who went into the lake
I meditated on the necessity of competition in a world awash in “my (fill in the blank) is bigger, better, smarter than your _________”.
I had to remember that I was in a town, home to an ivy-league institution, where competition is a personality cornerstone of those lucky enough to be invited to study at such an institution.
But what of the corralled mass of middle-aged male humanity standing next to me – exuding more testosterone than a Balco Lab? A heady experience for a second – until I remember the time in 10th grade when
I inadvertently entered the boy’s locker room after football practice. The smell of competitive animals doesn’t change –
No matter the age.
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Take-a-way Wisdom:
Art is a way of confronting life. Getting to the big unruled YES in a country bordered and ruled by no
Gwen's World 