Grasslands

 

The green grass and the barbed wire fence,

pasture and livestock . . . another fence,

meadowlands and woods beyond.

Those woods could be second growth,

and the grass is chewed down every season.

My spirit roams as I sleep,

it is often not with those I slumber with,

it can be lost within the woods,

sometimes it is farther afield. It is not

faithful my spirit, is yours?

These days I slumber alone, but never

truly alone. There is always something

that I reach out to, or reaching in.

 

When I was young I hoped for passion.

When I loved, I dreamed of passion.

I do not remember anybody explaining

the difference between the two.

Someone may have hinted along the way,

but they never said the words.

I never said the words either,

it seemed rude, or perhaps

like all humans; I lied.

 

I remember hands reaching through the wire,

sometimes my own, some coming from the other side.

Grasping, trying to hold on as eyes stray

to the forest, or the critters of the flock.

I can still feel the barbs and see scars

where drops of blood once blossomed.

Passions left me longing for my home,

not feeling that I was home.

Pleasures of the flesh were rarely pleasures

of the spirits joined. No one gave the caveat

of jumping bones for jumping bones,

even when younger. Now that I am old

and withered, that is not a likely case.

My spirit still wanders as all spirits

wander. I know the world, the universe

of illusion and desire. I know

that desire can be just a glamour

of self delusion in others as well

as in me. The grass

is always greener on the other

side of age.

 

The Media

 

What to do when you are listening to different news groups telling you yes, no, and maybe. Try to listen to the voices that give you hope, but do not believe them until you can prove to yourself that event did come true. Do not beat yourself up when you find out you were wrong. Learn from the mistake, pick up the pieces, and build a new belief system: repeat.

Try to learn to not lie to yourself, other people will do that for you. Try and also remember that when people are telling you the truth, they may also be telling you the truth for a reason. Ask them why, and when they answer, try and figure out if they are lying to you or themselves. “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”

Think of life as a desert and remember “in the desert, no man meets a friend”. Try and remember on that long Silk Road to enjoy the caravanserai when you find them.

Frozen In the Headlights

 

When you have been living in the darkness for a very long time, it is painful when someone turns on the light. It is possible to forget while learning to use your eyes again, that sometimes people fish with torches, sometimes they hunt with spotlights, and nocturnal animals are frequently found as blood stains on the highway having frozen in the headlights.

Bootstraps

 

It is very difficult to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you cannot afford a pair of boots. Generally the military will give you a free pair of boots, but it is kind of hard to pull yourself up from the kind of holes they may drop you in.

Pushing a Broom

 

What most of your cheap-elite-exploiters fail to grasp in the throw away concept of human resources is that universal health care provided by the government might actually boost the economy, e.g. their bank accounts. Instead of taking jobs people do not like just to get the health care, they might take jobs they do like, work harder and longer at because it suits their temperament. Let’s face it, there is a certain Zen in sweeping, moping, cleaning, helping, and growing. That is how Mr. Miyagi started training the “Karate Kid”. It just does not pay well. If you take care of your indentured-servants, they are less likely to storm the Bastille.

Countess Dracula

The N.R.A. (National Rifle Association) may support the right to “keep and bear arms”, but they own the blood spilled by those weapons. Perhaps they are a bit like Elizabeth Bathory, bathing in the blood of the young to keep their youth. Society may do them the kindness of walling them up in a tower to curb their pathology before the villagers start storming the castle.

Monsters

 

Monsters have been around a very long time, from Leviathan to Grendel.  Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein during a small European cold spell.  The monster of that novel is a bit different than the one portrayed in film. In the film still above, the monster is destroyed by the villagers, burned up with the mill.  In film there are monsters you hate and when they die you get a kind of release.  In “It Came from Beyond Space”, they suck all the air out of their spaceship to kill their monster and we go yea! There are monsters in films that we actually feel a little sorry for.  The monster in the Frankenstein film is one of them.  I feel a little sad when they burn up the “Beast from 20,000 fathoms” in the amusement park.  A person can keep fictional monsters at arm’s length whether they are likable or unlikable.  From giant bugs to alien invaders the army always saves the day and we can rest easy after a rollercoaster ride in fantasy land.

Frankenstein in the novel follows his creation north to destroy him after the monster has done some pretty crummy things to those around Frankenstein in the name of some form of monster angst. I suppose in the end Frankenstein destroys himself as well.  Some might argue that the scientist destroyed himself when he created the monster.  His willful pursuit of creation being his undoing as, to me anyway, he does not possess the inner strength to cope with creation. He passes out at the point of creation when he needs the strength to deal with what he has done. The real work of taking care of a child begins when a woman is most exhausted.

Real monsters, in the real world do not get the luxury of sympathy.  In the real world when you sympathize with a monster, you eventually become something like an Igor, partly responsible.  But it is more than that in the real world, it is like vampirism.  It is a disease that infects and can be spread not only by patient zero (e.g. the monster) but as in the zombie apocalypse they are all monsters, ghouls feeding on humans.  They are all monsters without souls.  They lose the shed a tear for them along the way factor.

In the current real world we live in, the monster Trump has risen his ugly head.  Unlike the monster in Frankenstein, he will not get a tear from me when he meets his end.   He was a monster before he became a politician; he embraced his monster-hood.  In this case, there was not just one mad scientist, there were a whole slew of them, many of which are still in the shadows, hidden.  They will not get a tear from me when they are brought out into the light.  They are monsters in their own right.  They were willful in this crime.

The forces that I believe created the monster Trump are the same group of mad scientists who believe shell corporations and LLCs are a good idea.  Hiding moneys in a tax haven defrauds the infrastructure of what nation or nations helped make that money, including the human resources who have to pay their taxes.  Hiding assets is just a way of protecting it from being taken away from you does not cut it as an excuse.  That is what bank guards are paid for and why we have the FDIC.  There is shame and criminal behavior in hiding assets.  How many trillions of dollars are socked away somewhere that cannot be seen by anyone, and what kind of dark deeds made that money for somebody? There is no army going to save the day from the giant insects in this particular reality we are living.  Many of those mass graves being uncovered have their origins due to “the army”.  And unfortunately the same forces that are guiding “the army” in this case are supporting those hidden funds.

It has been pointed out that the monster Trump was a reality T.V. show star. It makes the leap from movie monster to reality monster a much more applicable metaphor. Hollywood fantasy monster mutating into a real world monster. The media likes to label this White House as a reality show presidency. All the extras in this reality show are not extras from a film set, they are real people that this real monster and his own personal Dr. Frankensteins are destroying, maiming, and murdering for profits that is not coming out of ticket sales; it is coming out of human blood.