Truths and Lies

 

“All you have to do is write one true sentence.”
— Ernest Hemingway

 

I don’t know the truth yet at least part of me wishes to know it. There is also part that loves the mystery and the not knowing. I have known love and treated it badly and well. I have known crushing despair. I have also know joy. There are parts of myself that are rarely satisfied. I seek knowledge yet run from it. I carry contradictions. There are many whom I love. Hate takes a lot of energy. Annoyance is relatively easier. Tho the previous statements are all the truth as I know it, I wonder how many contain lies as well.
Blessings, G

 

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NevermoreNevermore by G A Rosenberg

 

Self-ConsumingSelf-Consuming by G A Rosenberg

 

Chaotic Spiral

 

“Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.”
— Ernest Hemingway

 

Life in a chaotic spiral
expanding every day
with new trials
I seek a thread
of some substance
to pull me through.
What is strong enough
to help me see it through
What can bring me centrewise
and see me to the end.
Is it love? Is it Strength?
Is it a person place or thing?
Is it my questioning nature?
or my wild imagining?
In the end those are what matter
and what will keep me true
— G A Rosenberg

 

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Facing the DawnFacing the Dawn by G A Rosenberg

 

Star ManifestationStar Manifestation by G A Rosenberg

 

Time Served Truly – Word Play and Consciousness Stream

 

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
― Ernest Hemingway

 

My sentence was commuted. Shortened in that way no one could say whether it was true or false. It wasn’t so much that I got time off for good behaviour or bad. Indeed it seems I lacked conviction. Still I will get off with time served in another 25 years or so. I serve time tho I am not sure it returns the favour and why should it? For quite awhile I defied it, refusing to show the maturity that it tried so hard to thrust upon me. I parried the thrust and behaved much as a child or one of younger years. Then the dice rolled and I found myself a parent and all my past came back to heal and to haunt and thus I became time’s hostage. Still its not so bad, time and I have enchained each other..time takes from me my youth and I make it do tricks, slowing down or speeding up and occasionally in my head it runs backwards bringing memories.
Blessings, G

 

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In My BelfryIn My Belfry by G A Rosenberg

 

Green Sun's DayGreen Sun’s Day By G A Rosenberg

Having words

 

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”
― Ernest Hemingway

 

It seems I’ve been writing quite a bit lately on the subject of map making. What is a map after all but a symbolic representation that tells us where we are.  What then are words? Don’t we use words as a symbolic representation to describe where we are as well?
We abuse words even more than we abuse other mapping tools. One of the largest ways in which we abuse words is by assuming that everybody who we speak to uses the same meaning for each word that we do even when the evidence starts racking up that this is simply not the case. I have seen so many arguments that derived from people using the same word or words yet they both seemed to come from separate dictionaries. At least a few times when I’ve pointed this out to people rather than focus on establishing a common meaning for the term so that debate or discourse was even possible, the people involved focused on who was using the word ‘more correctly’ Being right had become more important than communication.
Still despite this problem, many people do communicate. Sometimes it is just with a hand offered or a smile exchanged but nothing is more beautiful than the sound of two people conversing in harmony.
Blessings, G

 

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Guarded IdyllGuarded Idyll by G A Rosenberg

 

SpikedSpiked by G A Rosenberg

Loyal Books

 

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

 

Today I went to one of my favourite old bookstores. It’s Eclipse books in Bellingham, Washington. Two full floors of bookshelves from floor to ceiling filled with books. Then there are the books that don’t fit on the shelves so they are stacked neatly on the floor, all over the floor of the store. It reminds me a bit of most of the old apartments I had as a young adult.

I’ve always loved reading. At a time in my life when I was less than socially adept, books comprised most of the friendships I had. There are still fictional characters I have late night conversations with, their viewpoints coming in surprisingly handy.
One of the coolest things about Eclipse books is that I find books there that I don’t seem to find in any other used book stores anywhere. Books I haven’t seen in years. They and several more common ones comprise, well if they were music, I would call it a soundtrack to my life so let’s call it a backdrop.

There were the first three books that along with a class I took, gave me my start at reading the tarot when I was 18: Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack, Tarot a handbook for the Apprentice by Eileen Connolly and The Book of Thoth by Alister Crowley. There were also several other tarot books I’ve read over the years since. There were the Carlos Castaneda books which recounted his apprenticeship with the Nagual Sorcerer Don Juan that was the jumping off points for my studies about the same time into Theosophy,the Kaballa, witchcraft, Ceremonial Magick and quite a few other areas.

Over in Fiction, there was On the Road by Jack Kerouac, a book that captured my heart and my imagination even earlier and which no doubt led to some later cross-country hitchhiking trips I was to undertake, The World According to Garp and the Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving which made me feel with their outlandish so true to life characters that my life wasn’t quite so strange after all or if it was I was not alone. Still I Persist in Wondering by Edgar Pangborn, one of the finest short story collections I have ever read and one of the most heart stretching and heart wrenching. Lots of other Science Fiction that I also loved, Asimov, Ellison, Spider Robinson, Roger Zelazney, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Heinlein filled the walls looking down on me as if to say, “Where have you been? It’s great to see you back, would you like so spend some time?”

Walking back up the stairs, I found a few old self-help books buried in my memory and displayed, among them Ira Progoff’s In a Journal Workshop, an amazing book for organizing one’s inner life through writing and journalling.
Sometimes the best thing about seeing old friends is the realization of how much you’ve grown since the last time you saw each other. What’s even more fun is realizing there is still more things to discover with them beyond the sharing of memories.
Blessings, G

 

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MarkedMarked by G A Rosenberg

 

MaelstromMaelstrom by G A Rosenberg

Listen Completely

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
― Ernest Hemingway

 

Tonight I had reason to think and write out a few principles of what listening to someone means to me and I thought it would make a decent posting.

Debate rather than dialogue… do we debate each other or do we champion the debate of ideas… thesis and antithesis bringing us to a synthesis..which becomes in turn a new synthesis…

Do we identify so much with our beliefs and hold so rigidly to them that we are unable to separate an attack on something we think from an attack on our being?if greater understanding is not our goal, than why are we here? This definition  of  debate as between people rather than ideas, an important distinction and tends to be a misapprehension fostered by American politics,

What if when  we listen to each other and to ourselves, and we hear something that causes an emotional reaction, we look at why rather than assume ill intention or incorrectness on the other persons part? Can we learn to listen  not just to words but to intent.What if the meat of the issue involves looking at your own reaction to what someone is saying? Listen to the space between their words and their phrasing. Do you listen to answer or do you listen to understand?
I know I would rather be incorrect and gain new insight and growth rather than be right and grow stagnant in my correctness.
Blessings,

 

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Valhalla AwaitsValhalla Awaits by G A Rosenberg

 

Purple SparksPurple Sparks by G A Rosenberg

 

 

Quote of the Day – December 16 2012

“As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”
― Ernest Hemingway

 

Harder? I seem to find heroes everywhere I go. Oh they may seem mundane to most, insane to some but for me heroes, nonetheless. The single mother who has worked to raise her children and provide for them who advocates for the one with a disability. The man who after a long period of homelessness starts a non-profit to help others and to show others how capable they are of helping. The musicians and artists who turn down prestigious gigs in countries with horrible records of human rights. The teacher who hides her first grade students away before a gunman comes in and kills her. Anyone out there who offers hope to another. People who show the beauty of their being in astonishing ways big or small. I have many heroes and discover new ones every day. New stars appear in my sky nightly.
Blessings, G

 

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Seven of WandsTarot- Seven of Wands by G A Rosenberg

 

Space Reverie
Space Reverie by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 22 2012

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
— Ernest Hemingway

If writing is akin to bleeding, then what if I fear to see my blood? How do I show what I fear to see myself. I talk a lot about facing up to my fears yet this one, looking at the events in my life both the painful and inspiring may be a difficult one. Oh listing the highlights of my life is easy enough, yet looking at them enough to make them real, reliving them in a way that will set me free, seems ever so much harder. Chatting with you the way I do is kind of a halfway step. Maybe that’s it. Maybe now that I’ve reached halfway, i can go halfway again and be even closer, then half of that and eventually I may have reached true written communication, faced my fears and exorcised a demon or two along the way..

Zeno’s Paradox

In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres, for example. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise’s starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise.
–Nick Huggett

…or maybe not. I feel determined tho that I can face this. What blocks to communication do you face?
Blessings, G

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Illumination by G A Rosenberg

Honeycombed Tree Maze by G A Rosenberg