- Earthgirl had phone call with guy selling the property and if I had to guess we are still buying the property
- I think it's too good a deal to turn down and if we were greedy we should buy more acres but does this mean this deal *is* skeevy? far greedier people than me should be all over it
- I had reason to be on tumblr so I looked to see if I still existed, I don't, though BLCKDGRD can never be used by anyone else either
- Why do I want someone to read this to the point I would open an unannounced tumblr
- I cannot imagine any way we don't make money on this as an investment, seven miles from Ann Arbor
- We lived in Anne Arundel to start, finish near Ann Arbor
- I did intend this as poem, this tapping now halted thinkgin who's gonna read just write jueff somethings new
- I expect to be busted as I have the past 40 year I think I see the blinking single red light in the fog at a four way stop
- Why do NO poetry aggregators, I know why none but one but why, it just can't be motherfucking Democrats
- Jeef, stort a tombler to poop poeturd on'tway taint my cigar name?
- We had hoped to park and hike the Greenway but church was in session at the lot we'd have used, a huge outdoor mass, ended up at Ten Mile, all the side paths too ticky to hike in Summer we can hike now, like the one with this view yesterday
- Infinite spiders
- Another twitter shitfit by me re: public school teachers not getting constant shout outs for high priority on plague vaccines while the same people constantly shout schools should be in person asap
- Also too
- Make them cry: This is an age of tears in America. Our politicians cry. Our judges cry. Our TV commentators cry. Supporters of losing presidential candidates cry. Supporters of winning presidential candidates cry. Americans love to tell the world about their gushing sentimentality. They tweet about the crying jags their victories have sent them on. They write newspaper editorials about the tear-gasms a politician gave them. It is a subject for moral boasting.
- The rich ain't paying for shit ever again
- Almost the complete opposite of fascism: It’s ironic to me that people would choose this moment, and Trump’s presidency, to assign the label “fascist” to the right, for what fascism is about, above all else, is a politics of strength and will. That’s why fascists traditionally loathe the constitutional order: because they think it constrains the assertion of political will. The irony of Trumpist/GOP politics is that it is completely dependent upon the constitutional order. In that regard, it’s almost the complete opposite of fascism.
- Incrementally challenged
- The Social Life of Trees. Wonderful article, but who didn't think trees talked to each other?
- Maggie's weekly links
- America's Amazon is in Alabama?
- { feuilleton }'s weekly links
- We drove through Sugarland this past Saturday
- Jeef is snort gonna stort un tombler (dough shirley embark da fuck cuz fuck it)
- This week's forgotten CD from my crates and shelves
Johannes Göransson
Knowledge is Power. That is what the billboard says and I agree. I am an
adult, therefore I understand the threat of passengers. The threat to
Our Children, who don't understand the threat of these bird-like,
twitchy people. They pose two kinds of threat. To begin with, there is
the one we all know about, the predatory threat, the hawk-like
passengers that prey on children as they sit in front of their computers
or televisions. The terrorist threat. That threat is easy to handle.
You shoot it. You contain it. You confiscate. You stitch. You bleed from
various orifices and sockets, but you survive, you rebuild house and
rinse the child. The more serious threat is the diseases passengers
carry with them. Internal terrorism. Children love those diseases. It
makes them babble like possessed. Their make-up looks like oil in the
moonlight. Such children cannot be cleaned off. Kill them. Or turn them
into entertainment. Art.
sky trees water - good looking photo
ReplyDeletei enjoyed the song from 'the scientists' - evidently from their punk phase or maybe their power pop phase not their swamp rock phase
swamp rock includes 'the band', according to our friends at wikipedia - and their onetime frontman bob dylan just sold the rights to his whole catalog for three hundred million dollars, i heard on the tv today
see also
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/flashback-bob-dylan-plays-for-obama-at-the-white-house-56601/
also appearing at that white house concert - joan baez - doing 'we shall overcome'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yId_ABmtw-w
At 1:40 of the clip, Baez says, while continuing to strum her guitar, "One day Dr. King realized the nonviolent fight went far beyond the shores of this great country, went far across the sea to a war that was being fought by God's children, on both sides of that great fight. And he knew that he had to speak out against that, and he was afraid. He was very afraid. So we all raised our voices just a little bit louder. 'We are not afraid today.'" And the audience sings along on that verse. At the end of the song Obama and Biden are shown smiling as they clap.
barry and biden smile broadly, and cheerfully - maybe it's just my suspicious mind that interprets their smiles as shark-like
and this a.m. i've also re-read
...[Gurdjieff] had no purpose comprehensible to the average, relatively satisfied human being. A prerequisite to any understanding of his aims and an even relative acceptance of his means was dissatisfaction with the status quo in a personal sense, and dissatisfaction with, or distrust of, the state of civilization as we know it.
His avowed aim, as stated in his book All and Everything is to "destroy" all contemporary habits, opinions, preconceptions, etc., concerning human existence; such destruction being a necessary condition for the reception and acquisition of totally new concepts about the potentialities of human existence.
In one of the few "political" statements he ever made in my presence he said that unless the "wisdom" of the East and the "energy" of the West could be harnessed and used harmoniously, the world would be destroyed.
--- Fritz Peters, My Journey with a Mystic
“I consider a tree.
ReplyDeleteI can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background.
I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air—and the obscure growth itself.
I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life.
I can subdue its actual presence and form so sternly that I recognise it only as an expression of law — of the laws in accordance with which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or of those in accordance with which the component substances mingle and separate.
I can dissipate it and perpetuate it in number, in pure numerical relation.
In all this the tree remains my object, occupies space and time, and has its nature and constitution.
It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness.
To effect this it is not necessary for me to give up any of the ways in which I consider the tree. There is nothing from which I would have to turn my eyes away in order to see, and no knowledge that I would have to forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and type, law and number, indivisibly united in this event.
Everything belonging to the tree is in this: its form and structure, its colours and chemical composition, its intercourse with the elements and with the stars, are all present in a single whole.
The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it — only in a different way.
Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutual.”
― Martin Buber, I and Thou
Martin Luther was a freak on many things, and an anti-Semite, and he smelled -- but I do think about his comment that, if told the world was about to end, he would go into his garden and plan a little apple tree (ein Apfelbaumchen). I appreciate the hopefulness in the gesture, even from an asshole.
ReplyDeletespeaking of trees
ReplyDeleteIn his memoir Boyhood with Gurdjieff (1964), Fritz Peters recalls experiences he had growing up in association with the teacher and master G. I. Gurdjieff. In the 1920's, Gurdjieff had established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at a chateau outside of Paris, France. Peters was a young boy of eleven and served as a houseboy to this enigmatic man.
On one occasion, Gurdjieff told Fritz to look out of the window, where there was an oak tree, and asked him how many acorns there were on the tree. Peters responded that there were likely thousands. Gurdjieff then inquired as to how many of those acorns were likely to become oak trees. The boy guessed that perhaps five or six might, or maybe not even that many.
Gurdjieff then explained the essential nature of his teaching by comparing it to the possibilities that Nature provides:
“Perhaps only one, perhaps not even one. Must learn from Nature. Man is also organism. Nature makes many acorns, but possibility to become tree exist for only few acorns. Same with man - many men born, but only few grow. People think this waste, think Nature waste. Not so. Rest become fertilizer, go back into earth and create possibility for more acorns, more men, once in while more tree - more real man. Nature always give - but only give possibility. To become real oak, or real man, must make effort. You understand this, my work, this Institute, not for fertilizer. For real man, only. But must also understand fertilizer necessary to Nature. ...”
“In west - your world - is belief that man have soul, given by God. Not so. Nothing given by God, only Nature give. And Nature only give possibility for soul, not give soul. Must acquire soul through work. ... Even your religion - western religion - have this phrase ‘Know thyself.’ This phrase most important in all religions. When begin know self already begin have possibility become genuine man. So first thing must learn is know self .... If not do this, then will be like acorn that not become tree–fertilizer. Fertilizer which go back in ground and become possibility for future man.”
[end of quote from Peters quoting G]
To say a bit more about G's "many men born, very few grow" - this reality is expressed in the fact that in Yiddish the term for "adult male human" is used, not as a neutral descriptive word, which would apply to about half the human race over a certain age, but as a high compliment - to quote Wikipedia:
Mensch (Yiddish: מענטש mentsh, from German: Mensch "human being") means "a person of integrity and honor".
...In Yiddish, from which the word has migrated as a loanword into American English, mensch roughly means "a good person." A mensch is a particularly good person, like "a stand-up guy", a person with the qualities one would hope for in a dear friend or trusted colleague....
During the Age of Enlightenment in Germany the term Humanität, in the philosophical sense of compassion, was used to describe what characterizes a "better human being" in Humanism. The concept goes back to Cicero's Humanitas and was literally translated into the German word Menschlichkeit and then adapted into mentsh in Yiddish language use. In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the phrase Ben Adam "Son of Adam" (בן אדם) is used as an exact translation of Mensch.
Thus spake mistah charley, ph.d., a real mensch.
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