Category Archives: photography

Oakwood Smoke

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Oakwood Smoke

Dewdrop jewels adorn the berries
Golden waves reveal wind in the field
Fresh clean water refills the well
Forgiving sun warms moistened earth
Vibrant green shoots
Coat radiance on hills
Clear light infuses forest breath with live warmth
Evaporating dawn’s misty caress
As lush garden greenery emerges from shadow

Crisp little rustlings of foraging beaks
Crinkle through velvety silence
Mayhaps our longboatmen will hook us some fish
To grill over oak fire this evening
When maybe cider jugs in the creekbed will froth
With lively spirits for singing

May the Youngsters seeking sparkly rock treasures
On the beaches and in the clearings
Delight hide-and-seeking their imaginary friends
While we tend to the houses and the patching of clothes
To keep frosty rain from becoming surprise

In afternoon balm I’ll auger fluteholes
And string the guitars for serenading
Dusky appreciation into the night
As smooth river rocks in our fires swell heating
While we rim flaming centers with our circles of being

I might think back to recent times yet long ago
When the old world melted in the freezing drought
And burnt away in hopeless wars
Of taking all pushing everyone out
Till nothing and no one was left anymore
Each disappearing in private endings
To emerge from survival and gather as we few
Unknown to the others, in time to be
Alive together alone no more
Intimate strangers braided as tribe
By hidden streams of experience
Though of course they know nothing of you, my love
For we each keep sacred memories buried

Tomorrow I take Young Lad up Piney Meadows
To teach him about the bow
We’ll find pliant stalks for arrow shafts
And ready ourselves for the hunts to come
Young Lad only knows this new tribe life
And for that he is the better
Because it keeps young hearts pure
And young minds alert to aliveness
In time he’ll move off having borns of his own
As precious to him as mine were to me
By then I’ll be feeding my gone away tree
Returning my spirit to the forest

We old men and women must store up past thoughts
Mending the things through the seasons
And make savory scents that coil up in oak smoke
To fill tribal bellies with contentment,
Showing the Young without using words
That conduct is the temple of one’s presence
And our lives are life’s leaves
Meant to cycle as seasons
On and on as nourishment for each other.

9 December 2019

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Teetering on the Edge

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Teetering on the Edge

The dead that from us borrow
Are buried in their schemes
The children of tomorrow
Are left without their dreams

We see the steaming kisses
Of fire and the sea
The long bleak shoreline hisses
With all that used to be

The victors celebrating
Within their hoards entombed
Tomorrow wanders searching
Beyond bunkers of doom

Below a dusty red sky
From waterless burnt hills
We peer far out and ask why
We let your false pride kill

The air now ghosts of flowers
The sea now grains of grit
The green that once was ours
Our dawn that once was lit.

8 December 2019

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From Caesar’s Last Breath To Ours

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After the career: books donated in 2019.

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From Caesar’s Last Breath To Ours

Human Life is a sexually transmitted planetary disease, Climate Change is the disinfectant that will cure it. (I’ll explain myself on this later.)

Sam Kean’s concluding 5 paragraphs, on CO2 in the atmosphere, from his book Caesar’s Last Breath (And Other True Tales of History, Science, and the Sextillions of Molecules in the Air Around Us, 2017, Back Bay Books, Little Brown & Co) are interesting, being a series of statements of long-known physical quantities. Since I studied “gas physics” for my graduate studies (in the 1970s), and I developed an interest in climate change at least by 2004 (when I published my first article on climate change), I’ve known the basic facts Kean commented on for quite some time.

In one of my technical books on gas physics (Introduction to Physical Gas Dynamics, by Walter G. Vincenti and Charles H. Kruger, 1965, John Wiley & Sons, NY) an example is given in which the authors illustrate the physical phenomena of gaseous diffusion by showing that the last breath expelled by Julius Caeser will have taken years to fully disperse in a homogenous manner throughout the earth’s atmosphere, and so each person ‘today’ would likely breath in, on average, 5 molecules of that last breath. One amazing feature of the example is that it shows just how many molecules there are in each cubic meter of air (at sea level and ‘normal’ temperature), 2.69×10^25 per meter^3 = 2.69×10^19 per cm^3. Vincenti and Kruger quote the following from James Jeans’ 1940 book An Introduction to the Kinetic Theory of Gases (Cambridge University Press):

“…, a man is known to breath out about 400 c.c. of air at each breath, so that a single breath of air must contain about 10^22 molecules. The whole atmosphere of the earth consists of about 10^44 molecules. Thus one molecule bears the same relation to a breath of air as the latter does to the whole atmosphere of the earth. If we assume that the last breath of, say, Julius Caesar has by now become thoroughly scattered through the atmosphere, then the chances are that each of us inhales one molecule of it with every breath we take. A man’s lungs hold about 2000 c.c. of air, so that the chances are that in the lungs of each of us there are about five molecules from the last breath of Julius Caesar.”

The average spacing between air molecules (at sea level, or “standard temperature and pressure” = STP) is about 3.3×10^-7 centimeters. Since air molecules travel at an average speed of 5×10^4 centimeters/second (at STP), and each such molecule travels an average distance of 6×10^-6 centimeters before colliding into another molecule (obviously whizzing by many others between collisions), the frequency of collisions per molecule is about 10^10 collisions/second, or about 10 collisions per nanosecond.

Each such collision will deflect the colliding molecules into new directions of travel, so it can take them a very long time to actually transport from Point A to Point B separated by global distances. One number bandied about by commentators on climate change (who at least halfway know what they’re talking about) is that it takes “30 years” for local CO2 emissions to begin having a “global effect” as part of global warming. This is basically the timescale of atmospheric homogenization by diffusion of the locally emitted plumes, because of course the individual CO2 molecules of such plumes are quite ready to absorb infrared radiation, and lose it as heat released to other air molecules during collisions (the actual mechanics of global warming) from the instant those CO2 molecules are formed.

A different indicator of atmospheric trace gas homogenization is that a uniform (independent of geographical location) quantity per unit mass of radioactive fallout absorption/take-up by trees was first measured (recently, from tree corings) to have occurred in late 1965. Radioactive fallout was first created in 1945, and the greatest number of atmospheric (and any) nuclear explosions, by far, occurred in 1962. Some geologists have now proposed labeling the beginning of the Anthropocene from late 1965, and calling that year the end of the Holocene (which is/was the current geological epoch, which began with the last glacial period/retreat approximately 11,650 years ago). “Anthropocene” because it is the first epoch in which human activity (anthropo) has a global geophysical impact; such impacts being worldwide nuclear fallout (as in the 1957 book and 1959 movie On The Beach), and anthropogenic CO2/greenhouse gas-driven global warming.

When I first wrote about global warming/climate change, it was out of this perspective as a gas physicist trying to explain the technical details to a lay audience. I soon learned that the audience was not only laying, but snoring. I was trying to prod “people” into action to forestall climate change by “greening” energy technology, since I was also an engineer focused on “energy” and “efficiency.” Plus I was hoping a huge public shift in this direction would open up some nice ($$$) job opportunities for me. But the snoozing audience just wants consumerism at the lowest common denominator level, and the Big Bosses just want bombs (and money for themselves). So no sweet high-tech green-physics job for me, but more firepower for the ‘criminalated’ psychopaths who are our guiding self-worshipping self-imagined Olympians, more gargantuan Black Friday tsunamis of electro-plastic garbage consumerism for the ‘amnesiatariat,’ and as a result giga-tons more carbonation of the atmosphere and acidification of the seas, and less viability for our planet with its growing human population.

Since “the human element” (mental inertia, ego, tribalism) always controls and limits the actualization of any technical enterprise by a group of people — like greening away from fossil fuels — it was quickly obvious to me that though most “solar energy” technologies were ancient and well-understood “we” were not going to give up fossil fuel convenience, wealth-generation and enablement-of-political-power in favor of green energy, and so consequently global warming could only increase. And it has, and will. So I write about climate change “for the art of it” and for personal satisfaction, in particular to put my views “on the record” for my children. But I can only fantasize, without belief, that such writing will have any practical political effect — of course I’d like it to, but I’m a realist. Happily, it’s always nice to hear every now and then from someone who already agrees with my views, that something I’ve written has given them some encouragement.

And that is where the arc of my climate change consciousness — from the science to our society — has brought me to today: human connection. Given that fossil fueled humanity is intransigent, and now the advance of climate change is implacable (“tipping points”), I see the best focus for most people’s limited energies beyond their immediate survival and family needs to be the developing of a consciousness of climate change and political reality, and a commitment to acting toward others at a minimum with benign neutrality and better yet with compassion, honesty and solidarity, so human society is generally improved and economically more leveled, regardless of the geophysical conditions under which it exists at any given time. For a society that is as deeply humane as I’ve suggested (and vastly different than today’s) then if and when we really do enter a rapidly accelerating “end time” our individual exits would be as decently humane as possible because they would be occurring within a societal death-with-dignity of a society of broad solidarity. I suppose this is kind of glum thinking, but maybe that’s an inevitable result of my growing ‘old’ in these times.

All this has been a rather prolix introduction to a video about climate change I thought you might enjoy. The Age Of Stupid is a 90 minute British documentary from 2009 (five years in the making) that remains brilliantly cogent about the “human element” driving the climate change geophysics, and is also refreshingly accurate about the physical details of that geophysics. [1] The Age Of Stupid Revisited is a 15 minute look back on the original documentary, from today. [2] Nothing has changed for the better; for the worse yes. Reflecting on this documentary, on the arc of my climate change consciousness, and on my belief (which I wish future reality would contradict) that there will never be any significant collective action to stop anthropo-exacerbation of climate change, and to also end poverty and to economically level national and world societies, I arrived at the rather tart characterization that: human life is a sexually transmitted planetary disease, and climate change is the disinfectant that will cure it.

Notes

[1] The Age of Stupid
2009
https://youtu.be/awVbLg59tR8

[2] The Age of Stupid revisited: what’s changed on climate change?
15 March 2019
https://youtu.be/GqHKYwxEIRA

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What Should You Do About Climate Change?

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Earth’s climate is changing before our eyes, and at a faster rate than given by all previous scientific predictions. The melting of glaciers and permafrost, and the methane burping from tundras and the Arctic Sea; the enhanced power of hurricanes, rain and snow storms, and floods; the swelling of the oceans and the creeping inundation of shorelines worldwide; the unrelenting severity of droughts and wild fires; the acidification of the oceans, die-off of corals and reduction of marine life; and the havoc all these geophysical phenomena play on food production and on the habitability of the many environments both humans and wildlife call home, are all startling clear to see.

The present form of our climate change is global warming, which is caused by the greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, oxides of nitrogen, and volatile organic compounds), from our fossil-fueled economic activity, which is capitalist in either a “free market” or command economy format.

The only way to reduce the geophysical stimulation enhancing and accelerating global warming is to reduce and ideally halt the burning of fossil fuels. Humanity has not had the willpower to do this because it is from fossil fuels that we derive almost all of the power — and wealth — we use continually to each maintain our personal activity, and for us all to power our societies and civilization on every scale of their structures. While there are still people who live “off the grid” within the enchantment of nature as human wildlife, and who do not use fossil fuels at all, they are only a minority of Earth’s people. Humanity, 7.74B souls (25 November 2019) and growing by about 200,000 people a day (350,000 births, 150,000 deaths) burns fossil fuels to live.

The many poor and disadvantaged people around the world would like greater access to fossil fuels and electricity, which would allow them to increase their expenditure of external energy (exosomatic energy, outside their metabolism) in order to work themselves up from the drudgery and terror of surviving at a subsistence level, to safer more secure and comfortable modes of living. Many of the fortunate people experiencing relatively secure lives within the advanced highly developed economies of the First World would like greater access to, and cheaper prices for, exosomatic energy so as to extend the scope of their materialistic pleasures. Whether justified or unjustified, most people want more exosomatic power, and that demand drives the relentless expansion in the use of fossil fuels; and so global warming advances.

What should you do about climate change? There are as many answers to this question as there are commentators, critics, charlatans, careerists, environmentalists, philosophers, politicians, preachers, scientists, sages, saviors, speculators, know-it-alls and know-nothings with an axe to grind. The purpose of this essay is to whet your Occam’s Razor to slice through it all.

Consider the following Bayesian Statistics model problem, “Four Societies,” an abstraction of an extremely complex ‘what to do about climate change’ reality, to help organize our thoughts in hopes of eventually pointing to the correct actions we, individually, should take.

The purpose of Bayesian analysis is to logically select the best course of action from a set of available options, despite uncertainties about the probabilities of the outcomes that may occur, and where the decision-making process takes into account your own personal preferences regarding those outcomes. You can easily learn the mechanics of basic Bayesian analysis by looking up articles on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Also, I give a patient explanation of decision-making using Bayesian statistics, with examples, at [1].

Four options for configuring our society are presented above (Bayesian outcomes), two capitalist and two socialist. For each of the capitalist and socialist formats there are two economic modes: politically unrestricted economic growth, and highly regulated and politically programmed economic contraction. Each is labeled somewhat fancifully to suggest its characteristics.

The “Billionaire Boys & Girls Club” (BB&GC) is the unrestricted capitalism of Ayn Randian dreams, and such dreamers as Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and the many millions of people enthralled by their income-generating activities. These are people who see their life’s blood as issuing from their successful dog-eat-dog competition within a growing economy under capitalism.

The “Green New Deal,” (GND) as used here, is the idea of a 21st century interpretation of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration public works programs of the 1930s, and the military Keynesianism of the 1940s, to combine economic stimulation for the uplift of the bottom two-thirds of America’s standard-of-living pyramid, with a revolutionary revamping of American energy, housing, transportation, healthcare and social services infrastructure, that in sum total aggressively acts to minimize the further stimulation of global warming. The popular idea here is that America’s existential threat from climate change had its analog 80 years ago as the existential threat from the Great Depression and World War II, and that a Rooseveltian-style socialism now would be just as effective as it was then for overcoming the threat.

“Carbon Limited Capitalism” (CLC) is my term for the regulation and carbon-emission taxing of capitalism to significantly, if not entirely, eliminate its reliance on fossil fuels. Objectively, this would mean a contraction of economic activity for quite a while (perhaps forever) since green energy technology, though growing, is still too insufficient to supply the entire quantity of power consumed by our industrialized civilization — as we presently choose to wastefully conduct it.

“Enviro Co-op Simplification” (ECS) designates an intentional simplification of every aspect of American life so as to eliminate any reliance on fossil fuels. This format of American life would be centered on environmentalism, rather than gargantuan consumerism, and of necessity be a tightly interwoven network of cooperative associations and groupings — lots of socialism. It would be the “Certified Organic” model of American life and work, instead of our current ‘Fast Junk Glitz-o-tainment’ isolation-in-parallel format.

Each one of us will have preferences for or against residing in each of these four possible societies, and those preferences can be quantified on a purely subjective basis, as desirabilities D1, D2, D3 and D4, and assigned as follows.

A person primarily concerned with wealth accumulation might choose desirabilities as D1=100, D2=20, D3=10, D4=0.

A person primarily concerned with minimizing climate change and revitalizing Earth’s environments might choose desirabilities D1=0, D2=10, D3=20, D4=100.

There are as many possible sets of choices (D1, D2, D3, D4) as there are choosers. I will lead this presentation toward some general results, eventually.

What I (and you) — as the person in this model problem asking “what should I do about climate change?” — have to do is to decide: what am I going to commit myself to, both in my personal life and in any social and political activism I may engage in?

The two choices given here are for either economic growth or economic contraction.

What is unknown is whether our society will remain in its current capitalist format or transition into socialism because of the force of geophysical and sociological pressures. Let the quantity p designate the probability that socialism will arise in the historical near future in time to organize American society’s response to climate change. The quantity p is a number between 0 and 1. Thus, the probability that capitalism will remain the societal paradigm is the quantity (1-p).

Given “my” desirabilities (D1, D2, D3, D4) for the four potential outcomes (BB&GC, GND, CLC, ECS), and the probability, p, of uncertain magnitude (between 0 and 1) for a socialist transformation, how would I nevertheless quantify my expectations — or utility values — regarding my two possible courses of action: committing to economic growth or committing to economic contraction? As follows.

Here, the symbol * designates multiplication.

Given my subjectively quantified desirabilities (D1, D2, D3, D4) for the four potential societal outcomes, along with the as yet unknown probability p for a near-term socialist transformation, the utility value or expectation (a quantification of my potential satisfaction or dissatisfaction) for committing to economic growth is

Eg = D1*(1-p) + D2*p.

Similarly, the utility value or expectation for committing to economic contraction is

Er = D3*(1-p) + D4*p.

While “I” can pick desirabilities out of my own subjective preferences, feelings and biases, I can only guess — or ‘guesstimate’ — at what p might be. So, making such a guesstimate, I can then actually calculate a numerical value for each of Eg and Er. Comparing these, I would then choose to act according to whichever expectation quantity had the higher value. This is Bayesian decision-making, you choose the action that is subjectively of higher value to you, given your estimate of the probabilities of the uncertainties.

For example, the wealth seeker whose desirabilities are D1=100, D2=20, D3=10, D4=0, and who estimates the likelihood of a socialist transformation at p=0.5 (50%), would have utility values of

Eg = 50 + 10 = 60.

Er = 5 + 0 = 5.

Obviously, this capitalist bull would choose to devote himself to economic growth.

Similarly, the “Earth First” environmentalist whose desirabilities were listed earlier as D1=0, D2=10, D3=20, D4=100, and who estimated the probability of a socialist transformation at p=0.5 would have utility values of

Eg = 0 + 5 = 5.

Er = 10 + 50 = 60.

Obviously this environmentalist would choose to devote herself to economic contraction.

But not everybody is so lopsided in their preferences. An individual pulled in different directions by the need to make a living and enjoy a bit of consumerism, a yearning for greater social solidarity, a concern about global warming, and who has few ideological rigidities might select desirabilities D1=3, D2=8, D3=2, D4=10.

For this mild liberal

Eg = 3*(1-p) + 8*p,

Er = 2*(1-p) + 10*p.

It turns out that for this individual Eg=Er when p=1/3 (33%).

So, for the probability of socialism, p, estimated at greater than 1/3, Er is greater that Eg; committing to economic contraction will have more personal value that committing to economic expansion.

Obversely, for the probability of socialism, p, estimated at less than 1/3, Eg is greater than Er; and committing to economic expansion will have more personal value than committing to economic contraction.

For this mild liberal individual, if they believe that socialism has a better than 33% chance of happening, they should commit to economic contraction, environmentalism and consequently socialism. If they believe that socialism has less than a 33% chance of occurring then they should commit to being an economic growth capitalist. All this is based on personal subjectivities that arise from the confrontation with the objective realities of this American’s life in a world of climate change, and an assumed probability of future political change.

How would you quantify your preferences and inclinations into a set of numbers D1, D2, D3, D4 and p, and then what would your utility values be for the two actions of: working for economic growth, or working for economic contraction? How much are you willing to give up in order to forestall climate change? It might take more than you imagine. [2]

Now, I’ll state some general results for this model problem, and spare you the mathematical details.

For the probability, p, of socialist transformation to be a positive number between 0 and 1 (where any real probability must be within), the desirabilities must satisfy the following conditions.

Both (D1-D3) and (D4-D2) are greater than 0, or both (D1-D3) and (D4-D2) are less than zero.

Given these conditions, the value of probability at which Eg is equal to Er is designated as q, and has the value

q = (D1-D3)/[(D1-D3)+(D4-D2)].

For p less than q, one of either Eg or Er will dominate; and for p greater than q that dominance will switch. The “mild liberal” example shown earlier exhibited all this.

Another general result is that individuals with positive (D1-D3) and (D4-D2) — or D1 greater than D3, and D4 greater than D2 — can be ideologically capitalist and not really concerned about climate change; wanting economic growth under capitalism to strengthen it, and economic contraction under socialism to weaken it.

Similarly, individuals with negative (D1-D3) and (D4-D2) — or D3 greater than D1, and D2 greater than D4 — can be ideologically socialist and not primarily concerned about climate change; wanting economic contraction under capitalism to weaken it, and economic expansion under socialism to strengthen it.

Individuals who only care about economic expansion without regard to either capitalist or socialist ideology, and obviously don’t care about climate change, will have D1 greater than D3, and D2 greater than D4. Their utility value for economic growth, Eg, is always dominant regardless of any numerical value of probability p (which is in fact irrelevant to them).

Similarly, individuals who only care about economic contraction — our deeply committed climate change-confronting environmentalists — will have D3 greater than D1, and D4 greater than D2. Their utility value for economic contraction, Er, is always dominant regardless of any numerical value of probability p (which is only of interest as a political indicator of a national shift to economic contraction).

Finally, for both totally committed economic expansionists and economic contractionists, those who are inclined to favor capitalist ideology will see a decrease in the happiness of their unwavering efforts as the probability, p, of the transformation to socialism increases; and conversely, those inclined to favor socialist ideology will see an increase in the happiness of their unwavering efforts as the probability, p, of the transformation to socialism increases.

Those of you who are charter members or committed aspirants of the Billionaire Boys & Girls Club, or the Enviro Co-op Simplification Movement have no need for this Bayesian analytical method of making the emotional decision of how to conduct your life in the presence of climate change. But for us “regular people” this kind of theoretical exercise can help clarify the mind on what one’s priorities and concerns really are, and how best to focus your limited energies in the face of uncertain political shifts in a world of advancing climate change. What are you and I willing to accept — and sacrifice — in order to forestall climate change? Bayesian analysis is one way to personally come to grips with that question.

My wish would be for a socialist Green New Deal that miraculously disappeared fossil fuel usage without a loss of the exosomatic energy we now enjoy — achieved by some combination of energy conservation and the use of renewable energy (solar, wind and gravity derived) — and that such a transformation of the energy technologies powering our society and civilization were accomplished without further greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, that the required rapid contraction of fossil fueled economies, to forestall climate change, was also simultaneously a societal transformation to a new highly equitable economic paradigm operating harmoniously within the limits of nature. But I know that is impossible. Even the best effort in that direction will necessarily be an approximation to the ideal that is deficient to some degree, perhaps significantly. Climate change may now be beyond the ability — and the willingness — of humanity to avert; the best we can likely do is to minimize our further exacerbation of it. [3], [4]

Personally, I think that Enviro Co-op Simplification Socialism could be alright if we all made an effort for it.

Notes

[1] Bayesian Bargains: Jail, Shopping, Debt, And Voting
MG,Jr., (30 January 2012)
http://www.swans.com/library/art18/mgarci39.html

[2] That Green Growth at the Heart of the Green New Deal? It’s Malignant
Stan Cox, (13 January 2019)
http://greensocialthought.org/content/green-growth-heart-green-new-deal-it%E2%80%99s-malignant

[3] End-of-life anxiety and finding meaning in a collapsing climate
Leonie Joubert (20 November 2019)
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-11-20-end-of-life-anxiety-and-finding-meaning-in-a-collapsing-climate/

[4] Choosing Dignity During Climapocalypse
MG,Jr., (26 May 2018)
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2018/05/26/choosing-dignity-during-climapocalypse/

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A Soaring Hawk

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A Soaring Hawk

I walked beneath a freeing sky
A soaring hawk winging thoughts aloft
The calmed remembrance of old dreams
Clouds aglow with swallowed light
Drifting by on silent streams
Of stories I will never speak
The light of day unfurling space
Illuminates my winding path
Unshadowed hills of grit and green
The finest ripples of my palm
A fading wake of memories
Seeping out into the light
All so common yet all mine
Connecting ever each to all
By light on silent distant thought
Adrift alone on warped time’s seas
Beyond horizons of each one
So mind must soar up like that hawk
To look to where experience ends
Perhaps to catch a glimpse of you
Oh so very long ago
When warmth was shared between us two
Till now forgotten urgencies
Cast us away to different worlds
That drew our lives out as we’ve seen
Remote from those that now begin
As my regards go out to you
With hope your journey has been sweet
For mine was good despite the storms
And I survived to now breathe in
This freeing sky with soaring hawk
And see descending light infuse
Reflections burnish life anew.

23 November 2019

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Forever and a Day

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Forever and a Day

The opposite of death is love.

Come now sweet darling
Don’t be that way
The world may be changing
Fire ’n ice have their way
But don’t you be fretting
For come here what may
I’ll be your lover
Forever and a day

We’ll shiver in winter
We’ll sweat in the heat
We’ll drink the brown water
We’ll live without meat
Your young skin will toughen
Under hot suns
Your young brow will furrow
As years have their run

We’ll find our right living
Beneath ashen skies
We’ll always be yearning
For young dreams’ reprise
The world’s always changing
Uncertain to be, but
With my arms around you
You’ll always be free.

For our world is burning
Its green hopes lost smoke
As our hearts are learning
To hold strong as oak
The wars will be fearsome
And peace will elude
But love for each other
Will give fortitude

So come now sweet darling
Don’t take on so
Though our world is changing
Our love will grow
And we smiling through
Our sweet time alive
For each we’ll be lovers
Till forever dies

And this world will crumble
Freeze, burn away
Our lives flicker out
Must happen one day
The red suns are burning
The grey moon’s cold hope
Lost children are turning
From fear’s lonely yoke

But fret not my darling
For all things must pass
Yet there is one constant
One thing to last
Despite all the grieving
Our love is so brave
The smiles of whose being
Will live past the grave

We are so lucky
Past mere survival
We can both dream
Of nature’s revival
Mourning the children
Lost in the floods
Whose stilled lives are bubbles
Of me in the bud

Memories wistful
And not a lament
Hearts filled with love
And spirits unbent
The loss and the lack
Cannot kill the soul
Where love for another
Has once taken hold

We’ve been so lucky
In this life so graced
Though our world is changing
And we’ll be displaced
Amor y candela
La noche nos daré
Corazones contentos
La vida brillaré

So fret not my darling
For come now what may
I’ll be your lover
Forever and a day
Yes, our world is changing
And our time will pass
But through all the dreading
Our love will last

Come now the winter
Come now the drought
Lost is salvation
Of that there’s no doubt
The fire and the ice
Will each have their way
But through all the changes
Love constant will stay

So don’t you be fretting
Come now what may
You’ll fill my tomorrows
Like my yesterdays
Through all of the changes
One constant will be
That I’ll be your lover
And you will live free

Come now my darling
Send fear away
Though our world is changing
Our love will stay
Don’t you be fretting
Your sweet grace away
We will be loving
Forever and a day

16 November 2019

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Letter to a Man Dejected by a Woman’s Leaving

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Mother and Boy-Child

We received your “fish out of water” poem today, and each read it. I know how disappointed you are, and we are each sorry for you.

I can’t offer any advice, because that’s always unwise, and because I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of what to suggest that might do any good. I think it’s all a matter of luck.

Over time I have observed that every woman is the hub of a wheel, and that wheel is a family. The family can be real in the sense of actually existing children, or perhaps other emotional dependents to whom she is “necessary” (as Ralph Waldo Emerson defined it), and at the pathetic extreme maybe just house cats or a husband-on-a-leash dog.

For most younger women their family-wheel — beyond their parents, grands and uncles and aunts — is potential. It may be the conscious thoughts and plans for the future application of their fertility, or (more likely) the unconscious behaviors that work toward the accumulation of resources and the “building of the nest,” which in our capitalist society is conceived of as “security.”

We males are merely pollinating drones to these queen bees, so they can sprout the entangling vines of their family-wheel potentialities, regardless of whether we are lovingly used over a long period, or briefly squeezed like a travel-size tube of toothpaste then immediately discarded. It’s just nature’s way. Romantic love for a man is nature’s way of short-circuiting his intellect so he will enjoy falling for the mating interaction long enough to possibly help fulfill the statistical necessities of maintaining the species by reproduction.

As I said, whether the experience of any man’s use by a woman to fulfill her biological (including psychological) imperative (whether overtly conscious, or unconsciously instinctive) is a happy or unhappy expenditure of a portion (or all!) of his life-force, is a matter of luck, pure luck.

So poetry is an excellent tonic to accompany, or wake, the experience.

Specifically about the family-wheel, I observe that any man wooing a women with children is doomed to fail unless and until those children become enthusiastic supporters of his aims. This is not usual. The children (regardless of age) always want primary access (and for some even control) of their mother (biological or not). This grows out of their dependency/survival psychology, as I’m sure you can see (the needy id).

Also, as already noted, mother’s first allegiance (except for sociopath and deep narcissist moms, like drug addicts) is always to her “children,” whether human, animal or imaginary. It is a foolish man who tries to separate a mother from her children in order to capture her love for himself. The good quality or dysfunctionality of these children is irrelevant. Little Red Mother Hen will always clutch her chicks under her wings rather then strut off with Rooster Cockburn no matter how long and loudly he crows. That Rooster Cockburn does get in every now and then is purely a matter of luck and on the run.

My own sweetie has recently been renting a lot of “modern” movies of old people finding love even as they and their best friends are dying off. It makes some sense that after one is retired (these movies are about white people with more than adequate financial means living in advanced countries — like the well-paid actors playing the parts), and the kids are grown and “gone” that senior citizens who would like some canoodling could find each other for some periods of enjoyable shared company.

But these movies would not be nearly as enjoyable if they included the many dreary realities and personal compromises that are necessary to keep two mature adults in an extended romantic haze. Older people have their ways, their quirks, their likes and dislikes pretty well cemented in, and it is not such an easy thing for any two oldsters to mesh these without serious compromise. It would seem to me that “dating” for old people would work best as a smattering of sequential quickies. For me of course this aspect of love remains theoretical, and I have no inclination whatever to engage in experimentation to verify my theoretical analysis of senior citizen romance.

I think the best we can do at any point in our lives is to work and play at those activities and tasks that give us our sense of fulfillment. I’m thinking of artistic, intellectual, manual and body-active, and social activities — not “work” or “business” activities — that just absorb you and make you feel alive. Things that are the best use of your irreplaceable time; things that may seem “boring” and “trivial” and “selfish” to others because such personal activities don’t make you an accessory to fulfilling the desires of these “friends” for receiving unearned entertainment and attention. You act out of a sense of appreciation and enjoyment in being alive — almost autistically, rather than acting so as to define yourself by the approval of others, and in the hope of happiness coming from the outside world into you: independent centeredness versus a hollowness of dependency at the mercy of a fundamentally selfish and uncaring world.

Anyway, a man of independent centeredness (emotionally, psychologically) toodling away happily in whatever his form of engaging craziness may be, could bump into another independently centered person (possibly female) who shares enough of his interests that the idea of sharing company for a while seems appealing. I think this is the best way to luck into love. It requires a light touch, as regards pressing requirements on the other person’s way of life so as to make it “better” for you. I think the required light touches are more likely to occur with partners (it’s always “temporary” but of unknown duration) who meet in this independently centered way.

Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t discount the possibility of deep love and strong long-term emotional (and financial) commitments between couples. It’s just that I think they are best, and most likely to succeed (be fulfilling to both), when the individuals are independently centered and aware to relate — and extend their caring — with a light touch. Even so, whether if turns out “good” or “bad” is mostly luck.

I suppose this is all just a theory of karma. If I’m just leading a fulfilling life in an honest way then I’m more likely to find myself in the company of another person (or persons) who are doing the same thing in their own way. Maybe there will be enough overlap of interests to make it attractive for both to share (some of, all of?) the doing. Even in this ideal though, you know that “the other” is always an independent life-force entity whose flight plans and orbits are never slavishly determined by the gravity of your being (or at worst your self-centeredness).

So, like you I have at times both surfed the waves of love with incredible exhilaration (1), and I have also been dashed to smithereens against the rocks of bitter dejection, by catastrophes of ruptured love (2). What I’ve learned is that it is pointless for me to even pretend I now know something about romantic love (even though I may assume this pretense to write a novel), or “relationships,” or “women,” or (gulp!) “sex.” But I do think I know a little bit about “people,” and my talk about “independent centeredness” and “light touch” reflects that (3), and goes far beyond the confines of romantic and sexualized love, which for most people is merely desire labeled as “love” (4).

Finally, time and your own good sense to keep busy doing what you love doing, what you are good at doing and gives your time alive its sparkle and zest, are the best balms to soothe the tenderness of a broken heart. Your true friends will give you the space you need to work out your new accommodation with reality at your own pace, and they will be happy to know that you’re still here in our wild and woolly life-zone, toodling away at your unique line of creative independently centered insanity.

My only advice: keep writing poems.

Over and out,
Mangogarcia.

(1) Fuck Yeah!
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2017/12/23/fuck-yeah/

(2) Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2016/11/30/pre-traumatic-stress-syndrome/

(3) The Touch of the Open
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2017/08/31/the-touch-of-the-open/

(4) Love and Desire
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2018/08/28/love-and-desire/

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Niña de las Dunas — Español-English

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Español • Literal • English:

Niña de las Dunas es una canción, en estilo flamenco moderno, de María José Llergo del año 2017.

Niña de las Dunas
María José Llergo (2017)
[Guitarra · Marc López]

Español:

Madre dijo una vez
Que naciste del cielo
Que una estrella blanca bajó
Derritiendo el hielo
De su corazón.

Padre viejo miró
Esa noche a la luna
Y en la estepa nocturna escribió
Con navaja
Esta oración.

Niña de las dunas
Duerme tranquila
Llevas en la frente
Marca divina.

Niña de las dunas
No tengas miedo
Yo estaré contigo
En tu oscuro vuelo.

Y arena de mi reloj
Volverás a la tierra
Donde el agua te moldeo
Nunca más el hierro
Será tu prisión.

Niña de las dunas
Duerme tranquila
Llevas en la frente
Marca divina.

Niña de las dunas
No tengas miedo
Yo estaré contigo
En tu oscuro vuelo.

(Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele
Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele)

La luna se hizo cuchillo
Y en su pecho se clavó
Manchando de rojo sangre
Su vestido de algodón.

Con ella se la llevó
La hizo su compañera
Unos la llaman Venus
Pensando que es una estrella.

(Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele
Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele)

(Lele lele lele lele
Lele lele lele)

Niña de las dunas
Duerme tranquila
Llevas en la frente
Marca divina.

Niña de las dunas
No tengas miedo
Yo estaré contigo
En tu oscuro vuelo.

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Niña de las Dunas es una canción, en estilo flamenco moderno, de María José Llergo del año 2017.
[Girl of the Dunes is a/one song, in style flamenco modern, of/by María José Llergo of/from year 2017].

Niña de las Dunas
María José Llergo (2017)
[Guitarra/Guitar · Marc López]

Literal translation:

Madre dijo una vez
[Mother said one time]
Que naciste del cielo
[That you-born from sky/heaven]
Que una estrella blanca bajó
[That one star white below(o)/descended(ó)]
Derritiendo el hielo
[Melting the ice]
De su corazón.
[Of your heart.]

Padre viejo miró
[Father old looked]
Esa noche a la luna
[That night at the moon]
Y en la estepa nocturna escribió
[And in the steppe nocturnal wrote]
Con navaja
[With razor]
Esta oración.
[This oration.]

Niña de las dunas
[Girl of the dunes]
Duerme tranquila
[Sleep tranquilly]
Llevas en la frente
[Takes/carries on the front/forehead]
Marca divina.
[Mark divine.]

Niña de las dunas
[Girl of the dunes]
No tengas miedo
[No/don’t have fear]
Yo estaré contigo
[I will-be with-you]
En tu oscuro vuelo.
[In your dark flight.]

Y arena de mi reloj
[And sand of/from my watch/clock]
Volverás a la tierra
[You-will-return to the earth]
Donde el agua te moldeo
[Where the water it-you molded]
Nunca más el hierro
[Never more the iron]
Será tu prisión.
[Will-be your prison.]

Niña de las dunas
[Girl of the dunes]
Duerme tranquila
[Sleep tranquilly]
Llevas en la frente
[Takes/carries on the front/forehead]
Marca divina.
[Mark divine.]

Niña de las dunas
[Girl of the dunes]
No tengas miedo
[No/don’t have fear]
Yo estaré contigo
[I will-be with-you]
En tu oscuro vuelo.
[In your dark flight.]

(Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele
Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele)

La luna se hizo cuchillo
[The moon itself-> <-made knife]
Y en su pecho se clavó
[And in its chest/breast itself nailed]
Manchando de rojo sangre
[Staining with red blood]
Su vestido de algodón.
[Its dress/clothes of cotton.]

Con ella se la llevó
[With her it her took]
La hizo su compañera
[Her-> <-made her companion]
Unos la llaman Venus
[Some her they-call Venus]
Pensando que es una estrella.
[Thinking that she-is a star.]

(Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele
Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele)

(Lele lele lele lele
Lele lele lele)

Niña de las dunas
[Girl of the dunes]
Duerme tranquila
[Sleep tranquilly]
Llevas en la frente
[Takes/carries on the front/forehead]
Marca divina.
[Mark divine.]

Niña de las dunas
[Girl of the dunes]
No tengas miedo
[No/don’t have fear]
Yo estaré contigo
[I will-be with-you]
En tu oscuro vuelo.
[In your dark flight.]

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Girl of the Dunes is a song, in modern flamenco style, by María José Llergo, from the year 2017.

Girl of the Dunes
María José Llergo (2017)
[Guitar · Marc López]

English translation:

Mother once said
You were heaven-born
And a white star fell
To melt your icy heart.

Old father gazed
At the moon that night
And with his razor
This oration scribed
Upon the night-time steppe.

Girl of the dunes
Sleep tranquilly
Your forehead is marked
By divinity.

Girl of the dunes
Don’t be afraid,
I will be with you
In your darkness flight.

And my hourglass sands
Will fall back to earth,
Whose waters molded you,
So iron nevermore
Can imprison you.

Girl of the dunes
Sleep tranquilly
Your forehead is marked
By divinity.

Girl of the dunes
Don’t be afraid,
I will be with you
In your darkness flight.

(Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele
Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele)

The moon became a knife
And stabbed her own breast
With red blood staining
Her white cotton dress.

Away with her she’s taken
Her lover now to be,
And some would call her Venus
Thinking she’s a star.

(Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele
Le lele le lele le le lele le le
Le lele le le lele lele lele lele)

(Lele lele lele lele
Lele lele lele)

Girl of the dunes
Sleep tranquilly
Your forehead is marked
By divinity.

Girl of the dunes
Don’t be afraid,
I will be with you
In your darkness flight.

<><><><><><><>

Niña de las Dunas – María José Llergo
25 September 2017
https://youtu.be/lKWvTkeG7NI

Agradecemos a Urknor por haber subido la letra.
Urknor (10/07/2019), Valencia (España)
<>
We are grateful to Urknor, from Valencia, Spain, for posting the Spanish lyrics.
https://www.musica.com/letras.asp?letra=2426757

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See “Official Secrets”

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See “Official Secrets”

The movie Official Secrets, which is just out, is about Katharine Teresa Gun, the British translator in the U.K. government’s equivalent to the U.S.’s NSA, who leaked a top secret memo in an effort to prevent the Iraq War (in which up to 1 million Iraqis and over 35 thousand U.S. and U.K soldiers died, and many hundreds of thousands of others were injured).

That war was entirely illegal because: 1, Saddam Hussein (Iraq’s dictator in 2003) did not have weapons of mass destruction — as G.W.Bush and Tony Blair lyingly claimed, so there was no “necessity” of preemptive war as an act of self defense by the U.S. and U.K; and 2, because the U.S. and U.K. did not get a U.N. Security Council resolution to go to war against Iraq, because the world body did not see Iraq as a threat to the rest of the world. The failure to get that U.N. resolution was a result of the publication of Katharine Gun’s leaked information.

The memo Katharine Gun exposed was from a “Frank Koza” at the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, the U.K.’s NSA equivalent) asking the Brits to help bug the communications of other members of the U.N. Security Council (the non-permanent members at the time) to dig up dirt to be used to blackmail them into voting for war as Bush and Blair wanted — despite the lack of evidence (no WMDs) that war was justified.

Gun’s information eventually made it to the public, and caused such embarrassment to the British Government that after a year of terrifying harassment of Gun (including almost deporting her Turkish Kurdish husband), and taking her to trial (with a long sentence if found guilty of “treason,” and she had confessed), they dropped the case rather than reveal the government documents requested as evidence by the defense, because those documents (findings on the question of the legality of the proposed war, by Lord Goldstone, the U.K. attorney general) in fact explicitly stated that the war was illegal and Bush and Blair were fabricating fake intelligence to try and pull the wool over the eyes of the U.N. and the American and British public.

Katharine Gun (and the reporters and attorneys who worked to expose the government lies and defend Katharine) were exonerated, and she is a real-life heroine of historical significance — Daniel Ellsberg stated that her actions were more significant than his! Bush, Blair and their government associates, who perpetrated the massive Iraq War Crime (20 March 2003) — whose massively bloody and tragic consequences continue to this very moment — remain free, wealthy, untroubled by even a hint of Nuremberg style prosecutions, and are now even nostalgically “rehabilitated” (in the media stories aimed at the gum-chewing ADHD public, as by a sweet-smiling Michelle Obama cozying up to “oh gosh” Georgie Porgie) by comparisons to Trump today.

Once again, America managed to destroy a country, Iraq, and consume monumental amounts of American national treasure, and sacrifice thousands of American lives (as well as thousands of British lives, and hundreds of thousands to perhaps a million Iraqi lives) to lose a war — “lose” since it had no value to the public from the get-go — a war of choice, and an illegal war of aggression (just like Hitler’s war in Poland on 1 September 1939) which our highly privileged war criminals perpetrated. But, they got away with it.

America as a nation failed again (remember Vietnam?). The United Kingdom as a nation failed. To the extent that the American people and the UKanian people do not remember all this, and apply the tragic lesson of the Iraq War — and the Vietnam War — today to prevent the new called-for wars: on Iran, or in Yemen (to help the war criminal Saudis? to help the war criminal Israelis?, really?) and elsewhere that our highly privileged war criminals think they can make a buck and puff up their Wall Street portfolios; to the extent that these publics are so out of touch that they have no flaming anti-war consciousness, they and their nations are failing miserably. Failure is paid for in oceans of blood shed by innocent, naïve, common people, both foreign and domestic.

So I urge you to see the movie Official Secrets. It is well-made, well-played, literate, intelligent, riveting, honest. By doing so you can thank and honor an incredibly brave woman of inspiringly solid moral principle — Katharine Teresa Gun — as well as the journalists and lawyers who made their best efforts to prevent an illegal and unnecessary war; and you can use that viewing experience to help invigorate you own convictions to become aware of truth and not be lulled by indolent comfort or stupid bigotry into acquiescing to the war crime schemes (and the theft from the public commons schemes) of our all-too immune highly privileged war criminals, past and present.

By the way, a kid in my high school class (1968) was called “Frank Koza.” Don’t know if he’s the same one.

Here is the trailer to “Official Secrets”
https://youtu.be/V3vIYy38Fys

Here are the two parts of a round table interview of Katharine Gun, conducted by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!; as well as of the movie’s director, and the two key journalists who broke the story using Katharine’s information.

PART 1:
This U.K. Whistleblower Almost Stopped the Iraq Invasion. A New Film Tells Her Story
July 19, 2019
https://youtu.be/u6n1VFDJ3CY

PART 2:
15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun Risked Everything to Leak Damning Iraq War Memo
July 19, 2019
https://youtu.be/CWtIu7mbnbM

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For more about my photo taken at the Iraq War protest in San Francisco, in 2003, see:

https://manuelgarciajr.com/2016/04/10/iraq-war-protest-sf-2003/

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