Night and Day Robbery

I wrote this when I saw a post on the M.E. Chat Room  Facebook page about feeling hung-over for no justification, and it so linked into what's happening with me I 'liked it' and wrote this straight away - thanks M. Burton. 



Night and Day Robbery

hang-over mornings

and no alcohol or drugs taken;

so typical of this disease that

robs us even of the joy of solo or social settings of stimulant misuse.

Stolen moments replaced with the hours of down sides alone.

Another morning 'sobering up' to M.E.s painful partnership.








And for those who want more, see this from Mark Cunningham's post further down the M.E,Chat Room wall..... 

You Know You Have CFS/M.E. when . . .

you are cautioned to slow down by your doctor instead of by the police.

you have a choice of two temptations and choosing the one that will get you home earlier.

 you realize that caution is the only thing you care to exercise.

 you Don't worry about avoiding temptation. With CFS, it will avoid you.

 getting lucky means you found your car in the parking lot.

 you're sitting in a rocker and you can't get it started.

 you don't care where your wife goes, just so you don't have to go along.

 when you wake up with that morning-after feeling, and you didn't do anything the night before.

 your Doctor says: "I have good news and bad news -- the good news is that you are not a hypochondriac."

 you know how to spell gastroenterologist, chiropractor, etc.

 you go to make toast and nothing happens. You've plugged in the can opener.

 you say to your wife, "Good morning, Mary"...and her name is Sharon.

 you have to sit down to brush your teeth in the morning.

 when you become exhausted from the effort to blow out the candles on your birthday cake.

 when you forget your twin sister's birthday.

 you realize that you just sprayed spot remover under your arms instead of deodorant.

 you put both contact lenses in the same eye.

 you realize the marriage vows you took about sickness and health meant HIS sickness not YOURS.

 you have to take a nap because chewing your dinner wore you out.

 you have trouble adding single digit numbers.

 you get up to change the TV channel and decide as long as you're up, you might as well go to bed.

 one of the throw pillows on your bed is a hot-water bottle.

 everything that works hurts, and what doesn't hurt doesn't work.

 you reach the toilet, but forgot what you wanted to do.

 you can't finish a conversation, because you don't remember what you were talking about.

 you have CFS when your top three favorite pastimes involve sleep.

 you have to get rid of your dog; he kept trying to drag you to the yard to bury you.

 Medicare states that you're too sick for their coverage.

 everyone is happy to give you a ride because they don't want you behind the wheel.

 a passing funeral procession pauses to see if you need a lift.

 people are constantly putting a mirror under your nose while you nap to see if you're breathing.

 you know "where it's at", but forgot why it's there.

 at 25, your colleagues that are 15+ years your senior and have kids, manage to do more on the weekends than you.

you get the vacuum out because, by golly, today's the day your going to DO SOMETHING, and then you have to lay down and get hubby to put the stupid thing away. Unused.

you don't have to buy books anymore. You simply re-read the books you have because you can't remember what you've already read.

it's hard to be nostalgic when you can't remember anything.

you wear out your pajamas before you do your pantyhose.

you can't remember your children's names. Or your own.

you can crash your computer just by touching it.

you don't call people back because you're not sure they called.

you put the coffee pot in the microwave and your cold coffee cup into the coffee maker.

you call your kids by your pets' names and your pets by your kids' names.

you can't remember any of the funny stupid things you do when you sit down to write them.

you boil the kettle dry three times to get one cup of tea.

you read a note you wrote to yourself to pay a bill, and you wonder who the heck is Bill.

you call the school twice, to let them know your child is at home sick.

you can't disconnect the dishwasher from the kitchen tap, because you didn't turn the water off first to release the pressure.

you read 100 e-mails from your online support group, then realize you're in the trash folder.

you feed the dog twice, because she has learned how to trick you into thinking you forgot.

...................................................................................I have done all of the above.

Me too, Mark, not far off my score!

A message to you from Paul Maddern and Nicole Fordham-Hodges

Paul Maddern

"If you visit Yorkshire Sculpture Park, make a point of stopping at the chapel to see 'Still' by Jem Finer (yes, of Pogues fame). 700 images taken by a static solar-powered camera of one woodland view. I was filled with trepidation, not being a fan of video-instillation 'art', but this was one of the most memorable experience in a gallery for quite some time. There were points where we all gasped*, and I noticed I wasn't the only one reaching for a tissue. (*Which sounds it was a ticketed event. It's not. It's free and you just drop in and out. There were about 5 of us who stayed the roughly 20-minutes it takes to watch this, including two young children who were spellbound.)

And here's a short extract  [see below] , which doesn't really do the experience justice."

......................and this has reminded me about one of the blessings of having M.E.. that one has to stop, to learn to be satisfied with not doing, with watching out of the window, of seeking nature to look at when one can, and although the energy levels are low, and like a lap top battery unreliable in the length of time one has to function at any sense of 'normal', life should perhaps be seen as a series of photos strung together, and like memory, every-time ones scans through them, they change a little, bringing colours you had not seen before to ones awareness...


.......................and then I stumbled across Nicole Fordham-Hodges's blog and poem today, and had to put it up here, and although it does not fit the video below in subject, 


read the poem, 
and then watch the clip
....all is well.

Notes from The Lodge Café

http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/Nicole-Fordham-Hodges-blog?item=1249&itemoffset=1

The man who keeps the empty café steps out
to drink his coffee. Leaving just me
on the veranda
having myself stepped aside from my life.

The radio is still on in the inside
nobody listening to it
- London’s Heart - as if it listens to itself.
Every now and then a song comes on
which someone might pause to:
like that Tom Waits' song
the way the old American sang it last night
not remembering the words
but the colour they came out
the way they span.

I think myself specially blessed
then its gone.
Light slides on and off my hair.
The owner steps back in.
Teaspoons. Birdsong.
I have left behind someone I need to kiss.

                                                            by Nicole Fordham-Hodges

STILL (low res excerpts) from Jem Finer on Vimeo.

No one deserves the ATOS INQUISITION -

I know that we are not supposed to rub dogs noses in their own faeces if they have done it in the wrong place any-more, and I agree, but in the case of Lisa Coleman and the ATOS Inquisition, they are human and they should be taught a lesson; it's their shit and they should live with it stinking their lives out....as we have to put up with it seeping through the textures of our lives and our dignity.

Nobody deserves the Atos Inquisition - but they have their power from a divine edict from our leaders and they can Kill....

Thanks to the miracles of the ATOS INQUISITION people's real disabilities are written off and no longer are real or exist on any Government database, we are all data cured, our impairments written out of history - such is their devilish power; we all have to be productive units or be transported to the ghettos of our actively and discriminated against impoverished lives......

‎"This Government has decided to shoot its wounded....." too true as we told we can not afford even the smallest human dignity to disabled people.......

The Artist Taxi Driver - lots of F**k**g swearing, but are the Paralympians HAPPY with ATOS (who KILLS) sponsoring their little games 'cos they are OK thank you, while others with complex chronic conditions or with cancer are denied their welfare just because they could get to the ATOS Inquisition interviews..... ........

listen up...or are you too nervous already?

I’ll tell you about M.E.

I read this for the first time on Wednesday at Wicked Words open mike night - (well it was an open floor night as the mike was OS). It got across, and I had many compliments from those I respect after the show. Took over 3 days to recover from the night, and if ANY one shares their feelings of tiredness with me when I mention that I am tired and having a low function day....don't please (unless you have M.E or have a young child and have not had a full nights sleep for 2 years); this is not a tiredness competition, it's my life I am squeezing out of a spent tube.......  

In the Poem below note the spelling of tares, as with my dyslexia I spelt the word as TEARS and not spotted it until I read it out ………now that is part of the truth….tears are words from the soul. 

I’ll tell you about M.E.

I’ll tell you about M.E.

Write down your dreams, your aspirations, on a sheet of paper,

Done it?

Write your aspirations down.

One or two of them, maybe the deeper ones.

Done it?

Now tear it up, tear up the sheet of paper with your aspirations written down on,

Tare the sheet of paper into tiny pieces and throw them to the floor.

Commit littering where you are now, don’t hold back!

Done it?

Do this every day, every hour, in the street, in your seat, in your car, in your kitchen, in your bed, do it where you stand, where you cook, where you think, at the work desk, on your computer..

Not just mentally but in this physical representation of your personal dreams for a future.

This is the process of M.E.

Torn dreams, aching limbs, and an exhaustion that strips you of your souls desires, strips you of your simplest objectives in life,

Tares even the thoughts you are having at a moment in time,

Tares the conversations from your mouth as you are trying to have them, Tares them into shreds.

So you make your dreams smaller,

I’ve read the books, done the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy ‘patient sufferers’ course.

You make your aspirations easier to achieve,

To go and post a letter

To read the next few pages of a novel

To say hello to a friend…
………And I can see you have not got it..

Go on, write these smaller dreams down on a new piece of paper

Now tear them up throw them to the wind, these simpler dreams,

Do this every hour; train your mind to accept this

To accept that even the shadows of your deepest dreams are torn to shreds,

Rendered into a fatty deposit that sinks to the bottom of the latrine of your aspirations.
That there is around you the smell of festered and decomposing dreams……

Your life is not broken, it is torn over and over and over again,

Thrown as confetti the day you became shotgun wedded to this disease

And you now find these torn pieces hidden in the clothing of your personality, the folds of you character

Turning up as decapitated words and scrambled torn individual letters

On thousands of pieces of torn sheets of paper;

Shards spirited away by unseen underground rivers of illness

And I see you might be getting it.

The enormity of this incurable disease that cheats on the body, steals the mind and toils the soul….

So now that you are working it out,

write these thoughts down on a sheet of paper

and tear them up to smaller pieces and send these to your friends

I have no need of them, I have too many of them of my own.






I asked for some comments from 'The M.E. Chat Room' on Facebook, and here are some; Thanks all and 5 likes!

• Katie Godfrey Good descriptive piece, liking the way you've put this across.
• Jeff Baker Thank you. That may sound odd, but thank you for writing this. I just read this out to my missus and its helped her understand some of the things I couldnt find the words to explain.
  Really good work, it's well written and hits the nail on the head as a descriptive
• Donna O'Donnell your words are softly brutal and very true
• 
  

Firesign Theatre: Peter Bergman 1939 - 2012

I am so sad to hear that Peter Bergman, creator of the Firesign Theatre, has passed away due to complications from leukemia.
Please remember Peter in the memorial page at http://firesigntheatre.com/peterbergman/index.html

He broke the President! What more can a Bozo say? So so sorry he has got off of the bus.

Peter Bergman 1939 - 2012
www.firesigntheatre.com

The wind up from the Right wing; it's not funny, it's not clever, and it is discrimination

is it cos I am disabled........eh yes!. Any minute now I will hear that some of Rod Liddle's http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/01/rod-liddle-disabled-the-sun/ and James Delingpole's http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/jamesdelingpole/
best friends are disabled.

It is apparently only really fine to be disabled as long as you can play basket ball in a wheel chair or walk to the North pole with amputated limbs...oh, and raise money for charity in the effort, or win Gold, and make sure you keep smiling at the cameras..........all the rest are for the Transport to the virtual ghettos of callousness and aimed and dehumanising bias bureaucracy and fair game for stoning in the street - that is how it feels right now in the UK, and I understand Europe too....the attacks in the media are akin to homophobia and racism no doubt..........


I will now shop both Rod Liddle and James Delingpole to the authorities and general public at large; they are both FAKE journalists, which we all know is incredibly fashionable and just a made up job

Fluoride - legal action starts to pile up and new sodium contamination issue for drinking water

Fluoride Issues Update #11 from Golda Starr on Vimeo.

Sodium and Total Dissolved Solids Increase in MWD Water After Fluoridation

Richard Sauerheber, Ph.D. University of CA, San Diego; currently Palomar College, San Marcos

Lines are computed moving averages and increase progressively after 2007 when industrial sodium fluorosilicate injections began to treat tooth decay. Every ton of industrial waste fluosilicic acid requires 1/2 ton of sodium from sodium hydroxide Drano to maintain pH at 8.1 (two H+ ions from H2SiF6 requires two sodium ions).

Sodium at 116 ppm decreases crop yields and affects vegetable and fruit quality. Avocado production in Southern California is already down due to current sodium levels (North County Times, 2010). Sodium is released into the Colorado River by scores of industries lining the river. The EPA salt abatement program limits releases to one ton daily per site, but an exception has been made for Shell Oil at 2,000 tons salt daily at one facility.

Metropolitan Water District Los Angeles entered the industrial salt injection problem in 2007, with 0.1 tons daily sodium added at Lake Skinner alone, to neutralize fluosilicic acid to attempt to treat tooth decay that instead causes fluorosis. The EPA secondary standard for TDS (500 ppm) is exceeded but is not enforced–plants can tolerate natural TDS from 800-1000 ppm. No EPA standards have been developed by EPA for sodium since fresh water has historically been low in sodium. Sodium in blood is 3,000 ppm but is 0-10 ppm in pristine fresh drinking water. Vallecitos Water District raises no objections or questions to MWD on the injections and has ignored public testimony since 2006 opposing the ingestion of the non-FDA-approved fluoride water drug.

http://fluoride-class-action.com/sodium-increases-as-a-result-of-fluoridation

Support Night Slot - 'The Notional Health Service'

I have the luck of a 10 minute support slot at Wicked Words on Wednesday 7 December @ Seven in Chapel Allerton in Leeds supporting Matt Harvey , the night is 8.30 till 11pm I think.

I also think that from 7pm (free) the Leeds Writers' Circle presents Shades of Leeds - a selection of poetry and prose extracts from their new anthology.

So NO PRESSURE THEN

I am working up a short set provisionally entitled 'The Notional Health Service' touching on disability, the meaning of Health in Mind, Body Spirit and Society. Should be a laugh a minute! So that is 10 laughs.....well maybe 1 or 2!

Hope you can all make it; "Do I worry, you can bet your life I do."
For you reggae fans, look this up - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsonQSbrFgE





WICKED WORDS @Seven -
Seven is based on Harrogate Road near the centre of Chapel Allerton. Find us just below Casa Mia Grande.  It's opposite the Library and 30 yards down the road towards Leeds City Centre.


Stand-Up Poet - Matt Harvey | Seven Arts - Wednesday 7 December

Stand-Up Poet - Matt Harvey Wednesday 07/12/2011 8.30pm Tickets : £6 /4 conc Doors 8pm
http://www.sevenleeds.co.uk/clients/sevenarts/MODULES/DIARY/DIARYMOD_item.asp?type=All&itemid=466

December's Wicked Words Showcase is Matt Harvey, writer, poet,and enemy of all thats difficult and upsetting. Matt’s way with words has taken him from Totnes to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships via Saturday Live, the Edinburgh Festival and the Work section of the Guardian.

Take one more step out of your comfort zone; listen up and take that step with pride

The sound of tau

What happens when engineers have dogs.

I too fetch the ball back to often!
Gaining a joy and purpose
That far out-strips the meaning of the act
I load, wait for the stretching of the elastic and its release
and run back tail wagging
Again and again to reload.
An automoton by my own self circulating patters,
Not really a breathing living thing any-more
Is it me, or does this machine run too often for you too?

Once upon a time – sweet dreams were made of this

Once upon a time

In a land cuddled up on my mother’s breast, milk full,

I slept, carried by three small laughing nymphs

Triumphant that my fairy-self

Winged and free

Was caught and bound with rose petals

And maternal love

Tired now, body battered and time travailed

A scent I could not perceive

Dropped me softly back into those wordless smiles

Blew the seasons leaves from off the baby sleeping in the deep deep wood

And twined with happiness and trust

I flew to the rhythm beat of her heart,

Known from the womb-times

And heard still,

Distantly through unspoken memories
Before words formed, and stole my wordless dreams away.

Here's the challenge

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Here's the challenge: when opinions differ about things that feel like they really matter (because they effect our lives & the lives of our children) can we keep our hearts open to each other? How we are with each other when we do not agree is where the spiritual rubber hits the road (so to speak! :-) Can I listen, really listen & bring a genuine curiosity to why the other reacts or thinks or feels differently than I do? Can I speak in away that helps the other hear- without hyperbole or derision, with deep respect for them as another human being?

It's about having the courage to participate where we can & are called (which maybe on the street with others, in solitary prayer, &/or in conversation & meditation with others) without putting anyone out of our hearts, without forgetting that there is no "them" and "us"- it's all just us, muddling along, trying to figure it out, sometimes behaving badly (usually out of fear) and sometimes shining so brightly it takes my breath away.

It's about expanding our ability to be the peace- feel it, feed it, embody it within- wherever we are.

Internet Confusion and Response

The great Tomas Transtroemer has been awarded the Nobel Prize for his poetry http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15200547

 and then I saw this little exchange on the internet http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/10/06/tomas-transtromers-latest-poetry-collection-an-excerpt/tab/comments/#comment-508669

So instantly this came up in response.

On confusion over Tomas Transtroemer's Nobel award; is he dead?

So many are dead already

Unable to use words with any deep meaning or skill.

The sun standing above the autumn winds

Calls the words forward

But they are stuck in the marshes

Unheard, quagmired in fettered imagination.

Double Yay and WTF?!

Ring out from the central reservation

Of the sanitised and armcoed dual-carriageway road into winter.

Hopefully I wait for the new moon.

Mr Ed, is he a talking horse with no sense; Poem on disability follows

Just seen Mr Ed's [Miliband] apology of an answer to a person with a disability's question; and this came to me

An Assertive Poem on Disability 
(Note, everyday I meet people who are kind and generous;
This is to all the others, to the powerful, who should know better, but don't!)

I have lost my ability to comply
With the keep-fit fascist medical approach to disability.
It's as if I have broken the unwritten rule,
Now the smoke screen of 'being seen to be brave' has blown away,
And have had to even change my doctor on account of this ignorance.
I refuse to be a victim as my
Human Rights evaporated in the 'healthy' ones gaze of ignorance.

My invisible hidden disability has cast me into the role of lazy,
Non-trying, undeserving, politically untouchable.
Yet everyday is a challenge that I have to overcome,
With a strength and determination unrecognised un-comprehended.
It's unseen to the everyday eye,
Invisible to those who place themselves in the hanging judge's wig, and gown and raised prejudice.

There are so many who instantly decide my fitness for any Rights,
And by their mere fitness and human blindness
They unknowingly, smugly, emotionally, vindictively mentally condemn.
They are the sick who need their illness curing.
They are the ones who's humanity has festered.
They are the oppressors who can not see
That they are actively, righteously, placing 'us' all
In the shadow of their broken, un-healing souls.


Write to Mr Ed
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=255705251140520

~ Walt Whitman -

Thanks to Oriah Mountain Dreamer
 https://www.facebook.com/Oriah.Mountain.Dreamer
Today, the body-self just said "no!" & there was no getting around it- the constant motion of recent days caught up with me. I laid down during my morning practise & did my prayers & meditation looking at the ceiling & it's been pretty much a horizontal day since then- reading, napping, remembering favourite poetry like this one by Whitman. 
Felt a little like a day spent underwater, watching the light refracting through the waves, resting, waiting to resurface.


and I replied
Yup, M.E. - recognise your description immediately! Love Life when you can, don't need to do to do that....


And she quoted


"This is what you shall do;
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labour to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown
or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons
and with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem
and have the richest fluency not only in its words
but in the silent lines of its lips and face
and between the lashes of your eyes and in every
motion and joint of your body." ~ Walt Whitman

Wicked Words- open mike night @Seven

This came in response to an email reminder to register for a spot at this special Poetry open mike event @Seven; and thank you to the organisers.

Not sure where it came from, not my style I thought, but I seem to be surprising myself at this time!

Wicked Words- open mike night @Seven

Wicked Words

Put me down for Wicked Words

Wicked Words Wicked Words

Opening my mouth to express my world

Wicked Words Wicked Words

Plucked from the conscience and forged in the mind

Wicked Words Wicked Words

Open mike experience of the wordy kind

Wicked Words Wicked Words

Live words for the audience to share at Seven 

Wicked Words Wicked Words

Starts at 8 but guaranteed over by 11!

Wicked Words Wicked Words

All different performances and styles so various

Wicked Words Wicked Words

So many ideas from rude, to comfortable, to ego precarious 

Wicked Words Wicked Words

A celebration of Poets gathered together to perform

Wicked Words Wicked Words

To share emotion, intellect and dreams on the studio floor 

Wicked Words Wicked Words

Listen in to their woven lines with a drink in your hand

Wicked Words Wicked Words

A crucible of word-smithery, forged at the mike stand.

Another writing challenge - Sisterhood

A friend on Facebook suggested a writing challenge whilst I was away, and a good few of her friends have taken this up. It was such an interesting exercise in writing and looking at my own perception of women and sisterhood, that I had to give it a go, so in 24 hours, here is the poem what I wrote; thank you Pam and Bobbi. The Theme is Sisterhood.

Not so sure I like it yet, but it goes some way into a subject that perhaps on my own, I would not have ventured! Hope it works.......

Sisterhood: from a man’s perspective

They argue over things I sometimes see as unimportant

They talk about things I often cannot see

They share knowledge over things I am often not party too,

But they are deeply important to me.

They share things that are important to them

They care about things that are important to them

They go to the core of things that are important to them

When together, their world is greater than mine.

When together they can move each other to tears and laughter

When together they can act with deep strength and conviction

When together they can act for the good of the community

They make me so proud to be human.

When at odds with me they drive home my failings

When at odds with me they cut away my logic

When at odds with each other disharmony shakes

Like deep earthquakes, the ground under our feet rives.

Sisterhood grows with the dawning of soul light

Sisterhood is hewn from the rock of generations of suffering

Sisterhood blossoms when women are given their rights
And I welcome their strength to sharpen and guide mine.

A Poem written quickly to a theme; and a surprise visit from my father.

I am so pleased to have been asked onto East Leeds FM community radio to be part of the 13 hour readathon of Paul Auster’s ‘True Tales of American Life’, a large collection of stories from the people of the USA, and to have been invited on the afternoon before to present a poem live on air as part of the Writing on Air Festival

Thank you all for this opportunity to share in a local radio broadcast event.
http://www.elfm.co.uk/


Written for the Writing on Air festival from Monday 13th to Friday 17th 2011 at East Leeds FM; At the Chapel, on the theme of churches.


Of pulpits and pews
Memories of being in a church


My memories of being in a church,
Of looking up at pulpits and wondering
About the reason for sermons, religion and prayers.
They all come from the child-times with my father,
Who used to take me with him
On his pursuit of churches across England,
To see Old Saxon towers, Norman arches, gothic windows, flint walls,
And I would look for the gargoyles.
And over time I learnt to savour the smell
Of incense, polished oak and stone floors.
Of damp plaster and peeling paint.
Of rainy days,
When no pub would let children in.


His passion for church architecture perhaps was strange,
But recalling him now,
It brings back memories of his war,
A mobilisation that took him away from his immediate dreams and passions,
To the fighting in the Bocage Countryside
Just after D Day in the 2nd World War,
As he and his company fought towards Caen
And the liberation of France in ‘Operation Overlord’.
And from this stems his dislike for any strong smelling French cheeses,
Which reminded him of those war days,
Living, sleeping and fighting in deep sunken lanes and high-hedged small fields
Seeded haphazardly with the dead and decomposing bodies of cows and horses,
Of fellow and enemy soldiers,
The air reeking of their death
And casting forward though time
His vivid dislike for that smell,
And the avoidance of the disconnected memories
Of death of friend and foe
And the loss of innocent-nature and humanity
In those patchwork fear-ridden fighting fields.


And the story he told me of the time
When his commanding officer called him over.
The angry voice and bearing of the man showing clearly
That John was in for a bollocking from his superior,
That he was ‘in for it’ for some serious misdemeanour,
Something he’d got wrong,
Or order or action funked.
From his position at the signal-truck
He quickly rushed at the double,
Child-like and scared,
(I imagine with gut dropping and slack bowel apprehension)
He ran to the commander’s control vehicle and saluted.
And then, at that moment,
Before the judgement fell,
A heavy mortar came over,
Both the men dived for cover together, united
And the lorry John had just been in was hit and destroyed
Showing how transitory the concern about fear of authority really is,
How something so important,
Emotion cracking at one instant
Can transpose and become
Your guardian angel, your life-saver,
And it is all forgotten in the relief of still living,
Of breathing, and smiling.
‘Saved your life their Captain; what!
The parables of my father’s war,
Spoken so rarely in his life to me.
The horrors he saw he never really shared with others,
And the gap it left between him and me
Stand in the silence of the nave,
Around the tombs and in the humble choir and stalls
And maybe that is why I was always a little scared of churches as a child.


And so the church pulpits stand in my mind
As they stood in those churches of my childhood,
And in the churches of the villages in the Bocage,
Whose towers peered over the high-hedges
And deep narrow lanes of my Father’s baptism of war.
Those pulpits stand,
Preached from for hundreds of years
By priest, vicar and bishop,
Which together with the pews,
That we the people sit in,
Make up the body of these churches,
These communities bound together
By faith and authority.
These pulpits and pews stand,
Setting the cast of hierarchy
Casting reflections of this into our future,
Reflecting how our communities still stand today.
Can we step up into the pulpits elevated position,
To stand there ourselves and take a view, a stance?
Not to judge or become superior.
Can we allow ourselves to share a collective view,
An over-view of the generations
That stand divided by deep time-lines
And the impenetrable high-hedges of history?
And as we stand here in this chapel,
With the pulpit and pews divided but sharing this space
Where we wonder and hope for its future and growth,
I wonder if the youth of today
Will become aware of these stories of lives gone before,
Will see in this place the promise of a future
That can be grown from a shared vision.
Can drop the ranker of personal quarrels and competitive striving
And become still, just for a minute,
And descend into an inner place of peace and sharing.
And standing together, fulfil dreams that the future beckons.
Uniting the speakers and the listeners,
Uniting the memories that we all can carry forward
Into a community far greater
Than single personal recollections or dreams,
Celebrating a sense of future and past transforming.
Breathing in a soft beckoning night-time’s healing scent
Transforming the air and space here-in;
Into a safe creative space
And a shared welcome.

The certainty of life is not Death and Taxes

A bit deep this, but as one becomes more aware of the bottomless nature of desire and the lure of amusement and self picturing oneself into imagined situations or associated desires, of the fear of not doing and its tangible affect upon ones emotions and self image, then life is not all about death and taxes........it is about life, celebration and love...

And the opposites in life, that provide us with out ups and downs, or right and wrongs, define edges and ranges between, are everywhere true but not the whole picture, and like Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves (see video below), show that in this physical state we live in, opposites are needed, reflect what is out-there, but do not touch the reality on another level, that opposites together become one, without each other, they could not exist.


The certainty of life is not Death and Taxes

Two certainties in life,
Death and Society.
Taxing our bodies with their bills and invoices
Painting the pictures of self and other indelibly by
Filling the forming patterns and patting down the casting sand’s impression.

Two certainties in life,
Ying and yang.
That both sides only exist in opposition
And in this physical trap and with Time’s unravelling they
Hold up our conscious world to what primitive focus we can have.

Two certainties in life,
Me and you.
Oneself and the other really united not separate
Provoking the boundaries of our worlds with this riddle’s unravelling
Perceived with the gaps that lie between speech, thought and words.

Two certainties of life,
Flow and stillness.
Like water in a river’s stopper-wave or ripple
Forever a moving current with the illusion of non-movement to go
Beyond cognition and provoking our awareness of self and being.

The rub for me,
The difference between
Visioning and demanding.
Allowing something special-different to happen in my life
Which is at the same time everyday ordinary; experienced in the full-present and un-demanded.

Police and Thieves in the streets

A Poetical Thought

Could poetry turn the words of hate

into nothing more than worthless flakes

of wind blown barren seeds?

Mindfullness; a breath away

Here are two poems to go, on the road to somewhere, a road the verbal mind can not co-join me on. We are soo often mislead by the ‘helpful’ and attention-seeking overactive internal stream of verbal comment.

Born from a need to be recognised and the belief in its own uniqueness, the verbal mind continues to try and please, like a servile dog; only too often placed as the top dog in our psyche, and, un-like the wizard of Oz, well hidden behind its shadowy curtain.

Mediation will always improve how you do things, will always improve a situation, will reward you, not in things, not in conquests, but in openness. Lies give people power over one another, so Politicians by their very nature will lead through lies. They seek that power. And like them, internally, we have given, taken and swallowed many lies to ourselves.

Dropping the way and game of words, we can start to see those lies, feel them out, and turn to an understanding of where words should stand in our lives, and create more space for actions, and non-action and inner worth, the quiet giants in us all, that are the real elephants in our internal worlds. Turn to them and welcome their wisdom in.

Mindfullness

Are you a mind half-empty
Or a mind half-full
Type of person?
The breath-in confirms life
In-spires
The breath-out,
The expiring breath,
Fore-echo’s our final terminal passing,
A time on our own that we all
One-time
Will share.
And watching the out-breath,
Inspired by breathing
Awareness and awe
Conjure up relaxation,
Which flows through the body,
But can disappear
If I follow the mind flick
From this to that thought,
And engage with this talk.

Watching the chests rise and fall,
Relaxation deepens
And travels down
To where my feet sense the ground
And the history and pull of the earth below.
If we recognise the gentle love
That flows on the breath
Then our hearts can fly,
And our thoughts be stilled,
And we can become a mind
More empty than full.


Ink Well Meditation

Stream babble of thought,
Backwash of sounds
Spoken in a Language that no longer means anything to me.
Passing chatter of a crowd
Coming through and past me
Like shoppers through a store.
Whispers of Boredom
And tuneless La La la-ing
Letting me know
That I am thinking
But it is as permanent as clothes on a clothesline
Blown by the untamed winds
Coming from all life’s quarters.
Can I recognise; an Angel’s kiss
Placed on my eyes?
A light from another’s Spirit?
Giving me a Timeless moment
So easily Squandered.
A white feather from a Soul messenger
Wishing a Friend good-luck on their Journey.
A hug of Love and reassurance,
A breath of gentleness,
A Heart-full moment,
Deep breathed and Immortal
Grounded thought our Earth’s shared orbit.
Stream babble of thoughts
Welcomed as a sign;
The end of Winter’s frozen healing
And the start of a river’s new Journey.
This breath I feel now,
This out-breath I feel right now
Will it be the same feeling, same experience,
As the one that will,
Along with all of you
All humankind,
A shared moment felt on ones own,
Will it be the same last welcomed breath
That will not be followed by another in-spiration?

Fuk U Shima Nuclear Plant Disaster - Re-critical....really it's critical

the Tokyo Electric Power Company has warned: "The possibility of re-criticality is not zero"? This means the company says that there is enough fissile uranium, in enough density, to form a critical mass in the cooling pond - meaning that a nuclear fission reaction could start in the building, .........outside the containment shield that surrounds the actual reactor.'

Surprise 'critical' warning raises nuclear fears


I don't like this at all.....this may be the biggest single nuclear contamination incident ever, if the camp-fire of fusion rods, now lit in a concrete open pit beneath an open sky, do melt down and burst into flame........its going to project itself into the atmosphere.......... and the plume will contain actual particles of uranium and plutonium..... Planet go heal thy self?

Fluoride; They didn't and don't tell anyone so

‎'When fluoride is used as an additive for health reasons, it becomes a medicine. As a medicine it requires an informed consent from the individual receiving it. The individual needs to be told what the treatment is for and how it will be conducted. Risks and benefits must be explained. The patient should be told if there are alternative treatments.'


The head of the British Dental Association (see video clip below) can not keep his cool over the issue of mercury based fillings, so what can we expect when we confront him with the unethical and poisonous life time exposure use of highly toxic fluoride in Public Drinking Water, at huge financial cost to the National Health Service; that is you and I!?


And as for letting UK public know about this, whom in the Dental Association, Health Service or Government is responsible for not letting parents KNOW?

INFANT FORMULA
"Infant formulas reconstituted with higher fluoride water can provide 100 to 200 times more fluoride than breastmilk, or cows milk." - Levy SM, Guha-Chowdhury N. (1999). Total fluoride intake and implications for dietary fluoride supplementation. Journal of Public Health Dentistry 59: 211-23.

Fluoride Exposure During Infancy:

In contrast to recommendations adopted in the 1950s, fluoride supplementation is no longer recommended for newborn children. This includes both fluoride in drops, and fluoride in drinking water.

Not only is fluoride ingestion during infancy unnecessary, it can also be harmful - as suggested by a mounting body of evidence linking fluoride exposure during the first year of life with the development of dental fluorosis. (For pictures of dental fluorosis, click here)

Because of the risk for dental fluorosis, and the lack of demonstrable benefit from ingesting fluoride before teeth erupt, the American Dental Association - and a growing number of dental researchers - recommend that children under 12 months of age should not consume fluoridated water while babies under 6 months of age should not receive any fluoride drops or pills.

Fluoridated drinking water contains up to 200 times more fluoride than breast milk (1000 ppb in fluoridated tap water vs 5-10 ppb in breast milk). As a result, babies consuming formula made with fluoridated tap water are exposed to much higher levels of fluoride than a breast-fed infant. (A baby drinking fluoridated formula receives the highest dosage of fluoride among all age groups in the population (0.1-0.2+ mg/kg/day), whereas a breast-fed infant receives the lowest).

Dental fluorosis is not the only risk from early-life exposure to fluoride. A recent review in The Lancet describes fluoride as "an emerging neurotoxic substance" that may damage the developing brain. The National Research Council has identified fluoride as an "endocrine disrupter" that may impair thyroid function, while recent research from Harvard University has found a possible connection between fluoride and bone cancer.

Nuff said, well watch Head of responsibility and think, whom is doing what to whom right now?

You Must Have Vision

From Elaine Speakman

You Must Have Vision

How can you hope to discover the new without the spirit of adventure, without being willing to step fearlessly into the unknown? Where is that pioneering spirit? How can you expect to pioneer something without taking risks, without great strength and courage as well as rock-like faith and belief in what you are doing? You must have vision. No matter how fantastic or seemingly unreal and unattainable that vision may be in the eyes of human beings, you must have it if you are to step into the new and achieve the seemingly impossible.

11 March 2011

Regeneration, Economic benefit, and lies.

So often we hear that new industrial units are the way forward for economically depressed areas, especially those on new land next to the by-pass roads and motorways, which together will bring life back to these hard hit communities.

I am fed up with these lies, which not only cheat the local people, allow land speculators to make big amounts of money, put up short term and cheap and unsustainable buildings, they also ruin the last vestiges of any unspoilt area in a community, taking out the last environmental bio-diversity and pleasant views and areas of green.

So carrying on with the theme of 3 debts, here is what the smoke and mirrors of inward investment in new roads and new industrial units takes us.

Nothing but a waste of the money, monies that should have been used to support local businesses and make the high streets the centre of a new economy, with local opportunity for all to make a living, and even prosper, rather than the better off and better connected laying claim to land speculation, and the building companies trousered all the money for highways, which clearly was a waste of investment, not as it was sold to the people as; the way to a new wealthy and an inclusive economy.

View over an East Lancashire valley

Sheds on the by-pass
Wanking over the politicians’ promise
And road builders’ wet false dreams
Of inward investment; that never came
Spurning the high streets
That were full of shops
Sheds on the by-pass
Gutting the businesses that once had got by
And leaving the old town centre to crumble,
The foot fall to die away
And the closed-down and shops-to-let signs
Sprout like spring bulbs,
Only they will never now turn into flowers.
Sheds on the by-pass;
The mono-crop now failing
Cheap warehousing
light business premises
Thrown up in a rush for rental value
Close to the by-pass and the motorways
The sheds on the By-pass,
Sold as the key to green-shoots signs of recovery
Are half empty, and themselves wilting
Marked by the seal of a motorway lead recovery
That would never come,
Except to the road builders and landowners,
The sheds on the By-pass,
Planted by the thoughtless chase for land price profit making
Sit there morbidly, empty eyed
Cast under the same spell
Of the dying town centre
And terrace empty housing clearance
The Sheds on the by-pass
Cast their economic false shadows
Across the flat lands of the valleys
And the landscape of the hearts of the people.

Welcome Happiness

Today something special happen, at the same time it is quite ordinary.
Later My friend Eileen had this quote on her Facebook page

e.e. cummings wrote:

I thank you God for most this amazing day

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and the blue dream of sky

and for everything which is natural

which is infinite

which is yes

Poetry is the bed rock from which all words flow.

As usual in life in the early 21st century, we are always walking in the shadows of giants, and perhaps if lucky walking with them too. The build up of human knowledge is the shoulders on which we stand, too often though this knowledge is all messed up by the powerful, and they always overlook the wisdom that in these times they really should be using as the bed rock of their decision making.

Well it seems the powerful and righteous rich will never stand on the shoulders of the great wisdoms that came before, and will add nothing to the progress of humanity.

In this case, we have to take the steps that are called for, and learn to allow wisdom that is out there to come to us, and try and help this across the void of newspeak consumer lead language, to go to the heart of individual's and the heart of the matters we face.

A personal step:- you too can take a step where you are too.

Welcoming happiness in.
Something uncommon has happened this morning,
Without warning,
Happiness descended upon my consciousness.This stranger,
Brought a smile to my lips and relaxation to my soul.
Like a puff of a breeze on a hot simmering ball breaking day,
The wafted scent of fine raindrops on summer hot pavement slabs,
Caught on my in-breath.
Delicate, ready to fall away,
Stopped me momentarily in my thoughts and dressing routine.
And this time,
I paused.
I recognised the feeling and welcomed in this delicate healing spirit.
And the sylph has stayed a while,
Popping up throughout the day,
Glistening cobwebs dew drops shining a winking smile
When the sun catches them just so.
Reminding me.
That happiness can hang by a spun thin thread
Beyond my making;
But is quick to come in when recognised at the door,
And welcomed.

White frost

Drove from Leeds to Scarborough today,

and the hedges and trees along the route were white frosted lace,

a harsh frost covered all, hanging from the branches and the leaves,

a wondrous site, something I have never seen before,

in trees reaching up 100 feet or more,

sometimes white emerging from freezing fog,

at other times the sky a winter blue,

and along the hedges roes a white covering,

frosted edges reaching across white fields,

white on white emerging from white.

Temperature on the car thermometer was -5 to -7. Check out this weather page;

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=INORTHYO28

Un-sustainable weather patterns?

Is the cold spell and snow caused by the weakening of the gulf stream due to the melting of ice caps and the change in the salt content of the ocean water that drives the gulf stream-, it could also be the change and unpredictability of the jet stream; major cause of the flooding and heat waves we have had over Europe in the last few years, and El Nino this year is the strongest ever recorded in the Pacific ocean, the driver of air patterns across the globe, and our jet stream over the UK!?

banking fraud and political carpet baggers - debt crisis #3

A quick poem on the latest political smoke and the statements of powerful leaders and their cohorts.

A little ruff, but a quick response to some jaw droopingly callous political gaffs today and the responses that came on Facebook.

Life of Riley

Originally the name of a cow that roamed uncontrolled, that nobody would lay claim too, eating and ruining other peoples harvest, smashing their fences and robbing them of their hard graft and contentedly living happily on their labour, which then became a phrase associated with the officer class or anyone who escaped or was away from the frontline whilst drinking and flashing their cash. Also associated with a clan that produced their own money, and lived well on the cash they created

The Life of Riley

I think the political elite are leading a life of Riley,

The drug they are all on is power,

And the depth of their empathy is as deep

As the silvering on the mirrors they check their faces

And smug smiles with in the morning.

The mirror is cracked and their smiles crooked,

the promises made to be broken.

The drug power, one you have to be rich to buy,

they make sure they do not share,

but cut their politics with scapegoat rhetoric.

And they wonder if their conceitedness looks too big

And ask their media meisters if they can fit in

Some care and compassionate time on the media roundabout

Whilst playing the money making game with finances debt profit taking

Whilst the three debts continue their advance.

Finance, environment and energy,

These debts will take no hostages, of this I am sure.

The rich will fare better, and fairness will go to the wall,

As they make merry with the fruits of our harvest,

And contently cud-full wander and trample on the poor.

Progression?

Read this poem at a fairly recent open mike, and still quite like it, so posted it up.

It carries on the theme of sustainability, looking a little at how we as agents of society collude to bring collective avoidance into a shaded room, hidden behind the active parts of our minds. Together we passively let it happen.

The hidden always needing acknowledging, even if we choose to keep it hidden in our lives, or our comfy worlds.

So we make our lives sustainable, yet at the core lies this hidden un-sustainable trip hazard, which we have to carefully avoid; and in this case a sacrifice to allow us to mentally go on with our lives. Well something like that; so occasionally we do need to look at these hidden truths, and perhaps let them act upon the non linguistic, non verbal psyche; remembering without words. remember?

Oh and I do not like celebrity shows; what do they reveal about ourselves?

........................

‎Listen away if you can;

The corpse in the corner of all our eyes.

We squirm at spiders on the floor and some squeal ‘help!’

Rats make us hitch up our clothes and call out ‘something must be done!’

So unhygienic!

But we sit watching celebrities eating squiggly wriggling insects for star points,

And fail to stare at children starving; …………..that is too much.

A bad taste in the mouth; bad and inappropriate television,

Yet children die every minute, and warfare kills,

And squirming at nasty things is normal.

But diversion-rating wars are raging.

You may look me in the eye and ask me, am I any better?

But does that not say it all about us?

Communicating together to ignore the un-acceptable,

Embracing the trivial to our hearts to stop them hurting,

Bleeding from our mind’s eye that child dying,

The mother’s grief howls and whimpering,

Because we just can’t get ourselves to act together

As our feelings are too precious to see what’s real

And humanly, with media’s help

Together we arrange the curtains to hide,

The corpse in the corner of all our eyes.

I am no better; say this out loud!

“I am no better”

But that is no excuse for you or me,

The machine of entertainment the tank of trench warfare

Truth the infantry solders bogged down in a killing ground

Marked out by the media generals,

Spun by the patriots who live for the greatness of it all

And emote on the brave injured and killed,

To fight for the promise of desires that will be fulfilled,

Of wealth beyond that in which we are living,

If we battle on and build the common dream,

Sleep walking through a war we cannot even see,

But in our minds we still see peeping,

The corpse in the corner of all our eyes.

Humans over time have committed the heinous,

Atrocities, land taking, ethnic cleansing and killing,

Raping the pretty, killing the old, ugly and the babies,

Burning our souls to fight for our blood-lines.

But never before have we known the world width of injustice,

Never before have we Capital at our hand,

And stood quietly in the viewing big wheel high up above the landscape

To agree with the Third-Man, that down there they are all so insignificantly small,

That we can snuff out a few of them without worrying, noticing.

We are tightly muffled by the enormity of our own life problems,

We will all simply forget ‘Them’; it is far too difficult to remember,

The corpse that is peeping in the corner of our eyes:

“The corpse that is peeping in the corner of my eye”.

Remember?