for the most part

he liked to be the one behind the wheel

a man should be at the helm

of his own life

for the most part

these thoughts were metaphorical

he didn’t really have anyone else

to drive him anywhere, literally speaking

this was about control

he was musing about being in control

like that Incubus song he loved so much

of course he should be the one behind the wheel

but that’s when it happened

isn’t that when anything tends to happen?

just when it does

but only sometimes

does one notice

if one ever does

she roared by him

in slow but flowing traffic

weaving in and out of the lanes

as motorcyclists tend to do in heavy traffic

such as it was

it was a brief but provocative encounter

he knew it was a her by the hips

by the hips and waist

the feminine ratio

and that’s when it dawned on him

it was an ‘oh, wouldn’t that be nice’ moment

now, how nice would that be?

to wrap your arms snug and tight

around someone and give yourself over

completely to their seemingly reckless control

to hold firm to one so delightfully shapen

soft but in command

strong and skilled

travelling by long embrace

he had never ridden

he had no desire to do so

not really

not alone

but to be a passenger

oh, that would be something else now, wouldn’t it?

the closeness to her

the nearness of speed and surrounding

the absolute surrender

he had heard somewhere once

read somewhere once

that the passenger had to maintain

a centre of balance

had to learn when and how

to move in order to compliment the rider

he supposed one would have to take lessons

informal lessons of a sort

in order to learn how to be a good passenger

and this thought was a comforting one too

ya, he could take lessons in being a passenger

that would be just fine with him

passenger lessons

the naughttao stillment is a counter-movement toward calm and stillness.  based in taoist philosophy, the stillment encourages you to stop and be still.  still your movements, your mind, your heart.  still your life.  to do this you must renounce your quest for the material minutia that the commercial commissars wish you to produce, possess, and proliferate.  instead, make a shift to a new paradigm.  one that emphasizes calm and quiet and combats the chaos of modern life.  a paradigm that uses non-action for the individual in the same way gandhi used non-violence for the collective.  reject all the stuff you have become and return to nothing.  look at who you are.  look at what you have.  are they really supposed to be one?  look again at what is essential in your life.  you will find that many somethings convolute and complicate your life.  the stillment challenges you to strip away all the complicated somethings and end up with nothing.  a nothing that is the truth of who you are. 

you came into this world with nothing and you will leave this world with nothing is a commonly misread idea.  it’s true that to an observer you came and shall leave with nothing, and it is that nothing that you must rediscover.  that nothing you came in with was full of love and you may leave with it.  you came in with a spirit, a soul, a consciousness, a uniqueness of infinite dimension.  and while all will leave when you do, your footprint shall remain.  your footprint is made up of all the somethings you have accumulated and all the effects you have created.  the multitude of somethings you accumulate does not increase who you are just as deprivation from amenities does not decrease you. 

somethings cannot elevate or enlighten who you are.  you are a who, not a what.  we seek whats because they are comfortable and easily defined.  you are a job, a car, a pair of jeans, a perfume, a hair style, sneakers.  you are a father, a daughter, the oldest, the youngest, disabled, gifted, normal.  you are extroverted, task-oriented, oppositionally defiant, depressed, dysfunctional, medicated.  no, you are not.  you are nothing.  you are none of these things, they are somethings that happen to you or that you happen to.  they are the masks we wear.  the widely held belief that we are the sum of our experiences and possessions is a lie.  while many have come to believe the latter to be true, they may disagree with the former.  many who have abandoned the quest for material gain have sadly just transferred those desires to a new medium, experience, but it is just as false.  just as the new car, living room suite, diamond, designer apparel, does not create who you essentially are, neither does the day at the louvre, the walk on the great wall, the trek through the amazon.  you disagree?  consider the many idiots and fools who have done or seen great things and have not changed in any way whatsoever.  please realise also that we are all someone’s fool, just as we are all someone’s friend.  consider those you know who have done or seen things you think should have been life altering but instead they have remained as stupid as you have always thought them to be.  how is this possible?  it is because who you are is in no way defined by the somethings you do or the whats you have seen. 

the stillment challenges you to stop and rediscover the you that is nothing.  that has nothing, worries about nothing, wants and desires nothing.  it is a difficult thing to do. 

in your natural state you are nothing.  and nothingness is where you are most comfortable.  with simplicity and nothingness you will in turn become whole.

not convinced?  consider the many people around the world who have nothing and will go no where in their entire existence.  by definition therefore you see them as in some way less than you.  if that is true, then indeed you waste your time reading this.  consider the many legions who have insurmountably less than you.  those that have enough essentials to exist, and many who don’t even, are still often happier, wholer than you.  why?  consider the child.  the child is empty of experience and for the most part devoid of actual possession.  is she not nearer perfection than thee?  is the child less of who he is going to be as and adult.  parents will tell you that their child has been who she is for as long back as they can remember.  she has been that way and done those things since she was a baby, they often remark.  the child is the less complex, closer to nothing, version of ourselves.  the conclusion is that we are and always have been exactly who we are.  and we have been so all along with nothing.  with nothing but who we are.  the somethings and whats merely cloud, distort, confuse, and hide who we really are. 

so what then?  so get rid of them.  strip away every something that you possess or desire or even need.  impossible!  impossible you will say.  sadly, this is impossible to many who live in certain parts of the world.  the stillment is not a drive toward returning humans to cave dwelling hermits, although it is suggested that you make a serious effort to be alone and in nature to aid in rediscovering your nothing.  the stillment does not advocate some backward push into infantilism, although spending time with young people is also recommended.  no, the stillment challenges you to be you, only slower, stiller, more awake, and more aware of your surroundings.  so then it is conceded to be true that some somethings are truly essential to modern life.  in turn you must concede that the necessity of a something, such as a car, does not mean that a luxury model is that necessary something.  that is the trap the stillment challenges you to not only avoid but deconstruct.  within you is a cancer of desire that has blurred the line between what somethings you need, and what somethings you want.  again, look around, how many times have you told yourself lies of desire when acquiring something supposedly needed that was in fact really merely wanted.  it may have been an actual need by modern terms in the beginning, but you dressed it up as a want didn’t you?  with all the bells and whistles, because why should she have better than you, and you’ve earned it after all haven’t you?  and why shouldn’t you be allowed to spoil yourself?  you’ve worked hard haven’t you?  listen to you.  don’t you sound just like an ad man?  sold.  look around yourself and see what you’ve been sold. 

look around.  is that thing over there what you need or is that what you want?  it’s what you’ve been told to want by someone who is consumed by wants himself.  what do you need?  ask someone who doesn’t want something from you, if you can find such a person.  they’ll tell you, you need nothing.  you need nothing.  and a lot more of it.  the excesses of man are just that.  excesses of want and desire and we rationalise them as needs so we can feel better about our footprint. 

as stated before your footprint made up of all the somethings you have accumulated and all the effects you have created. 

a word about your footprint.  a lot has been made about ecological footprints in the environmental realm, and justifiably so, humans are destroying the world.  destroying it with excessive wants it may be conjectured.  but there are other footprints.  cultural, parental, emotional, societal footprints.  or it could be simply that there is only one.  one lasting mark made by you on the earth, its people and places.  it is not being suggested that your actions should be guided by what is left behind, be it benevolence or cataclysm.  for who could act simply on the grand notion of what to leave behind.  a legacy is not a goal.  it is decided by those that remain and therefore cannot be controlled by the individual in life.  that is no way to live.  no, it is suggested that by examining what footprint may be left that you can better understand how totally off course you have been pushed by your somethings and whats. 

question:  how much crap will someone have to clean up after you go?  what or who was this crap for then if it is just going to be recycled into the world of useless possessions after you go?  please don’t kid yourself on this one.  they are just going to have an auction when you die, really, they are.  it may seem important that you have these things but when you are gone others will see the folly of it all, if they don’t already.  you don’t need to ask.  you know it’s true.  question:  does this crap in life really make things better for you now?  does extra bedrooms with useless crap, bigger cars with extra luxuries, more elaborate electronic devices with extra features, does all this stuff fill you up inside?  can materials improve flesh, blood, and mind?  no.  nothing can.  nothing can fill you.  nothingness and knowing that you don’t need (see, really want) these things can fill you.  stuff only fills landfill.  look around at your footprint and determine what is wanted somethings and what is not.  the first shall greatly exceed the second.  then what?  get rid of them?  maybe not, that’s just more landfill.  stop getting more, definitely.  try selling it to someone who doesn’t yet understand?  shame on you, that’s a transference not a removal of your footprint.  you are still responsible.  donate it?  sure if someone can use it as a need, clothing is a great example of how your excess can turn into someone’s need fulfilled.

so you already know all this.  maybe as stated earlier you already are a person who has forsaken consumption of goods in search of cultural experiences because you believe this will free you from the trappings of material consumption.  perhaps you are wrong.  you have replaced a misplaced desire for shallow accumulation of things with a misplaced desire for the shallow accumulation of experience.  then again may be you have, and may be you have not.  so, you have set forth on adventure to fill the hole left by removing the collection of crap from your life.  what kind of adventure?  what kind of experience?  just like you were being sold value in your life by the ad man through commodity purchase in object form, are you now being sold the same bill of goods in your choice of experience? 

yes, you are.  just as you were told to buy objects to improve you, so are you being told to buy experiences that will.  experiences that you have been led to believe will change you, reinvigorate you, reinvent you.  and, as before, you are you no matter where you go or what you do.  that will not change, nothing ever does.  you will not find new parts of you in new york, london or madrid.  not at the eiffel tower, nor the berlin wall, not in the markets of florence, nor the waters of the great barrier reef, not even in the ancient valley of the dead, nor on the peaks of the himalayas.  you are not a scavenger hunt to be collected and constructed.  yes, you may learn things in these places.  you may learn much about you and the world.  things only you can learn, if you are open to it.  but, you will in fact return from these places the same you you have always been.  again, consider all those who have done and seen so much and have remained so tragically unchanged.  why?  the reason is simple, the answer is the question, why?  why go to these places?  why do… anything?

you do what you do, want what you want?  because you have learned to follow expectations of who you are supposed to be and what you are supposed to have.  expectations built as much by you as anyone else. 

most of what you have always done was done by you simply because it was what was expected of you.  what you were supposed to do.  you followed expectations of you.  expectations either created by you, or by what you perceived others expected of you.  be careful here, you can never say you did what others expected, only what you perceived their expectations to be.  for you will never truly know what others expect.  and most of your perceptions of these expectations most likely bare no actual resemblance to what others really expected of you.  furthermore, the truth of the expectations is irrelevant because you can only ever act on what you know in any given situation. 

while these may be the conditions of constantly flowing expectations we all labour under, that does not make them any more valid or true to you.  the stillment proposes that you stop doing what you are told.  what you are sold.  stop doing the things, stop seeking the experiences that others have told you, have sold you on.  experiences themselves are of great benefit, that is not being denied.  only through the continual flow of experiences will you live, love, and learn.  but the only experiences that can be learned from in any genuine sense are ones that come from motivation that is true to the self.  all other motivations are driven by a sense of wanting to conform and our society is based on them, on that there can be no refute. 

however, there is a gigantic difference between conforming for the benefit of a just society and conforming for the benefit of a commercial society.  you have had trouble distinguishing the difference, not because you are stupid or easily led, no.  because the deceivers have become so good at what they do.  you are among them.  you are your own best deceiver.  but it is not entirely your fault even though it is mostly your fault.  if you are a sheep, and you do not know, there is no sin.  but a sheep who knows he’s a sheep and believes that fleecing will make him a better sheep, is well, sad and pathetic.  question:  do you want to visit insert location here because there is a deep connection felt with some unseen force driving you there; or do you simply want to go because you are certain others will be impressed by you having gone?  it is that simple and that complex.  ask yourself whose idea was it that you go there, do that, get that thing.  truly for all of us it must be realised that almost every answer you have in almost every situation is: that wasn’t my idea, where did that come from?  be honest, search yourself and you will find that this is the plain truth about living in most of the societies of the world and in living in our global economy.  you have implanted wants and desires that are hard to distinguish from what you really need. 

most of what you think you want, need, desire, you truly neither need, want, or even desire after scrutiny.  this is the basis for buyer’s remorse.  it’s not remorse, it’s realisation.  you didn’t need it.  you were driven by want that once fulfilled left you empty because it wasn’t the thing, it was the wanting of the thing that drove you.  this definitely must stop.  it is an outside force exerting itself on you.  you are vulnerable to this force because you are in constant motion.  you are always busy.  there is always more to do.  there’s never enough time to get it all done.  never enough time to do what?  what are you doing that is so important?  are you saving the world?  stop this nonsense.  who would you be saving it for anyway?  the stillment encourages you to still this constant movement.  stop and think.  stop and look both ways.  stop and smell the roses.  to paraphrase ferris bueller:  life moves pretty fast, you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you will miss it.  be still.  you make so many mistakes when you hurry.  stop and do nothing.  become the nothing that you once were.  in finding nothingness, in doing nothing, the pace of everything will slow and you will begin to see what is truly going on around you. 

by doing nothing, the false expectations that drive you to do what you do will fade away, and you will emerge into a state of following nothing. 

the stillment finds its basis in taoist teachings.  wu wei, inaction or doing nothing, does not mean surrendering to fate or giving up.  it means that you meet conflict, crisis, and chaos with calm.  you find solutions with still clarity rather than with hurried panic.  it is a simple yet profound ideology that you will find challenging to practice.  in nothingness you will find everything you need.  it will take time to break the commercial and cultural conditioning you have ingrained.  you will feel silly, your mind will race.  you will feel that there must be something more productive you could be doing.  you will find your mind clouded by many voices saying contradictory things.  and that is the beginning.  when you begin to really hear the traffic of your mind you will begin to understand how to leave it behind. 

do not concern yourself with finding ways or times in your life to schedule meditation or walks or doing nothing.  this will only add to your multitasked frustration.  there are already moments in the day when you find yourself tuning out.  your mind wandering.  your concentration failing through lack of opportunity to regenerate.  go with it.  wherever you are try to let it happen.  instead of shaking yourself out of it, let yourself slide into it.  soon you will discover activities for you that are non-activities, that are opportunities for inaction, for doing nothing.  meditation, yoga, tai chi, walking, running, cycling, are all excellent activities for those whose minds insist in the beginning on forcing a productive outcome.  but eventually you will learn to find random moments everywhere to slow, to calm, to stop. 

consider the driver and the walker.  the driver sees that he is moving quickly and knows of the potential danger, but he feels the illusion of control because he believes he can see ahead and clearly in all directions.  but just looking straight out the side window would give him some sense of that illusion.  when calamity hits, it will all be moving too fast to control.  you are the driver and you are speeding through life.  the stillment is walking through life.  yes, you will not get there as fast as the rest, but consider the destination.  the walker sees the truth of this.  from her point of view she sees the highway traffic for what it really is, loud, fierce, frenetic, dangerous.  you will see less of the world on foot metaphorically, or will you?  what does the driver see?  surfaces without texture.  he is protected from the elements, prevented from the elements.  the walker is in the world not moving over it.  the walker can stop.  she can sit.  her mind can wander.  the walker feels the earth beneath her.  she feels her senses alive as they should be.  the driver is enclosed, encapsulated, insulated.  he is hurtling through space and time in a beautiful coffin.  the driver’s destination is mapped and well traveled and he thinks he’s free because he can see the exit signs, but really he is lost.  he only knows where the road leads, he does not know where he wants to go.  because his experiences, his exits if you will, have all been preselected based on what outcome he thinks he wants, his destination, he has lost the opportunity to be truly in the world.  lost the opportunity to be surprised, to learn, to find awe, the opportunity to find himself.  when the walker gets lost, that’s when she finds things of beauty and importance, not about the world, but about herself.  when you give up trying to know where you are going, what you are doing, that is when you will make many interesting discoveries.  

once upon a time someone answered:  because it was there.  this person does not know why he climbed the mountain, but he knew he had to and he did not care that anyone knew he did it.  he did not climb for glory, he climbed for himself.  do you want to climb so someone will be impressed, so you will be elevated artificially?  or must you because you always had to.  the true artist declines credit for the art because she knows that it came from a place she doesn’t even understand.  all she knows is it had to come out.  you’ve done that.  after a personal moment of greatness, be it small or grand, you thought to yourself: where did that come from?  you are so far from you sometimes that you can barely recognise yourself, especially when you do well.  you cannot know the source of who you are unless you know nothingness, quiet, and calm.  but that knowledge comes with a price.  it is difficult to return to you.  it is easy to buy a replica you.  so, do you want to drive in comfort, or suffer the pain and delight of the walker?  what do you think, does the globe trotting debutant really see more of herself in the world than the single mother of two?  will your life be better spent hiking the outback or reading to a child?  finding your truth is painful, because it may not be what you were sold.   

when you can become quiet in your movement, you can also still the mind.  the cacophony that is your mind will quiet in nothingness and you will begin to hear yourself again, or maybe for the first time.  it will be difficult and take much effort and time, but so did the process of your commercial conditioning.  you will need to seek others who will support you in your efforts.  they need not know your true motivations because they may not understand.  they may also add to your problems by contributing their own version of active noise.  as you begin to find your own rhythm and still strength you may be able to convey to them what it means to be still.  but all must come to stillness on their own, at their own pace, in their own time.  you will never be truly still.  none of us ever is, but you will find more joy and contentment in life.  and you will see things very differently.

gandhi said: live simply so that others may simply live.  the naughttao stillment offers:  live simply so that you may simply live.  in this way, by example, by non-action, by not contributing to the noise, by reducing your footprint, you may live simply so others can simply live.

When I was six my sister died.  I mean, I guess she died.  I don’t remember.  I didn’t know her.  I was six.  She was born, and then she died.  It could have been the other way around. 

     The way I’m told it, from time to time, is that there were more like her, others I mean.  Babies, fetuses, zygotes even.  None of them made it.  Just me.  Only me.

     When I was eight, or rather just before I was eight, I went to live with my grandfather.  It was February and my birthday is in March, so I wasn’t eight just yet.  It had been a year since my sister was born and died, or died and born, whichever way it went.  They, whoever they are, the police, fire, passersby, strangers, they found my mother in the snow at the cemetery.  She had been there all night.  She didn’t have a hat and mitts on, and no snow pants.  She would yell at me if I went out in the day without those on.  So she was really cold when they found her.  She had to stay in the hospital for awhile to warm up.

     Since my dad still had to work every day, and because I could be a handful at times, I got to go stay with Grandpa.  My grandmother was there too, but she needed more taking care of than I did.  There had been a car accident and she had hit her head.  This was a long time ago though, when I was only a baby.  A nurse named Nancy Allen took care of my grandmother during the day, and Grandpa would put her to bed after feeding her dinner each night.  Grandpa was old, so he was retired.  He said that he had his days for himself, but his nights belonged to my grandmother. 

     Sometimes I would hear him sing to her, and sometimes he would yell and curse at her.  Mostly he sang when it was bedtime.  Mostly he yelled when she would pee her pants.  No matter what, my grandmother never talked.  She spent her days in front of TV or by the window and she would smile at funny things on TV or at the pretty flowers in the garden in spring.  And she would cry sometimes at sad things on TV, or when bad things happened, but she never talked. 

     Grandpa owned a gas station, still does, and he was the boss so sometimes he would go there during the day and be a boss even though he was retired.  He would only do that when Nancy Allen was with my grandmother and I was in school.  He would walk me to school, which wasn’t far because it was across the street from his house.  Then he would go to the gas station for the day.  I had to go to a new school when I lived with grandpa, but that was okay because I liked it better there anyway.  After school I got to walk home all on my own, which wasn’t a big deal since I could see my grandmother in the window from the school yard.  If Grandpa wasn’t home yet then Nancy Allen would make me a snack.  I liked Nancy Allen, but her snacks were apples and bananas and Digestive biscuits and juice.  When Grandpa was home, I got milk and shortbreads.

     At first, when my mother was still warming up in the hospital, dad would come over for dinner with us after work because it would be lonely to eat at home.  He was, still is, a boss like Grandpa but he works at a company and he has even bigger bosses over him.  He said he wanted to take care of me but that since my mother was in the hospital and he still had to work, it made more sense for me to stay with Grandpa and Nancy Allen.  When my mother came home from hospital, even though she was all warmed up, she was tired and needed to sleep a lot so I still stayed with Grandpa.  Dad did not come over for dinner as much and he never brought my mother, but I got to go home on the weekend to see her and sleep in my own bed.  It stayed that way until summer vacation.  Everyone said I was better off staying with Grandpa and Nancy Allen.

     When summer vacation came, I had to move again.  This was okay because I always went up north for the summer to live with my other grandparents at their cottage.  My mother’s parents lived in a big house on a lake all year long.  I spent all my holidays up there including Christmas and March Break.  Well, not this past March Break, but all the other ones.  Christmas was so cold up there, but the snow was amazing and we skated on the lake.  Usually, my parents would come up for long weekends and on their holidays from their jobs, but that summer my mother came up with me the whole time and dad only came on the long weekends.  He was very busy at work.  I thought my mother came up to the cottage to be with me and her parents, but she spent most of her time alone.

     I felt kind of bad because I mostly played with the other kids that were up at their cottages while she was still sleeping a lot or going on long hikes by herself.  I said sorry for ditching her all the time once, but she just smiled at me, patted my head, and said nothing.  It’s funny but one thing I really remember about that time is that no one seemed to talk.  Not to me, not to each other.  It was quiet all the time, except when it wasn’t.

     There was some yelling too.  Every once in awhile my mother’s father, Granddad Jake, he would yell at my mother and her mother about how everybody should just get back to normal and that the time for all this crying was done.  My mother’s mother, Grandmother Alice, did not like this kind of talk at all.  She wouldn’t yell back though.  She would bang pots in the kitchen or turn on the vacuum but only do a small patch of carpet.  If that didn’t stop Granddad Jake, she would take my mother by the hand and walk her down to the lake away from him.  One time, he followed them down to the dock so Grandmother Alice got in the boat and took my mother out into the middle of the lake while he yelled at them from the dock for being ridiculous.  This mostly only happened when I was supposed to be sleeping or when I was out playing.  By the end of summer I was ready to go home.

     My dad came up for the Labour Day weekend, which is the last weekend of the summer.  There’s always a big party all around the lake on the Saturday and all the kids go crazy because school is almost here.  I went to the party with my friends, but everyone else stayed back and there was a lot of yelling.  The party was a lot of fun, and I got to stay over at my friend Steven’s cottage.  His mom made us pancakes and waffles with blueberries on Sunday morning.  Even though Monday is the holiday, most of the dads decide to pack up and leave on the Sunday so they won’t get caught in traffic on the Monday.  Since Granddad Jake and Grandmother Alice are always at the cottage, we don’t usually leave until Monday. 

     Dad came to get me right after the waffles and pancakes.  Just dad.  He said that my mother had decided not to come back from her holiday yet.  This was okay because she didn’t have to go back to her job yet, but we had to get back to work and school.  My mother had not been back to work and they didn’t mind waiting for her to finish her holiday.  I love my dad, but I was eight.  I knew what was going on, but I didn’t tell him I knew.  If he didn’t want to talk about it, I wasn’t going to make him. And that’s how I saw it, or pretended to, back then at least.

             My mother is crazy. Oh, I know that’s not what you’re supposed to say.  There’s a clinical label for what she has, what she is.  But I don’t believe in clinical labels so I won’t list it here.  I’m not saying there aren’t legitimate illnesses that cause great suffering.  It’s just that I believe that we all get a raw deal in some way, and it’s not the circumstances of our lives that define us, it’s the choices that we make.  I believe that my mother is crazy, and I have to believe that she is, because how else can I describe someone who would rather live with the ghosts of her dead babies instead of being with her living one.  I have to say that she is crazy, because if she isn’t, what does that make me?

under everything there is more

beneath the surface there is always more

and the search is never ending

if one seeks to know surfaces

the never ending search for that which lies

beneath

the sage knows the difference

between the search of layers

and the depth of nothingness

deep understanding means knowing

nothing

in the depths there is nothing

and true understanding means

knowing nothing

and wanting less

the knowledge of surfaces

allows one to know the world

and its many layers

but the difference between

the knowledgeable and the sage

is the need of one to know it all

and the path of one to knowing less

the way is everything and more

to understand the way

come to know less

know nothing

nothing is all you need

knowing

that is to say that global athletic combat is the last acceptable bastion of fervent nationalism, I’ll grant that as a given.  Like all good forms of nationalism, (see nationalism under war, religion, and racism) athletic nationalism breeds power, corruption, and monetary wealth.  But unlike its counterparts, this special kind in turn fosters consumer bliss which inevitably leads to a brief prosperous euphoria felt by all, or at least by those in the host country, well some of them, those already prosperous anyway.  Athletic nationalism has such a good rep too because it so ingeniously cloaks itself in the guise of inter-national brotherhood.  No one loves their country more than in that instant when some athlete they only recently heard of and really don’t give a damn about beats some American for the gold.  Oh god what a moment of bliss!  Hell, most of us love anyone that does… given the choice between a former Iranian terrorist shot-putter or a Russian spy gymnast versus Johnny USA for gold, well what choice is there really?  Jealousy loves prosperity.  Question: what’s the difference between Hitler spending a fortune on athletics to prove Arian superiority and Australia or China or whoever spending a fortune on athletics to prove… wait, what is it that the host country is trying to prove by spending a one time only shit load on venues, athletes, and infrastructure… wait, what was the question?  Oh well, as always, remember the Olympic motto:  train for a million hours to give the ignorant mass joy for a day and then kindly disappear from our consciousness like the poor losers you beat, endorse some product if they let you, we really don’t care, but hey, thanks for the memories we’ll soon forget. (and if you test positive, don’t come home, losing with honour is so much more rewarding than cheating to win, isn’t it?)… naught that I’d know or anything.

she lives in anticipation

four times a year

the season next

is for her

always the best time of year

she tells me

in a humid state

soon leaves will coloured fall

and we’ll take a long drive up-state

she tells me

beneath a rainy gray

soon flakes will powder white

and we’ll angels make away the day

she tells me

under a woolly cuddle

soon showers will flower rise

and we’ll slickered jump a puddle

she tells me

in a pollen haze

soon hot sun sweats’ burn

will validate our lazy ways

she lives with negativity

doom and gloom

she livens me up

whenever she’s in the room

seasons four us

the garden is a place of life

and a place to find the way

the sage works the soil to give life

to the plants

to himself

for the sage knows the earth is the source

of the way

and being close to it helps him

find the way

the sage loves the earth

and coddles fruit and flower in the soil

when he returns to the the garden

the sage subsists from his toil

the garden

you make me wait

you always, always do

you make me wait,

and wait, and wait, for you

wait until you’re ready

and you finally find me there

wait until you’re ready

and I’m always, always there

but wait,

whatever will you do

when that day finally comes

that I’m not there for you?

just wait then

for the day will forever never be

that I am not waiting

for you to come to me

waiting

that is to say that what we as adult humans truly appear to be both aesthetically and morally is basely grotesque, I’ll grant that as a given.  The child, smiling, eyes a glow with wonder is by contrast utterly beautiful, then again so are wolf pups.  It is apparent the key evolutionary developmental stage into adult personage consists mainly of uglification.  Joy and wonder are transmogrified into fear and ignorance until all is untrustworthy.  The moment a child first stops waving to everyone she sees and learns to stare away avoiding eye contact would be step 1.1 followed by such learned behaviors as teasing, deprecation, and humiliation.  Ever notice that the only one not staring at the floor on a crowded elevator is the child hidden in a corner by its mother?  Soon she will learn not to look at the ugly mysterious others surely bent on rape, robbery, or revolution.  Soon she will see the true evil ugly nature of all those that currently peak her curiosity for the different.  Soon she will learn that only the ones that teach her about the ugliness can be trusted, and then only just so far.  Soon she will learn.  Her parents will teach her as they were once taught.  They may use a different method, perhaps a new one they just learned from a book, but the essential rules are still the same: most are ugly, and the rest just hide it better, look both ways before showing emotion, never take the opinion of a stranger into consideration, brush away your imagination twice a day, and most importantly, different colours of ugly are the worst ugly of all.  As each generation comes into global dominance, they find the newest, niftiest, most technologically advanced ways to spread the word about ugly… naught that I’d know or anything.

those that seek to acquire knowledge

do so for the mere purpose of acquisition

those that let themselves be taught

do so, so that they shall learn

he who is educated in the purpose of knowing

shall contend and so be opposed

he who knows from the act of learning

shall concede and so be embraced

so is the way to wisdom

so is the way of the sage

the way of learning