Get over yourself

Get over yourself

You're not very bright

It's plain accidental

If ever you're right

Your slim grasp on logic

Gives philosophers fright

Get over yourself

You're not very bright

Get over yourself

You're not very smart

You think you're so precious

With your terrible art

But you're less a Picasso

And more of a tart

Get over yourself

You're not very smart

Get over yourself

You're simply absurd

And not just to me

From what I have heard

Your view of realty's

Constantly blurred

Get over yourself

You're simply absurd

Get over yourself

You're not very sweet

You're not in the kitchen

'Cause you can't stand the heat

As for duplicity

You can't be beat

Get over yourself

You're not very sweet

Get over yourself

You're not very wise

You say that you love me

But we all know that's lies

And when you get caught out

It's such a surprise

Get over yourself

You're not very wise

Get over yourself

You're not very dear

Your plain self absorption's

Abundantly clear

Whenever you're needed

You just disappear

Get over yourself

You're not very dear

Get over yourself

You're so self obsessed

You don't have a thought

That goes unexpressed

Perhaps a psychiatrist

Could say it best

Get over yourself

You're so self obsessed

Get over yourself

You don't run this town

You think you're so open

But your brain has shut down

I simply don't care

If you gossip or frown

Get over yourself

You don't run this town

Ukuleles

I, too, used to be a mocker. 'Ukuleles! Pfft!' I thought. 'A toy, only fit for children and blue rinse ladies.' But, dear readers, there is a phenomenon sweeping the globe. Suddenly, ukes are COOL! And I understand why.

Musicians are prone to taking themselves oh, so seriously. Young women play endless angsty songs in quavery little voices while young men parade their alienation and hurt (and implicit superiority) for the world. And woe unto you if you do not appreciate their art and their pain. 

Guess what? Nobody particularly cares about your interior landscape. Get over yourself.

Music is medicine, but it need not taste awful. Instead, wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where music and laughter went together, where the musician was closer to a clown than a dentist? That world is here, and your passport is a ukulele. You can play anything on a ukulele. You can be enthusiastic, but you will never be serious. 

Check out Jake. Then pick your jaw up off the floor and go buy yourself a uke.

Worry

Sometimes I lie in bed and worry
I think about the things I said that day
I think about regrets and unkept promise
I guess I am a knucklehead that way

Sometimes I lie in bed and worry
I feel concern for all the human race
I worry that if gravity should fail
We'd all go spinning off in outer space

Sometimes I lie in bed and worry
Wicked people really cause me fright
What if Hitler should rise up from his grave
And come to cause me problems in the night

Sometimes I lie in bed and worry
I'm concerned as all the galaxies inflate
That countless trillion years into the future
Heat death will become our common fate

Sometimes I lie in bed and worry
I think perhaps I am a worry wart
Which of course is just another reason
To worry I don't worry as I ought

Archie

Archie was an ugly man
Of quite unpleasant face
His nose looked rather ill at ease
And slightly out of place

In fact his nose was quite depressed
And feeling out of sorts
And though it never said too much
Had suicidal thoughts

Archie never had a clue
Of his nose's mental state
But sometimes wondered why it had
Become so quiet of late

It was late on Tuesday evening
When the fire was burning low
That Archie's nose decided
That it was time to go

So striking out upon its own
It started a new life
Finding happiness at last
With an earlobe for a wife

My Bed

My bed, it is a safe place
It's where I like to be
I'm pretty sure that nothing bad
Will happen there to me


To curl up with a good book
My wife beside me there
I can safely put away my fears
My worries and my care

And if it's gently raining
It's even better then
I find it difficult to think
Of getting out again

Sp given that I feel this way
I think it's safely said
There is no problem big enough
That can't be solved in bed

So let's all take the generals
And tuck them tightly in
Tiptoe out, turn off the light
And let the peace begin

Sing for yourself

I love music. Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. The greatest connection I had with my father was his nurturing of me as a singer and guitar player.

I remember as a young man I burned with musical ambition. I craved applause and the opportunity to perform. I was certain I wanted to be famous, to make music my life, to be ... a star! Of course that didn't happen. Just as well, really. I'm not cut out for public life, or travel, or criticism, or pressure, or dealing with shifty business types.

Nope, I've had a luxurious musical life, doing what I wanted. It's only recently I've realized it was luxurious. I've always in the back of mind thought of music as a 'means to end', to make money. Now while I've had a little success, in those terms my musical life could only be considered a failure. Too often I've thought of it this way. But that's wrong. 

I was standing paying a bill at a medical practitioner's desk humming to myself and she looked up and said 'Singing is good for the heart.' That thought struck me. She was right, in all kinds of ways. The best reason to sing is for yourself.

Singing is good for the heart.

Tree

Tree, originally uploaded by ordinary-art.

Youth

Youth is wasted on the young
We've always known that's true
And so I have a simple plan
For what we need to do

Remove their youth is what I say
Excise it surgically
Put it in a bottle
And inject it into me 

Intelligent Design

The universe is mostly bare
Cold hydrogen and space
With random plops of galaxies
Like pimples on its face


And stars are born in violent storm
In gravity's dark grip
As nuclei are crushed torn
In fusion forces rip


While on our tiny speck of dust
Of ancient nova scree
The rare phenomenon of life
Began haphazardly


Almost all the life life forms
That e'er drew breath or blinked
Have disappeared unheralded 
Forgotten and extinct


And still there are some bozos
Of religious frame of mind
Who think this mess in which we live
Is majestically designed

Willy Wonka is a freak

Willy Wonka is a freak, originally uploaded by ordinary-art.

Integrity

Integrity, originally uploaded by ordinary-art.

Clouds

Clouds, originally uploaded by ordinary-art.

Gecko

lizard, originally uploaded by ordinary-art.

The Aquaduck

The Aquaduck, originally uploaded by ordinary-art.

moar funny pictures

Consciousness.

I went for a walk today, part of my increasing effort to get fit and preferably not die (at all). While I was walking I listened to a podcast. Bless ipods. You can find it here: Thought and Experience . I listened to Daniel Dennett, famous modern philosopher talking about consciousness. Old Daniel says quite a few startling things. I just want to concentrate on one.


You are a 'you', right? You are a self, a unified entity of consciousness. You have a 'stream of consciousness' as exemplified in  'Ulysses' by Joyce. You can contemplate your 'self'. Dennett says that this is not innate but rather produced by human society, almost a loading of software into your pliant young brain. Perhaps this is why hardly anyone can remember their birth and first year. 'You' are just not there yet to organize those memories coherently.


As if that is not enough, Dennett says animals don't have this quality. If we ask what it is it like (as an internal experience) to be a dog, Dennett replies 'What's it like to be a brace of oxen?' We naturally say, well, you can't be a brace of oxen in the same way you can be 'us'. Consider ants. Ant colonies behave in cohesive ways, they work to common goals and son on. Can you imagine 'being' an ant colony? No. Can you imagine being an ant? Dennet says if you can you're mistaken because the brain of an ant is the same kind of entity as the colony in that it serves a purpose but is a competing and cooperating matrix of drives and impulses with no unifying entity present. Maybe, you admit, but surely mammals are more like us and hence have a self. Dennett says the science is against you.


Here is a remarkable experiment. You take a rabbit and cover its left eye and train it to be afraid of a visual stimulus. You then uncover the left eye and and cover the right and expose it to the same stimulus. The rabbit is unmoved! If we ask 'What's it like to be a rabbit?' are we asking about the left-eyed rabbit or the right-eyed one?

captioned trail, originally uploaded by ordinary-art.

Brains

Brains, originally uploaded by ordinary-art.

Silver Splinter

Silver splinter in the sky
Lodges in my still mind's eye
People in that javelin hurled
Fly above the passing world
Looking out they do not see
Rushing on from A to B

Jerusalem

Woke up late this morning
Cloud across the sun
Gathered up my blanket
Waved to everyone
Later on I'm walking
Holding out my thumb
Guy pulls over and says to me
'I'm on the road to Jerusalem'

I ask him why he travels
What he hopes to find
He looks in my direction
And just says 'Never mind'
I thought about a song I knew
I began to hum
There's not a lot to talk about
On the road to Jerusalem

Stop to buy a coffee
Put some petrol in the tank
Bought myself a paper
But it turns out it was blank
It happens when you're led by
The blind and deaf and dumb
Maybe we can learn something
On the road to Jerusalem

There's many miles behind us
And many more to go
The maps we have are useless
There's too much that they don't show
Kerouac lies bleeding
Another highway bum
Used up and defeated
On the road to Jerusalem

There's mountains out before me
Rising from the plain
But they don't get any closer
As we drive on through the rain
I sometimes get the feeling
That we'll drive 'til Kingdom come
And never see another soul
On the road to Jerusalem

Burt Reynolds

Burt Reynolds had a mustache

That he bought for fifty cents,

He fed it beans and turkey

Which is only common sense,

He took all of his clothes off

In a famous centrefold,

Just as well he did it then

'Cause now he's getting old

I think about Burt Reynolds

And the hair beneath his nose

And notice it precedes him

No matter where he goes

So I wonder if the mustache

Is the CAUSE of his success

He wouldn't want to think that's true

Is my educated guess.

Here it comes ...

In recent times our part of the world has had tsunamis, earthquakes and fires. All of these natural tragedies caused loss of life and property.

We are pattern seeking creatures. In our evolutionary past, finding connections and meaning allowed us to predict outcomes and survive where lesser brains would not. We draw inferences and extrapolate and a lot of the time we're right. But we can also be wrong. We can also make connections where there are none. 'Magical' thinking is like this. An athlete succeeds while wearing a particular pair of underpants and suddenly, in his mind, he succeeds BECAUSE of his underpants.

Religion is another area where this kind of faulty connection making happens a lot. Ever since the time of Jesus, fervent believers have been expecting the end of the world. From several things Jesus is reported to have said, even He expected the end of the world SOON. Letter writers in the New Testament expected the end SOON. Every generation thereafter expected the end SOON. There is a particular kind of believer who makes a big deal about signs of the end. Natural disasters always figure highly in this. Hence, lately, we've heard that same talk again (not that it ever goes away) claiming this or that disaster is a sign of the end.

Frankly, this is sloppy thinking. These same people will try to 'prove' God's existence, by using cause and effect. The universe is orderly, therefore, they claim, there had to be a first cause, God. Now I'm not going to show why that argument is false. I think I've already done so elsewhere. What I will say is this: Suddenly, when it suits them, God will provoke 'uncaused' events, like earthquakes to make a theological point. Setting aside the idea that this makes God seem to use a terribly nasty blunt instrument, it also stops the universe being orderly and brings 'magic', action by divine fiat, back on the agenda. You can't have it both ways (although this kind of believer likes to have it all kinds of ways).

A few more things to consider:

1. Is earthquake frequency increasing? Who knows? Records have only been kept for barely a century and certainly not over the whole world with any degree of accuracy. Don't say it if you can't demonstrate it. A century is a piddling little amount in geologic time.

2. Do you REALLY want your God to be responsible for thousands of deaths and injuries just to make an announcement? What would this say about His character?

3. In terms of mathematics, given the number of people who have lived and died on the earth, isn't it statistically unlikely that it just happens to be while YOU'RE alive that the cosmos wraps up?

Give up the lucky underpants.

Dear Editor

Dear Editor,
The people who write to you are mad
Exposing strange conspiracies when there's none that may be had

Dear Editor,
I sense that their mental boats adrift
Lost upon the raging sea of a local seismic rift

Dear Editor,
They prattle on about the weirdest stuff,
Aliens and cosmic rays, and other silly guff

Dear Editor,
I must confess I do not understand
Why you publish all this nonsense from this most peculiar band

Dear Editor,
Why not (and I offer this for free)
Publish more along the lines of sane folk,
more like me

If you really loved me

If you really loved me

You'd stop being such a pest

You'd always try your best

To do all that I request

If you really loved me

You would always understand

Never quibble or demand

Or upset the things I planned

If you really loved me

You wouldn't always think you're right

You'd never fuss or fight

You'd always be polite

If you really loved me

You'd put up with what I'd do

You'd keep smiling through and through

No matter what I did to you

If you'd really love me

You'd always have the grace

To recognise your place

Which is behind me, just a pace

So when you think you've got it

There'll be no need to brawl

Don't hesitate at all

I'll be waiting for your call

Accident

The trivial trigonometry of chance

Writes in scratchy script

Unreadable to the layman

Line and symbol unhinged

Aimlessly wandering, bleeding

No heed to line or order

Growing dull mold stain

Colonising the pores of opportunity

Snaking along fault lines,

The random architecture of stress and strain

Entropy builds behind the dam walls

Chaos spins in crazed jittery dances

Disaster dreams in darkness

Nostrils twitching

Eyes flickering behind crusted eyelids

The pressure of probability

Prowls outside the unguarded gates

When cycicism became the fashion

You're probably going to think I'm writing this because I'm old. There may be some truth to that.

I'm watching a Pete Seeger concert recorded in Melbourne in 1963. I will point out that I was only 8 years old at the time this recording was made.

My father was a folk music fan. We used to sit around the kitchen table after dinner and sing folk songs while Dad played guitar. Naturally I grew up being a 'folkie' too. Of course I went through my rebellious phase with rock and roll and all things 'cool' but every few years my life would return to the purity and simplicity of the single guitar or banjo, the simple song that stood the test of time.

In this concert, Pete is playing all the old ones. He even does 'Kumbyah' Cue disdain. Except Pete is doing it and telling the story of the song's history from Angola and encouraging the audience to sing along. Cue more disdain. Except they DO sing along. And the swell of a thousand voices from 40 years ago rings with sincerity and warmth. Pete sings 'Ain't Gonna Study War No More' and the place roars with harmony and passion. He says 'Let's sing it so loud the generals all over the world can hear it!' and, by God, they try for Pete.

Pete is still here. He's 90 but still plays and still creates hope and peace and a swelling of the heart, a determination that we CAN do better. Mary Travers from Peter, Paul and Mary left us last week.

Sometime over the last few decades, hope and determination for a better world went out of fashion. It's become 'cool' to despair, 'cool' to deprecate, 'cool' to wallow in negativity. We're oh so clever. We've given up. We share snide grins at the few naive who still think music can grow out of a people and unite them in yearning.

Not me, I'm still singing 'Kumbyah'.

Scary Books

The world is full of scary books

That set me all a-quiver

And I'll turn down good literature

For stuff that makes me shiver

I'll read them late at night in bed

Until my pulse just races

And in my dreams I'll get to see

Some quite unpleasant places

I wonder why I seem to be

Drawn to fear and dread

But only when I'm tucked up tight

Safe at home, in bed

Destroying Idols

Many fundamentalist christians are vehemently, rabidly anti-catholic. Their main criticism is usually idol worship. After all catholic churches have all those statues. Statues are idols, right? Guilty as charged. Of course this shows a complete misunderstanding of the role of image in catholic theology. But something more subtle is going on in the critics' own backyard. Naturally critics don't like to look at their own backyard. They much prefer pointing out the flaws of others.

The commandment against idol worship is simple when it is restricted to physical images. But of course this is the most restrictive application of the commandment. By far the most dangerous idols are those of the imagination, the mental concepts we have of God that stand between us and the 'real' experience of God. When we think we know God, that He in some way 'belongs' to us, that he is understandable or understood, we cling to our conceptions of God.

This isn't faith at all, but a poor substitute which is more about intellectual knowing than trusting. As I have written before, it is the difference between clinging to wreckage in the water and learning to swim. Christian theologians have sounded this warning through the ages. They talk about the via negativa, the approach to God which depends on saying what God is not.

Buddhists have an interesting teaching in this regard. It is encapsulated in the saying: ' If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him'. The idea being that any Buddha you meet is a concept that leads away from realization of the self. We cling to concepts. Real mysticism is letting go.

Peter, Paul and Mary

The three of them stood on a stage
Two guitars
Sometimes a bass player
And harmonies that would weave in and out of magic
An alchemy of voices
Singing strong
Singing what was true
Singing for civil rights before it was comfortable
Taking Dylan to the mainstream
Where he could detonate in people's minds
Talking, marching, singing, playing
With a mix of passion and professionalism rarely matched

Mary's gone
But the music still sounds across the years
If I had a song
I'd sing it in the morning
I'd sing it in the evening all over this land

Justice, freedom, love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land
All over every land

Such as these

The simple word
Upon the page
The open book
The empty stage
The smell of rain
The evening breeze
My soul was made
For such as these

The loving glance
The gentle hands
The gift of one
Who understands
The shady nook
Beneath the trees
My soul was made
For such as these

The open heart
The childish grin
The healing kiss
On wounded shin
The sleepy head
Upon my knees
My soul was made
For such as these

The heartfelt song
The circle round
The friends of old
The new ones found
The passing time
That gives us ease
My soul was made
For such as these

Recite!

'Recite!' he said
I quivered then
And slowly lowered down my pen

'Recite' he said
I took a breath
Could this be where I meet my death?

'Recite!' he said
My thoughts all fled
All literature then left my head

'Recite!' he said
My brow did sweat
All poems did my brain forget

'Recite!' he said
His bold command
Took away my will to stand

'Recite!' he said
And then, dear light
I thought of one to put things right

'Oh pretty little daffodil …'

'Not that one!' he snapped

Dark Angels

I met a woman today who taught me a lesson

I was at the mall
Buying stuff, just groceries really
Teenagers twittering in the too loud voices they use
The muzak oozing through the air
Any mall
Anywhere

I walked down the ramp toward the carpark
And there she was,
Sitting,
Sitting on the concrete ramp
Her feet straight out in front of her
Pointing down the ramp
Her back vertical
Her head faced toward the carpark and it never turned

'Are you alright?' I asked
Stupid really
She was sitting where no one sat,
Where no one was supposed to sit
Maybe she fell
Maybe she was drunk
But no

'I'm dying,' she said
'You'll be alright,' I assured her
Stupid again
'No,' she said, 'I only have two weeks to live.'
Not much you can say to that

When she spoke her head remained still
But her eyes looked up at me
And there were dark angels there

'Would you like some help?' I said
'Yes' she said
A passer-by went off to get security

Security

She said 'Say good bye to Doctor Fuller for me'
I said 'Of course I will.'

I stayed with her until security came
Then I left her

I got in my car

We live our lives
Partly sleeping
But all the while dark angels circle us all

These Young Men

It hasn't been easy being a father to these young men
I suppose it's never easy being a father
But these young men
These young men have worn me out;
Not because of anything they've done,
No,
They're fine young men,
Young men I can be proud of,
Gentle, kind men,
Men who know justice and virtue and the grace of empathy,
No, these are young men who are a worthy addition to the world

It was worry that wore me out,
Responsibility,
Entrusted with treasure,
I was tasked to deliver these young men safely to the world
And all along I worried,
I worried that I would lose this precious gift,
That I would fail in this one great destiny of my life

But I haven't

They're very nearly ready now
I am required less and less

These young men
They are my life
And I am happy to be judged by them and for them

The Competition

Some people seem to feel
That life is competition,
A race that goes to those
whose claws are red
But I can never comprehend
The value of a race
Where each and every entrant
Ends up dead

The Poem

There's a poem going to take shape here,
Just you wait and see

The pen is going to write something,
Something deep and profound,
Or possibly something witty,
Witty is okay, too

Any minute now …

Well, that was a long pause!
You can't see it, of course
It's hard to write a pause;
Writing anything at all fills in the pause
But blank paper is just skipped over by the hungry eye,
The eye does not care for the dramatic pause …

There goes another one

Ribbity-Jo

There once was a man who told a lie
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Jane
And he told it over and over again
Ribbity-Jo my darling

He told this lie so many times
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Joo
That he started to believe it true
Ribbity-Jo my darling

And having thus convinced himself
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Jye
It was no more for him a lie
Ribbity-Jo my darling

The moral of this song is clear
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Jow
And I'll tell you what it is right now
Ribbity-Jo my darling

The lie that causes greatest harm
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Jeer
Is the truth we think we hold most dear
Ribbity-Jo my darling

A New Lord's prayer

Source of all
Dwelling in the field of potentiality beneath and within all things,
You, for whom the very search is Holy,
May every being act in accordance with the well-being of all
May the actions of all in this physical cosmos reflect the deeper order
Let us recognise that all that we have is a gift
Let forgiveness be the signature we leave in relationships with all
Gently remind us of the path we all should follow
And let our hearts be turned towards the best for all
Because love is the Way of the cosmos
And love is the both the means and the end
Through worlds without end.

words

words burst from my mouth
and circled like a swarm of angry bees

they found your heart

and impaled themselves there,
dying
their bitter toxin
swelling love's cruel wound

The Asterisks

In distant ages long since past
Before the horse and plough
Asterisks in great herds roamed
Where we are standing now

They stretched as far as eye can see
Across the black soil plains
And we can only mourn their fate,
Not one of them remains

When the white man first arrived
On this fatal shore
He hunted all those noble beats
Until there were no more

He ate their mighty haunches
He wore their furry pelts
He rubbed the oil from their bones
Upon his cuts and welts

They tried to keep the species on
In zoo captivity
But Asterisks will only breed
When they are running free

And so, in geologic terms
Before an eye had blinked
The Asterisk was added to
The list of those extinct

Pi

The number pi's a mystery
Both deep and most profound
He multiplies diameter
To find the whole way 'round
His decimal goes on and on
Never to repeat
Some say he is irrational
I think he's rather sweet

A collection of short poems

Crunch of gravel under the wheels on the neighbor’s driveway
Shifting, sliding, slipping steadily
Spread in random showers
A true Zen stone garden.

***

Grey clouds on the range
Humidity pressing on your shoulders
Like the cares of the world

***

Sitting on my veranda
I hear the birds in the Jacaranda
I hear the heavy rush of wheels on the main road
I know which I prefer

***

The road lies dormant at night
A sleeping beast dreaming dark dreams
Bitter burning on the tongue that flickers out to taste.


***

When I was at school
My father with razor bladed cutting tool
Carved into the blunt end of my pencils
Baring raw wood
On which he would write my name
Thief proof
Sometimes people are marked in much the same way.

***


Here in the hinterland
Hope grows slowly
A precious seed

The 'non-sense' of Dance

Think about dancing. What a strange practice to the fiercely rational mind! Partners in embrace, agitating on a floor with other couples, no destination in mind, and no purpose other than the enjoyment of the moment.

Think about ballroom dancing as done by Fred and Ginger. An elegance with no meaning or significance other than itself. Great beauty, high art, transient but glorious.

Dancing has rules. There are parameters. There are skills to be learned. One may dance poorly or well, but the pleasure in the participation may have little to do with the technicalities of the dance or the skills of the dancer. The aim is the process. Participation is the point.

Metaphor time. Maybe life is like the dance. We take to the floor for pleasure. There are rules but we gladly submit, for the pleasure. Although constrained, we are free in ways we cannot be in the mundane world of directions, destinations and goals.

Let’s dance!

Zombies!

Some people have an empty smile
That does not reach their eyes
I am quite sure they do not know
They do not realise
It causes me to ponder
And it really makes me feel
That far from being fictional
Some zombies are quite real

My Nana

My Nana was the last of the real old ladies
She knew what it was to be an old lady and she rose to the occasion
Taking on the role and making it her own

She was an old lady a long time, her husband Frank dying young at 57
Her hair was white
She let it be white
She kept it tied up in a bun
Sometimes, if you stayed overnight, you saw her take it out of the bun and brush it, long, silky and with waves
She used bobby pins
Everyday

She wore old lady black shoes
Just one pair
She had bunions on her feet
They hurt
When she walked she tended to hobble, back bent
An old lady walk

She wore old lady dresses
And cardigans
All the time

She had a pet dog, Scamp, on whom she doted
He got old too, in sympathy I think
My God, did he smell bad
A spoiled nasty bad tempered dog
Maybe he had bunions too

You could walk over to Nana’s place
Around the golf course
Down Duncan Street
And she would always be glad to see you no matter how adolescent you were
Feed you sweet cakes
Slip you a dollar when you left
Sometimes because you did something for her
But often because you didn’t

She made jelly, with extra sugar
She kept a little jar of brown sugar that you could have a teaspoon of if you were good
She made pineapple syrup on the wood stove so that the whole house smelled like heaven will smell
She made roasts with the outside black but inside warm and heavy and fragrant
When I was older I cut the wood for that stove

She used to laugh, hold her hanky to her mouth and say things like ‘Jingy Joves!’
You don’t hear that enough anymore

I remember her washing in a copper boiler
I remember the ice man who used to call with a huge block of ice for the ice chest
I remember the dunny in the backyard
I remember digging pink sweet potatoes out of the rich soil and eating them raw
Of course all of this was when I was much younger

It seemed as I got older and bigger she got smaller and thinner
Almost as if her substance was going to form my flesh and bone
She lived alone in that one bedroom fibro house until she died, aged 83

For nearly 30 years she was an old lady
She wore it well

Where do I begin?

We base our language and much of our thought on the notion of separateness. We distinguish objects from their backgrounds. One of the most enduring separate objects is our selves. The idea that we are a separate entity from our environment and other beings is so deeply ingrained, we find it ludicrous to consider alternatives.

Yet when we examine this notion we find that it is physically and mentally without support. Our boundaries are fuzzy. We draw them arbitrarily. We superficially think that our 'self' begins at the boundary of our skin. Even an elementary grasp of physiology recognises the falsehood of this notion. Our skin boundary is porous allowing a flow of materials in and out of our bodies. We depend on our physical environment for our continuing existance. We are deeply emeshed in a physical web of flow between us and our environment and our fellow beings. To think we have a separate existence is like thinking our liver could decide to leave home to join a rock band.

Even within our skin the boundaries are fuzzy. Shrinking in size we see systems, organs, tissues, all of them, in some sense, 'us' and yet 'not us'. Finally, we see a mix of molecules and atoms. When did we pass the boundary from life to non-life? Are some carbon atoms us, are some not us? Where did we go?

Perhaps the idea of 'me' is a social convention. Perhaps the delusion of a separate subjective experience in a world of objects is what helps to create our suffering. Perhaps the ultimate liberation is to be liberated from ourselves. 'He that shall find his life will lose it'.

Aristotle

'We are what we repeatedly do'
Aristotle said that,
And I think that it's true

Of course, Aristotle has long become dust
As you and as I
Regrettably must

So, given the time you're going to be dead
When all has been done
When all has been said

Spend these precious moments the best you know how
Decide to start living
And do it
Right now!

The Green

The seething closeness after recent rain,
The trees relieved,
Ancient priests of Eden’s keep,
Steaming green,
Cleaned leaves gleaming,
Dreaming deep green dreams
Deeper than reason,
Sweet and seamless,
Vision dim but still seeing,
Being,
Easing into release.
Real ease,
Breezes teasing the healing leaf
No need of redeeming
Having never been deceived,
Never believing the freezing speech of winter,
But reaching easy agreement
With seed and spirit:
The keys of freedom.

Not appeasing or pleading
Or ill at ease and needy as we ever seem to be,
Greedy, feeding like unheeded, unimpeded centipedes and millipedes
The heat of receding sweetness leading us on,
Bleeding, feeble, diseased and dreamless,
Sleeping uneasily,
Fearing peace itself

But all our dear unheeded seers,
They see, they hear,
Each peered reading of leaf and stream
Leading to keening cries.
Kneeling here they grieve
For each reedy spear that disappears,
Receding out of reach.
They seek to teach
To intercede
To plead the clear weaving
Of flesh and seed,
But we jeer at their meaning.
We deem them unneeded
Merely peeling bells
Appealing to inflamed feeling
Interfering
While we,
We heave them beneath our feet
We feasting beasts,
We teeming blasphemers,
We least of these

Emergent Unity

Let's start with an atom. An atom has particular properties and characteristics. If we combine 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen we get a molecule of water. The molecule has different properties from the atoms that make it up. In large numbers, water molecules have a whole host of properties that make thinking of 'water' a valuable, real concept.

Next the cell. A number of complex interacting molecules is what a cell is. But a cell is 'alive', an emergent property that is not shared by its molecules. Put cells together and you organs and systems. Put those together and you have an organism like us. We have sentience and subjective experience, properties miles away from our constituent molecules.

Why should the enfolding of complexity end there? If we consider the super structure of the whole cosmos perhaps it has undreamt of capabilities and properties. Mystics throughout the ages have experienced ecstatic states where they experience the unity of all things. This is the realm of the sacred, the divine. This is might be what we call God.

Blessed

Blessed are those who stay afloat in a sea of doubt,
Not because they cling with desperation to the flotsam and jetsam of shipwrecked faith,
But because they let go.

Blessed are they who face themselves with a fierce honesty,
Who, with integrity, transform themselves,
Their life an art.

Blessed are they who inspire,
Whose lives burn with a glow that,
Though it may consume them,
Warms others who are near,
Comforted by that costly light.

Blessed are they who are honest in the face of deception,
Humble in the face of pride,
And tender in the face of violence.

Blessed are they who can speak from the heart,
Whose words, free from device, bear the fragrance of wet earth and grass.

Blessed are they who laugh,
Whose wit and playfulness can puncture the pompous and deflate the demi-god,
Not even sparing themselves from their trickster ways.

Blessed are they who sing,
Whose voices cannot be contained by simple speech or prose,
But who must rage and rejoice with Angel tongue.

Blessed are they,
For theirs is the kingdom of the earth (which is heaven).
They will partake of blood and sap and spit and sweat.
They will truly live.

Lunatic

There's a lunatic thumping around in my attic
Pounding the walls and upending the chairs
Although he's not evil but only deluded
I certainly hope that he won't come downstairs

I've tried to placate him with chocolate and whiskey
But it just doesn't seem he's so easily bought
He frantically leaps from one thing to another
This is harder by far than I would have thought

And so I must tame this crazy old lodger
Perhaps with hypnosis or possibly gin
He frightens the neighbours and occasionally smells
Now is the time I have to begin

And so I sat quietly and tried hard to calm him
I offered him drafts of sweet chamomile tea
And as we were talking it dawned on me slowly
This crazy old bugger was apparently me

Let's do lunch

A lion and a tiger went to lunch
Their meeting was well planned
They organised a limousine
And booked a marching band
They called upon a PR firm
Well versed in large events
Because the lion and tiger live
On different continents

Zeus

Zeus would sit on thunderclouds
And hurl the lightning down
Sipping cups of Jasmine tea
In his dressing gown

He had a brave and noble beard
That nestled on his face
When it wasn't playing poker
And off some other place

Jesus Again

Jesus never owned a gun
He never watched TV
He never played a baseball game
Or ate excessively
And though his land was occupied
He never urged revolt
And as I was thinking this
I realised with a jolt
If Americans who loudly claim
They love this Jesus guy
Were actually to meet Him
They'd punch Him in the eye!

The Test

Some people say that life's a test
And living will be scored
That after dying you'll receive
Your very own reward
But if God knows all there is to know
He knows the outcome now
And all our trials and troubles
Are meaningless somehow
For life to have a meaning
It must by us be made
And not lived as a contest
To gain a passing grade

Time

Time marches on
I've heard it said
Until one day you wind up dead

There are days
At least for me
I wish that time would stop for tea

Elements

Iron's symbol is Fe
Sodium Na
Silver hides behind Ag
Potassium is K
The periodic table
Mendeleev's grand design
Labels all the elements
And puts them in a line
The number of their protons
Dictates where they should be
And when the numbers all were placed
The phycisists could see
Hidden in the numbers
In patterns strange but true
The reasons why the atoms rage
And romance as they do

Caution!

The tiger's paws
Conceal his claws
And all because
He's quiet
You'll pat his dead
And end up shred
So don't be led
To try it

Making Beauty of the Fall

All of us are tumbling from a precipice unknown
To a hidden mist-filled valley far below,
All our desparate struggles will not serve to keep us safe
We cannot turn around, nor may we slow

But while we may be falling we may turn ourselves just so
And those who watch our subtle grace enthrall,
Straining every limb but with laughter in our eyes
We delight in making beauty of the fall

Who ARE these people?

The forest in the Amazon
Is disappearing now
At eighty thousand football fields a day!
What I want to know is
Who are all these folk
Who need so many fields on which to play?

Navels

What's with navel oranges?
I mean, how can that be?
They aren't members in good standing
Of the mammal family

Only mammals can have navels
And furry skin to boot,
I'm not sharing navels
With some stupid little fruit

Wear your navel as a badge of pride,
Placental mammals rise!
I'll eat that stupid orange
And make sure that he dies!

Bees

The bee is really quite contrary
And if your tread should be unwary
Then blinding pain shall surely come
As he stabs you with his pointy bum

But nature can be very cruel
And it seems to be the rule
That pulling out his wretched sting
He kills himself! Poor little thing!

Circles

Circles are exclusivist
And by their twisted skin
They separate the plain into
Without, and what's within

You might think that's reasonable
But not from where I am,
Stuck here on the outside
Of a damn Venn diagram!

Deep Religious Questions

I wonder if the Buddhist
Doing carpentry
Accidentally hitting thumb
Says “Jesus Christ!' like me?

I wonder why the people
Who think this world is sickly
And long for heaven's golden realms
Aren't keen to get there quickly?

I wonder why religion
Considers sex a sin?
If sex was a requirement
They'd get more people in.

I wonder why the sciences
Are anathema for some?
What kind of god makes virtue
Out of being dumb?

I wonder why God is thought
A cosmic male parent?
Any penis that He has
Would surely be transparent!

Physics

The ephemeral state of matter
Is not widely known,
In fact most people think that stuff
Is solid as a stone,
But really things are cloudy
And neither here nor there,
Made of mostly empty space,
A condition that we share,
And when we think we touch something
What nature from us shields,
Is repulsive interaction
Of electrostatic fields.
So give three cheers for physics
Which will not bend or lie,
You are mostly nothing
And so, dear friend, am I

Words

The words
We use are tired
And weak,
Empty husks,
They wheeze
And creak

But how
Can something
Made of air
Hold the weight
We make them
Bear?

Tinkle, Tinkle

Tinkle, tinkle,
Old wind chimes
Remind us all
Of happy times
Back before
Your constant din
Did our neighbour's
Eardrums in.

Waves

Do you think
You've always been
An ego bound within a skin?

Maybe you
And maybe me
Are waves on an eternal sea

Separate
For a little time
But One beneath the water line

The Banana Adventures

That brave and bold Banana
Adventurer was he
He sailed over the ocean waves
Across the briny sea

To the jungles of the Amazon
Where he trekked both night and day
In search of buried treasure
In a green and red beret

Until, one night, in jungle camp
Still brave and bold, but vaguely damp
A troop of monkeys gathered near
And Banana, wracked with fear
Paid a ransom for his hide
And thus survived when he might have died

In morning's light relieved but sore
Standing on the jungle floor
In deepest tones an oath he swore
To go adventuring no more
And homeward then, he sadly went
Dignified,
But slightly bent

Seven League Boots

One step, two steps
See them sprawl,
One galaxy amongst them all

Three Steps, four steps
Blinked and missed 'em
One tiny little solar system

Five Steps, six steps
What does it mean?
One planet coloured blue and green

The seventh step
Just look and see:
One tiny you, one little me

Tiger, Tiger

Tiger, tiger burning bright,
Who was it who set you alight?
From where I sit, it seems that that's
Cruelty to pussy cats!

Fetch some water quickly, dear
Fetch it fast and bring it here
A meaning new without a doubt
To putting that poor pussy out.

Evolution

Evolution marches on
What's here today may soon be gone
And as the aeons on doth roll
Evolution takes its toll
On creatures past their use-by date
So you better watch out, mate,
If stupidity's extinction's sign
Then you could be the first in line!

A Dangerous Word

There is a dangerous word. Actually there are lots of dangerous words. Language has the capacity to sneak up on you, limit your thinking, steer you subtly in directions you don't notice. We can only think about what we can name. How we name things is fraught with assumptions. The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao.

Nevertheless, there is a dangerous word, that dismissive, nasty word: MERELY.

You have heard it said: This is MERELY that. Life is MERELY the random play of molecules. The Mind is MERELY a subjective experience of the brain. Morality is MERELY evolutionary imperative. And on, and on.

Here, MERELY is taken to mean 'only this and no more', 'no need to look any further, folks, it's all explained'. MERELY is a tyrant of a word. It says that my view is the only view, all other thoughts are without merit. MERELY is a devaluing word. It says 'this is worth little, don't look here'.

Like all tyrants, MERELY wants to rewrite history and the present. Like all tyrants, MERELY needs to be overthrown.

An apple tree is MERELY a seed. An apple is MERELY a combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen just so.

MERELY is a dangerous word

I just get SO frustrated!

I get frustrated having the same debates over and over again for no good reason. The only thing that happens is that people entrenched in their view remain so. People (including me) come wrapped up their invincible capes of self justification and cannot really hear what is being said.

I get frustrated at people who want to justify their worldview with things I KNOW are patently false. Of course this doesn't preclude their worldview being true, but it sure reduces their credibility in my eyes. How could it not? I happen to have a reasonable education in science, physics in particular. This is not boasting, it's just the way it is. People without an education in this area need to be very careful making pronouncements in it seeking to justify their personal religious view. I think it's a simple rule: If you don't know about it, don't talk about it. I have a certain amount of theological education too, enough to tell a pony from horseshit. I accept that SOME believers can rationally and eloquently make a case for their belief. I may disagree with some of their interpretations but I recognize the complexity of the issues and respect their intelligence. Why on earth are there so few of you?

I get frustrated when people blithely think that their enculturated view is the 'natural' one and that anyone who thinks differently to them is evil. In this day and age of free information and travel such ignorance is inexcusable. (Americans, I'm looking at you.) Which brings me to willful ignorance.

I get frustrated at people who view knowledge as a threat, who think education is unnecessary, for whom curiosity is evil, intellect synonymous with false pride, learning is the same as elitism. You are dangerous to free thinking and civilization itself. You have made a virtue out of sloth and ignorance a badge of honour. When you celebrate lazy thinking you enslave yourself to any philosophy that is shiny enough to catch your attention.

I need to be able to divorce my intellect from this visceral reaction. If I was a better buddhist I could look with compassion on all those who have offered up their critical thinking skills on an alter of convenience.

But I get SO frustrated!

Organic or Inorganic

There is a central myth that has beset the Western world for thousands of years. Perhaps it was the Hebrews, perhaps it was the greeks. The notion that runs through our thinking about the world is that it is a thing.

Up to the enlightenment, the universe was a created object, made like a potter makes a pot. Man, himself, was made of clay. With science and the enlightenment, we've done away with God but the myth has remained where the universe is a dead thing, life a happy accident. Newton's clockwork universe still ticks in our heads as we view the world. At its heart, we reason, everything is the insensate collisions of countless billiard ball-like particles. Nothing more.

But this is not the only myth we can use. The Chinese view the universe as organic. Imagine seeing an apple tree in winter, for all intents and purposes a dead thing, inert. In spring, it brings forth leaves and apples. That is what apple trees do. The apple is contained in potentiality in the bare tree, and before that the seed. If our imaginations can stretch enough we can see the apple contained in potentiality in the air and water.

Our labels of organic and inorganic, living and non-living, are simply that; labels. They are intellectual constructions, and they are deeply informed by our culture's guiding myths.

We can choose to view the world from the 'bottom up' as 'really' inert stuff moving about or we can see it from the 'top down' as a whole organic process, unfolding in complexity and beauty, each new form an expression of its essential nature.

Apple trees 'apple' One of the things the universe apparently does is 'people'.

It's been over a century since Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God. Apparently the news of His demise has not reached the general population. In the ensuing century we've had people believe in the myth of racial superiority, scientology, spaceships in comets, death cults, lizard people, neo-paganism, crystals, the Unification Church, the Urantia Book, divination, astrology, voodoo, spiritism, the new world order, aliens, and countless other nutty things. Uniformly the adherents of these weird beliefs are totally convinced that they are right, they will (and often do) die for their beliefs.

Will we believe just about anything? Apparently yes. And we seem remarkably capable of seeing the other guy's belief as silly while not examining our own. What is it that safeguards us from such stupidity? Critical thinking and a fierce commitment to the impartial examination of claims. As soon as we set up a realm of human experience (faith) and make it exempt from rationality we set ourselves up to waste a lot of time, and possibly our lives, in the pursuit of silliness.

From a number of different sources recently I've had people use the old first cause argument to 'prove' God. Of course this is an old argument. It usually goes something like this:

1. There is a universal law of cause and effect.
2. To prevent an infinite regress of causes there must exist a First Cause.
3. The First Cause is God.

Sounds pretty good. But does it really stand up to scrutiny? To begin with is there really a 'law' of cause and effect and if there is, in what realm does it apply?

Cause and effect is actually a philosophical labeling rather than a scientific one. It comes with a particular mechanistic view of the universe as 'stuff' being pushed around by other stuff. It is a particular characteristic of Western thought. Buddhists, for example, speak of 'dependent arising'. Imagine a cat passing a fence with a hole in it and an observer on the other side watching. He sees the head and then the tail. He makes this observation a number of times and concludes (as a westerner) that the cat head 'causes' the cat tail since the head always precedes the tail in time in a predictable fashion. We know however, that such an analysis is faulty since the cat is a single system with inter-dependent parts. Some eastern philosophies see the whole world like this.

Now, in what realms does cause and effect (if it indeed exists) hold? In modern physics there is at least reasonable debate on whether some events are uncaused, and given quantum uncertainty can some effects actually precede their causes? It's very likely a strange world out of the realms of our experience that may act in a completely counter-intuitive fashion. So, the jury is out, cause and effect may NOT be universal.

People who quote first cause often turn out to be christians who believe in 'free will'. Decisions we experience subjectively are objectively electrical and chemical changes in the brain, stuff pushing stuff around. As such they too would be bound by this 'law' of cause and effect. Every mental event is 'caused'. Thus free will is ruled out on the basis of strict adherence to cause and effect.

Also, people use the universality of this 'law' of cause and effect to prove God but then immediately exempt Him from the law. God is eternal and uncaused. It seems a strange form of special pleading to me.

Thus, in summary, the law of cause and effect is a philosophical assumption, it may not hold in all reality, if it does hold it poses propblems for free will and the very 'law' you wish to use to demonstrate God is a law that does not apply to Him.

Note, now, I'm not saying this categorically disproves the notion of First Cause. Rather I'm saying that it is not particularly persuasive.