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Post by nana on Jun 18, 2020 20:19:48 GMT -5
A neighbor of mine put this in his yard today. At first I thought he must be a salesman from the Land of Chairs (remember, Pooka?), but then I took a closer look. It was profound, moving, and I’ll leave it at that because it speaks for itself:
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Post by pooka on Jun 19, 2020 15:39:56 GMT -5
We could fill the streets with empty chairs, & there would be those who would refuse to see them. The pandemic had gotten me down as it was. Then the killings took over the airwaves everywhere. It's driven me into a deep dark place to the point I can barely function.
America has made war on the "Others" among us since the pilgrims. Pick a group, & at some point, they've taken their licks at the wiping post. Black folks have been the easiest target all along because they are the most visible, & have endured the most abuses. As far as this most recent unrest, it's because the Civil War never really ended. Once Federal troops left the southern states post war, Jim Crow took over. progress has been made, but hate is a mighty foe. The cancer of hate has festered among us all along. It spreads, mutates & morphs, but it never goes away. Until we can all look at another & only see another human being, this poison will always be with us, sadly. It's easy for some to live in their little bubble & ignore the issues, but there's nowhere safe in this day & age. Mankind has become a kind of super-organism. So interconnected, we're one thing. One action can be telegraphed to the whole. Hate like this inflicts the globe. Without constant vigilance, it can never be quelled. It hard to know where to start. I recently came across a posting of a part of the The Egyptian Book of the Dead. It speaks of always being in the process of becoming. From Awakening Osiris,
The Egyptian Book of the Dead,
translated by Normandi Ellis, Phanes Press, 1988
Becoming the Child
In seafoam, in swirlings and imaginings I am fish, tadpole, crocodile. I am an urge, an idea, a portent of impossible dreams. I lie between heaven and earth, between goodness and evil, patience and explosion. I am innocent and rosy as dawn. I sleep with my finger in my mouth, the cord of life curled beside my ear. Like a child in its mother’s belly, I am with you but not among you. I know no ending for I have no beginning. I have always been here, a child in the silence of things, ready to wake at any moment.
I am possibility.
What I hate is ignorance, smallness of imagination, the eye that sees no farther than its own lashes. All things are possible. When we speak in anger, anger will be our truth. When we speak in love and live by love, truth in love will be our comfort. Who you are is limited only by who you think you are. I am the word before its utterance. I am thought and desire. I am a child in the throat of god. Things are possible—joy and sorrow, men and women, children. Someday I’ll imagine myself a different man, build bone and make flesh around him. I am with you but a moment for an eternity. I am the name of everything.
I’ve dreamed the nightmare a hundred times, that old revulsion of bone and flesh, waking in sweat, in a headlong rush toward the world, into the cool certainty of fires that burn in sudden stars, the heat in the body. That I am precludes my never having been.
What I know was given to me to say. There is more.
There are words that exist only in the mind of heaven, a bright knowing, a clear moment of being. When you know it, you know yourself well enough. You will not speak. I am a child resting in love, in the pleasure of clouds. I read the book of the river. I hold the magic of stones and trees. I find god in my fingers and in the wings of birds. I am my delight, creator of my destiny. It is not vanity.
There are those who live in the boundaries of guilt and fear, the limits of imagination. They believe limitation is the world. You can not change them. There is work of your own to do. You will never reach the end of your own becoming, the madness of creation, the joy of existence.
Dance in the moment. Reach down and pull up song. Spin and chant and forget the sorrow that we are flesh on bone. I return to the rhythm of water, to the dark song I was in my mother’s belly. We were gods then and we knew it. We are gods now dancing in whirling darkness, spitting flame like stars in the night.
In the womb before the world began, I was a child among other gods and children who were, or may be, or might have been. There in the dark when we could not see each other’s faces, we agreed with one mind to be born, to separate, to forget the pact we made that we might learn the secrets of our fraternity. We agreed to know sorrow in exchange for joy, to know death in exchange for life. We were dark seeds of possibility whispering. Then one by one we entered alone. We walked on our legs, and as we had said, we passed in well-lit streets without recognizing each other; yet we were gods sheathed in flesh, the multitude of a single spirit. Gods live even in darkness, in the world above your heads, in the crevices of rocks, in the open palms of strangers.
I am a child, the seed in everything, the rhythm of flowers, the old story that lingers. Among cattle and fruit sellers, I am air. I am love hidden in a shy maiden’s gown. I am the name of things. I am the dream changing before your eyes. I am my body, a house for blood and breath. I am a man on earth and a god in heaven. While I travel the deserts in frail form, while I grow old and weep and die, I live always as a child inside the body of truth, a blue egg that rocks in the storm but never breaks. I sleep in peace in my mother’s lap, a child mesmerized by sunlight on the river. My soul is swallowed up by god.
Out of chaos came the light.
Out of the will came life. Now I'll give you two links to ponder without comment. I really didn't want to bring this here, but here we are.
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Post by nana on Jun 20, 2020 18:08:14 GMT -5
Too much for me to read right now, but I promise I will. For now, is that Egyptian thing from ancient Egypt? I had no idea that it was possible to have so much poetry with hieroglyphics! There are shadings of every major religion in it. A lot to unpack.
I suggest stop watching any news for a few days. I know how you feel
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Post by nana on Jun 22, 2020 21:03:00 GMT -5
Oh Pooka, I read Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop all the way through. It was at the same time so awful and so hopeful. It is such a tall order to think things could change, yet change must come. What we all have been doing is so obviously not working. What gives me hope is something I learned about reading an essay by Steven J Gould, called punctuated equilibrium. He was talking about evolution, and how it’s not the slow majestic march of incremental change that most people envision, but rather long periods of status quo, punctuated by periods of rapid change brought on by a sudden event, say an asteroid that kills off the dinosaurs or a mutation that dramatically improves (or drastically degrades) the viability of an organism. So maybe this is one of those times. We are going through a big change, and some of it is going to hurt, but we will come out the other side the better for it.
I’ll read the next link tomorrow!
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Post by bluelotus65 on Jul 7, 2020 11:57:12 GMT -5
Pooka, thank you for the heartfelt post. Despite this very dark time I find myself feeling hopeful when I see the multiplicity of young people rising up to demand systemic change. Let us hope that we can make it happen!
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Post by nana on Jul 7, 2020 15:19:16 GMT -5
It took me a while, but I just read the second link. It also rings true. What a crying shame...This change will be a marathon, I fear.
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Post by bluelotus65 on Jul 8, 2020 13:51:10 GMT -5
😢
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Post by pooka on Jul 16, 2020 2:03:09 GMT -5
I'm going to try to make this short for now. My computer went bad, & I still haven't replaced it yet. I decided to just do without for a while for the sake of my sanity. I don't have a smart phone, so there are a lot of things that get kinda complicated doing it the old fashioned way. It was fun paying my credit card from my home phone & going back to a paper bill for now. I'm writing this on a borrowed one for the moment. nana, The Egyptian Book of the Dead was in use from around 1550 BCE to around 50 BCE. There is no one Book of the Dead. The term speaks of books of various spells that were compiled for each individuals who commissioned them from the temple scribes to suit their life & afterlife. At present, some 192 spells are known from various sources. I'm sure translators did their best to do them justice converting them to modern language. This particular spell I came across entitled "Becoming the Child" rang so apt for the occasion. We all need to try to to be that child before we learned the fears & hates that complicate the world of today. OK, maybe we can't live as that child, but maybe we can use the idea to live a better life for ourselves, & those around us, & our society at large. As Edward Kennedy said of his brother Robert Kennedy in his funeral eulogy, "My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." Just do our best to be decent citizens. It shouldn't surprise us that the ancient Egyptians had deep & insightful literature given how long their civilization lasted in all it's forms. It, & many other sources of wisdom from around the world haven't gotten as much press as the bible in all it's versions. Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop was a tough read, but it all made a kind of twisted sense. You can imagine how we've gotten to where we are, & maybe a roadmap of where we went wrong, & some idea of what need fixing.
A White Woman, Racism and a Poodle was a bit surprising, but it show how things that seem to have no connection can be connected. The evolution of our society is a never ending process, but we are active ingredient in the mix. Public sentiment pushes it to & fro. You used to be able to get away with stuff years ago, because things weren't as widely known or reported. Secrets are hard to keep in this day & age of the twenty four hour news cycle. With any big turn in our social order. There comes a tipping point when the tide turns so that the thing or issue can no longer be put off or ignored. There are starts & stops. A halting march to tomorrow. History unfold in it's own time. Things I thought were unthinkable when I was young are dull facts of reality today. What"s the adage, "May you live in interesting times". We certainly are doing that right now. bluelotus65, the young among us ARE the future whether we like it or not. They will ask questions we wouldn't or couldn't. They will see things amiss in places we've become complacent to. We will hopefully always strive to for that more perfect order. It will always be an unfinished business. There will be the old guard who will resists till the last, but they will fall by the wayside in time, like old tyrants of the past. They always fall eventually. Change is the thing we live for, but we need to push for the change we want & need. There's enough prosperity & justice for everyone.
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Post by nana on Jul 17, 2020 7:58:34 GMT -5
Good to have you back, Pooka! I’m glad it was only computer trouble and not illness. I was worried!
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