After Us the Deluge – Who are They?

They lie soaking in the front lawn, backyard, strewn about the pasture.  Once alive and vibrant with hope and full of fanciful mystery, these formerly living must now be let go.  Commemorated.  Buried.  It would be easier if I could take responsibility for their demise.  Punish myself and be done with it.  But I am only responsible for their creation, nurturing and neglect.  I put each of them in harms ways by wanting them to accompany me through life.  Having a fascinating companion makes your time fly.  Being with someone who is always wanting to do things that scare the hell out of you makes the emotions soar.  Observing and absorbing stirring emotions so intense and so raw and so genuine reminds one that they are – sometimes reluctantly – alive.  Now I smell death in my creations.

Loss hollows me out – have no doubt.  My past lives swell before me.  But having something to lose at least puts me ahead of having nothing at all.  The false starts and missteps and naivete that infected the young me diminished, slowly, as hope became more strategic and sentiments cool with age.  The wise who watch over me never wanted to be discovered, but, also, never want to be abandoned.  For it is the lack of knowing everything that keeps me seeking to want some select things.  It is my believing without seeing that ultimately leads me to a place where every representation of those things I thought were important lie about me and wait to be disposed of.  Now I see death in my past lives.

Pursuing something to find a thing that matters is a way of escaping yourself.  It might start out as a person, next it may be an achievement, followed by occupation, family, and or isolation.  These pursuits only understand win lose in their immediacy but they are steps up and towards oneself.  The events of life hold value diametrically.  Winnings are quickly dissipated and leave little value for life.  Losing often has no immediate reward but pays a life long dividend.  The wise who I spoke of earlier are there to help but prefer to remain anonymous.   Now I hear wisdom in my silent past.

Once you know it all, you begin on the path to learning nothing.  When you conclude that those who trust you are suckers, you begin on the path to losing their trust.  If you believe everyone is out to get you, you begin on the path to getting nothing from anyone.  Each of us will eventually take the path of least resistance.  Unless we have the knowledge to know the pain of alternate paths, we will repeat our mistaken travels.  The Wise could give us this wisdom at birth but they choose for us to do it the hard way.  They could tell us that every ascent has a descent in its future and every descent has an ascent in its future – but they don’t.  They could tell us that every harvest – good or bad – begins in the dead season of winter when no activity is taking place.  The thoughts in this winter of events manifest in the spring planting of seeds of endeavor.  Those nurtured or neglected planting soon must endure the scintillating heat of summer with deluge and disease.  The surviving crop of this season of man matures and goes to harvest and then to the scales.  One must acknowledge that the cycle begins again with the winter.  Now I feel the dead season in my beckoning future.

 

Feelings After the Flood, May 30, 2016

I feel nothing.  However, when someone talks to me about the loss or shows care in words and more so in deeds, I lose my composure.  Yes, it is a terrible loss.  No, it’s not the end of the world.  Maybe it’s time to make a change in direction.  I thought Sawmyl Synders Farm would be my life’s work.  I thought I could die in the field with my expanding animal charge and a lovable livestock guardian dog named Syndee.  But now…not.  I believed it would never be possible to flood like this and so I built and expanded and dreamed without limitation.  Now that I know, I will not build anymore, nor will I expand this reality.  And as for dreams…

Maybe this was as good as it could get.  Thirty dozen eggs a week for sale.  Three goats that turned into a hobby and not a business.  One Thanksgiving and one Christmas with my own homegrown turkeys for a meal.  A large investment on a small property with, now, no future.  Now, no hope.  Now, no next.  At the age of 67 I am not prepared to put more money and years into something that may be carried away on fast brown water.  With good health, bad luck and a mentality that defies logic at every opportunity, I wish to do something but something that can be done by me.  Something that will last me the rest of my conscious life.  Some day, I’ll find a way, to make my natural tendencies pay;}  Sublimation?

But what of the others?  Tita Vee?  Friends and Neighbors?  Saint Isidore?  JC/PCS/Ray/Fran?  They will be there and remain in my life but in another wonderful relationship.  Of course, for Vee, it will surely be enhanced.  All my children, of course, they are the world, along with their children.  What do you think Mother Nature is thinking about me now?

Mother Nature does her thing and you don’t want to get in her way.  Her regard for mankind appears to be as apathetic as my apparent regard for this loss.  The fateful thing about her, Mother Nature, is that she only speaks to you in the present.  As for the past, there is no discussing it with her, and as for the future, she expects that you remember the past.  But she will talk to you now.  She will tell you that every vulnerability will eventually be tested and every measure of her is merely a guess at her strength and predictability.  Only when you sit in your pit of ashes – stripped of everything – can you imagine what homage she requires.  But there is no payment, other than respect, that she will accept.  The ancient idea of making sacrifices to Nature to persuade her to spare you, now makes so much sense to a modern man scarred by her hand.  That one must bring the firstlings of his flock and their fat portions and give it to Mother Nature out of regard, this I would do – if there were any left.

Whatever path I take, it must be one which expresses regard for Mother Nature for the rest of my life.  That path may be in a mode that is far removed from contact with her but a mode that brings others closer to her.  She has tried to teach us, all of us, that every event will eventually take the path of least resistance.  I must find that path for myself for my remaining years.  Every ascent has a descent in its future, and this flood is the descent for me now.  I must ascend on a path I can better control.  A path with an ascent that I am more naturally adapted.  I must evaluate my life and its seasons and identify where I am.  In what season of my life am I now?  In what season of my retirement am I now?  In what season of my understanding am I now?

The Tao: Seeing Path, Polarity and Pattern in Today’s Events

The Tao of Power is a translation of Laozi’s Chinese epic Tao Te Ching into English by an exceptional woman whose nom de plume is R.L. Wing.  The verses I have chosen here are relevant to what I consider the basics of The Tao: Path, Polarity, Pattern.  What I hope to do here is relate selected current events to these three fundamental principals.

Path:

Translation: When a country is divided: fields are overgrown, stores are empty, clothes are extravagant, sharp swords are worn, food and drink are excessive, wealth and treasures are hoarded.

Thoughts:

Is the controversy over the Second Amendment an issue of freedom or division with regard to the need for each citizen to wear a sharp sword?

Is our crumbling infrastructure a symbol of “fields overgrown”?

Are the empty calories sold cheaply and abundantly an example of “stores are empty” yet food and drink are excessive?

Are the cheap textiles made by exported slave labor why we have extravagant and excessive clothing?

Illegal immigrants and excessive crimes point to poverty in a country of wealth and treasure being hoarded in a country of plenty, is this a fair assessment?

 

Commentary: The path of least resistance is level and even, but for many the bypaths are tempting.

 

Translation: Plan the difficult when it is easy.  Handle the big when it is still small.

Thoughts:

Could gun violence be better controlled if gun control had been attempted long ago?

Would immigration be less of an issue if NAFTA and WTO had been uninitiated and global corporations had been less profitable?

Commentary: Just as a river finds its way through a valley of boulders, Evolved individuals work their way around areas of resistance, knowing they will ultimately wear them down.

 

Polarity:

Translation: Evolved individuals produce but do not possess. Act without expectations.  Succeed without taking credit.

Is it possible to benefit from one’s productivity without possessing it?

What are the results of expecting nothing from anyone versus equitable reciprocity?

Can one succeed in today’s work force without taking credit?

Translation: When something increases something else decreases.

Is there such a thing as win/win?  Lose/lose? No fault?  Or is everything win/lose, biggest loser and your fault?

Commentary: All things are interconnected and interdependent and from this concept comes the behavior of polarity.

Pattern:

Translation: What is small becomes attainable.

Can a situation that exceeds one’s capacity to understand it become too big to control?

Do things that are out of balance or out of harmony become entities with their own momentum?

Commentary: The Taoist goal is to control cause and effect by transcending it through balance and harmony with the environment.

Three Lurid Pictures – Continued 1

If I were to only tell you that the extract, “Three Lurid Pictures”, was a characterization of three prominent people associated with the French Revolution, you might guess, incorrectly, who they might be.  When I told you that the three were Robespierre, Dr. Guillotin and Honore Mirabeau, you might guess, incorrectly, that attention and volume of the eight pages would be paid to the aforementioned in the order I mentioned them.  And you (probably), like me, being American, having never learned French history, while they (the French) having never forgot it, could not understand why these three and why write about the apparent least of these firstly and prominently (6 of 8 pages are dedicated exclusively to Mirabeau).  In order for me to bring you, dear reader, up to my frail understanding of this subject, I’ll have to first speak of James Russell Lowell’s characterization of Thomas Carlyle.  Next, I need to give his and my comparison of Carlyle to Shakespeare.  And finally, I’ll select certain of Carlyle more histrionic portrayals of Mirabeau for in depth analysis.  Shall we?

James Russell Lowell finds Thomas Carlyle both original (kaleidoscopic, brilliant, colorful) and thoroughly absent of any new original ideas in his later works.  Carlyle’s condemnations and ridicule of shortcomings are softened by humorous sympathy and acknowledgement of mortal frailty.  Lowell says, in fact, that the author’s type of humor runs and ends, as it must, into humor first cousin, cynicism (my wording here).  J.R.L. continues, saying, “There are no half-tints, no gradations (in his verbal portraits of powerful and historic men and women).  Carlyle’s historic compositions are wonderful prose-poems and names like Voltaire, Shakespeare, Thackeray and Homer are mentioned.

Lowell writes that one must go back to Shakespeare to find a rival to Carlyle in characterization and caricature.  Once the scales are set up, our critic looks at specific attributes of both Carlyle and the Bard.  Where Shakespeare portrays the ordinary strikingly, Carlyle examines the exceptional with exaggeration.  Shaky expounds the graces of Nature and the evolution of character, where as Carlyle gifts his characters with full detailed representation, firstly factual, then emboldened.  William Shakespeare knows the psychology of man most probably better than any practitioner today, while as Carlyle conducts a physical exam from face to follicle, from finances to feces.  With the gift of song, Lowell goes on, Carlyle’s prose-poems might sail off from Shakespeare’s lake to the epic oceans of Homer.

to be continued…Mirabeau summation here next

 

Three Lurid Pictures – Thomas Carlyle…some thoughts.

I was about to completely put down my 1880 vintage “Studies in English Literature” by Thomas Swinton when I came across an excerpt from “The French Revolution: A History”, by Thomas Carlyle.  The excerpt, ‘Three Lurid Pictures’, at once, seemed to be more Shakespeare than Gibbon, more rage than rational.  It was irresistible. Immediately, I had to get some background so that I could follow the sundry historical references he made throughout the eight fun pages.  I read about the Louis’, XIV, XV, and XVI.  The quotes attributed to their reigns are repeated to this day, even though those quotes are most probably inappropriately attributed.  In any case, I got the idea of imagining those same quotes being appropriately applied in modern times to the last two American presidential administrations and the next future one.  Here we go…

Around 1751, King Louis XIV brought France to its peak of absolute power and his words “L’etat c’est moi” express the spirit of a rule in which the king held all political authority.  His absolutism brought him into conflict with the Huguenots and the papacy, with damaging repercussions (quoted from HyperHistory.Com).   Around 2006, President George Bush sharply defended Donald Rumsfeld…, saying the embattled Pentagon chief is doing a “fine job” despite calls for his resignation from six retired military generals.  Continuing, the president was quoted as saying, “I hear the voices (indeed!), and I read the front page, and I know the speculation.  But I’m the decider…”.  I can only imagine Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld mumbling “Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.  Don’t blame the boss. He has enough problems deciding.  As for me, I am the State”.

Around 1774, King Louis XV’s decisions had damaged the power of France, weakened the treasury, discredited the absolute monarchy, and made it more vulnerable to distrust and destruction, as happened in the French Revolution which broke out 15 years after his death. “Après nous le déluge”  is a French expression, attributed to Marquise de Pompadour, the lover of the King of France.  The expression has two possible meanings: ‘After us, the deluge will come,’ asserting that if the revolution ended his reign, the nation would be plunged into chaos; or ‘After us, let the deluge come,’ implying “I don’t care what happens after I’m gone.”  Around 2016, President Obama gave an incredible, hilarious speech at the 2016 White House Correspondents Dinner.  At the end he dropped the mic and walked out telling the audience, “yeah, you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone!”   I can only imagine First Lady Michelle Obama mumbling “I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as ‘us’ and ‘them’…  But for me…after us, the deluge”.

Around May 9, 2016, a reporter asked the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, what he would do to reduce the deficit. Trump replied, “We’ll just print money…”.  One might have speculated that a move like this would devalue the poverty wages of the already near starving poor.  I can only imagine the presumptive First Lady Melania Trump mumbling, “Nothing lasts forever, so we live it up, drink it down, laugh it off, take chances, and never have regrets. Because at one point everything we do is exactly what we wanted.  And as for ‘them’… Let them eat cake”.

I hear the past again, in every present quote.

I see history repeated each time we take a vote.

The coming of a state of one,

The deluge starts to crest,

This cake for rich it weighs a ton,

It will not float the rest.

Tao Te Ching Verse 22 – Following the Pattern

I picked this verse because its number, 22, coincides with the week of the year that I next need to supply questions for our Pub Theology group.  Interestingly, “Pattern” is one of the themes I like to pursue when communicating my take on the Tao.  Here, I will select from R.L. Wing’s translation and commentary from her book, The Tao of Power.

Evolved Individuals…regard the world as their Pattern (paraphrased).  Look for the pattern of nature in the pattern of man’s behavior.  Once one has become exceedingly crooked, the only coarse is to straighten.  When the depths of indulgence become filled, emptiness follows and self might be found.  For the ages, those who sought not to display, define, make claims or boast are forever illuminated, distinguished, credited and advanced.  They do not compete and so the world cannot compete with them.  To evolve one’s outer countenance, turn within.

Wing writes that change is governed by cause and effect.  Cause and effect are transcended through balance and harmony with the environment.  At this point, I will insert my own interpretation of “Pattern” and try to match it up with what Ms. Wing is saying.  I view the Pattern of all events as seasons of the calendar.  All activity begins in the “dead season” of winter, the important time prior to actual action.  This is the time for balance and harmony to be contemplated before launching oneself into the foray of activity in the Spring, where one’s events begin to grow.  The elements and interruptions of this second season cannot be known in the first, but they can be prepared for.

Let not one goal cost you all that you have attained up to the Spring.  Balance the desire for your future with the weight of the past.  See that the harmony you have attained and aspire to exists in the goals you wish to attain and aspire to the seeds you are gathering for planting.  Those plantings must persevere and progress through the fire and deluge of the next season, Summer, which seems to seek your development but never in a painless and obvious way.  The four seasons are like a set of toll bridges on a single path.  Not one can be skipped to without paying the toll of the one before.  Not one cares whether you are prepared to pay the toll, so one should be prepared to pay.  The end that comes before the next beginning is the Fall Harvest.  Have no doubt, even if there is nothing to thrash, that is something.  One’s Harvest, while viewed as great or small, is always something.  It is the stuff one takes with when the dead season again beckons and encourages contemplation.

Pub Theology – Is it a waste of time?

Churches are trying to stave off decline.  The young are defying tradition and seem to find near religion in low humor and getting high, especially on beer.  Is Pub Theology a simple solution to a complex problem or just simple?  Brian Berghoef, author of “Pub Theology: Beer, Conversation and God”, explores these and similar questions in a Huffington Post blog inappropriately (but sensationally) titled, “Pub Theology Is a Waste of Time”.

Why talk when you can do?  With all that needs to be done in this world, why sit and consume alcohol when you could be out saving the world.  Instead, you sit on your considerable arse and talk about THEM.  The problem as you see it.  Well, some of those attendees ARE doing something about THEM.  If you’re only paying attention to various conversations, sidebar conversations, and event rants you might miss the point.  Genuine words from selfless people serving humanity joyfully.  You may be talking over them.  You may be looking down at their apparent lack of intellect.  If you unaware of these people in your presence at PT, you are missing out on the most important part.  The part that matters.

The one thing that you can be sure of is that a beer fest/feast put on by christian organization will attract more Buddhists, atheists, Jews and “free-thinkers” who show up to fill the twelve chairs you arranged around three tables in a small tavern on a single Tuesday night to attract new church folk.  Though the conversations may resemble the Tower of Babel at one table and a graduate lecture at another and a comedy workshop at still another, something is happening.  While some people never return, some always return, and others connect or conclude or are convinced of something.

Something is happening when the Questions of the Night are lost when the group tangents take flight.  Nothing is happening that does not have potential for group or individual reflection and consideration.  All that is happening can perhaps affect the quiet person beside you or the outspoken colleague across the slightly slippery and snack crowded surface.  All walks of life walk into this scene and each has the possibility of staying.  Every unique personality that peeks through the metaphorical curtains of Pub Theology has something to leave and may find something to take.  Talking about similar interests and diverse opinions are the solution to dissension in this divided world if each and every participant will commit to a single act: Listen.

Active listening and respectful acceptance are the doing that takes place in Pub Theology and may lead a more fully engaged individual doing, whether it be with the sponsoring church or not.  The metaphor of moist clay may be used here.  What is the harm of change triggered by beer and conversation?  Change is good when it brings people out of their shell and into the light, whatever that light is.  Intentions are important.  One may start attending PT because of stark isolation and find bountiful and good company.  Another might seek to school the silly Christians on their fallacious notions and open their own beliefs to wider understanding, capacity and reverence.

The contemplation after the event complements the noise that has just dissipated from one’s ears.  The patience and love that is carried in by one person can surely leave with another sincere soul.  No specific achievement may be reached in a single visit.  A seeker may have experience many events glean from each one.  However, the potential is there for real and renewed belief in others and in spirit and in oneself.  None of it should taken lightly and all of it can be taken with thee.

For greater benefit there must be greater discipline.  Getting more out Pub Theology means spending time contemplating it, whether that be prayer, external discussion, or even blogging.  Even though there always needs to be something it it for me, I should never forget about THEM.  Not the THEM many of us blame in our circuitous commentary on PT questions but the them who also came looking for something and listening for genuine conversation.

Stereotypes are at the greatest risk at Pub Theology because they are all seated about you and they resist, you will find, category.  The best insight you will have is seeing the world through the eyes of the outcast, the vilified and the forgotten.  What is sacred to them probably isn’t sacred to you but will be able to understand it for the first time because you listened.  Every prejudice has a story and each story has moral when heartfelt beliefs fly from another’s lips and fall on soft ears.

Something is happening in those taverns.  No one attends without intention.  We know their are barriers that keep us from others, be it churches or family members or races.  These barriers can fall and a community can be buoyed just as Pub Theology groups around the world are lifting a pint and raising self-awareness.

Tao Te Ching Verse 2 – Using Polarity

R.L. Wing writes the line “They produce but do not possess…”.  I feel this attitude can be freeing for those of us who react to both success and failure in ways that set up exhilaration and depression.  To be able to function and produce and move on is better than assigning labels and valuating the things we do.  The best laid plans and the vagaries of luck are not staples for our well being, they are detours from it.  Letting fate’s hand cloud or blind our reality puts someone or something else in charge.  It is better to feel blessed with all of life’s lessons than to search through our day, throwing out the distasteful and challenging moments while still trying to cling to those that bring us temporary good fortune.

In Wing’s commentary on this verse, he speaks clearly about polarity in cliched physics terms: every action has its complementary reaction.  Each of us who rides the rocket of rapture with success needs to always remember that the artificial fuel will soon burn out and a crash comes just as quickly as the sudden launch.  Every ascent has a descent in its future.  That being said, the opposite is also true.

Every descent has an ascent its future.  Things can only get so bad before they get better.  If there is a top, there is surely a bottom.  One can control one’s environment, according to R.L., by avoiding extremes.  Extremes of good are even frowned upon.  Possession of one’s ideas and work is also a path that will take one, eventually, down.  Great expectations are a burden one does not need.  Nature gives credit to those who never try to take it and therefore, they always have it.

Egg Incubation Humidity

The Brinsea company’s incubation instructions are very informative on every aspect of the incubation process.  Following are some of the things I learned.

The egg needs to lose between 13% to 15% between the time of laying and pipping.

There are two guides that help indicate correct humidity:

  1. The air cell increases as incubation proceeds.  To see this you should candle the eggs.
  2. The other indicator is weight loss.

There are two controllable factors that influence humidity:

  1. The amount of water surface area.
  2. The amount of fresh air that that the incubator draws in.

After the Ice by Paul Crenshaw – a review

There are few days in each of our lives that would be clearly remembered if it weren’t for the startling events of that day.  Ice, bright sun, dirty rivulets washing across the road would all blend with another day such as it, except for an event that will never leave one’s mind’s eye.

Paul Crenshaw tells the story of a family tragedy.  A little boy murdered by his step-father.  An endless personal journey for him, where emotions and sentiments speed up at times with rage and at other times slow to allow a glimpse of compassion or forgiveness but without stopping to let them into the mental mirage.  The author collected newspaper articles and microfilm reels in an attempt to review and understand what happened in those haunting days many years ago.  With courage that was suppressed for sometime by trepidation, Paul let the information sit for a long while before opening up the cans.

The little boy, a nephew of 18 months, died from child abuse.  The step-father was convicted of first-degree murder.  The author speaks of having a place within himself deeper than sadness as he reviews the material, it seems he is talking about some kind of wished for mental mechanism that allows him to remember and evaluate but that holds his simple sentiments in check, keeping them from careening to a place where there will be a loss of emotional control.  Images of the murderer and the murdered do not go away.  Images, detailed images, remain and emote and haunt and never quite leave one’s mind’s eye.

The memory of the day of the funeral once again introduced the existence and metaphor of ice.  A bleary memory of the funeral, an eager escape from a stifling house where men spoke of violence, and the writer’s aimless walk away into the woods, away from the sounds that accompany death, into the soothing cold.  Freezing air, a fickle air confused of its role of either rain or snow, and the early dark that served as a companion to thoughts which required no light.  His reluctant return was respected by solemn silence, except for the ice on the leaves which seemed to accompany him to the misted glow of his grandmother’s house porch light.

Memories of the nephew’s life before death are filled with snippets of the real and fill in the blank imaginaries which help to carve continuity for Paul’s imaginings.  Having never been in the house where the boy was murdered, a detailed layout of the inside of the house is imagined.   Not knowing the precise details of what happened on that fateful day, a scenario is painted with precision.  Images of overgrown, neglected, and empty pepper the section where the imagination takes over for the missing bits.

The most poignant piece for me is when the author tells of his own remarkable family event of consequence.  His young daughter is thought to have a deformed skull.  Panic and fear set in for both parents.  Tests are done and trepidation rises.  However, as it is for so many soap-operatic occurrences in today’s modern medicine, this was a false alarm.   Their daughter’s skull was normal.  The doctor’s skull is the one that needed examining.   The point he makes here is that after this near tragic event, which turned out OK, he has no memory of what kind of day it was, how bright the snow was, how the mud mingled with the rivulets.

Memories and imaginings both strain to have another constraint added.  Why couldn’t there be a way for fond memories of both the murdered and murderer be kept separate from the events that came after?  Why can’t forgiveness intervene and allow for peaceful remembering and silent forgetting?  Why can’t sense be made out of the senseless as opposed to murder invading the laughter of a Thanksgiving day?  The events watched and waved at fail to foretell the future.

The author’s father has not spoken his grandson’s name since.  Sometimes the two of them would stand together late at night in silence, staring into their thoughts, into whatever dreams they could not handle.  The family does not mention the grandson’s name.  The grave site is unknown to Paul.  He would visit that place but he fears it would be for his own comfort and that saddens him about himself.  The haunting continues in his own life with his own daughters.  He stands in silence in their bedrooms as they sleep.  He is there in the morning when his wife gets up.  He cannot explain.

His imagination returns to the step-father.  How did they pick him up and put him in prison?  How did the arrival and days after go?  Sometimes the thoughts are tinged with sympathy if not forgiveness.  Other times they are painted red, with vengeance in mind, and the possibilities of being incarcerated with violent men.  Each frame of this mind clip takes place on a cold day.

He contrasts his dour imaginings with those brighter as he writes about his adult family life.  The closeness of his parents to them emotionally and the love for their own daughters.  As he starts to flick through a box of photos, it’s not clear, at first, whether they are of the lost nephew.  It turns out to be of his own young girls and his reflections.  Somehow he concludes that he is less wise as the years go past.

The author Paul Crenshaw closes with foreboding moments.  First the imagined crying of the nephew in the house where he was to die.  Then a real life moment in a grocery store where Paul worked and the step-father and nephew came in.  The little boy was crying until Paul picked him up.  He returned to crying when handed back to the step-father.  The young man, though not expressing it, indicates that he may feel guilty that he did not foresee the events that would take place a few months hence.