Off-Planet Species, Part II of IV

This is Part II of an article.  Part I is here.

Because technology is such a key element in determining relative strength, and because the off-planet beings are visiting us, and not the other way around, it is likely that the off-planet culture which descends through our atmosphere will be more powerful than we are.  Thus, we must study examples from history, with an eye toward how the less powerful group handled the meeting.

Japan was closed to outsiders from around 1603 up until 1854.  Prior to the earlier date, Japan was well-disposed to foreign trade and Christian missionaries.  But one of the Shoguns began to fear native Christians would set up a fifth column for Spanish or Portuguese invaders.  So he expelled the foreigners and closed the borders.

While the American, Matthew Perry, was largely responsible for re-opening Japan, it was the Russians who inadvertently gave the Japanese the keys to modern technology.  "While continuing negotiations with the Japanese, Putiatin (a Russian) asked permission for his men to build a vessel to take (the ship-wrecked Japanese) home. Because [a Japanese leader] had lifted the restriction against building large ships, the Russian admiral’s request was granted. The Japanese watched intently and soon afterwards built an exact copy. The bold claim that the Japanese could quickly catch up technologically with the West was realized and demonstrated to devastating effect only fifty years later in the Straits of Tsushima, where virtually every ship of the Russian fleet was sunk or captured by Admiral Togo."

Source:  http://www.navyandmarine.org/ondeck/1800perryjapan.htm, Apr 28, 2011

In this example, Japan was well aware of both the advantages and risks of opening contacts with an alien culture.  Where they saw a power imbalance, they always worked to strengthen themselves.  Unfortunately, the friendly relationship with the West decayed into war on more than one occasion.

** End of Part II **

Pink Slime / Kiribati

Things that are on the tiny piece of The Mind which I call "my mind" today, Monday, March 12th, 2012.

1) Pink Slime

"Pink slime" is the term used for a mixture of bits of fatty meat scrap and connective tissue salvaged from slaughterhouse floors that is treated with ammonia hydroxide to remove pathogens like salmonella and E coli.

Formerly used only for pet food, pink slime is now used to feed ourselves and our children, often times mixed in with our ground beef.

How doth this offend me?  Let me count the ways...

70% of all ground beef consumed in the U.S. contains a portion of pink slime in it.  In my book, 70% is a darn large percentage.

I can't shake the image of a slaughterhouse -- cows getting killed, blood gushing everywhere, men in heavy black plastic aprons with sharp knives carving up the raw, red meat; workers putting aside the short-haired cowhides...

This image follows:  the day is done, and so begins the sweeping up (what kind of broom do they use?) of the bits of "meat and muscle" (no bone or hair mixed in?) and packing it into, what, Hefty bags?, and freezing it, and shipping it off to the Pink Slime Factory (which is actually called Beef Products, Inc.), where they mix it with an ammonia-based chemical (now the image of a Mr. Clean bottle fills my tiny part of The Mind, and I imagine opening it, and the pungent, searing smell of straight ammonia hits my nasal cavity, and I think, "we are eating this stuff??!?") -- and they squeeze the mixture out of big tubes (not imagination -- see photo above) and pack it and ship it off to the hamburger-makers.  Ugh!

Due to public outcry, fast food giants like McDonald's and Taco Bell have stopped using pink slime in their food.  But the federal government continues to allow its use in school food and has just authorized the purchase of ground beef which collectively contains an additional seven million pounds of pink slime for consumption by our nation's children.
If that isn't enough, how about the fact that our food producers have been using pink slime for ground beef and as a leavener in bread and cake products (In cakes?  Seriously?) since the 1990s, and this is the first I've heard about it...

I wonder what else I've missed, as a result of my immersion in re-runs of Cheers.  It's my own fault -- I don't blame anyone but myself.  I choose to take the easy way out.  To ignore the plethora of information available to me.  To refrain from writing letters to the USDA, FDA, NSA and dozens of other alphabet soup agencies.  To stay indoors, comfy and cozy and slowly being poisoned, rather than chain myself to a cow on the way to the slaughterhouse.

If we are getting slimed, we have no one to blame but ourselves...

2) President Anote Tong of Kiribati

So it turns out, there is a tiny archipelago nation in the Pacific Ocean named Kiribati.  And because its islands rise mere feet above sea level, it is in danger of becoming the first major victim of rising tides which may result from climate change.

The president of this nation of 103,000 people, Anote Tong, is preparing for the worst.  He is looking into buying a big chuck of Fiji.  6,000 acres to be exact.   Once he owns the land, if things get bad for Kiribati, he'll just move all 103,000 citizens to the new digs.

No joke.  This is for real.

I really liked the tone of the CBSNews.com article.  My feeling was that Tong is a good guy:  kind, rational, and caring about his people.  He is reviewing the facts, and calmly making plans to deal with whatever situation arises.

Here is a picture of him.  He even looks decent.

**********************

That's all I got right now.  Until the next blah blah tirade, make it a great day!

Citations (current as of March 12, 2012):

[1]  http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/08/10611274-pink-slime-panic-grows-online-are-we-overreacting

[2]  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57394296/island-nation-kiribati-considers-moving-populace/

[3] http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-usda-to-stop-using-pink-slime-in-school-food?utm_medium=email&utm_source=action_alert

49 Things I Love About America

49 Things I Love About America

(A few of the items below are supported by the international community.)

1. The Grand Canyon

2. Freedom of religion;

3. The fact that almost anyone can write a song, record it, and post it online;

4. Supermarkets;

5. Our public education system, warts and all;

6. The way the New York Philharmonic plays behind the beat of the conductor.  (How can such a large group of people be so connectedly, fiercely independent?);

7. Wrangler blue jeans;

8. The phone companies, past and present, who at this point have enabled pretty much every U.S. citizen to have some method of reaching every other person in the developed world.  (While cost may be a barrier with some technology, with a little research, even a very poor person can phone Germany for pennies per minute -- Skype at the public library, anyone?);

9. The Mises Report, consistently and intelligently arguing for libertarian, "Austrian" economics;

10. The fact that on some forest trails, the Forest Service has installed a bench, roughly a quarter of a mile in;

11. The fact that after a half mile or so, the Forest Service leaves the trail untouched;

12. Jon Stewart and The Daily Show;

13. The fact that Americans have access to more health care modalities (Western, Eastern, and most everything in between) than any other citizens of the world;

14. Digital cameras, and all that goes with them;

15. The fact that I can open the Yellow Pages, look under "religion," and find ads for a Catholic church, a Jewish temple, a Protestant church, an Episcopalian church, a Muslim mosque, and on and on and on...and for the most part, we all let each other happen;

16. Off-Broadway;

17. Off-Off Broadway;

18. Big pharma, those much vilified companies which, in addition to their various evils, bring us Advil, aspirin, and hundreds of other drugs which improve our lives through the creative application of bio-chemistry;

19. Our organic farmers;

20. The enormous amount of food our non-organic farmers produce;

21. TV and movie content -- a portion of it -- in moderation;

22. The debate over whether or not violent video games are bad for us humans (I sense they are -- there are more healthy ways to express the violence inside of us);

23. Freedom of speech and of the press.  "I hate Obama."  See -- I'm still typing.  It works.  (I don't actually hate President Obama -- I was making a point about freedom of speech...);

24. The slow but steady progress toward green energy and green vehicles;

25. The network of roads, trucks and trucking companies which currently keeps our economy functioning (food in the stores, gas at the pumps, etc);

26. The wisdom and restraint our political and military leaders exercise, day after day, even as they possess the most awesome, potentially cataclysmic, apocalypse-making set of weapons systems ever devised by humankind;

27. The California redwoods;

28. NASA, for bringing humankind to the moon, and sending back all those cool pictures.  Hubble rules!

29. Amazon.com, for making almost every book ever published available in a searchable database.  The library at Alexandria:  eat your heart out;

30. Print-on-demand, free blogs and web sites, YouTube and the like -- providing access to world-wide expression to anyone, and I mean *anyone.*  Info-glut is a problem.  Finding content worth ingesting is a problem.  But was an incredibly narrow distribution channel choked by editors and advertisers a preferable system?  Search on a keyword, and find text, images, and videos created by hundreds / thousands of people:  famous, infamous, and unknown.  Wow.  Brought to you by:

31. Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and the tens of thousands of geniuses who design and build the technologies that allow YouTube et al to exist;

32. The 1,716 microbreweries we support (2010 figure);

33. Our political process.  In the paraphrased words of Winston Churchill, "democracy is the worst form of government...except for all of the other ones."

34. The forty five cent stamp;

35. A gallon of reverse osmosis water for a quarter (although the fact that I need to buy drinking water because the ground water is polluted is a bummer);

36. Farmers' markets selling locally-grown produce;

37. The fact that we have 3,617,764 businesses with four employees or less (2008 figure);

38. Our public libraries;

39. The plethora of centers offering many different spiritual practices:  tai chi, yoga, meditation of all stripes, and so on...

40. Graphic design, as it beautifies and makes more legible our visual environment;

41. The Tesla Electric Car Company;

42. The American Humane Society, taking care of our unwanted doggies and kitties;

43. My alma mater, an American university which gave me an unparalleled liberal arts education;

44. My school of meditation, located in the Southwest of the United States, guided by an (east) Indian master, which taught me how to go in;

45. Mike Rowe and "Dirty Jobs," a TV Show on the Discovery Channel;

46. The 304 locations of the Whole Foods Market (2011 figure);

47. The hundreds of charities and NGOs working to make our society a more caring place;

48. 101 different kinds of salsas, many made by Mom-'n-Pop businesses;

49. The fact that, if an individual has the moxy, s/he can reside in America and penetrate the veil of data-fluff,  becoming conscious of what is.

The Evolution of Sport

2,200 years ago, we humans gathered for "competitions" between gladiators.

Today, we gather for baseball and football.

No doubt, an improvement (notice the absence of metal swords and tigers).

Perhaps in another 2,200 years, we will express our violent energies this way:

Some of us have already begun to take this approach...

Discover Dynamic Meditation

Enjoy the World Series!

Love.

A Gift from Existence

There is a dull weariness.
A dim, faraway, somewhat weak voice
(call him The Employer)
implores me to write.

Write what?

Briefly, an angry fire flashes in my eyes.

Within the donut-shaped torpidity
surrounding my midsection
a heat arises;
makes its way to the surface,
melting the lethargy.

A few trips to the thesaurus
bring life to my sleepy synapses.

He Who Needs Approval starts yapping:

"Is it ready to post?  You see, forcing yourself
to work works!  Maybe I'm alright after all..."

He recedes.  A calm descends.

Outside, a motor idles,
adding a mechanical soundtrack
to the morning-sun-lit greenery
which surrounds me.
A bird's chirp can barely be heard
amidst the auto-growling.

Now The Judge has his say:

"This is boring.  You did your first
awareness poem in 1990.  No one
will care to read this drivel."

The Facilitator believes him.

And yet The Employer has me on deadline.

To post or not to post?

The Facilitator must make the call:
the buck stops here.

A neighbor's voice wafts through
the aural field.

The Literary Encourager chimes in:
"The play Our Town was as folksy
and bucolic as this morning's writing...."

A pause, as a cloud of awareness
fills the body-mind-Being.

---------------------

---------------------

---------------------

---------------------

A gift from Existence.  Ah, This.

---------------------

---------------------

---------------------

---------------------

As Coleman Barks put it, in the book "Unseen Rain:"

"When the approaching presence calls out,
[Rumi] says, the first word spoken will coincide exactly
with the last word of his last poem.  For Rumi,
poetry is what he does in the meantime,
a song-and-dance until the greater reality he loves arrives: 
a melting tear-gift eye-piece to look through,
while it and the scene and the eye dissolve."

Three minutes of real...

Space.  The final frontier.

Tick.  Tick.

Little tick.  Sway.

Finger boop.

Chuckle.

I wonder if this is for public view?

I almost missed that thought.

Hmm....

Finger boop.

Again.

Again.

There's my roomie...

Looking mean.

Looking at the electricity meter...

Putting silver tape on it.

Well, not that mean.

Finger boop.

What does....snip.

Thumb boop.

Finger boop.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Who says I'm not aware?

Again.

Shoulder muscle pinch.

Finger boop.

There's my other roomie.

"Yeah," he says, in a kind voice.

Finger boop.

Publish.  NOW!

Yes sir!

4% of the world's pop. owns 33% of the cars

I hate to be a downer, but I am compelled to bring up another inconvenient truth.

In the interest of identifying one of the root causes of "U.S. - Other" hostilities, I turn to the subject of resource distribution and usage.  A statistic:

* Americans, while making up only four percent of the world's population, operated one third of its automobiles. [1]

Ignoring the ideological and religious disagreements which lead to conflict, we can make a simple economic statement:

If there were 100 people in a village made up of citizens from all over the world, and there were 100 cars, let's suppose four (4) of the people (the only Americans in town) owned 33 of the autos.  And they didn't like to share them.  That would mean the other 96 people would have to compete for the ownership and usage of 67 cars. 

I can only speak for myself but I imagine, if I were a non-American villager, I would be a bit peeved with the situation.

(Why am I 'supposing' in this story?  This is actually how it is...)

Picture this scene:  I am walking home from the grocery store, carrying hemp bags heavy with ramen noodles, cans of refried beans, and bags of rice, arms tiring, body soaking wet from the near-constant rain (our hypothetical village is in the Northwest of the U.S.A.), and feeling a little sorry for myself.  I pass one of the four mansions in town:  a humungous colonial with 18 bedrooms and two four-car garages, with their massive doors open.  There are three guys polishing three of the seven parked cars, while the eighth car is backing out, ready to set off for destinations unknown. 

I continue moving, passing old ladies, unemployed 20-somethings, and men and women from all walks of life.  I also see others driving their autos.

I come upon a modest house with a car parked in front, a 'for-sale' sign in the window.  For this middle class auto owner, it became a choice between doctors' bills and driving to and from work.  There are four or five people circling the vehicle, like sharks circling a bloody carcass. 

One middle classer's fortunes rise a bit, so she buys a car.  Another's fortunes sink, so he sells.  The 96 scurry around for economic crumbs, like a flock of pigeons running after not-nearly-enough crusts of stale bread. 

Across the street, seated in his plush leather chair in an office adjoining his nine-car garage, mansion-owner number two (of four) phones his stock broker to see how his multi-million dollar portfolio is doing.

And people wonder why demonstrators are occupying Wall Street...

'Faction' for thought...

[1] http://articles.cnn.com/1999-10-12/us/9910_12_population.cosumption_1_global-population-worlds-scientists?_s=PM:US

Diamond Poem

Unbounded sky. Vast

beyond words. Sunlight, darkness

your blessed children.

Jesus, Buddha, the Hasid

Masters spoke to the human family of these spaces.

Our family. The world’s peoples.

Connections are created: by blood and marriage, love

and fate, spirit and soul. The persons intermix, Stu, Mary, Sally,

grands and great-grands, siblings, offspring, old ones and youngsters.

Within this web resides Lee. One woman among millions whose passion

for life expresses through theater, sculpture, a grounded caring for those around

her: dropping everything for a loved one in need. Lee racing to the

emergency room, steady, supportive, loving; re-

turning home tired, ready to receive nourishment. Now, her passion

renewed, off into the fray, her heart leading the way.

The Masters know heartfulness

dotted across the earth by us will re-create the

godliness of which they spoke.

A godliness so

vast that to speak of it is

to miss it. No sky.

Off-Planet Species, Part I of IV

There is an interesting, somewhat disarming video on YouTube which reproduces a series of mainstream media reports of recent mass UFO sightings.

Video of Mainstream Media Reports of UFO Sightings

The information contained in the video is not news to Dr. Steven Greer and the Disclosure Project.  They have been compiling eyewitness testimony from citizens, and government and military personnel for years.

Disclosure Project Website

I think it is time to re-frame the issue of "first contact."  I think it is very simple to equate our first meeting with an alien (or off-planet) race to first meetings which have been occurring for centuries "on-planet."

Consider:  1,200 years ago it was impossible to cross the Atlantic or Pacific oceans.   Red people (Native Americans), white people (Europeans), and yellow people (Japanese) lived among themselves, each with their own distinctive facial features, skin color, eating patterns, clothing design choices, physiques, languages, and other cultural attributes. 

It is certainly the case that when Europeans first came into contact with Native Americans, there was the sense that the other group was "alien" to them.  To cut to the chase, I would argue that, after dealing with the surface attributes, the fundamental issues were these (from the point of view of the Europeans):  1) are the Native Americans stronger than us or weaker than us?, 2) will we be building a friendly relationship or an adversarial relationship?, 3) do the Native Americans have something we want or need?, and 4) do we have something the Native Americans want or need?

There have been enough meetings of cultures on planet earth for us to get, as a species, that the superficial stuff (skin color, tuning of musical instruments, etc) is merely window dressing.  To be certain, there are plenty of ways in which we can spend our time exploring and celebrating our differences. 

But the core issues are the most imperative:  friend or foe?  Potential dominator or dominated?  Trade potential?

I would argue that there is very little difference between the distance of an ocean separating two cultures, and the distance of a galaxy.  Life is life.  Intelligence is intelligence. There is not much difference between a red skin / white skin meeting, and a slimy skin / white skin meeting; or a slanted eye / oval eye meeting and a big, bald, green head / average-sized, hair-covered white head meeting.

** End of Part I **

On rag-dolls and zombies...

 "Please: No violent video games."

A simple request of a sixth grade computer class in which I was the substitute teacher.

Of course, this becomes "the line in the sand."  Thoughts race through the students' minds:  "How much can we get away with -- our guy being a new substitute and all." "Dude -- how do you pronounce your name?"  Never mind that I've already veered away from the optional lesson plan which would involve actual teaching and learning.

First there are the sports games. While they provide a comparatively healthy outlet for pent-up energy, they are violent.  (Wouldn't you call twenty two big men crashing into each other with all their might violent?)  Given the options, the lesser of available evils.

Then there is the otherwise-bright girl who decides to pull up a game which involves throwing rubber balls at a "rag-doll-person," who appears to be injured by the pelting.  Certainly violent, but at least she's firing rubber bullets.  I could relate to this girl. The peer pressure is intense -- fit in or else...

What about the on-screen bicycle rider, careening down a set of stairs, body parts and blood flying. Is this a violent video game?  The students I asked did not think so.  After all, the only person getting hurt is the bike rider himself.

And of course the zombie games: first person shooters with blood and gore everywhere.  The 12-year-old's analysis:  "The zombies start out dead, so it's not really violent."  I kid you not.

To be fair, one student spent five minutes on a web site which creates opportunities for students from 130 countries to work together on projects which make a meaningful contribution to the health and welfare of the planet.  A drop of sanity in a sea of lunacy.

My classroom was being dowsed with violence. Energies from parents, teachers, and friends who are not getting what they want, and who would rather fight with each other than sit down and discuss their differences like grown human beings. Discuss, collaborate, and share the resources we have available to all of us.

Think of the paradise on earth we could co-create if we took all of the resources we employ to beat each other up, and instead used them for the things we all need to live a beautiful and rich life.

I will not be silent any longer. I will speak common sense until my last breath. There is just too much at stake to do otherwise.

Links to the Music of Prahas

Hello, Readers,

I thought you might enjoy hearing a bit of my music.

1) Sky (a lovely three-minute music video)

2) Samples of my theatre music in video format (running time:  two minutes)

3) Haiku for Piano (Piano poems which sound like George Winston at a meditation retreat.)

4) A Trapeze Artist’s Nightmare (a two-minute theatre music video)

5) It’s a Dream! (a four-minute avant garde music video)

I’d love to read your feedback!

Sport and Peacefulness

I just came home from a morning of sport.  Playing, not watching.  A warm-up session for a team sport, which is a competition, involving among other things guile and deception, the struggle to gain and control territory, and the final goal of defeating your opponent (all with a playful spirit, of course).

Aside from being good for the physical body (apparently the lymph system gets stimulated, which helps remove toxins from your system) sport is pleasant; it gets me associating with others; it gets me out in the sunshine.

But as I left the grid iron, the question arose:  does sport support peacefulness?  Certainly it took me out of my head, and moved some rather stale energy.  But is putting juice into an arena which by definition pits one person against another helping to increase the sum total of peace in the world?

Compare to this:  giving a healing massage to another person.  Or this:  sitting silently on a park bench, beside a friend, holding hands, feeling a cool breeze on your skin.

Of the tens of thousands of ways one can spend their time, why compete when one can melt?

Here's why: to get what I need, plus a little bit more.  It is true.  But is that where I stop competing?  Or do I push for more?

I notice myself greeted with choices each moment.  I notice myself addressing them: with brain, with heart (with luck, with Being).  I notice I know not what to do.

And then, with forever limited information, I choose.

Love-filled, precision-guided lightning bolts

Why does my mind

steeped in soot 

cause me to cry out,

"War!  War!  Rage against the vile winds

which rip through the virgin, green fields,

stripping them of their succulent fruit,"

when I know,

from a higher place inside,

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, 

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ...

"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, 

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. ..." *

Where is the Aiki response?

The love-filled, precision-guided lightning bolt

which re-directs and diffuses the in-bound hatred,

leaving only a cool, calm evening bathed 

in the light of a crimson sunset.

* Quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Triage: Dr. James Orbinski

A review of the documentary, "Triage:  Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma," 2007, on NetFlix now.

Dr. James Orbinski worked with Doctors Without Borders for many years, eventually ending up as their president.  He treated hundreds of people in Somalia, Rwanda (during the genocide), and elsewhere.

This man -- this clear-eyed, kind, intelligent man -- knocked my socks off with his combination of softness; caring; controlled, focused rage; courage; and stamina.  He kept showing up in the most hellish, needful places on earth.

There are many ways to be of service.  There are those who look at the enormous, rickety machine we call the world, and study it for years, looking for the one bolt that, if turned, would effect the most positive change.  The one gear box that, were it to be replaced, would increase the performance of the machine ten-fold. 

This is not Dr. Orbinski's approach.  He looks at the globe, finds the area seething with the most human suffering, grabs his black bag, and dives in head first, bandaging, suturing, injecting, amputating, balming.  Every few hours, covered in blood from head to toe, he pauses, lifts his head up, takes a breath and a sip of water, only to plunge back into the melange of guts and gore.

Below I quote a few passages from the documentary which, dare I allow my authoritarian side to speak, ought to be required viewing for every human being on earth.  You may also like to read the doctor's book -- "An Imperfect Offering:  Humanitarian Action for the Twenty-First Century."

*******************

"To be politically neutral, you have to be the most political of animals.

"Everything depends on information, and trying to be as clear as possible about who you are, what it is you are trying to accomplish, what risks you are NOT prepared to take, and so on."

*******************

A professor interviewed in the film:

"When the battle is raging, NGOs (non-government organizations) simply cannot function.

"[You need security.]

"You need the military, but if you are identified with the military, you lose that independence which is absolutely crucial to actually serve populations on all sides of a conflict.  How do you walk that fine line?"

*******************

"The genocide (in Rwanda) was a collective act.  What made it possible, what made that final political crime possible, was the absence, the erasure, of seeing the other.  Of knowing, of feeling, of being with the other.  And when that's removed, then politics
can become genocidal."

*******************

A Rwandan woman with children:

"People would say, 'Everyone that went this way died.'  People would say, 'Everyone that went that way were killed.'  And I said, 'My God, what can I do?'  I was all mixed up because I was scared.  I didn't have any money to support my kids.  My youngest was only a month old and I was still too weak to do anything.  So I was panic-stricken."

(This family managed to get into the hospital compound.  At night they would sneak into Dr. Orbinski's room and sleep in the closet.  He never objected -- rather, he became friends with them.  Many years later, when he returned for a visit, the woman told him about her stealth.  She said, "we snuck in every night and you never knew."  He replied with a smile, "I knew.")

*******************

[This next is an accurate paraphrase]

"I was operating on a woman in Rwanda.  She was macheted.  I pulled a piece of skin with my forceps -- it hurt her.  She touched my arm.  I looked up from her abdomen, and looked into her eyes....

"She had had both of her ears cut off.  And both of her breasts cut off.  And both of her Achilles tendons sliced.  And she had a pattern of cuts etched into both of her cheeks and her forehead -- a delicate pattern -- someone had taken his time doing this.  And there was dried semen between her legs.

[Long pause]  "And suddenly I was no longer a dispassionate doctor, a skilled technician.  Her humanity flooded into me.  I turned away and vomited."

*******************

(About a girl not leaving her nearly-dead mother in the midst of corpses and shit and blood):

"I don't think it's heroic -- I think it's decent."

*******************

"The very existence of MSF (Doctors Without Borders) is predicated on the refusal to accept the unacceptable, and that by definition means being free, and using your liberty in a very particular way.  And trying to stay out of the established corridors of power...which doesn't mean you don't walk through them...but it means you don't become them."

*******************

Being free.  And using your liberty in a very particular way.

My experience of this simple statement is enormously complex; rife with dozens of conflicting thoughts and feelings and emotions and sensations.  Dr. Orbinski must certainly have shared a few of them.  And yet, he found a way to get up and go on.  He found his way to serve.  This fearless surgeon inspires me to continue on.

Aikido at it's finest

Aikido at it's finest (click here to read article)

A paradox -- please help me see...

Two seemingly contradictory phrases

meant to guide one's living:

* Love.  Simple.  Evaporate each moment.

* Protect your queen.

Do we need both?  If so, how to

reconcile the paradox?

Love.

My serious (fun) blog

For more articles by yours truly, see
My serious fun blog

Baggage

I was surfing an online dating site today when I came across a woman who claimed to have no baggage in her life.


At first, I felt envious.  Like, "Wow, this person really has it together.  My life has lots of loose ends."  Boo hoo.


A moment passed.  Then this thought passed through my noggin:  "If you don't have any baggage in your life, you just aren't trying hard enough."

Luke and Darth

Last night, I descended into partisanship.  During those hours, there were good guys and bad guys; folks in white hats and black hats.

Of course, I was in a white hat.  I knew what was right; what was wrong.  That feels really good, for a change.

And -- I wanted to beat the black hats into submission.

In the calm light of morning, I feel the hangover from the violence.  I feel the dregs of the beliefs -- I'm still not convinced I am wrong.

But a wisp of disidentification is returning.  I am not the body.  I am not the mind.  I am not the emotions.  I am the witnessing consciousness, which wears no hat, judges not, chooses no sides.  It simply watches; mirrors all that passes before it.

The dark and the light reside inside of me.  

Remember.

Robin Williams, The Muse, and Elmer Fudd

Robin Williams, on Inside the Actors Studio, is talking about Elmer Fudd (remember him from the Bugs Bunny cartoons?).  He suggests Elmer could do great in "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Mr. Williams stands up.  There is a brief pause.  My brain is trying to catch up, searching for images of Elmer Fudd, plodding through the memory banks for snippets of the play mentioned,  wondering how in the world the two fit together...

And in the blink of an eye, Mr. Williams' technique, craft and timing kick in and the line ("Stella...!") simply flows out of him, sounding just like, well, Elmer Fudd.  Hilarious.

The inspiration comes, forms into an idea, and the master-artist's tool (in this case, the actor's body-mind) is so refined it responds and expresses without hesitation.

Robin Williams -- master comic, actor and improviser.  (If you haven't seen the Inside the Actors Studio interview, go to youtube.  It is classic.  You won't stop laughing for an hour.)