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Run, Turkey, Run

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Do turkeys vote for Thanksgiving or Christmas? Good question. An equally good question, do turkeys have a democratic vote? Well. I doubt that. If they did, they would probably vote for vegetarians and vegans, and who could blame them? I certainly wouldn’t.

One of my memories of the Dominican Republic is seeing young ladies standing on corners by the highway with chickens and geese beneath their arms. The birds looked very excited to be out, flapping and squawking at their moment of liberty. Every so often, a car would stop, a bird would be exchanged for cash, and off it would go, flapping and squawking happily away with its new family. Little did it know the fate that lay in wait. I am reminded of Boxer, in Animal Farm, promised freedom and an after-work-life of clover-filled pastures only to be led unceremoniously into the rag-and-bone man’s truck, destined for the glue factory.

I am reminded too of the Quebec referendum and Separation H. The vote was close and, as the Parizeau man said: “as soon as they have voted ‘yes’ we have them in the lobster pot.” The lobster pot, the roasting dish: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Brexit, Separation H … oh boy, the joys that await us as we mark our little square boxes with their little neat crosses, never remembering the crosses, row on row, that mark the graves in Flanders Fields where all those lovely poppies grow. ‘Sheep unto the slaughter’, thought the French troops as they bleated like sheep while marching towards the meat-mincer of Verdun. A voiced protest, maybe, but not really a mutiny. In spite of that, 1 in 10, 10%, the true meaning of decimation, were then shot by their own side … for mutiny. Afterwards, the offending regiments were forcibly broken up. Clearly, the authorities didn’t want the war effort affected by the voicing of any hint of the realities of that war.

So, my fellow democrats, liberals, free-thinkers, and well-wishers: let us link hands and join in the Lobster Quadrille, or if you’d prefer the YouTube version, click on the second link. And while you are waiting for the link to appear you may as well sing that sublime chorus so often associated with Separation H:

“Parizeau, Parizeau:
is it yes or is it no?
Parizeau, Parizeau:
into the lobster pot you go.”

 

Moo Cow

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Moo Cow
for Geoff Slater

It’s his story to tell, not mine, but I’ll tell it anyway, since he told it to me.

We were talking after lunch, de sobremesa, as they say in Spain, sat around the table. Chewing the fat, or the cud. The subject turned to farming in Wales and how Welsh farmers were sometimes trapped in the stall with the bull and crushed against the wall when the bull leaned its great weight upon them.

“It nearly happened to me,” he said. “But it was with a cow, not a bull. I was nine years old. One of our cows got into the manger and couldn’t get out. My father sent me in, hoping that I could shoo it out, but instead of leaving, the cow turned and trapped me against the wall. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe,” he paused.

“Go on.”

“I carried a pocket knife at the time. I had just enough room to pull out the knife, open it and … ”

I watched him shrink, grow younger. He returned to nine years of age. In his hand, he held an imaginary knife. The room shrank around us until it became the size of a manger. The cow loomed large, filled the room.

” … I stabbed, stabbed, stabbed … ”

His eyes tightened. His face grew grey. A sea-change came over him: white-caps whipped over his flesh. Storm clouds threatened. I watched his clenched hand stab … stab … stab … at empty air.

” … I stabbed it again and again and it turned and moved away … and finally I could breathe. I was lucky.”

He relaxed, started to breathe again. The room returned to its normal size. The cow vanished. The sun shone through the kitchen window, high-lighting us as we sat there, breathless,  in silence.

 

Bully Boy

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We asked several people round for estimates, five turned up. Estimates varied from $1,000 > $1,200 > $1,400 > $1,500 > $2,000. My friend, Bully Boy, came in at $2,000. I said no, “No thank you,” I thought most politely. But he wouldn’t go. He was a very large man, super aggressive, and towered over me.

“It’s the best deal you’ll get,” he told me. “I won’t take no for an answer.”

“You already have ‘no’ for an answer,” I told him. But he still wouldn’t go.

“Mind you,” he said. “We’ll do a good job. We’ll tear up this, and that. It will all cost money. But it will be worth it, when you sell the house. Sure, $2,000 is the initial price. but it may rise. $2,400, $2,500, maybe $3,000 … we won’t know until we see what needs doing.”

“No,” I said. “No thank you. No,” But he still wouldn’t go.

“Look,” he said. “Those other guys are cheap-skates. They won’t do a good job. Me and the boys, we’ll dig down till we find something, then we’ll repair it. You won’t regret it. We’ll do a real good job, me and my boys.”

Two equally big louts climbed the back steps and knocked on the door. They opened it and let themselves in.

“How’re you doing, paw?”

“Great, kids, great. We’re just about to pen a deal here, aren’t we?” He thrust a piece of paper into my face, then put it on the table. “Just sign here.”

Bully Boy passed me a pen, almost stabbed me with it, and leaned over me as I bent to read the document.

“No,” I said. “No. I’m not signing this.”

“Why not? It’s the best deal you’ll get.”

Bully Boy and his sons crowded round me. I felt like I was standing at the bottom of a deep well and they shut out the light.

“Sign!”

“No.”

“I hate doing this … ” Bully Boy said, rolling up his sleeve to show an arm knotted with muscle and fat..

“Me too,” I said and whistled. My two Rottweilers came at a rush, stopped at my hand signal, and sat.

“Growl,” I said, and they rose as one and growled a deep, throaty, chuckly, mad-dog growl.

“Show your teeth,” I said and pointed at Bully Boy. The two dogs pulled back their lips, leering and drooling as only Rottweilers can.

Bully Boy and his sons vanished out the back door faster than they came in.

Now, your mission, should you choose to accept it: multiply those prices by ten (that’s thousands of dollars), multiply me by a thousand (there’s a lot of people in my situation out there), subtract my Rottweilers (not everyone my age has a trained guard dog, let alone two large, protective pets), and remember, I am a small man, seventy-eight years old, and this was a very large team of con artists.

You too will age and shrink. You may not have any pets. Your tablets may make you muddled. Now, if you live alone, like me, think about my story, and be scared … be very scared.

 

 

 

Heart Dance

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Heart Dance: This is what the heart does when you have a good friend around for lunch and you spend an hour or two discussing art, creativity, meaning, change, artistic development, moving on, changing one’s style, and welcoming and creating new artistic visions. Heart Dance is about possibilities, about opening things up, seeing the interior self more clearly, watering the creative soul and encouraging it to grow outwards until it fills the whole person.

Heart Dance moments happen at different stages in the artistic life. They are urgent moments, impulsive moments, moments when you can suddenly hear the music of the spheres and see the universe dancing for you, before you, and with you. They are magic moments when the heart becomes one with the universe and heart and soul join mind and body in a universal heart dance where the dancers are one and the dance is not just for one, but for all sentient and creative beings who can hear the music and feel the rhythms pounding through arteries and veins.

The dull, grey, concrete life of the nine to five desk-bound existence fades away to be replaced by a flowerbed of activity, full of light and sound and color and music. Usually, this happens to the individual in the privacy of his or her own mind. Occasionally, we can share the event with a friend who is going through the same, or a similar, change at the same time. A unique experience to feel and witness the music with another person and to be bound into the circle of dancers, treading where other artists, great and small, famous and less important, have all danced before.

We talked of the joys of visiting great museums and of staying in one room, before one painting, and of spending the day there. This I did with El Greco’s El entierro del Conde Orgaz / The burial of Count Orgaz, with Picasso’s Guernica when it was housed in the Mesón de Guernica, with Hieronymus Bosch’s The Hay Wain, with Velásquez’s Las meninas, and with Goya’s Desastres de la Guerra, not one picture, but a series of etchings taken in, day by day, over a period of a magical month spent in Madrid.

In poetry it happens when I return to poems that I love. I read and re-read them, again and again, finding new nuances, new meanings, new depths. I think of the anonymous Poema de Mio Cid, of Góngora’s Polifemo, of Quevedo’s Canta sola a Lisi and his Heráclito cristiano, of Octavio Paz’s Piedra de sol, of Lorca’s Romancero gitano and his Poeta en Nueva York … the wonderful original poems of Fray Luis de León and of St. John of the Cross … and this is just scratching the surface of an exterior world that I have interiorized until it has indeed become a part of me.

Heart Dance: my heart dances and sunshine floods my soul as I write these words, words and thoughts that I have just shared with a good friend, as he shared similar words with me and we joined together in a heart dance during which the sun shone brightly and the whole creative universe sang and danced with us.

Buzz Words

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Beware of Buzz words. Beware too of the perils of what Bobby McDonagh, in the article linked below, calls the thought incinerator. A thought incinerator is a word or phrase that can be repeated again and again to destroy thought and argument. McDonagh’s article illustrates the use of thought incinerators in politics. Being more apolitical than political, I am interested not in politics, but in the linguistic argument that involves the erosion of language and meaning and the destruction, with chanted, thoughtless choruses, of logical discourse and analysis.

Lock her up, the people have spoken, build that wall, drain the swamp, fake news, all fall into the category of thought incinerators, precisely because they can be repeated endlessly with no need to present logical arguments to support their continued usage. While these mindless chants can be attributed to one side of the political divide in the USA, more similar phrases can be found in the article below touching on the current political situation in the [Dis-] United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. some examples follow: the elite, project fear, Brussels bureaucrats, Brussels bullying, Brussels blackmail, the EU wants to punish Britain, whatever did Europe do for us, not to mention the notorious red bus and its far-reaching message “350 million quid a week for the NHS“. I encourage you to read the and hopefully to understand what such mindless repetitions do to incinerate thought within our so-called democratic society.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/20/brexiteers-trump-language-fake-news

The problem goes beyond politics and enters the realm of language erosion. In our province, the local newspapers write at a grade nine language level and like it or not, we deal on a daily basis with functional illiteracy. Spelling, if and when people actually write, has become phonetic because less and less reading takes place, and the world is summed up in catchy sound bytes from radio and television and the shorter the better. Slowly, we are reduced to devouring slogans like those repeated above.

I look at the trees in the garden: birch, pine, spruce, fir, tamarack, hackmatac (from the Western Abenaki?), balsam poplar, larch, willow, mountain ash, black willow … they can all be reduced to trees. In my garden, at the feeder, I have birds, sparrows (so many varieties), nuthatches (white and red-breasted), woodpeckers (at east three kinds), finches (many species), grosbeaks, siskins, song-birds, warblers, passerines … but as the clear-cut loggers who cleaned the hillside behind my house pronounced “trees are just trees, we’re here to clear them out,” we might just as well say “birds, just birds, we’re here to fatten them and feed them to the cats”.

The erosion of language, the erosion of thought, the dumbing-down of society, the reduction of the world to advert, slogan, and chant, the loss of thoughtful democracy … this is what I fear most. And, as I age, I fear the loss of memory as song sparrow, white-throat, chipping, Lincoln, are slowly fading into generic ‘sparrows’. Soon, alas, they will probably all flap their wings and fly away, fading into the simplistic grey mist of a disappearing species … ‘birds’. I fear that day and I fear what memory loss and thought incineration and language erosion are doing to my precious world.

More thoughts on language erosion can be found here

https://rogermoorepoet.com/2018/11/17/thinking-outside-the-box/

Sex Education

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What I really mean is, with apologies to Pink Floyd: “we don’t need no education.”  Actually, I am rather ashamed of this cartoon. When I drew it, I called it “Pussy Grab 100.” I was thinking of the need for sex education in schools and at all levels of society. Then I thought of all the ways in which people were actually learning to abuse each other, rather than learning what ‘the other’ is about and how to get on with her or him or them. Sometimes we forget that man is born of woman, not the other way round, in spite of the mysterious magic of the legendary Adam’s Rib. And remember: there was only one Adam and only one rib. In addition, not many people, adults or children, leap full grown and  fully-armed from the thigh of an Alpha Male Greek or Roman god. Respect for the mother and the potential mother, surely this is the first thing that every child in every walk of life must learn.

Men should be learning to treat women with dignity and respect, not to trample upon them and abuse their rights. Women should be learning to respect themselves and their bodies. In my book women should maintain control over their own bodies. If there is indeed an international code of human rights, and if it is indeed still being respected, then surely we should be thinking of a parallel international code of women’s rights. It would contain the right to self-determination, the right to be protected, not by superior male members of the same family, but by a code of laws that allow women to move forward as independent human beings with inalienable rights of their own. These would include  a right to health care for themselves and their off-spring, a right to education and self-education for themselves and their children, a right to a space in which to bring up their families in safety and in harmony with the earth and its more humane principles.

I hear a whisper in my ear … but the principles under which human beings live are the laws of the jungle, nature red in tooth and claw, might is right, entitlement to the amount of justice that humans can afford to purchase, the right of the powerful to grab everything they want and make it their own, the right of the male head of the family to determine the fate of his women and off-spring, the right to attend male sex education classes that begin with Pussy Grab 100 and continue with a series of lessons that would make the venerable Marquis de Sade blush and turn over in his grave. And remember, while the Marquis de Sade wrote in impeccable French, such modern day lessons can now be found online, in verbal and visual form, and for free.

Democracy: for me, one of the keys to democracy is the way in which the majority treats the minority (or minorities) over which it has gained power. Is there an understanding of the minority point of view, consideration of the needs and desires of the minority? If so, then democracy functions. If not, then cultural rights, language rights, educational rights, human rights are swept away, legislated out of existence, scattered like leaves before a hurricane force wind that shows no mercy. When that happens, we have de-mock-racy not democracy. When de-mock-racy happens, it’s winner take all, and may the gods help the hindmost to help themselves to scrabble for whatever remainders they can glean.

Here’s a link o an earlier post on the meaning of The Other.

Hash Brownies

It’s funny, really … after years and ears of avoiding illegal recreational drugs, of urging students and athletes to be natural and clean, after politely and rudely saying “No” to pushers and pushing them aside … the least (so they say) of those recreational drugs (marijuana) is now legal and on sale in Canada in government sponsored and approved stores. Did I waste my life in the advocacy of cleanliness and health only to discover that what I was advocating against is now perfectly legal, and excellent, and good, and makes tax money and profit for the government?

One thing’s for sure: I’ve been clean since birth, and I am not starting now, not on recreational drugs that were previously illegal. That said, my friends who suffer, as I do, from osteo-arthritis assure me that the medical marijuana they have been using for years is better for them than all the patent medicines sold over the counter. I can see and hear the ads: “Blow dope for hope,” “avoid pills for your ills,” “smoke joints for your joints.” Or maybe  “eat hash brownies for your just desserts.”

So, on the first day that marijuana was legalized in Canada, I went into the garage, climbed the step-ladder, stood at the top, breathed deep, and came down again. I went back into the house and told my beloved: “There: I’ve just had my first legal high.” I was proud: high on top of a step-ladder and still legally, morally, virtually, spiritually clean.

Guess I don’t need strange smells hanging to my clothes. I can always smoke Gauloises or Disc Bleu if I need smelly breath and clothing, not that I have ever smoked either. I guess I will remain a rope-a-dope virgin … but I might yet be tempted by the miraculous possibilities inherent in hash brownies or peanut butterballs with an appropriate addition. Especially if the pain gets worse. And my doctor makes a strong recommendation for clemency.

Brexit 2

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So, I called Mrs. May, the British Prime Minister, this morning, in search of clarification and she very kindly agreed to send me the road map she had drawn up for Brexit. As you can see from the above photo of the road map, it is very simple: the truth of the matter is that in Brexit ‘the truth points the way’. So, just follow the arrows and you will arrive at a satisfactory solution that will please all parties.

Thank you so much for this road map, Mrs. May. It reminds of the RAC maps that led us through France to Spain by following one straight line that never deviated. I remember trying to follow that one straight line through Bordeaux one year, in the rush hour crowds that followed the end of a soccer match and a rugby match. Marvellous. I can’t remember how many times we got lost in the twisting turning narrow streets we encountered when we once took a false turning, away from the packed streets of revellers, while looking for our RAC booked hotel.

In the end we  picked up a street urchin and he drove with us for another half hour tour of the city before we realized that he too was ‘just taking us for a ride’, so to speak. In the end, we stopped outside a large, five star hotel, unbooked, and spent the night there. My my father and I were in the elevator, going upwards to the Nth floor. The elevator stopped and three large, husky, obviously foreign men walked in. They looked at my father in great surprise and one of them spoke to him.

“Tis the map of Ireland written all over your face,” he said in a thick Irish brogue. The other two nodded their agreement.

“Yes,” said my father in an even thicker Welsh accent that he had picked up working in the Rhondda Valley, “I am Irish, but I was born in England.”

Ah, road maps: they lead you anywhere and everywhere. You can always trust them. And they always turn out just right in the end. All you have to do is follow that one straight line for page after page and never deviate from it. Ask the RAC: they will tell you.

 

Brexit

 

What a mess! If anyone thinks that they actually do understand what is really happening, please enlighten me. Please, pretty please, with sugar on.

In my cartoon above, the road to hell is clearly paved with good intentions: but what are those intentions? To remove Britain from Europe under the donkey’s nasal bray that ‘the people once they have spoken may never again change their minds’? It would seem so. It would also seem that many are still speaking, and most of them at cross-purposes. I want to know what the conditions are that will  be applied after the British Exit from Europe? I haven’t seen them clearly set out nor have I been able to read the small print. The devil is in the detail, indeed, and the devil is waiting in the fiery furnace to the left at the bottom of the cartoon. 

Will the United Kingdom morph into the Once-United Kingdom? It certainly seems to be the Dis-United Kingdom at present. Once again the nationalist and separatist movements are waving their flags: Scotland for the Scots (and stay in Europe), a united Ireland with no borders, political or otherwise (and stay in Europe), Wales for the Welsh (and, according to Plaid Cymru, also stay in Europe).

I remember all too well the Quebec separation referendum here in Canada. The comedians called it Separation H (after a well-known medical application to a certain part of the anatomy). However, I saw the anguish and the hurt and the damage that the Quebec referendum brought to all Canadians and I would not wish that on anyone. Yet, the British people seem to be going through not the same, but a similar, deeply-felt existential anguish over Brexit. 

According to the proverb, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed  man is king. So what far-sighted, one-eyed man or woman will rise to the top of the bonfire to sort out this mess? I crave enlightenment. I want reason to return to an emotional tangle of mashed advertisements, baffling propaganda, twisted tweets, and mingled myth and legend. 

Rex quondam, rexque futurus: perhaps King Arthur, the once and future king, will return with his knights of the round table to sort all of this out. One thing is certain: he’d better bring Merlin the Magician back with him, or nothing will get sorted, and that’s for sure.

Nota Bene: I no longer live in Great Britain and, as a result, I am neither for nor against Brexit. I would just like to understand what is happening and what the eventual results will be. Perhaps, as Blake once wrote

“I shall not cease from mortal strife, /
nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, /
till we have built Jerusalem, /
in England’s green and pleasant land.”

However, I notice that Blake didn’t mention Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, nor did he offer us a timetable, nor did he say where the money and the [re-] construction material was coming from. Perhaps there is a glorious and wonderful future ahead for all of the people who live in Britain (no longer great and a kingdom no longer united)  … but, looking at the wild fires in California, and the hurricanes in Puerto Rico, and the flooding in the Carolinas, and the early snow outside my window, I somehow doubt it. I also doubt that, right now, smaller is better.