Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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That is funny. Credit Russia and the idiot savants of the press with hysteria.
The anal plug is a nice addition.
A more innocent mind might recognize it as a Tesla coil from the computer game Red Alert.
Bingo! Tesla owners are retentive. Coughs.
Where’s the 351st Brony Cavalry and Lord Rainbow Cardigan?
the world is a clown show
What has been evident since Lenin went to Russia is that we have no intelligence on Russia, none. Not one action of any Russian leader has ever been predicted, most especially Putin’s recognition of the Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. That was one thing Washington did not predict. In retrospect it should have been obvious, and it gives the Russias a great deal of room to maneuver.
US government “intelligence” agencies are in the dark about foreign motives and actions, but are up to speed on using their ever increasing budgets, technology, weaponry and manpower so spy on, intimidate, physically abuse, incarcerate and magically cause American citizens to somehow end up like Seth Rich and Michael Hastings. It matters not at all when they are caught working for foreign regimes, overthrowing a sitting president, earning mountains of cash from “persons unknown”, committing treason and threatening all who would lessen their power. Nothing happens to them. They operate with impunity and out in the open. They exhibit more raw power than the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the State Department and the Pentagon. They have brought to heel and now control every aspect of the media and Big Tech.
No power on earth can bring them to justice. Anyone in Washington who attempts to do so will get their attention. “Brave New World” meet “1984” meet “Darkness at Noon”; Stasi meet Gestapo meet KGB.
Weaker minds will excuse and dismiss everything if just given an inch. OK, now we could dismiss this annexation of Donbas, couldn’t we? Biden actually said as much.
You’re absolutely on point, Bob. The US intel is so concerned with my guns, crypto and freedoms that they were fooled easily. What’s next from PeeYouTin? Nobody fukn knows.
I like Putin more every day. Here’s a recent moment with Vlad deftly playing O Canada on the piano just before meeting with Xi Jinping. Nice choice, comrade. https://tinyurl.com/8d6u5c
I loved the inclusion and multi-cultural approach of letting the Eastside Rolling 40’s attend but the Bloods will retaliate because they aren’t invited.
And not a think changed on our mountain this past week. Weird!
The Clinton Wing of the American Democratic Party is “The Russians,” in this latest episode of their Media’s latest family sitcom. The two friends cooperate financially, strategically and institutionally to such an extent that they are indistinguishable from one another today. It’s the same Rhodes Scholar-ly international, tech-heavy, Booty-call Oligarchy, with their hands lodged deep inside each others’ pockets.
If their media fabrications can levitate the Clinton’s friends’ private agendas to such heights, again, that they ‘justify’ a new shooting war in Europe, then this country is in real, real trouble, and has no future. As the “Russian Collusion Hoax” and the two-year COVID hysteria have just proven, when governing bodies govern according to faked media narratives, a tiny minority of government staffers can wreak Nuclear-grade havoc on entire Nations.
And the lonely Bot-fly grub tunnels deeper into the Wildebeast’s brain.
If we are to remain a self-determining Republic, then this has to end. And, as I see it, it can only end in one of two ways: We need to either abolish this thing called “freedom of the press,” and pick up the Chinese model of media control – which means nationalizing all broadcast stations, webhosting, publishers, schools, and the like…OR, the American broadcast industry must reform itself.
Given the state of media ethics in American media today, and the lateness of the hour, I think the looming Sino media-model is the more likely outcome of the two.
It is not just “the Russians” that have occupied the minds of those two treasonous weevils Bill and Hillary. Recall all the campaign finance scandals involving China; also recall how much missile technology from Loral Space Bill turned over to China. This allowed those Asiatic demons to advance 20 years in advanced warheads, missiles, and guidance systems technology. Thus did that priapic dung beetle put every American within range of Chinese ICBMs.
As for “freedom of the press”, that supposes competition among various sources of media both local, national and foreign. That no longer exists and has not for decades. “Freedom of the press” has gone the way of “freedom of speech”. Say the wrong thing or write the wrong thing, then you and your family will be marked for destruction economically, politically or physically. More and more it is even the case that you will be destroyed for no reason at all, simply pour encourager les autres. Kafka lives!
The US media will self-reform when Obama stops going to bath houses and when Biden regains his sanity. Self-reform in any capacity personal or national is always difficult and usually impossible.
Such freedoms as promised in the Constitution are mere dust in the wind. No one pays any attention to that piece of paper. That is, except for the 2nd Amendment. That is because it does not rely upon some moldering document hidden away in some archive, but relies upon guns. Guns are a bit harder to ignore than paper. We might ask those Canadian truckers about the need for guns. Give up your guns and you give up your lives—literally.
Fascism is slowly transforming America. There can be no denying this. Those who fantasize about returning to some long ago Arcadia are charming in their innocence but deadly in their naivete. They are oblivious to the reality all around them, and as such have rendered themselves useless. But that does not mean therefore that all is lost. Fascism a la Pinochet is yet a distinct possibility.
If so then we can expect the media to do what they always do—lick-spittle, fawn, fellate and boot-lick those in power. And if one of their members starts to howl “freedom of the press” then it will be off in a helicopter for him.
“Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state.” As long as our side controls the state, what, me worry?
Steve,
I must say that I am surprised at your comment. You normally seem to post intelligent comments here.
Be very careful what you wish for. You may just get it.
My question to you:
Why would any thinking person wish to grant absolute control over the means of communication and dissemination of information to those who have demonstrated nothing but contempt for the truth?
To adopt anything in the model of the Chinese communists is foolish in monumental proportion at best. And at worst it is fatal.
We need to either abolish this thing called “freedom of the press,”
=============
NO.
Simply hold them accountable for their actions.
But who can do that?
No one. “Freedom of the press” has mutated into “tyranny of the press”. No dissenting voices are allowed. The “press” serves the ruling classes and despises all the rest. It feeds off sexual predation and lies. The press is to America what cancer is to flesh.
Correct.
It will stop feeding only when there is nothing left to feed upon.
Take a look at that drawing at the top, that represents the way the gov’t-media has portrayed this whole russia thing. Looks like little kid scribblings doesn’t it? That’s the way the whole past 2 years of “imaginary virus concoction” looks too. See the pattern?
Bombard the easily led masses, constantly, with the most enormous barrage of bullshit imaginable and watch all of them come apart at the hinges, starving for the buffalo jump.
This methodry works in the US because a fair amount of the populace has been reduced through multigenerational pussification to wobbling, bloated masses of fructose laden emotional basket cases not even worthy of the whip. If the boot is put to them they just cry even louder. Barely even human.
Not that I’m directly (or indirectly) suggesting such a thing – but the short story from some 20 years ago called: ‘What I Saw at the Coup’ by Matt Bracken is an interesting thought experiment. It is instructive on ways to ‘hold them accountable for their actions’. ‘Them’ is not just the media. It’s chilling for other reasons too – but I don’t want to spoil it.
It’s easy to find, even using Google. There are several copies of it hosted a number of places, including over at http://www.americanpartisan.org, http://www.forumsforums.com, and at http://www.freerepublic.com. Should it suddenly disappear, I’ve archived copies – so it’s message can still spread to where it needs to. Contact me for it, if necessary.
Mapphun of the highest order…