What Is

What Is

Our life is so much a make or break deal:

First we have what is Given,

A chance, a birth, mother, father,

Sister, brother, blood kin and people met.

A world is here where we wake each day

And find ourselves involved.

Then we have our own designs, of

Each moment a path, a care, a career,

We make something of time and trouble.

A life is lived, conducted, embraced,

Experience of what may be.

What is, what will become, is

Our dance of chance and choice.

(11/21/2010)

Fascinating and disturbing dream*

* I'll warn you this is a bit of a strange one.

Fascinating and disturbing dream

Imagine (if you will) this man

Who is a font of industry

He lives in a town called West

Located, as it was, in the West of North America

The Great Continent.

A great exponent of Manifest Destiny.

This town on the mountain prairie

Was a stagecoach town,

And boomed with the task of settling

The Great Continent

And making the Red man scarce.

He wrote,

"Imagine (if you will) this growing town

And the men and boys who come here

Employed in the mighty task of settling

The Great Continent

And fighting the Indians found there.

"Imagine now,

Lopping off the arms of

Ten Thousand men, and

Devising a machine so precise

It would articulate each one above the other

In a giant hand-clap.

"The clap of twenty-thousand hands

Would be a mighty thing of Industry."

This man was a great proponent

Of right nutrition, balanced meals,

And foods high in vitamins.

He himself died quite rich

At the age of eighty.

(4/5/10)

4 a.m. Anxieties / Don't Ask

4 a.m. Anxieties

Bombing Iraq in our dreams

we may ask:

How many Xbox sales is a

dead child worth?

(12/22/2005)

Petition Against Gays Serving in the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

Writers

I'm cleaning things up on my interwebs and want to "re-post" here a short reflection I wrote a few years ago.

Writers are:

• passionate, because they are fully engaged in a subject;
• considerate and friendly, because they care about others;
• playful, because they are connected to their "inner child";
• balanced, because they value diversity and differing perspectives;
• thoughtful, because they are careful thinkers and dedicated communicators;
• socially adept, because they engage, listen, and communicate skillfully;
• warm and caring, because they value people most of all;
• normal, because everyone is a writer, so they are no different;
• ordinary people, because they have the same needs and dreams;
• special, because they have found the calling to be artists of words.

I admit that all of these qualities may not be universally true and evident for everyone who writes. Everyone is a unique individual and makes different choices about how they express themselves and experience life. But I can't help but perceive that the act of writing itself must necessarily draw a person more deeply in touch with themselves, as well as with humanity.

The above statements may be the naïve notion of a young writer starting out, but I feel it is true for myself, if for no one else. And this is my motivation for writing.

Stuff

Get everything you wanted this Christmas? How about more time to spend with your friends and loved ones? Better relationships? More time for your hobbies?

Or did you just get more stuff?

Could it be time for a new take on the American Dream? How about a society where our values are honored and lived out: family, community, fairness, connected functional neighborhoods, environmental health and safety? This New Years I think we should be reflecting on what really matters to us and whether our daily choices are supporting our personal values. Or will you just turn on the TV again and turn off your freedom?