Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Millennials



I read a lot of conservative writings - a lot - I mean you can't understand your opponent unless you study him/her, right?  One of the main themes besides "The poor just need to work harder dammit." and "Guns, guns, guns!!" and "Immigrants are the problem!" is "Millennials are a sign of a corrupt and declining culture." Yes, conservatives find it very (very) fashionable indeed these days to disparage Millennials:

Lazy.

Entitled.

Disengaged.

Narcissistic

Those are the main themes, anyway...

While I have a very small sample set, I've known four Millennials since their birth.  Here's what they are doing with their lives (in order of descending age):


  1. A Curriculum Developer for a charter school that specializes in immigrant children who neither speak nor read English when they start school.
  2. A PhD Biologist researching cancer treatments.
  3. A Social Worker binding up the wounds of and bearing witness to hundreds of victims from our ill-advised wars.
  4. A Nurse Practitioner leading the startup of a Sleep Medicine clinic.


Oh yes, and prior to their professional lives, all four of these Millennials worked (hard) to earn their money and spent tons of hours / days / weeks volunteering.

Not quite the neat narrative made popular by conservative thought leaders, now is it?


~



just repeating it doesn't make it true..


Flag 


Many of my lib'rul acquaintances persist in saying  "He doesn't represent true American values.."

Although I've said it before, it bears repeating - while that assertion might be nice if it were true, it isn't. It might be nice if we had a long and storied history of fairness and inclusion, but we don't.

Racism in general and wealth consolidation by the very rich have always been with us - at least since those pathetic Pilgrims touched boot to Plymouth Rock and started that boulder on its centuries-long tumble into darkness - i.e. now...



~



The Rich Have Always Been Parasites


Affordable Housing In America 

Whoever touches pitch gets dirty,
    and whoever associates with a proud person becomes like him.
Do not lift a weight too heavy for you,
    or associate with one mightier and richer than you.
How can the clay pot associate with the iron kettle?
    The pot will strike against it and be smashed.
A rich person does wrong, and even adds insults;
    a poor person suffers wrong, and must add apologies.
A rich person will exploit you if you can be of use to him,
    but if you are in need he will abandon you.
If you own something, he will live with you;
    he will drain your resources without a qualm.
When he needs you he will deceive you,
    and will smile at you and encourage you;
    he will speak to you kindly and say, “What do you need?”
 He will embarrass you with his delicacies,
    until he has drained you two or three times,
    and finally he will laugh at you.
Should he see you afterwards, he will pass you by
    and shake his head at you.

~ The Book of Sirach - Chapter 13 ~ 


~


Friday, November 24, 2017

let it roll, baby, roll..

 Rain

The future's uncertain and the end is always near...

~ Jim Morrison ~

The future's uncertain and the end is always near



~




Are you happy?


Prefontaine


My son asked me if I was happy. I mumbled something about making Jizos and "Yeah, I guess so... "

Of course, there is always more to that story, right? I mean, happiness doesn't just descend one day and then live with you for the rest of your days - not in this life - not in my life anyway... Happiness visits from time to time out of nowhere and for reasons beyond my ken. Most of my time though, has been spent in worry.

The considerate thing about worries is that they change with the times of your life.  As a young parent, I worried that the kids were going to be OK.  As a young professional, I worried about "success." I worried a lot about money. Now well into the age of the walking ghosts - the disposables - worries center around continued employment, missed opportunities, what sort of person I am underneath the curated presentation others see, and what sort of end this will all resolve to..

And - this is all my fault, my responsibility, all of it.

I never developed a wholesome practice that could reliably keep the looping worry parade at bay, never could develop a personal relationship with Jesus or any of the other big names in the celestial dome... I reap now what I sowed in the past, and at this point - I don't expect big changes. Like Dylan says "Lotta water under the bridge - lotta other stuff too.."

And yet - happiness comes and sits next to me quite often - despite my carefully constructed armor of worry... It plops down with its rumpled lunch sack, unwraps a baloney sandwich with yellow mustard on white bread, sips unsweetened iced tea, looks up into the sky and says things like "ahhh.. feel that breeze.. look at those clouds.. is that a hawk?"

This morning - I was reading Brain Pickings and found a Jane Kenyon poem on the topic of happiness - pretty close to true I think - at least for me...


HAPPINESS

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
        It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

~ Jane Kenyon ~



~


Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Stories


Night Chant 

The Jizo Project is about sixteen months old.  While there is no meticulous count of how many Jizos got set loose, the number is around three hundred.

Besides making them, placing them in the world and giving them away, all of which I love doing, The Jizo Project allows me to continue the story telling I did when my children were little.  Stories were big in our house - stories from books - stories I made up for them. The kids made up their own stories too - really detailed stories that grew in the retelling over the years to become even more intricate and nuanced.

The ongoing and unfolding story of the Jizos isn't told to two beautiful ragamuffins on their way to sleep for the night - it's way less personal now - now everyone who visits Instagram is part of the story. I've been pleasantly surprised that adults engage with the Jizos at the level of the stories. I've not been told for instance that "They're not real you know.." or "They're made out of clay. They can't talk." or any of the other million things that serious people tell me from time to time. 




~
 
 

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Oh world.


Always open


How we work what we love. I've just begun to notice
where we've disembarked. And there is nothing
to hold on to. Even here,
        love. Even here.

Oh world. Cold water. Hard wind.


~ Carol Glasser Langille ~  

~



Wednesday, November 8, 2017

which are leaves and which are angels



bending away from justice



I take my glasses off

it is the hard
edge of things
i am avoiding
the separations
so that i take my glasses off
and then i cannot tell
which are the leaves
and which the angels
like blake
like that man
who lived with lepers
not noticing what was sin
and what was grace
visioning visions vision
i take my glasses off
so i can see

~ Lucille Clifton ~







~


Tuesday, November 7, 2017

you never show


Tower 

you never do...


~



send me dead flowers


DSC_2224-1


...and I won't forget to put 
roses on your 
grave...

~ Mick Jagger ~



~



Friday, November 3, 2017

Thanks anyway...


Pals


He said "I feel like I should get together with you."

What I said was "That would be lovely."

What I thought was "I'm too fucking

far down this shit-stained road

to be anyone's should."

~


A gift from my father



Portsmouth


You miss beloveds that you no longer see. 
But, there are are also people that you miss, 
especially when they are right there in front of you. 
A maddening puzzle to be sure and one
that holds with an iron grip.

~




Of course you can't >say< this when they ask how you're doing.. .


Self Portrait


“Here, in this place of love and death, 
I am trying to ride exactly 
in the middle.”

~ Sharon Dolin ~


~


Thursday, November 2, 2017

Wednesday, November 1, 2017