“You have a masterpiece inside you, too, you know. One unlike any that has ever been created, or ever will be. And remember: If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you.”
— Gordon MacKenzie
I find myself to be a collage
of every place I’ve been and seen
in my life and in my dreams
which just may be the same.
I pick and choose
the things I use
to spread upon my canvas
Wins and losses are all the same
the more I play the reality game
the wins sting more I confess
Yet with each colour that I add
each texture both good and bad
the meaning seems to get a little clearer
there’s been much love along the way
and despair from day to day
as the final line gets nearer.
Still I add, I change, delete
clean it up and make it neat
this is all I’ll leave behind
My legacy for you to see
It will be all that’s left of me
the journey that this life defined.
— G A Rosenberg
“The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’ meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’ meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.”
— Larry Hardiman
So I’ve talked a bit about religion and a bit about sex so let’s finish the trilogy of things we aren’t supposed to talk about with politics. Where sex is about the physical relationships between two (or sometimes more) people on an intimate level and religion is about the spiritual relationship between us and the universe, one of the definitions of politics according to Merriam-Webster is ” the total complex of relations between people living in society”. In other words all these beings are here with me, how are we going to deal with each other? Everybody has different ideas on how to answer this question and everybody is sure they are right and equally sure everyone else is wrong. We elect the people whose answers we are convinced are the closest to ours to govern us and then deride them when we find out that they lied. We have office politics, relationship politics, family politics and even personal politics. Believe me quite often the decision to not tear someone apart either verbally or physically is based totally on political considerations.
If something is this important than why shouldn’t people discuss it in polite conversation? Partly as with sex and religion, it involves the fear of the different. If someone has a different idea about how to relate to people than I do than his might be better and I might have to rethink things. I would show myself to be wrong in front of other people and be embarrassed. To avoid this, I either need to not talk about it or be able to make my opponent look bad. This normally ends up with someone feeling bad or foolish and again it comes from fear.
Why can’t people admit that when it comes to Sex, Politics and Religion, no one has the perfect way of doing things? We can all learn from each other and come up with an integrated approach that incorporates all views. Barring that we can stick to our guns and say “Maybe this doesn’t work for everyone but it works for us. Learn from us or leave us alone.” Yet it seems we can’t be left alone. Too many people need to impose their views on everyone in order to feel that their way is the right way. In S P & R fear makes us either Tyrants, Slaves or Isolated. Following our own paths and decisions, learning from others as we choose makes us happy. This might not be politically correct to say, but for me it feels like a truth.
Blessings, G
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
― Oscar Wilde
Last night I talked in general about religion so tonight let’s talk about sex. Almost everyone does it or has it in almost every conceivable way yet talking about it except among one’s closest friends tends to make for awkward conversations at best. Especially when it comes to talking about varieties of sexual experience and desire. Many get not only defensive but go on the offensive when exposed to desires that are different than their own. There are those who will go out of their way to attack those they consider ‘perverts’ or ‘deviants’. Again the reason seems to revolve around fear of the different. Probably the most pervasive pernicious fear that attacks us humans. This seems to be slowly changing with each generation and I hope it continues to do so.
Blessings, G
Tonight was a bit of a break art wise so here are two of my older pieces:
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
— Aristotle
I used to laugh at a quote that I came across several times in my youth. “The three things that should never be mentioned in polite company are sex, religion and politics” What I found funny about the quote and still do is that most conversations outside of those three, I find hopelessly banal. Perhaps it was the way I was raised. My mother was a very intelligent opinionated woman who was far from shy at expressing herself. Her sense of humour was quite bawdy and a lot of my communication skills come from her.
I can’t help it. I find sex religion and politics all to be fascinating subjects. What can be more interesting than the ways in which we interrelate as people, as cultures and as spiritual beings each with their own outlook on the universe. Yet without Sex, Religion and Politics there would arguable be no war. I can’t think of any conflict that is not a result in some way of at least one of the three. Yet what else is there to talk about? Health at its best is a subject that hopefully becomes exhausted quickly otherwise degenerates into rather lurid and tedious descriptions of bodily functions and operations. The weather also gets very tired very quickly. I don’t know that its possible to discuss one’s job without talking about how people relate to each other which quickly becomes politics on a smaller scale. There is a reason why these three and any other topic except S, R or P is known as small talk. What ever happened to larger talk. You know the questions that we all carry around inside of us that when shared offer us insight into ourselves and the world around us.
Are there subjects that should never be brought up? Is there any topic that is too socially unacceptable that two adults cannot and should not address it? I have always believed the answer to this question is no but increasingly I find that for many this is not the case. Mention certain subjects and large segments of the population will either turn and attack or lose all cognitive function as their limbic buttons are pressed and they go into a mindless rage. Ask someone to explain their beliefs and why they believe the world works in certain ways and they often quickly become defensive. Express a different world view then theirs and immediately too many scramble to justify why their belief or practices or culture is better. Nothing is wrong with that except that all too often people tend to take a challenge to their beliefs or practices as a personal attack rather than an honest inquiry to understand and integrate their thoughts with our own. How can we arrive at truth and understanding if we are unwilling to accept our differences. It is puzzling. Luckily not everyone is quite so insular.
Blessings, G
“I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
File this one under I should have known the gun was loaded. Facebook can be an interesting place where we find ourselves in the cause of making a point defending things we disagree with. Recently an acquaintance on FB (a FB acquaintance is a friend whom you don’t have much conversation with other than occasionally liking a posting by them) got himself in trouble with many people by admitting publicly in several places that he felt an attraction for young women. He did not say he ever acted on it. He just admitted to having a fetish for it. He chose among other places to post this in a bunch of groups that are associated with the Anonymous movement. One of Anonymous’s big targets is pedophiles so it was rather like wearing a gestapo uniform to a synagogue. He rather enjoyed the blowup on his profile page with assorted death threats and harangues.
I believe in protecting kids from pedophiles. It is not a crime I find condonable. Yet to me the idea of attacking someone for what they think, particularly something that they cannot help is rather a waste of time. Would I ever let him babysit for me or anyone else? I definitely would not. Do I think that he should be lauded for making such a statement? No and yet I would rather have someone identify themselves as a possible predator than to keep it secret. It would be so much easier to keep my family safe if everyone labeled themselves like household products. “Danger: May mug you.”
“Do not combine this person with alcohol”
“Texts while driving”
“Psychopathic Serial Killer”
“May be attracted towards children”
Anybody with enough self-knowledge to label themselves has saved me the trouble of trying to discern possible danger. Are they a hero? Hell no, but at least they are warning you. So many people don’t.
Kids these days in the west are raised to be incredibly savvy about this stuff. Between media and school, they are well aware of stranger danger. This is so much the case that at times I get concerned that they are raised with too much fear and paranoia. I grew up in a friendly neighbourhood and miss the fact that they are somewhat a thing of the past. Now a friendly hello to anyone may be looked upon with suspicion. Yes western civilization children are probably safer than they have been in any time in history and yet there is a price in fear and freedom that is paid for the security. It is a good balance to keep in mind.
Anyway in the conversation, I attempted to point out that this guy had committed no crime merely identified an impulse that could be considered unhealthy and that it was not worth the time and emotional energy to attack him. Of course this led to suspicion towards me (and another guy saying much the same thing) for ‘defending’ him. The next three hours of my time was spent defending a point of view I only half believed in against people who were listening to their emotions more than they were understanding any points I made.
I wasn’t defending the man. I was defending the idea that someone can’t be persecuted when a crime has not been committed. Who, reading this has not had thoughts that if acted on, would land us in prison or make us pariahs of society? We all have our shadow and our time is better spent working on ourselves than attacking others. It is all to easy to point fingers at the shit heads of the world as a way to avoid looking at our own stuff.
If we feel that a crime is beyond the pale then do things to either help the victims or prevent the crimes. Persecuting someone who is looking for the attention is feeding these impulses and not preventing them. A better form of prevention is to help these people work through their issues so they don’t end up acting out. That is not something that will happen on Facebook.
So lessons learned. If you stand in between a witch hunt and its target, you will become a target yourself. You can’t force people to see a bigger picture or to think critically. Mores the pity.
Blessings, G
“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
~ Patrick Rothfuss
Words like daggers
aimed towards my heart
We war with our tongues and minds
each dying the death of a thousand cuts
tares in the flesh
and tears in the eyes
and it all seems to lose meaning
as the love bleeds out
Words of healing
a balm for the soul
We comfort and seek to mend the pain
each grieving what has been lost through war
wiping the tears
bandaging the tares
we seek to find the meaning
and relight the flame.
— G A Rosenberg
Wondering if His Dreams Have Wings by G A Rosenberg 
Dwelling Place by G A Rosenberg 
Bearing Sustenance by G A Rosenberg 
Forest Queen by G A Rosenberg 
Distortions by G A Rosenberg 
Focus (Redux) by G A Rosenberg 
Manifestation by G A Rosenberg
Nature Spirits by G A Rosenberg
Royal Welcome by G A Rosenberg 
Beyond the Entrance by G A Rosenberg 
Healing Ring by G A Rosenberg 
Life Passages by G A Rosenberg 
Communication Breakdown by G A Rosenberg 
The Peacock’s Bride by G A Rosenberg 
Advisor by G A Rosenberg 
Mad World by G A Rosenberg