Category: Uncategorized

Back on my Literacy Soapbox

First things first: Thank you educators (formal and informal). You guys are on the front lines doing something about literacy issues.

With our digital world still unfolding and it currently being the wild, wild west of the world, I worry there has been a tendency to view words as inferior to numbers. Reading is seen as escapism, a hobby, and other whimsy. Literacy starts meaning the ability to read a newspaper, which is written on an 8th grade level. What do we mean by literate?

The ability to grasp meaning from language requires a capacity to hold those abstract principles in your mind and then critically apply those abstractions to yourself. Sure, a 10 year old girl reading Anne of Green Gables, is absolutely doing this. Even if she’s reading for a school assignment and hates every second of it: she will have a feeling about what she reads and that feeling becomes opinion which she then must express in both a written and oral book report. Then she has learned to think for and express herself and her own thoughts.

Working in risk management for businesses and professionals, my days involve a lot of reading of policy forms. That huge stack of papers they give you when buy, say, auto insurance. Not the page that shows your coverage limits (commonly called or declarations page) but all the stuff after it, that is a legally binding contract you paid money to sign. Consider court documents and the language of laws. Reading a court filing yesterday, I hit a word I did not know. I have 4 print dictionaries I consult for such things. The word was in none of them and I could not find much online either. I was outraged.

I consider the work of promoting literacy to include the right to readability of “binding written agreements.” Things like state and federal law, how voting works, court papers and explanations of rights and lead options, credit card and bank agreements and capitalization and interest practices, student loan education.

The list goes on. My point is: there are ways language can be used to obfuscate instead of illuminate. The less we read the more likely we are to not even notice it. That is not a fair game; everyone deserves equity.

Pretty is pretension? Deep Dictionary Disambiguation

Pretty is a prevarication aimed to increase one’s prestige?

A pretty face is a pretentious face?

Pretty is pretension?

Beauty is.

PRETTY (Source:OED Concise dic.)

1. attractive in a delicate way without being truly beautiful.

2. used ironically to express displeasure.

– fairly

– trinket

– (used condescendingly) an attractive person.

*so, pretty is not a compliment… huh.

see also: pretext ; pretense/pretence ; pretend ; pretension ; pretentious ; prevaricate ; prima facie

Consider the convergence of these three words with one another.

Still Life With Woodpecker. Tom Robbins. 1980

America is full of metaphysical outlaws.

Inessential insanities get one in trouble with oneself.

Essential insanities get one in trouble with others.

It’s always preferable to be in trouble with others.

In fact, it may be essential.

Tunnelvision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interests. Tunnelvision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego.

Equality is not in regarding things similarly.

Equality is regarding things differently.

People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve.

Watch “I Gotta Try You Girl” on YouTube

Favorite bluesman.

Ma’Kheru: The Word of Truth (from The I Ching)

Ma’Kheru (or Maat).

The superior man abides in his room.

If his words are well spoken, he meets with assent at a distance of more than a thousand miles. How much more then from near by!

If the superior man abides in his room and his words are not well spoken, he meets with contradiction at a distance of more than a thousand miles. How much more then from near by!

Words go forth from one’s own person and exert their influence on men… Must one not, then, be cautious? –

The I Ching 15

The One and the Many,  Isaiah Berlin 2007

One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the alters of the great historical ideals – the belief that somewhere, in the past or future, in divine revelation or in the mind of the individual thinker, in pronouncements of history or science or in a simple heart, there is a final solution.

If, as l believe, the ends of men are many and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, than possibility of conflict can never wholly be eliminated from either personal or social human life.

Choosing between absolute claims is the inescapable characteristic of thre human condition.

 

 

Center homo sapien (free write)

Effie, the homo sapien, happened into the role of organic lynchpin in the clockwork garden of Jack’s dad. She, alongside innumerable others before, have and will be the particle held in the center of the spherical orbit of all the little human particles in existence; like a pin passed through the end of an axle to keep a wheel in position. Neither Effie nor the others were inherently special, chosen, or different; it was because they were there at the right place and the right time. Any particle could have ended up in the center, but only one particle would.

Now, once you are in the center, you are committed for a long-haul—there is no stopping the ride historically. If the particle in the center ceases to be in the center, acting as a pin holding wheel to axle, then the orbit of all the particles has been altered because the center has not held.

Imagine the universe as a dreidel. Upon being spun, it initially maintains near-perfect, balanced rotation about its axis; but, as the rotational velocity decreases, the dreidel starts spinning a little looser and then a little looser, climaxing in a great wallowing that quickly resolves itself to stillness.

So if Effie kept center, the world would keep turning; the universe keep expanding then contracting. Easy breezy style.

That a special spatial situation existed in the universe was not altogether unknown, but was kept quite hush hush. About 95% of all human particles were unawares of any such phenomenon like the one above described. Making the particulars public, it was assumed, would spawn terrorist attacks, chemical warfare, cronyism, and all other manners of manipulation that were intent upon bumping the human lynchpin out of the middle. No one wanted to take the lynchpin’s spot but acted on account of (a) they could not understand the impersonal, non-special truth that no one is ‘picked’ to be the center, no one is unworthy, or (b) they just wanted to tear the world up.

Knowledge of the esoteric variety may be seemingly spurious or craven, but appearance is not always indicative of insides. The special knowledge certain occult-ish groups harbor is not superficial at all. The problem was that most practitioners had no idea how to apply this knowledge to their benefit, let alone how to use this knowledge without it being at the expense of an unaffiliated innocent. The power of those ancient precepts could no longer be fathomed for homo sapiens had forgotten what power is.

Power is the ability to redirect external phenomena at will: that is, to be the more forceful of two objects colliding in order that you continue on in your initial direction, while re-routing the direction of the other object away from its initial vector.

This and nothing less or more is power.

Nothing more than this exists.

Since the lynchpin homo sapien, Effie, is itself no different in composition from all other homo sapien particles, it could, theoretically, be subject to the force of a hypothetical juggernaut particle that delivers a blow of such momentum and force that it rips her from the center.

Lucid: a fuzzy word (disambiguation with 3 dics.)

LUCID broadly reduces to the three senses below. The Latin roots of ‘lucid’ signify: bright/shine/light.

1: mentally sane;

2: clear; easy to understand

3: giving forth light; shining; bright; luminous

(lucid dreaming is only given as a subsense in 1 dic.)

LUCIFER (the entry immedately following ‘lucid’ in all dics.) The correspondence is ‘light’ and/or ‘shining.’

Latin roots = light bringing/light bearing

1: morning star = the planet Venus when it rises in the morning

2: Satan; Prince of Darkness; Devil

3: match for striking a light

(Luciferous = emitting light)

UNLUCID = especially unintelligent, obscure

Lucidity relates to a clearness, soundness, even transparent, but these meanings are created by virtue of “light shining in.”

In ‘unlucid’, I presume there is a lack of light, perhaps this is “the darkness that obscures.”

LUCIFER is allegorical device meant to elucidate some estoteric or hermetic principle?

Love and Do What Thou Will. St. Augustine

Every man and every woman is a star.

Every number is infinite; there is no difference.

In the sphere I am everywhere the center, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found.

I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle.

Alabam

Alabama is strange and gothically beautiful. A charming place to encounter, but a contentious place to live. At least for me. So I left, but do like remembering.

The Gulf of Mexico is only a few hours away. Summer vacations at Destin or Pensacola Beach. The sand there is soft and fine and white. The gulf waters are lighter and vibrant like the Carribean waters southward. This contrasts with the deep blue, navy color characteristic of the Atlantic on the East Coast as well as the Pacific Ocean on the westcoast.

We’d invite our neighbors, the entire Cole family. Sadie and I were the same age-specifically, being in that thrilling 13-17 yr old range, where you are so excited to be seen and see. People were there year round because it was the cheapest family get away going, often referred to as the Redneck Riviera. My hair likes to curl in general. But, with salty water, hot breezes and 95% humdity, my hair would curl the way I wished it would everyday. Strong memories of walking the beach, feeling my hair blow in the coastal breeze, and being thrilled about how glamorous I surely looked.

The beach was good, you could be and act like yourself. Tuscaloosa required a bit more work. Sadie’s family did not “have a church” and my family, we were lower middle-class transplants upon arrival. There were the rich folks and there were the really poor folks, but not a lot in between.

Tuscaloosa is the center of high society for the state. Population just shy of 80,000. I remember hellacious springs that brought in the Azalea bush season. A staple of manicured landscapes. Ours were pink.

My Mom loved dogwood trees. They bloom quickly and lose their petals even quicker. The dogwood flower is symbolic of Christ’s crucifixtion (most everything in Alabama ends up being about Jesus though), accounting for much of their local popularity. We planted one when my grandmother died.

The Black Warrior river running alongside the heart of Tuscaloosa.

This historic trellis bridge on Black Warrior river demarks Tuscaloosa from Northport. Barges and tug boats frequent the water. There is a 3 mile river walk nestled into the shore of the river, and the University of Alabama is across the street. When classes are in sessions, students traditionally setup hammocks between two trees and study there. UA is a football, party, society schmooze school for the elite. There is an old joke that men attend the university to get an MBA degree (Master of Business Admin) while women attend to pursue their MRS degree (find a husband, get married) and so from Miss to Mrs. Gross, right? That is why this gal prefers to use no title before Casey, but when pushed, I always go with Ms. Just for mystery, ya know!

Best restaurant in the state. They do ribs with white bread. That is all. But the way they do it makes anything else seem unnecessary.

This is the University of Alabama.

This is the university during any given home football game.

Too many people for me, but they seem to have a real good time.

This was the safe place for punks, goths, and plain ole’ rock n’ roll animals like me.

Outside of Egan’s, it seemed masks got melted on faces and gender roles became horrific molds to be fit.

Tuscaloosa society gals, begin preparing in high school with debutante balls, antebellum societies, and finally culminating into rushing a sorority and hoping they let you in. Rock n’ roll animals like me, avoided the feck out of these parades.

Spent a lot of time in this theatre. Remains my favorite theatre to this day.

This is Moundville. The peoples who built the land up so and lived here, were one of the most complex civilizations of their time. I majored in Anthropology, so I spent summers doing archeaology fieldwork for class credit. Totally not as romantic as it might sound, but who doesn’t like digging around in the dirt from time to time.

Tuscaloosa gets dozens of tornadoes every spring. The twister in this picture resulted in one of the most expensive (to rebuild) disasters in US history, following right behind the hurricane damage.

After shot below.

Watch “steely dan – show biz kids” on YouTube

https://youtu.be/uDMGHiMXV4A

Great guitar slidework.

And it’s Steely Dan. You know what inspired the band name, right?

Watch “The Kinks – Mr. Churchill Says” on YouTube

Ah, concept albums about world wars. Solid, heavy art stuff.

Featuring wails of klaxon and surprising amounts of historical context.

We gotta save our tin and all the garden gates and empty cans are gonna make us win…

Watch “Lou Reed – Sweet Jane from Rock n Roll Animal” on YouTube

dont own rights, but pay homage.

Not the usual version that gets play time

What an effing slick front man.

Watch “A Day In The Life” on YouTube

Don’t own rights, but pay homage

A dreamy song in multiple movements for a dreamy grey Seattle Sunday

Dream of Troubadours

I dream troubadours whisper Provencal words against my neck.

An apothegm: my legs will not stop shaking.

An aphorism: about that which one does not know, one might do best by remaining silent.

Breathe, hold it in and hold in stillness, then release.

Prudence and patience,

my prowess has power adapted to the need.

I work in mystery-the intersection of suspense and anticipation in a heavily muted silence.

Decorously discreet both in dire straits and in heedlessness.

My obliging pruriency sure hopes he pries.

On being mothlike

There’s a light,

There’s a light

I’m a moth,

And there’s a goddamn light.

DIZZY—

HOT——

…….———

I’m a moth,

There’s a light, there’s a light,

There’s a goddamn light

Quote from Tao te Ching

Thirty spokes will converge

in the hub of a wheel;

But the use of the cart

will depend on the part

of the hub that is void.

So advantage is had

from whatever is there;

But usefulness rises

from whatever is not.

When the Sky Shattered

At that moment, the sky fell.

Like the vibrations from her hand clap overcame the sky’s structure. Cracking like a punched mirror, but silently. Little fissures and crevices branched like spiderwebs and radiated outward, allowing bits of an ultra-violet, purple color to seep through from behind.

As pieces of the blue sky separated, they slid down the sides of the earth, like a reverse snow globe, following the earth’s curvature, down and around until all that was left was a new purple sky.