Carpe Diem New Beginnings + Haiku My Heart: Without Beginning

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all begins somewhere

when one is in the middle

beginning is lost

~cie~

Tan Renga Challenge 2019: Day 12: Miscanthus Bud

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the Dutchmen, too,

kneel before His Lordship --

spring under His reign.

inevitable forces

to which all must bow someday

by my new banana plant

the first sign of something I loathe --

a miscanthus bud!

all things must have their season

even those things undesired

another year is gone

a traveler's shade on my head,

straw sandals at my feet

straw soon replaced by leather

weatherproof boots are a must

now then, let's go out

to enjoy the snow ... until

I slip and fall!

not such a big deal in youth

in old age a bone may break

Basho & Cie

Notes:

All Hokku stanzas were created by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694). All Ageku (closing) stanzas were written by me.

I would like to dedicate this set of poems to my mother's and my late father's friend Richard, who passed away yesterday from complications stemming from ALS. I hope that one day a cure is found for this terrible, debilitating disease.

NaPoWriMo 2019 Day 30 + Poems in April 2019 Day 30: Thank You Jimi

Copyright Nico van der Stam

I want to thank you

For some much-needed wisdom

Across many years

~Cie~

Notes:

I watched the Jimi Hendrix documentary, Voodoo Child, this evening. 

I didn't really become a Jimi Hendrix fan until I was in my teens. He died when I was only five years old. I saw a documentary about him when I was eighteen or nineteen, and it was good, but this documentary reveals more of his personal thoughts. He was brilliant and he left a lot of wisdom for the world. 

The wisdom he imparted to me today is to stop looking for adulation and approval from others. This is something that I've struggled with my entire life.

When asked how it felt to receive so many compliments about his work, Jimi said that he really didn't care about compliments, in fact, he found that they distracted him from what was important: creation.

I think that's what it really means to be secure in oneself. Not so much thinking that one is flawless, but to be able to see the worth of one's goals and actions regardless of the opinions of the masses. 

Lots of views and comments stroke the needy ego of the insecure and wounded child that remains within the crusty, curmudgeonly, and likely not at all tasty exterior shell which houses my soul. 

This becomes a distraction to the creator. I start wanting to please my visitors rather than express myself through my words.

Next time I get stuck in that unharmonious groove, I need to remember Jimi's wise thoughts on the matter.

I will always be a fan of Jimi Hendrix the musician. 

Perhaps most people won't understand this, but that doesn't matter.

I also appreciate Jimi Hendrix the philosopher, and I'm grateful for the wisdom and works that he left behind.

(Don't move: this has been a Haibun!)

NaPoWriMo 2019: What's Done is Done

Image by Peter H from Pixabay

There is not

A single thing that

Can be done

To change then

We can only change today

We only live now

~Cie~

30 Days of Haiga 2017 Day 23 + OctPoWriMo 2017 Day 8: Box of Truth

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Words and text manipulation by The Real Cie

30 Days of Haiga 2017: Day 16: Crushed to Dust

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Verse by Gem Moondreamer and The Real Cie

Text manipulation by The Real Cie

Broken Heroes

Nicolo Lothario

The prompt from Prompts Galore asks us to "write about coming to the realization that your heroes are only human."

Several times the realization has been one of these: guy seems like the perfect catch. He's married with kids, seems like a great husband and father, oh, if only I could find someone like...

Great googly moogly! So sorry, Spouse of Cheating Dog. Turns out that instead of being such a good guy after all, he's a rampant womanizer. Not going to name names, but I've been sorely disappointed by having perceived no few of these cads as heroes in the field of romance and can only count my blessings that I wasn't the poor fool who ended up with them. Not being pretty does have its perks. Guys like this ignore the existence of women who look like me.

Circa 1973



My father actually was one of the good ones. He and I didn't always get along. He had certain very conservative ideals that didn't jibe with my very liberal ones. He could be overbearing. However, he had a genuinely good heart, and I could always count on him being there when I needed him.

Until a hemorrhagic stroke severely compromised him, and thereafter he developed vascular dementia and congestive heart failure and spent six years with both his physical and cognitive health declining until he finally, mercifully, passed from this world in a peaceful room at the hospice center.

Everything dies, but the long, drawn-out way my father died pretty well shook my belief in an ordered Universe. Good people are allowed a merciful death, right? They don't have to suffer for years and years, becoming more and more fearful as the twilight takes over their mind, right?

Well, that was the most naïve thought ever. We should probably scan my head and see if I even have a brain, or if I long ago replaced it with a rotting lump of Limburger cheese.

Malcolm Young was my hero from the time I was twelve years old. He doesn't really look or sound like one might think a hero would. He's tiny, somewhere around five foot three and weighing something around 110 pounds when he's been eating hearty. He's a shy, nondescript man with a quiet voice. So, what would cause me to think of someone like that as a hero?

Malcolm took no shit from anybody, and he didn't like crappy behavior. He disliked bullies. He was sympathetic to people who were victimized by the mean-spirited sort who gets off on putting others down. In other words, I knew from the start that he cared about people like me, who tend to be the target of the mean-spirited lot. People who are shy, who aren't conventionally attractive, who are even, dare I say it, mentally ill. That's what makes him a role model, and, yes, a hero.

His family seems to have some genetic tendency to cancer and vascular disease. So, you'd figure it might be one of those things that would take him out. Oh, but no. He couldn't have gotten lucky and died from the heart problems that he had in the early 2000s, or the stroke that he had in 2014. That would have been too easy.

Nope, instead he has to be dying from a horrid form of dementia that has literally shrunken his brain and left him so he can't remember the things he did during his life, or the people he did them with. This disease took him from being a low-key but decidedly brave hero and a very independent personality to being a very sick, very confused victim whose once-alert eyes are bewildered and terrified, and who requires constant supervision.

You know where my faith has really been shaken in this whole mess?

The idea of a benevolent, ordered Universe seems rather improbable to me.

I'm not an atheist, but I haven't believed in the Church God for years. Deism seems far more plausible to me than theism, given the nature of things. I can buy the idea of a grand creator, but I don't really think it gives two fucks about us. Oh, it may be benevolently disposed to its creations, but it's also pretty detached, much like a person who raises fish whose purpose is to repopulate lakes and streams. This person cares about the fish as a population. They don't focus on the fish as individuals.

I think we're kind of on our own, as far as things go. Yes, I believe in a soul that survives the death of the body. To me, reincarnation seems the most likely course of events. Energy never dies, it simply changes form, and the spirit is pure energy. Eventually, it will find another body to inhabit. That's how I see it, anyway.

Sometimes my thoughts on the matter are similar to Sam Winchester's.

And sometimes they're more like Paul the Tavern Owner's.

"Look, there’s sure as hell demons. And maybe there is a God. I don’t know. Fine. But I’m not a hypocrite. I never prayed before and I ain’t starting now. If I go to hell, I’m going honest. How ‘bout you? "

Unlike Paul, I used to pray. I was once a devout Catholic. My father was a devout Catholic. He prayed. I'm not sure it did any good, but I'm not so arrogant that I'd 100% say it didn't.

The only thing I know for sure is this:

A benevolent, involved deity wouldn't allow its creations to suffer the way that so many of us do. If the deity is involved in our lives, I, like Stephen Fry, have but one thing to say to it:

How dare you!

How dare you let little children be molested and murdered. How dare you let there be wars. How dare you let my son's friend, who is only 18, get bone cancer. How dare you let my father struggle on for six years, losing his ability to control his body and his mind. How dare you give my aunt dementia. How dare you let Malcolm Young's mind be destroyed and force him to keep living in a terrified, bewildered state. How dare you allow all these things, and the countless other horrors? Seriously--how dare you!

I don't believe in the Church God. But in the event that he exists and hears what we say, that is what I have to say to him.

My final thought on the matter of heroes:

The church god actually used to be one of my heroes. I lost faith in him years ago.

~Cie~

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 14: Suffering: A Conversation Between Me and the Cosmos

Suffering:

A Conversation Between Me and the Cosmos

"Why do you allow us to suffer?" I cried

To any deity or angel or demon

To any ascended master

To any spirit high or low

To any elemental being

To any ghost

Or speck of dust

Or invading microbe

Or molecule, atom, electron, proton or neutron

Which might chance to hear me

"Why do you create things of beauty only to allow them to be destroyed?" I demanded

"I want to know who is responsible for this!" I declared

I wondered aloud how something so magnificent as this cosmos could come to be

Without even an iota of divine intervention

I decided that it could not

But the creator thereof must long ago have pissed off

To any rate, this is the only thing I can imagine to be true

For as I gazed up into the night sky

At the myriad of stars

I was as alone as ever

Having, as always, no answer to the question

Of why we are born

To suffer

~Opal~

Notes:

Like Ellie yesterday, I deviated from the prompt. The prompt was to create a poem which includes a conversation. Technically, mine does, although it is a one-sided conversation!

Spectra Says It: Why I Don't Believe In or Worship the Church God

I do not believe in or worship the Church God of what many people call Christianity.

This is not to say that I don't believe in a higher power/creator force.

It is not to say that I don't believe in certain entities or possibilities currently termed "metaphysical" or "magic."

It is not to say that I don't believe in at least the possibility of beings such as those creatures that might be termed angels, demons, or deities. 

What I am saying is that even if the Church God exists, I do not and will not worship said being. However, in truth I believe that the Church God is mostly a projection of the ideals of Zir worshipers.

The Church God is an egotistical, abusive asshole. I will not worship an egotistical, abusive asshole.

What deity worth zir salt would require the absolute prostration of creatures so far beneath it? To an all powerful being, we would seem no more evolved than a cluster of caterpillars. To require absolute worship from us would be similar to me requiring absolute worship from my fish. After all, I feed the bastard and change its water. It should be bowing down and worshiping me. I allow it to live.

As for the omnipotence of such a being, if it is omnipotent and involved in our lives, then how dare it allow such horrors as children being raped, women and girls being impregnated by rape, children dying of cancer and other diseases, people of any age losing their intellectual capabilities due to terrible conditions that destroy their brains. 

What kind of a monster would allow a person who felt they were male be born into a female body to a father who, when said person hit puberty, raped them and forced them to bear the child of said forced copulation? Then, to add insult to injury, said person came to love said child, and said child died as the result of anaphylaxis following a bee sting. Then, while said person was recovering from the grief of losing said child, it is discovered that he has bone cancer.

The above is a true story which has all happened in the brief 18 years that this unfortunate young man has been on the Earth.

If the Church God exists, perhaps one can explain away the rape as free will on the part of the father, who chose to commit the vile act of rape. But how do you explain away the bone cancer? 

If Church God gave this person bone cancer, ze is malicious. I don't care if it's "so he can learn important lessons and get closer to God." That's just fucking awful.

If Church God did not give this person bone cancer, but ze cannot take it away, ze is not omnipotent. 

If Church God did not give this person bone cancer, but ze will not take it away, ze is either malevolent or apathetic.

The only one of these that I would even consider paying homage to is a benevolent but not omnipotent creator force which is able to give life but not prevent disease or evil.

Let us postulate for a moment that Church God is an absolute fact. Church God exists. Ze giveth and Ze taketh away. Ze allows evil of all stripes because human free will. (I'm still not sure how our free will allows diseases or death raining from the sky in the form of killer asteroids or anything but human-perpetrated crime such as rape and murder, but okay.) Ze is omnipotent (all powerful) and Zir followers claim that Ze is all-loving.

I still call bullshit.

A being that is all loving would not require absolute worship or to the eternal lake of fire and torture to any being that does not believe or refuses to worship. That isn't all loving, that's all ego. I refuse to worship any being under threat of punishment. 

A being that is all loving AND all powerful would never allow one of its creatures to be raped and murdered. Hell, it wouldn't have even created anything that was carnivorous. Everything would be eating leaves and seeds happily.

For a being that is omnipotent to stand idly by and watch its creations suffer?

That's just all kinds of fucked up.

Either Church God is benevolent but not omnipotent, ze is omnipotent but malevolent, ze is omnipotent but apathetic, or ze is nether benevolent nor omnipotent. 

The one thing Church God is not is benevolent and omnipotent. Because if Ze were, the world would not be nearly as fucked up as it is.

~Spectra~

Adam Smith on the Wealth of Nations

Gargleblaster: The Demiurge Responds to the Ultimate Question

Demiurgos

“Why do you keep doing this to us?” pleaded the mournful population of the suffering world.

Quoth the Demiurge:

“You ungrateful parasites are the architects of your own suffering. I am merely the architect of the realm wherein you dwell and destroy.”

~Aurora~

Author Note:

So, this is a response to the Gargleblaster 179 prompt on the Yeah Write website. I'm entering it mostly as a lark. I generally don't enter contests, as I write for enjoyment rather than accolades. I don't consider myself a particularly "good" writer, although some people seem to enjoy reading what I splatter on the page.

I expect exactly nothing from throwing my work to the wolves. However, if you're the sort who enjoys writing contests, you could end up winning actual money. Please click the link to find out the details!

I chose the Demiurge as my protagonist as the poor soul tends to get a bad rap, and I wanted to give equal time to zir point of view.

Maharishi Mahesh on Desire as a Catalyst for Change

Uploaded on Oct 24, 2011
http://www.TM.org How a desire rises with the full support of Natural Law in an orderly brain - Maharishi

1. (Dr. Hagelin:) Thank you so very much, Maharishi, for these beautiful, very compassionate and lucid
remarks today. As Maharishi said, bliss is not difficult; it only takes a few minutes to locate a chair and
experience the bliss of unbounded awareness with Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation program.
Invincibility for a country is a matter of days--just a matter of organizing and training groups of peace promoting
experts. So the world is poised for a complete transformation. And Maharishi is compassionately
offering that scientifically proven knowledge, and the only scientifically proven knowledge that has the
capacity to bring peace and to transform civilization quickly, easily and delightfully. Maharishi, this week
and next week, much of the world is moving towards a holiday time of celebration of Christmas and
Hanukkah and Kwaanza. The hubbub of politics in Washington, D.C., has settled down with Congress gone
and the international diplomatic community also leaving to go home to their countries to celebrate a period
of rest and of peace. And the questions this week are focusing on deeper issues of enlightenment, of God
realization, and of prayer. The first question is a follow-up of Maharishi's remark of last week about desire:
Maharishi has said that the ability to fulfill one's desires is the key to living an invincible life. Maharishi
explained that when a desire is consciously created at the source of thought, the ocean of consciousness, then
that desire will be fulfilled because it has the support of all the laws of nature. Maharishi, what kind of desire
will be created from the source of thought? Will it be an individual's desire or God's desire?

2. Maharishi: Every desire is for fulfillment. A wave may be rising but not knowing that the point of rising
itself is the source, is the goal of it. When the wave settles down, then it is ocean. When it rises into
something, then it becomes isolated, and it comes in space and time. And when it sinks, it goes beyond
boundaries, beyond space and time. If this silence at the source of thought is open to our awareness, then our
awareness is the field of all possibility.

3. As opposed to thoughts arising from the source of thought, thoughts may arise as the winds of the
environment. The eyes see this and speech hears this, and the thoughts float from one area of surface to the
other area of surface. This is life of the sensory perception. And when one transcends, then one gets to the
source of all thoughts. Source of all seeing is in that field which is the basis of all, the source of thought, the
source of hearing, the source of touch, the source of all the five senses.

4. Whatever we want in the field of vision, get to the source of thought from where the vision begins, and
then you'll be able to see anything within your Self. That is Vedic education, from where you can have what
you want within your Self.

5. The conscious mind could be thinking consciously at the source of thought, the transcendental field of
life, the field of the Veda. Veda we define to be the Constitution of the Universe, the laws of Nature that
conduct the galactic universe here, there and everywhere.

6. The purpose of Vedic University and the University of Peace, is to open TC, Atma, the Unified Field to
our single awareness. The formula is yogasthah kuru karmani. That means: "Established in the state of
Unity-established in Unified Field-you perform action."

7. When you are established in the Unified Field, then your performance is the performance of the Unified
Field, it is the expression of the whole creation. You are there as the silent doer of the entire universal
administration of the enormous ever-expanding universe. This is Vedic education, education of total
knowledge.

8. Giving the students this knowledge in their education years will be fulfilling the government's parental
role for the people.

9. There are all kinds of gross and subtle practices that express humanity rising to divinity. Devotional
practices, songs, melodies, prayers, mass meetings in churches, collective meditation, collective devotional
practices. What is special in our message is the practical experience of that Unified Field, and the
transformation of the atmosphere through these collective meditations.

10. The main thing is conscious awareness of the totality of the Constitution of the Universe, totality of
Natural Law, which is so simple through the programs of the Peace Government.

11. Education should be experience of the Self primarily. Once the experience of the Self is there, the child
will succeed in anything he would want to do, because Natural Law will do all that he can do.

12. Parents will be fortunate to give children Total Knowledge.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi started teaching Transcendental Meditation in 1957.

Brief Movie Review: The Man from Earth

This 2007 American film by Jerome Bixby is a dialogue-based dramatization of a story by Gordon R. Dickson about a man claiming to be a 14,000 year old caveman. While his friends/former colleagues initially believe that John is pulling their legs and go along for the ride just for fun, they eventually begin to believe that what he says might be true. This causes anger in several of his guests as they are forced to question the validity of the things they have always believed to be absolute truths.

Questions are raised about the validity of both science and religion. Things that are thought to be absolute truths one day may be refuted the next, replaced by new beliefs. People want something that they can believe in and when it seems that one's comforting belief may be taken away, a person can have irrational, even violent reactions.

I have had discussions about belief with my son, who is, in my opinion, one of the wisest people I have known, although he is only 23 years old. He said that while he has certain spiritual ideas which he on some occasions holds to be true and on other occasions hopes are true, in general he feels that the only way to be a true scientist and a true seeker is to conduct oneself as an agnostic. Thus, one does not reject possibilities, nor embrace anything as absolute. One is always open to discovery and change.

As to the nature of questions such as life, death, and salvation of the soul should there be a soul, we are not in a position to know the absolute truth in these matters. This being the case, it is best to keep an open mind and an open heart. We must, as Dr. Martin Luther King Junior said, learn to disagree without becoming violently disagreeable.

~Cie~

Cross-posted to:

One Love

Sly Fawkes