Peering through windows

Whether through windows of time

or a window of glass

we peer through,

maybe through the windowed pane

eyes of the artist who is

long gone yet

lives on

displaying legacy image for us

to view

through our window of time

into his memory of love

through her yielding to the pangs

of love

the pain of love

Yeah, windows golden with memory

they are

moments of love so

dear to him and her and now

to us

golden memories they are

images of what carried them forward

into future or carry us

backward into reflection

backward into history

where precious intricacies of the human mind and hand were

crafted for us or

assembled for us

to see,

to view

through a glass darkly

through barriers of time

or glass

or gates of iron or the

gates

of Vienna

when the invaders had been turned away

and later where

the artist lived and breathed and

loved

and left a gift, their moment of prescious love

which came to be their

golden moment,  and later his gilded

memorial of love for us to

peer into,

before the gates could close again.

Smoke

We all live in a Blueish Bussarine

It’s amazing what we humans have done with techno throughout the ages of time

Way back in the mists of anthropological mystery some Croation CroMagnon got a bright idea to knock off the angular faces of a stone. He kept chipping away at it until the thing was more or less round; it looked so cool he decided to make another one. Then he got the history-rocking idea  to punch a hole in the middle of each stone and  then connect the two together with a wooden pole.

Next thing you know he’s wheeling his stuff around on a cart, gathering his food a la cart. This was definitely an improvement.

Human history rolled along at a quicker pace after that.

Eons of time went by. Then a while back ole Isaac Watts put mind and metal together with the the potentialities of heat and water.  in an advantageous arrangement. that became know as the steam engine and so it wasn’t long before we homo sapiens were using the thing to power everything up. Some guy came along and slapped that steam engine onto a cart with a set of wheels and whammo we humans had ourselves a powered vehicle for purposes of transporting ourselves and all our stuff.

Wow!

Henry Ford happened along and he paired up assembly line strategy with mass production productivity. Next thing you know, everybody and their brother is out driving around on Sunday afternoon in a Model T or Model A.

Soon afterward, some other folks come along and did their version of Ford’s world-changing whirligig, so then we had wheeling around not only Models A and T but also models GM and MG and model GTO and BMW and model ’57 Chevy and ’65 Mustang and so forth  and so on.

All along the way, these fossil-fuel-powered motorized mobilizers were extending their influence into the other elements such as air and water.

Airplanes in flight, Boats on water, millions of them puttering along with their enginary cousins everywhere here there and yon and all over the world.

In 1966, a scant year after the historic ’65 Mustang made its mark on the prairies and the dusty deserts along Route 66, the Beatles came up with a new idea, the yellow submarine.

“We all live in a yellow submarine,” they sang.

This is a fascinating concept.  The Beatles never stated it blatantly in their song, but the idea is this: in our evolving 20th-century consciousness we can surmise that this planet–even as huge as it is–is nevertheless a closed ecological system, not unlike a submarine.

Another expression of this idea is seen at Disney World in what the Disneyites call “Spaceship Earth.”

While our ancestors thought of the earth as somehow infinite in its distances and its capacities, we 21st-century world-dwellers are understanding that what comes up must come down. Pollution up, pollution down. Carbon up, carbon down, and everything (as the stuff spewing from our exhaust pipes) that goes up eventually comes down. All that stuff we spew into  the air and all that stuff we bury in the landfills, it doesn’t just magically go away.

“Out of sight, out of mind” is a fallacy that perpetuates our fantasy of an earth that possesses infinite capacity.

We the people who inhabit the so-called “developed world” are now starting to take this emissions stuff seriously. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, the so-called “third world” and “developing nations,” those folks are trying to develop their economies and their infrastructures under the constraints of our post-modern enlightened consensus about us all living in a limited-capacity closed ecosystem–a sort of yellow submarine.

In our present world, India seems to be in a developmental category that is somewhere between “developed world” and “third world.”

As I was strolling along yesterday on a high-tech promenade of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, I lingered to appreciate this old disabled bus.

It used to be a carbon-emitting transportation machine in a third world country, but now it has morphed into an ice cream booth in our hyper-entertained theme park of USA inc.

I would like to  thank the Artist(s) of India, whoever he or she was who decorated this bus. Nice work!

And I would like to commend the Disney person(s) who saw the historic value of this work of art. To me, it represents the idea that we all live in a blueish bussarine, and not everything that wears out must be thrown away.

Glass Chimera

Real Color or Reel Color?

Now we’ve leaped into the Disney scenario, along with the all the other however-many millions of people who’ve traveled here from around the world or whatever planets they came from.

It’s pretty amazing what they do at Disney every day. And then at the end of a day, at night when the fireworks boom and sparkle overhead, it seems like a large contingent of all those Magic Kingdom gawkers decide to leave at about the same time, barreling out of there in massive members.

This huge throng gets directed out of the park, up to the monorail, out to the busses and the boats, and it is amazing to me that the Disney people have this great daily egress all computed and figured out and so well-managed. It seems to go without a hitch, this progressively steady movement of thousands of sedate, highly-entertained people trundling out in semi-darkness, about half of them kids, a gargantuan flow of folks that is being directed by mature WDW employees waving flashlights and looking as if they enjoy what they’re doing while all of us cattle-like crowds are obviously enjoying the whole trip that’s been projected on us so agreeably through these many years of developing Disney expertise.

So this morning I’m sitting in the big resort over here somewhere in Orlando and feeling relaxed and refreshed because we, like however many millions of other working people (you’d have to be working somewhere to afford all this) are here in the planet-perfect central Florida springtime, and I moved to share a couple of pics with you that indicate what’s going on.

One pic I took yesterday. You’ve probably seen a print of this famous painting by Emanuel Leutze.

Now here’s a funny thought I had this morning: what would George Washington have thought about all this?

It’s amazing how much the world has changed since Washington crossed the Delaware River in order to surprise attack the occupying armies of King George III, and thereby accomplish the revolutionary crossing by which our national independence was wrestled from from those stuffy old Brits. But you’ve gotta love ’em, gotta love them Brits. After all that, they’ve turned out to be pretty good friends and Allies. And I think quite of few them are ambling around here at Disney just now.

But here’s another pic that I’ll lay in front of your eyes. I thought of it this morning. It’s not a Disney pic, but it expresses a wonder that’s on my mind. The photo was taken a year ago at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, on the absolute other side of our country.

What I’m pondering here is the color, and source of the color in the image. In that greenhouse where this pic was snapped, there were hundreds, yay thousands of very colorful flowers.

What you see here is a very interesting plant that offers an intense red bloom, which hides beneath stripy leaves. But here’s the catch. The intense blue here, and the yellow flourishes that capture your attention are not, as at first they seem, part of the flower, but rather, an imposition of colored light that has shone down through colored facets in the overhead glass roof of the conservatory. At first glance, all the hues seem to blend in riotously colorful montage of flowery exuberance.

Images we see are not always what at first they appear to be. When I was a kid growing up in early-1960’s America, Disney had a TV program that was custom-tailored for all of us newly-prospering postwar suburbanizing Americans who were at that time going crazy with millions of purchases of a new technology called –haha! — color TV! On Sunday nights, we’d watch Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, and it was pretty amazing, even more amazing to us than, say, what you’d see today on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram or blahblahblah whatever.

And guess what! Last night as we were piling out of there with all those millions of temp-Floridians, I saw the person who used to host the Wonderful World of Color on Sunday nights.

I saw the real Tinkerbell!

I guess it was because I wished upon a star.

Glass Chimera

March 14, 2017

Why the Diagonal, y’all?

Because it’s the shortest distance

between two

points?

or

because what goes up must come

down?

or

to break up the conformism of these trunkated

lines?

or

because it

snowed?

or

because this old tree was just ready to begin its

fall?

or

because its time had come, y’all?

or

because that’s

all

she wrote

or

maybe it was just the final

call,

from seed to tall

from spring to fall.

It could happen to us

all,

y’all.

From seed to fall,

that’s all?

Prob’ly not,

I do believe.

You?

Glass half-Full

Coast

Coast is clear

life is dear

without fear

now and here

World turns round

up turns down

some get lost, others found

life goes back to ground

Build the town

structures up, but they’ll come down

lots of noise, then dearth of sound

still the world goes round and round

Another day, another turn

some will learn; some will burn

many earn and some discern

still the world doth turn and turn

Clouds rise up

life is tough

times get rough

lose some stuff

When all is said and done

we live and walk and speak and run

we feel pain but we find fun

until this present day is done.

What then?

Do it all again?

How about find a friend

in the one who died and rose again.

Glass half-Full

from Ridiculous to Sublime

A couple of nights ago, I briefly tuned into that  greatly over-hyped debate. Donald was blathering about Hillary’s emails and she was going on and on about his failure to release tax returns.

Nothing new here, just more of the same old same old blah blah.

So I ditched it, and went back to what I had been doing before, because, I thought, this is ridiculous.

Well then a day or two rolls by.

This afternoon, while listening to WDAV on the radio, my soul was stirred profoundly by the hearing of an amazing selection of music. And I found myself wondering, what is it about this music that moves me so much?

I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing. This music it is sublime.

What is sublime? you may wonder. I cannot adequately explain to you what the word sublime means, but I can show you where the meaning is clearly demonstrated if you will listen to this:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOofwWT3Edc

As the changing drama within the music builds up, pay particular attention to these     minute-time points in the video: 2:58, 4:00, 5:55 and 8:32.

I recently read something about how or why  this artistic dynamism moves us so much. In his book, A Secular Age,

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002KFZLK2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Charles Taylor says . .

“. . . such art can serve to disclose very deep truths which in the nature of things can never be obvious . . .”

This music is, after all physical analysis is said and done, merely a pounding of wood and metal beneath the orchestrated hands of trained men. How can it be, then, that it moves me so?

To try to understand why or how, you might as well try to comprehend how or why, over two centuries ago, some men and women like you and me had a luxurious building constructed and then  walked around on its mosaic floor like they owned the place and then later a bunch of other stuff happened and things changed and it got covered up for a long time and then one day some other people came along and dug it up and said . . .

“. . .well, gollee, what do you know about that?”

“Gosh, Jeb, it’s a mystery to me.”

Glass Chimera

Covered Women

I was a Catholic kid growing up in the 1950’s. During that era, the Church schools were administered by nuns whose habits included keeping themselves covered by black and white cloth.

But during my lifetime, now extending into 65 years, all that nunnery garb has gone the way of the buffalo. You don’t hardly see old-style nuns walking around in public any more.

On the other hand, there appears to be a worldwide movement by some religious people to keep their women covered. More about that in a moment.

Another thing that was going on back in the day, when I was a youngster, was the growth of viewership in playboy magazine, a publication that was eagerly snapped by pubescents like myself and many others, for the sake of looking at naked women.

Generally, us good Catholic boys preferred to train our eyes onto the girls in the magazine, instead of the nuns who were teaching us at school.

That infamous magazine was not the only one, as you probably know. There were many others, such as penthouse and hustler. As the years rolled by, those rags just got raunchier and raunchier. Then along came the X-rated movie houses, peep house, topless bars and ultimately the worldwide web on which any female genitalia and mammary-triggered acting out can be fantasized. At various times I sampled them all before God got a hold of me and got me straightened out on a few things.

Now I notice, ubiquitously, we inhabit an hyper-stimulating post-religious world where many women who court the public spotlight compete with each other for  male gawks by flaunting outfits that take exposure, instead of fashion, to the max.

This is very titillating, and at times seems pleasant and quite alluring, but it doesn’t solve any problems. In fact, as a certified old geezer now I am starting to think this whole hefneresque uncoverage trend has generated more trouble than its worth.

All these sexy women sauntering around in the world can actually make a man’s life much harder–not easier–to bear.

My personal experience uncovers this truth: when you get right down to it, there is nothing better for a man in this world than a real, live woman who loves him, and there is nothing better for a woman than a real, live man who loves her.

But now we have millions of horny men walking around in the post-modern, post-religion, post-playboy, post-marriage, post-internet world being constantly tormented by all these uncovered women.

And so along cometh the Muslims imams, raising their hajibual judgements against our licentious western ways.

As a Christian, I cannot deny they have a point.

They want to keep the women covered. Western women see this as oppression. Maybe it is, but there are some western men who discreetly understand why it is that the Muslims want to cover their women with hijab and niqab. My born-again assessment of this conundrum is that Law (of covering women, or anything else) is no salvation–and no solution–for delivering us over-stimulated males from our sexual obsessions. We each have our own frustrations to deal with, and that is an issue between each man and his God. And his woman, if he is fortunate enough to have one.

In other news, it has been reported that some great historian said somewhere that what goes around comes around.

I could say that, in my lifetime, the notion of women being modestly dressed has incrementally disappeared; maybe it went around the dark side of the moon or somewhere to be disposed of forever. Religious people are criticized for being old-fashioned, puritanical, repressed, blahblahblah, for their antiquated ideas about keeping women covered.

Now the idea of modesty comes back around, but this time from a different source–a different religion–not the old Catholic one, not the old Puritan one, not the old Calvinist one, but the new/old Muslim one that comes slouching from the east.

And this old guy wonders if now we really get what’s coming to us. Nebuchadnezzer is not just mouthing empty fatwahs.

Maybe it’s time to take cover.

Glass half-Full

It’s the Contest

The destroyer is a spirit, a corrupted zeitgeist.

But in spite of his apparent worldwide heist,

he is no christ.

He’s eloquent in spreading fear

while whispering in your ear.

She slides in on a sled of doubt

chewing up our courage, then spitting it out.

He serves up fodder for defeat;

she slices delectable discouragement for meat.

The destroyer fastens our attention

on cultivating nervous tension.

He’s obsessive with dismay;

she casts hope and care away.

They display

excrutiatingly excellent excuses

to focus on all those world-driven abuses

for which we have no productive uses

so that accomplishments can be decimated,

achievements aggravated

and defeat elevated

to a sordid art form

so as to blot out our war-torn

mission

as if by atomic fission.

Hey, they say,

it’s all going to blow someday,

maybe the big one even comes today.

The destroyer will habitually say

conspiracy is the order of the day,

and rational order has been put down

as we’re all just fooling’ around.

She says decency went out with the tide,

been cast aside,

and integrity is dead

and that we should just party down instead

because the whole damn system is fixed

for sure, bewitched

and our course cannot be switched

cuz life’s a bitch,

not a beach.

So don’t bother to reach

out.

Just glory in the art of pout.

We’ll make of complaint an art form

and criticism a craft, to adorn

our death-wish thanatos

with exquisite, tragic loss.

On the other hand

as far as the east is from the west,

in spite of all that, we could be supremely blessed.

The comforter says you can do this;

your arrow is not destined to always miss.

If the system is rigged what does it matter;

your hopes and dreams aren’t doomed to splatter

on the mean streets of this world

because the true kingdom is not of this world;

it displays a flag unfurled,

that flutters in our heart

urging us to start

a work, an art

apart

to begin anew

a place for me and you

a place in the son

no matter what the gun

has done

to make us turn and run

from the challenges of this screwed-up life.

We can overcome and defeat this strife

by faith, by hope, by true love,

bestowed to us from above

if we can allow the destroyer in us to be crucified.

On a cross of sacrifice, that enemy has died,

and to its own defeat is tied.

But I’m not tied to it;

they can’t make you do it.

Death doesn’t have to overcome me, nor defeat you;

I tell you true.

We shall rise above it all

if you can hear the call

of resurrected victory

for you and me:

He’s signaling from the other side

if you can resist the tide

of death-wish thanatos

and the destroyer’s proposed eternal loss.

You may hear otherwise,

but death itself in the end just dies.

Selah.

Traveler’s Rest

The Lady is at Work

She heard America singing;

through two centuries’ labors they came a-ringing–

the song and the opus of bringing

a newborn project in a newfound world

‘neath a loud stripey flag ‘t’was unfurled.

From ship to wagon to cart to railroads,

sending out them precious mother-lode payloads

over seas and lands and bridges and field rows–

he hauled ’em in, she bailed ’em out

through highways and byways they sent forth the shout.

Up with the work! and down with the grit

she dug and he hammered; she welded; he shipped it.

Turn up the earth, mine and weld and wield it ’til it fit–

a new land, a new time, new way of doin’

rolling on wheels where used to be horsehoin’.

They rolled up on the far edge of our vast continent,

on the heels of a gold rush at the shore of containment.

Along came the Okies, then Hollywood raiment–

not bein’ done yet, we slid into Silicon valley,

so much bigger and brighter than the old yankee alley.

Now what’s up with that and where do we go from here–

let bruthas and sistahs step to the music we hear

enduring the pain, dodging the rain, overcoming the fear,

we gotta discover what to do to pick up the slack

so we do not regress, do not turn back.

Maybe we will and maybe we will not–

forge a way past our lethargy, this entitlement and rot

what it is we got to do I know not what,

might have to grab that destiny from some ogre or grinch.

Let’s get this ship turnin’–hand me that wrench!

Glass half-Full

The life song of J Alfred Bourgeois

We’ve worked hard for what we’ve got;

maybe we’re smart and maybe we’re not.

Thanks to the courage of long-dead soldiers,

we can grow and prosper and manage to get older.

We’ve read about .gov by the people, republics, and democracy;

we try to stay decent, clean, and free from hypocrisy.

And yes, we’ve heard of that Marx guy, and Lenin and whatnot.

but I’m here to say we aint no proletariat.

We don’t wanna change the world;

we like stars and stripes in the breeze unfurled.

Dinner on Sundays, work on Mondays, weekends for fun days;

this is what we like, and cultivate in predictable ways.

Jefferson said let’s do .gov by the peoples.

We say along with that came letting folks raise their steeples.

Marx, on the other hand said we need dictatorship of the proletariat,

but this home-making bourgeois boy giveth not a plug nickel for all that.

We’re happy to be plain ole boojwazee,

with a washer, dryer, car, and a home someday mortgage-free.

There are plenty out their who wanna die for the Cause;

we just like living in freedom under reasonable laws.

Glass half-Full