Journal: Reaching Around the World

Since opening “LOOSELY SPEAKING” last July, it has been so exciting to see my words fly around the world! There are now readers from 31 countries, on all continents but Antarctica, with Argentina showing up on my map just this week, the very first from South America.

I thank from my heart all of you who have read my writings, especially more than once, and most especially, who have ‘followed’ LOOSELY SPEAKING. It would be wonderful if you would ‘comment’ a hello and tell me something about yourself: it’s not just about writing, not just about ‘likes’ and stats, I am writing for connection, too. I’d love to know what you think, how my writing connects with you.

I am still new to WordPress, still producing only a single blog, but will be sorting out my writing to several themed sub-blogs: Poetry, Social/Politcal Commentary, Personal Journal, and Photography. It is just a matter of figuring out how to go about this subdividing.

Raw: Another Morning After

Each morning waking
you are less and less
in my first thought
and shame is passing
into just embarrassment
and simple pain.

Yet still my eye–
with each flicker of a glance
of what I saw you in
that passes in the road
or on the screen
or in a passing thought–
still shies away,
seeks haven in any other thing.

But there are so few
that have not you
within them for me:
You were that important.
No. Not you.
It was that important
that you were there.

I write it now, revealing
in this space where you
will never come
will never see or know:
I would not share this now with you
no matter how for me I wish you knew
because I still believe
that where you are,
you wander still lost
in a greater pain than mine.

April 27, 2011

The Cult of Trump

It begins at the center and spreads, this wave of delusion and absurdity, demolishing the ability to question, to think straight, to distinguish truth from lies or reality from fantasy… It overwhelms any capacity for critical thinking, any logic and common sense in its path. It flips perceptions of reality on their heads, and projects its own evils as what their chosen foe is and does.

It is one of those cults of ecstasy, in which a manic madness obliterates all other feelings, especially those that might warn the victims away from it. It creates a context of its own that blinds its victims to any greater context, like, for instance, the real world. It is the most extreme form of mob mentality.

Meanwhile, those on the outside, seeing and recognizing the madness for what it is, are flabergasted at what ‘some people’ can believe and commit their whole hearts to. It is hard for basically rational people to understand the total abandonment of reason, believing that we all always have the power of free choice.

But mania is a disease, an affliction, and it takes a mighty strength of will to fight one’s way out of a cult, especially one that relies on the quantities of believers to sustain it. But there comes a time when many cult followers suddenly regain some sense of self, and their own strength of character returns, begins to separate from the cult.

Some, of course, never do. Perhaps, with some inherent flaw or deep damage in their own sense of personal boundaries and personal truth, they depend on the cult for any feeling of belonging, of worth and identity.

Even then, when one has snapped out of the delusions, the machine of the cult makes it nearly impossible to actually break free. Witness Jonestown, where many  were forced against their will to drink the koolaid. It is a matter of record that there were those who wanted to get out, to go home, but were prevented in the weeks before the koolaid, which was not a mass suicide but a mass murder. 

Cult figures rarely go down alone. When the greater reality finally imposes itself, when the cult loses its momentum, loses its believers, and begins to circle the drain, the central figure notoriously takes as many down with him/her as possible. Former followers are forced to drink the koolaid, former enablers and supporters are tossed under the bus.

This book explains a lot about why and how people get into cults, and when, suddenly, they snap out of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapping%3A_America’s_Epidemic_of_Sudden_Personality_Change

Romance is a Cat

I am glad of the cat
who keeps company with me
from time to time sitting
beside me on the arm of the chair
or on my arm despite
my need to have it free
and sometimes I pause from work
or pull her close against me to rest
slightly purring against my chest
and not body-blocking the view
of keyboard and screen…

At night and time to sleep,
she walks across me
with hard pointed feet that
concentrate all her little weight
against nerve points
and tender spots that wince…
I wake to find that I’m her bed
or just behind my knees
she has kept warm and cozy 
through the chilly night, 
and that is fine and right.

I’ve grown accustomed
to my days of freedom
from the worries and the cares,
the frustrations, aggravations,
the longings
of a partnered life,
happy so, and unperturbed by fears
of losses inevitable and fore-ordained,
that I feel I can no longer quite afford.
Disappointment and dismay
realizing self-betrayals of
of red flags ignored, denied…

My time, now,
my space is mine,
within boundaries safe and distant
no longer requiring human intimacies;
The little pointy-footed cat
much makes up for that.

Paradise Left

Milton wrote PARADISE LOST from the Victorian Biblical perspective, but that is not the only way to look at or resolve the same mythical problems of suffering and death, and how we got some good, important things to make human life better, and civilization possible.

In the accounts of Genesis, Biblical and earlier, the serpent is Satan, the Adversary, the Liar–a clear villain.  But he gives Man the fruits of knowledge, of awareness of right and wrong… in other words, understanding, morality and ethics. 

In the Greek mythos, it was Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and gave it to Man. He is not thought of as a villain, except, of course, by the gods. Both are known by the same name: Light-bringer.

Imagine this scenario, then… Adam and Eve have eaten the apple: they have acquired reason and critical thought, and most importantly, creative thought.  I don’t think God and the Angels evicted them from Paradise, where everything was easy-peasy… I don’t think they lost Paradise: I suggest that they abandoned it, because wonderful and perfect as it was, they could imagine more exciting things, they could imagine creating gardens and homes of their own.  Of their own…

Human beings are not the sort to remain content in a perfect garden, all things provided for.  We love to solve problems! Therefore, we need problems. Sure, when we feel overwhelmed by problems, we may dream of Eden, but it isn’t really what we want.

Gone

I thought you’d live forever, though I know it can’t be so–
I’ve always known I’d lose you, though I thought you’d never go…
There’d be time some perfect day to speak the long-unspoken word,
To tell you all I needed to, to be sure that you had heard…
That there’d be time to listen, to show how much I care
To be sure you know I love you, before you aren’t there.

But I have been so busy, and believed you’d always be
within my voice’s reach, and where my eyes could turn and see
that you are waiting, smiling, until my moment’s best
for attending to your moment, all those words and all the rest…
But time grows short–the leaf, it fades, falls drifting through the air
And it will touch the ground and still, before I can be there.

Sorrow, for the incomplete, the tales and songs unfinished…
Guilt, for all the chances passed and so our lives diminished…
Loss, for opportunities that knocked time and time again…
Anger, that you left too soon, and never warned me when…
Shame, because it is my fault, for the things I never gave
because it was so much easier to think you’d never leave.

2004