Treading Water

Treading Water

February 24th
My birthday a few days away
here i am one more time
actually never stopped my whole life
wrestling with my demons

dark, crusty hands
reaching up from the waters of my unconscious
grabbing  me by the ankles
dragging me down
under

I fight and fight and fight
Fought my whole life
made a lot of progress
the dark crusty hands are weaker now
now i only go under a little bit and for a little while
then i quickly make it back to the surface, and
tread water 
which is better than when 
i used to go under and
stay under

but when will i fly?
I know i have wings, i can feel them
sometimes other people even tell me they can see them
Once or twice i've even taken off briefly, felt great
then I'm back treading water

Over the years i've learned a lot about how to free myself
things i can teach others
if i ever get free myself

I have hope
but when, O Spirit
will the dark
crusty grip
all my unconscious fears and self-judgements
release
and like a great eagle
I will enter into the kingdom
the kingdom of light
love, peace, joy and fulfillment

amin

Changeling

Changeling    
(written 2/22, Cotati, Ca.)

How hard it is to believe that change is possible
especially how hard to believe that change is possible NOW
both for me and around me

all i can see is what is in front of my eyes now
the life i am living
the world and society i am living in
and yet
one of the primary teachings of the buddha is
CHANGE
Impermanence

why is it harder for me to believe that all this suffering
will pass
easier to believe that things are bad and getting worse
and will continue to get worse
and worse

The pendulum, the yin/yang symbol, and other
mystic teachings
all say
it's all gonna change

is it easier for me to have nothing to lose
so that i can avoid the pain of losing what is dear to me
so i can scoff and rant 
at those holding on
to their precious 
transitory 
illusions of security?
and what does that say about me

Impermanence, holding on
is suffering
I am suffering
holding on to the protection of
having nothing to lose
because
everybody always loses everything
the teachings say
in order to gain everything

Change is here

An Environmental Sense of Urgency

What if you really believed the ice caps might be gone within 5-10 years, with all the changes that would bring to YOU?


What if you really believed that all the toxins in the environment were harming YOU, your health and happiness, and that every bit of pollution put in the environment affected YOU?


What if the average American was as concerned with losing their homes, their lives and their health to these causes, as they are about their jobs and their mortgages, especially middle class people like yourself?


What's it going to take for that to get through? How many big disasters, how many failed crops, heat waves, floods?
---------------------------------


what's missing in the environmental consciousness of America is a strong sense of urgent FEAR, 


fear of the clear and present danger, albeit indirect and subtle, of pollution and global climate disruption. 
Conservatives have won election after election by appealing to people's fears of crime and everything else. Isn't it time the progressives starting pushing the fear button that people have, because hell, there is a lot to be REALLY SCARED about. 


Wake up, environmental organizations, and start running professional ads in Sports Illustrated, Cosmo, Elle, Parent Magazine and all the rest, ads that leave people scared shitless about the things they should be scared shitless about, and cause them to demand environmental protection more than oil drilling.

To sound elitist for a minute, with exceptions, most of the ruling plutocracy feels invulnerable and the uneducated just react to getting their buttons pushed by ads.  The potential opening is in the middle class; if they put enough pressure on the system, things will change, and i am also suggesting ads that push the buttons of the tea party types, ads run in the places they will see them. Scare the bejesus out of them, make them as afraid of global warming as they are of immigrants and terrorism.


Urgency, we need a sense of urgency.

Is College worth the money

College is pretty damn expensive these days. Is it a cost effective use of the money? or would that money be better spent in other ways, travelling or starting a business.

My understanding is that college traditionally served 4 main purposes:
1 Vocational training for a job
2 To become a more rounded human being-"liberal arts"
3 As a halfway house between home and on your own
4 To provide status; college educated being presumably higher than non college.

It seems to me that these days it's pretty much all about job training. The economy seems to be tanking, and jobs have been and are getting shipped overseas.

At a  State University one might get 4 years for as little as 50-60k, all expenses included. A lot of other schools one is looking at 100k or more, for the privilege of being unemployed and back at home after 4 years.
What if you took 100k and started a business, or decided to educate yourself by going online and to the library (if you had the discipline to do it yourself), and saved the tuition money. Or what if you did what a lot of young people in other countries do, which is to travel and work for a few years, then go to school. You'd know a lot better what you wanted to do.

As far as the social aspects, i think it's great to have that opportunity, but it's pretty expensive. Of course, many jobs require that piece of paper, even though it's often said that the book learning isn't much use in the real world. Really, I think that a lot of the pressure to go to college is a scam, a way for banks and others to make money from loans and textbooks, and i think parents and high school students should do an objective cost-benefit analysis and let go of the myth that if one does not go to college, one is not an educated person.

Five Point Plan to Fix Our Broken System

Election day on a workday
election day not a national holiday
that tells you the score right there

So much dysfunction in government. People always say "throw the bums out", but even when we do, we just get new bums. Maybe it's not just bad leadership, maybe the system itself is broken or has been corrupted. We can all think of a million things that need to be changed, but what are the
Game Changing Ideas,
the changes that would have effects all up and down the line. These are my suggestions.


1-Get money out of politics.
As long as money is what it takes to get elected, and lots of it, we have government by auction to the highest bidder, and you can see that result in every government policy and decision. Depending on their budget, small companies buy mayors and city councils, larger businesses get to buy senators and congressmen and get special tax exemptions passed in Congress (hidden in the fine print of 800 page omnibus bills).
Even if corporate personhood ended, the rich would still be able to buy politicians.
The only solution; no private money in elections.

2 Real Choice
Right now it's a choice of tweedledee or tweedledum, the lesser of two evils,  no real choice. Whether you're passionate about Ron Paul, Ralph Nader or Rick Santorum, good luck. Third parties have just about zero chance of getting elected. So how do any new voices or new ideas have even the remotest chance?
At the minimum, we at least need to have Instant Runoff Voting, which means you rate your choices in order of preference, for example  Nader 1, Obama 2, Mr. x 3, Santorum 1,  Romney 2, Mr. x 3. If nobody gets a clear majority in the first round, then the 3rd place candidate is dropped and people who listed, for example, Nader as their first choice would have their votes applied to their 2nd  choice.

---------------
These first 2 points I believe will make just as much sense to Republicans as to Democrats. The next 2 may be a little more problematic, although i think every Republican will agree with the idea that vote counts should be honest and the system above reproach, even if they think that is the case now.

3 Honest Vote Counts-----Electronic Voting Machines=Stolen Elections
I find the evidence conclusive that elections have been hacked.
Here's one link, if you google, you can find many more
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7926958774822130737#

and just because Obama won, or was allowed to win, don't be too sure that 2008 was an honest vote count in all the elections across the nation.


4 Stop Disenfranchising Voters
Florida 2000, a systematic campaign to remove voters from the rolls
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5321794022770412541
2004 Lack of polling places in Democratic districts
http://harpers.org/archive/2005/08/0080696

and deeper than that, the "War on Drugs" has basically been a war on left wing politics, putting people, (especially poor dark skinned people, who tend to be Democrats), in prison as a way to take away their vote (and make a hefty profit off them), and scaring others out of politics.
https://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=The+New+Jim+Crow

5 End Protection for Criminal Businessmen
 A corporation is a legal fiction which was designed to allow people to take business risks without fear of losing their personal assets. It was not supposed to be a licence to commit crime, but that's what it is today.

So often we hear this corporation did this or that corporation did that, Monsanto, halliburton, PGE, Exxon, etc. The truth is, the decisions were made and carried out by specific people, and if those decisions and actions were criminal, including criminal negligence, then those specific people, especially the top executives, need to be brought to criminal court and put at risk of losing everything and going to jail.

Instead, the "corporation" gets fined, takes it off their taxes, and the perpetrators go off to their mansions with their golden parachutes, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars.

I get so frustrated with progressives, the left, whatever label you like, when they buy into this idea that a legal fiction, a "corporation", was responsible for whatever the latest crime is, when in fact, it's people. Right now the incentives are for bad behaviour, not good; screw things up for short term, private profit, then ride off into the sunset with bags of money, leave the mess behind.

Unless personal accountability is built into the system, don't expect good citizenry from those in business.


---------------
These are just the basics, and of course there are a lot more important changes that need to be made, but i truly believe that if these were adopted we would see real, fundamental change and a much more equitable and livable America.

Of course the deeper issues are issues of ethics and world view, how one looks at the world, the frame that effects all our ideas and beliefs, and the deepest changes are on that level, but that's for another post. although you can see some here http://jaydancingbear.com/writings/Politics.htm

I also want to say that , to me, 
the most important issue of the day is the Environment, 
Global Warming, GMOs, pollution, toxic waste, threat of nuclear disaster, etc., 
because if the environment is screwed, if we're getting cancer from pollution, 
and have to move because the climate has forced us to, everything else is affected.

Obama Conspiracy Theory

This is my own personal theory, didn't read it somewhere.

I believe that elections have been regularly stolen for the last 15-20 years through changing the totals on electronic voting machines. The poster child for this is the presidential election of 2004, which John Kerry probably won by 3 or 4 million votes, if one believes the exit polls, which have since been banned.
http://harpers.org/archive/2005/08/0080696
These have been stolen by Republicans for Republicans, so the question is, why let Obama win? My answer:
The powers that did this knew that the big Wall Street crash was in full progress and knew they wanted a big bailout. For all that Obama is black and young and articulate, he was still a mainstream, inside the box thinker who would do what he was told was the "right thing" by the "experts", all ex-wall street hacks.
A Republican could never have gotten away with bailing out a bunch of criminals with taxpayer money, and not punishing a single one, without raising a howl of protest from most of the country, but Democrat Obama, young, inexperienced Obama, confronted with a major disaster requiring major response in his first days in office, was the patsy who would take the heat for rescuing a bunch of criminals who deserved to be ______(you fill in the blank), another Democrat cleaning up the Republican mess, as did Clinton after Reagan-Bush, as did Roosevelt after Hoover.

That's my take on it.

There is no such thing as a corporation, only people

A corporation is a legal fiction. There are only people; owners, shareholders, CEOs, workers.
In 1933 60 families owned most of America. How many own it today?

In 1933 Ferdinand Lundberg wrote a book, based on a great deal of research, called
America's 60 Families  http://www.google.com/search?aq=0&oq=america's+60&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=america's+60+families
in which he detailed how a small number of super rich people owned America. Some of the names may have changed, but America is still owned and operated by perhaps 1000 people.

-Through the legal fiction of "corporation", their control is disguised.
-Through the legal bribery of "campaign contributions", they buy and sell politicians to get the laws and policies that benefit the super rich at the expense of everybody else.
-They own the media, so the only message heard mainstream is "capitalism and competition'

All the people complaining about corporations miss the point that
there is no such physical thing as a corporation, only people, and 
there is a ruling aristocracy in America that has names and faces.
Please, never say corporations again. Talk about the ruling class, the feudal lords who rule America as their person fiefdom. Name the names who own specific companies.

and what, exactly, am i suggesting? Certainly not physical violence, but
publicly naming and shaming the specific people responsible
for whatever the specific issue may be.

Is America A Democracy?

Election day not a national holiday, elections on a workday
=discriminates against workers
This tells you the truth right away 
 
  A) Who gets to vote?
  1) Who gets to register
  2) Who gets wiped off the rolls (florida 2000)
  3) Are there enough voting machines (ohio 2004)

B) Who do they get to vote for?
   1) Winner take all=Lesser of two evils
   In most cases third party candidates have no chance, people are afraid of throwing away their vote
   i.e. Ralph Nader
  2) Instant Runoff Voting, Proportional Representation=every vote counts

C) How honest is the vote count
  1) Electronic voting machines = stolen elections
      Paper ballots harder to steal an election

D) How is the process financed?
  1) Campaign contributions =legal bribery
  2) Corporate money allowed as "free speech"
      No money=no chance to win=candidates sell out 


E) How do we find out what the candidates have to say
  1) Role of media
  a) corporate owned
  b) covers some candidates more than others, shuts out 3rd party candidates
  c) sound bites, slogan advertising

Democrats and Republicans

America is basically a one party state, the Corporate Capitalist Party.
The Democrats are the left wing of that party, the wing that says even if the country is run for the benefit of the rich, the poor should at least get enough crumbs to survive.
The Republicans are the right wing of the CCP, the wing that says fuck the poor, let them die.
That is an important difference.

My belief is that the Republicans have gone too far, and that all simple minded people who voted for them are going to turn against them, and that in the next few years, people will be marching in the streets, the same way the civil rights movement happened, and i look to the students to be the ones to get it happening.

President Obama has been replicating the history of the 1930s, when the British and French tried to appease Hitler, as Obama is trying to deal with the right wing fanatics, who will never get enough to satisfy them, and will ultimately self destruct.

Hafiz and Forugh Farrakhzad (new poem)

i went to the library to get a book of Hafiz' poetry. Right next to Hafiz was a book entitled
Sin, selected poems of Forugh Farrakhzad, translated by Sholeh Wolpe.
After reading some of each book, here is a poem that came out of me
---------------------
Hafiz and Forugh Farrakhzad

Destiny
is a far off thing
but just as close to me
my love
as your lips

O my beloved
why have you been so cruel to me?
i have wandered over mountains,
rivers, lakes, oceans,
deserts
braved heat and cold, and still
you withhold yourself from this poor lover's sight, and yet
I know that you are ever present, with me always
were i only able to know you

How many years of my life? How many days, hours,
How much of my strength, attention, desire, energy
have i given to looking for you?
How many generations of cells of my body
have been born, lived, died
while i wandered to and fro
searching for you
a fool for love

O, my beloved
come to me, i need you, i want you
My body aches for you
my mouth is parched
My desire rises, thinking of you
Come to me please
i beg you
make yourself known to this poor fool for love

Destiny, what is destiny but
the calling of the blood
the calling of the inner essence
to be, to know, to remember
our long lost, constantly sought
eternal orgasm of the soul
union
with, as
the beloved

Amin