Put up a parking lot

Posted on May 28, 2019 by

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” ― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

I went outside for a walk today.

I heard the sounds of lawnmowers, the sounds of traffic and vehicles.

I heard a singular bird chirping in the distance.

I heard a Canada goose honk in the distance.

I did not hear insects.

No hum of bees amongst the dandelions.

No frog croaks.

Only one bird chirping.

Where I work is surrounded by woods within the uptown of a city.

In years past it would be nothing to see the geese in the pond, their chicks growing like wild flowers.

The birds would be a cacophony of music against the thrum of society.

Even the breeze seems to have lost it’s bluster…

What have we done?

Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi

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Breathe

Posted on April 30, 2019 by

“To hurt is as human as to breathe.” ― J.K. Rowling, The Tales of Beedle the Bard

I have an adopted child with FASD who has gone downhill in recent years to the point of us losing hope.

If you know what Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is, than you know what I’m feeling right now. You know why I chose the Rowling quote and the song below.

I love my child with every fibre of my being

My heart is broken.

I no longer know how to help my child. There’s so much to their story that I wouldn’t know where to start nor would I want it aired for everyone. The nuances and complexities of the familial arrangements surrounding us all both add and reduce the turmoil.

I’m exhausted beyond.

Melissa Etheridge – Breathe

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Gods of War

Posted on April 26, 2019 by

“There’s never been a true war that wasn’t fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.” ― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Ours was a generation grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken” –” ― F.Scott Fitzgerald

I would like to believe that someday, some time in the future, peace is possible. I like to believe it, no matter impossible it seems.

We are a strange creature – humans, that is. We are willing to kill and be killed all in the name of a god that many seen to worship, just in different fashions. We are willing to annihilate the planet we live on all in the name of Greed, Lust, Desire. Some of us are willing to die for our Love, our Hope, hearts entwined.

What strange creature are we, humans, that relish in the aftermath of slaughter of innocence, yet wail when the slaughtered are our own.

Once upon a time, wars were fought face to face, person to person. Arms to arms. Once upon a time. Poppies bloomed in fields of blood, men kept marching on.

“Never again.” Words heard over and over. Unheeded, unheard. Never again.

The Gods of War drum out their commands, whispers in the ears of the powerful, and grown into a crescendo of us versus them.

Battle on, humans, battle on. The pawns must obey the players, the players must obey their Gods.

Def Leppard – Gods of War

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Machine

Posted on April 25, 2019 by

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

Modern age. Are we really so modern?

Trapped by the screens of our lives

Endless typing, skimming, surviving.

Anyone really alive anymore?

Cogs in the wheels of the master’s machines. Need money – borrow it! Need food – use your borrowed money, don’t make it yourself! Easy! Convenient! Stress, anxiety, depression, sickness…death.

Were simpler times really that simple? Toil for your food, toil for your bed, sludge through the drudgery of mud and decay to survive another day. Was there anyone really living?

Parts of great machines, we are. The anarchists try to clog up the gears, but it keeps chugging on.

Buy now! Save! Supplements to make you fit, lean, healthy! Big pharm, big alternative health, big money – now! Is there anything real anymore?

The machine keeps on trucking forward.

Extinctions, pestilence, plagues, climate, ignorance…a self-proclaimed end of days that the machine keeps sloughing towards.

A few try to break the cycle. Merely gnarls in the trunk of the axles that spin the wheels. The cogs stuck in congestion of traffic, smog or fog?

The machine keeps churning on…

 

Imagine Dragons – Machine

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Home Sweet Home

Posted on April 24, 2019 by

“A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.” ― Rumi, Words of Paradise: Selected Poems of Rumi

I’m feeling all mooshy inside, boiling water sopped up into a bundle of wool – squishy, small, yet capable of being larger than life.

My insides have never been reflected on my outside, well, at least not that I know of. Sometimes I can sit there, forgetting the extra pounds that cushion my body. I forget the layers of age, hurt, weight.

It’s a striking thing to feel one way on the inside, then, when observed in a reflection, the awful truth comes from the shadows and you are not who you thought you were.

I left my inner sanctum, my home, decades ago. I realize that now. I’ve wallowed without thinking, I’ve dreamt without believing. I’ve hungered without sustenance in my soul. I’ve slept through a fog of time where memories have been lost, gone forever in a flood of complacency.

Tomorrow. It’s always tomorrow.

The last while though, I’ve slowly, ever so slowly, started to come home. My anxiety is high, has been for months. I thought it was the house we’ve been trying to sell. It isn’t. It’s me. Afraid to truly be, afraid of success, afraid of not-failing. How odd…why would one fear those things? With success, comes change. With change, so much more.

Today, we’re having a viewing at the house. I no longer call it our house. It isn’t. It’s in the state of limbo that I have been. Not really belonging, but not quite ‘other’. Soon, I hope, we will both be home. The house home to ‘other’. Myself, home.

Mötley Crüe – Home Sweet Home

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