Turn It Off and Find The Silence

Some days I listen to the radio on my way to and from work, more lately that my CD changer in the truck is inconstantly failing.

I have my radio set with twelve preset stations of, what should be, music. Most mornings it's more talks shows than music. They talk about some acts of stupidity, what was on TV last night, or some trivial moment in their childhood that, for the sake of rating, is important to air on the radio waves. Occasionally, there is a musical interlude before returning to advertisements for strip clubs, natural male/female enhancements, over-talking discussions by the DJs and guests and advertisements for televisions shows.

In the mornings, I often turn the radio off shortly after I turn it on.

The evening is somewhat better. I guess someone figured out that lively conversation isn't necessary to get the working class of America out of bed, motivate and/or outraged and off to work. There's more music, some news, the ever present advertisements. Ear candy.

In the evenings, I have started turning the radio off and rolling the windows down.

As I drive, windows down, ten to twenty miles an hour, I watch the rage-o-holics and resist the temptation to join in. Anger, like heat, is transferable. Unlike heat, the half life of anger is much longer that heat. Everyone is wound pretty tight. "Me first, you get lost" seems to be the America way these days, "Freedom" has become a word to express "me first".

I watch the two brand new trucks, shiny and insured, whip around each other, and jam on their brakes and collide. They repeat this dance of purposeful automotive assault a few times before one pulls over to, presumably, call for the police and the other slinks off, causing me and everyone around this drive to feel quite unsafe. Tense. Wildly agitated. I feel the anger flow off their actions and I feel that urge to strike back at the violence. It's there, below the surface, tightly coiled around my sense of self.

I know if I turn the radio on again, the music, if there is any, will "taste like copper" to me, that feeling that I have been infected with the metallic constraints of violence withheld. My experience desires action; my reason presents restraint; the conflict between creates the copper taste. If I turn the radio on, it will only be noise that will challenge the restraint. I leave it off and stay with the experience, as distasteful as it is. In the silence of the drive, I reflect.

I have noticed that I option to listen to music, radio, television, go to a movie or go to a bar for a drink, I am avoiding thinking about the experience. I don't learn from anything when I avoid the feelings of the experience. Avoiding doesn't mean I will forget. Like an emotional capacitor, I remember the experiences I don't reflect on immediately. Later, when a similar analog of that experience happens, I experience the previous incidents and the emotions of those in addition to what is happening in the moment. The emotional tension merely mounts with I avoid. In the silence, I reflect.

One of the reflections I take is of my limited knowledge of people. I only know something about my culture and my country. Some of what I see creates despair. Some of what I see creates hope. Most of what I see creates distraction: distraction for choosing, feeling and thinking. Distractions from Freedom.

Television, radio, music, Internet, magazines and newspapers to some degree - they present distraction. I feel that some present distractions for distractions sake. That is, they exist to distract and have no meaning of value unto themselves. I have to wonder if these distractions and our cultural conditioning to "bright and shiny" distractions services some less overt purposes. People that don't think are easy to misinform, easy to lead and easy to control. Quiet and docile slaves, ignorant of their captivity. And People that are easily distract don't think, they react. Like the two drivers: they weren't thinking. They were reaction.

It's difficult to combat ones own culture and aspect's of ones own country. I turn the television off, the radio too, and find a place and a way to reflect. In my youth, I rode a bicycle at night usually with hours of music. Sometimes I would turn the cassette player off and ride. Ride in the dark and silence and reflect. While rage, anger or loneliness may have put me on the back of a bicycle in the dark, I staid, riding, to reflect. I worked through my anger and some of my social awkwardness and learned to see larger patterns of behavior in myself and others. I become more a person in those quiet, reflecting moments. I was practiced.

Years later, I see many people that fear the silence, fearing what thoughts come to them in their own voice. My culture seems to feel that silence is a place to put up a advertisement for some distractions or that silence is for those that know of some nefarious deed.

I can live with and in silence and reflect because I am practiced. I can reflect, witness or experience and still choice my actions. Pure Reaction is the hallmark of the immature being. I am concerned that not enough people can deal the silence necessary to experience, reflect and practice choosing their actions. If most people can't find this place, my culture will corrupt my country and create more people like the two angry drivers, people who endanger my country with impulsive reactions without thought or responsibility.

Your Savor, Messiah and God doesn't need you to Kill for your God.

Seems bizarrely and sickeningly strange that humanity has become increasingly very impatient, very righteous, arrogant and ignorant people in the religious world. Clearly, any higher being (whether a omni-present Messiah, semi-god or full god) would be able to deal with believers and non-believers alike in a suitable fashion according to that higher being's ideals and rules. That suitable fashion is what was called the after life and doesn't require or make use of any of humanity's input on the subject. Your god will do as your god wishes, no matter what you feel, think or do.

Some people require "heaven's retribution" on earth today, now. Calling for or actively enacting religious violence upon the ignorant, the knowledgeable or the insensitivity is to completely discount the concept of your chosen god or high being. I mean, "god can kill it's own children". Why would god need it's arrogant, small minded children to kill on it's behalf? Seems exceedingly righteous to profess to know the thoughts and feelings of any god, much less to incite or commit violent action in your god's name.

Additionally, it is ignorant presumption to kill or inspire violence for religious reasons. Very few if any of the core religions of humanity call for direct and complete subjugation or outright massacre of non-believers, heretics or those that have created an opportunity for insult. Those concepts are born only of the past of tradition. The traditions of religious violence is archaic and should be left in the distant past. Killing for your god or faith is to discredit your faith, not exalt it. Humanity must be willing to start with forgiveness the past and have patience with the present if we are to create a powerful future of all of humanity's faiths.

So, if you are sharpening your blade to take another head of a tourist, reloading another magazine into your rifle to snipe at another country's troops, wiring another bomb to kill anyone ( discriminate or indiscriminately), or booking tickets to find a Danish satirist for offenses against your chosen god, maybe you should take a long moment to reflect on the larger views of your faith: Your god doesn't need you to kill or incite violence for or in your god's name. Your god can handle that well enough without a your messy little hands killing your fellow man.

Were I to be to presume what my god thinks and feels, I'd report that my god is sickened by the violence done in his and other god's names and awaits humanities return to the paths of peace. But I don't speak for my god; he's perfectly capible for speaking and action for himself. So instead I will speak for myself: your stupidity makes me very angry.

Poem: The Fragile Calm

How long to hold my tongue?
How long to bare someone else's cross?
How long to curb my feelings for the sake of someone else?
How long to service the ill, the lonely, the needy, the mislead and betrayed, and the forsaken?
How long do I give my life away to create The Fragile Calm?

Poem: Green Thorns

The deep green, the hook and the sharpened ends lay in wait, eager to snare less aware tissues.

Poem: Flesh To Stone

Feather by feather they fall.
Too much stress upon borrowed wings and borrowed time,
Too much heat circling so close to the fire.
Not enough care given, not enough attention shared, not enough focus spared.

Feather by feather they fall.
I stand again, wholly human, not more than I am.
I have to re-earn my special status...
And I fear I have left too much debris to make the journey.

Feather by feather they fall,
Until there are no more.
I stand about to fly, to lift away to mystic destinations,
my feet far to heavy to lift away.

I feel stone tears begin to escape yet only well up in the corner of my eyes.
And, as the wind blows away the feathers of my past,
Slipping my uniqueness into the unknown abyss,
I feel unshed tears turning flesh to stone.

Poem: Where is My Love?

Where is My Love?
Have I passed her by already?
Did she leave upon knowing me
Or has she yet to discover me?
Where is My Love?

Poem: Nine Stones

Nine stones mark the way.
Nine travelers before me.
Rounded and gray,
That are stacked against The Wind and The Dark.
Nice stones point the way,
Not to home I have been to,
But to the home I have yet to discover.

Poem: The Dreams Return

The dreams have returned again.
I see the occasional color in select scenes,
though mostly black and white.
I feel the chill of evil lurking in shadow
and the clairvoyance of dark deeds.
I was lured into the trap I couldn't escape,
and then discovered as I yearned to be away.
I found my past twisted into slivers of my presence.
But I found no future there.
I have no constant companion in these dreams,
each contains a new person that fades or terminates before the dream is over.
The dreams have returned again.
Where are my radiant, precious and uplifting dreams?

Poem: Disconnected Hearts

Unplugged, frayed line.
I know it feels; I feel the sadness returning.

The casual grace of a woman's smile,
The warmth of her hand upon mine,
The joy of her presence,
I hunger for these again.

Still fixed in my mind, for the heart does not forget so easily,
the struggle, the frustration and finally surrender of past loves.
I have healed enough I think.
I stoke the furnace with hope,
I peel away the fortifications,
I remove the glazed stares, honed to a humanizing focus.

All that is left...
Is to take action.
To move to the center and receive the opportunities to find the right woman.
All that is left is to take action.

Poem: Hollow

Another sleepless night.
She was here again.

I didn't want her to stay but she didn't leave.
I didn't turn her away but I wanted to.
I didn't want her in my bed again but she desired to be there.
I didn't lie about the others but she stayed anyway.
(Honesty fails me again.)
I didn't love her but I was with her.

And, when she left, I was hollow again.
I do not miss her.

Sex isn't the start nor end of anything.
It's not love. It's not love.

Sex isn't love, slow to learn.
Now the trap is sprung and I feel hollow again.

What are they thinking?!

full article found here

"PRIMM, Nev. — A driverless Volkswagen was declared the winner yesterday of a $2 million race across the rugged Nevada desert, beating four other robot-guided vehicles that completed a Pentagon-sponsored contest aimed at making warfare safer for humans."

Is it just bad writting or the Pentagon's idea of the future of American Saftey?

Let's break this down:.

If this means "safer for humans", we have to recognize that war isn't made without two or more teams of people; i.e. "us" and "them". Inheriantly in war, the objective is to "kill them" or kill enough of them that they can't fight back. And the dead are not safer, they're just dead. Thus, "safer for humans' is a contradiction since, in war, someone has to die.

If this means "safer warfare", then we as a species are in deep trouble. War is supposed to be hard, ugly, and hellish. War is all those things and more for a very good reason - warfare is a "very bad thing" and should be avoided at all costs.

I don't want war to be safer, more efficent, or "pretty". If someone is killed, making it safer or pretty is to devalue the lives taken, as if to say, not only did we kill you but we taunt you in death. Making warfare "safer" will only lead to more warfare. Diplomacy is hard and if warfare gets any easier, we as human beings will also take the path of least resistance. That means more wars or continually smaller and smaller things. Occasionally, "this war" or "that war" will royally piss someone else off and they'll return the warfare favor. This cyclic warfare game is how the middle east, northern Ireland, and various African countrys got to be the high point of genicidal histories.

"Warfare safer for humans" is a incrediably fast path to complete human genecide.

Restless and Ill-temperd

I've grown restless and ill-tempered. I have tried to pull these handicaps away from everyone but doing so compounds the problems. I don't want to explain my trivial life's aliments to those with a fragile calm but holding it back is hardening the response, shortening opportunties to mere reactions. I don't want to sit. I don't want to stand. I don't want to be awake and I don't want to sleep.

More than a "Thank you", Respect

On the way home, I have to travel a freeway that's under construction. For the trip home, freeway construction consists taking three lanes down to two. Skipping the obvious problem about the construction crews ability to find the exact wrong place the lane merge signs, there are some interest driving behaviors to witness.

As you come up an overpass, the left most lane merges into the, then, center lane. The flashing arrow sigh signaling "merge right", is just at the top of the overpass, thus it can't be easily seen from the bottom of the freeway overpass, before the rise. During rush hour, this lane merge becomes a sticking point.

Traffic patterns, like people, repeat. The same people travel south in the mornings and then north in the evenings. Now, of course there are some variations but as a generalization, this is a good summary. And thus the frustration.

A fair number of north-bound travelers get selective amnesia when traveling home. Pulling in the left lane near the pending end of the freeway and start of construction, they act surprised when, at the top of the overpass, they "suddenly see" the merge right flashing sign. (Note: it can be seen miles way but that's not apparently isn't as important because it's not as visible on the approach to that particular overpass and thus creates plausible deniability and just plausible ignorance.)

Me, because I travel south in the mornings and north in the evenings, know the sign exists. I can see if for miles and it's been their for months now. As I draw closer, I gauge traffic and, well before the overpass roadway starts to rise, I get in the center lane. I make peace with the fact that this is where I need to be to travel onward north through this freeway construction.

Other, with their selective memory and plausible ignorance, pop out of the center and the right lanes (I've seen it, they do it) and get in the attractively (usually) uncrowded left lane. I suggest they know about the merge right but that's just me putting my driving awareness, study of my life and my routines on others and maybe that's not completely fair. I mean, my drivers education class drilled we students endlessly to "be aware of your surroundings while driving."

So, comes the point of mock surprise and frustration: the end of the left lane. It is interested to note that, even when the flashing "merge right" sign is in full view, how many drivers continue in the left lane to within 10 feet of the sign and then play the "mock surprise" look, the "please forgive me for being here" glance and "let me get in front of you" leer up the center lane folks, namely, here, me.

I watch people shooting up the left lane, heading for eventual merge and wonder about their arrogance's, their "me first" attitude. For ever one car that inserts forcibly into the center lane, minimum two car lengths of travel are lost. One car length for the vehicle it's self. The second car length is in the negotiation and in reaction time for the insertion to be completed. Reaction time travels in heavy traffic like a reverse wave, magnifying in stop-n-go traffic. Pay attention next time you're in a traffic jam and you'll find it's true. A 3/4 second reaction for you (that's the usually best reaction time) becomes a 1.5 seconds in the space of one car. Thus, it takes at least one minute and fifteen seconds to get 100 cars all moving from a dead stop. There ways around this problem but that's subject to a different discussion, rant and social observation.

So, it comes my turn to deal with these left-laner lame-brainers with their plausible ignorance and the magnifying traffic delay effect. Do I let them in? Do I block them out, tail gating the car in front of me in vehicular protest, as if to say "I don't believe you are that stupid Buddy. Suffer!" Do I make them work for it first in "resistance protesting"?

Yes to all of the above. Those with the "kiss my bumper" attitude usually get the "get behind me stupid" response from me when I can swing it. It's not the mock surprise that gets me, it's the arrogance of "deal with it" in their driving style. I try to be relaxed and let one free-of-hassle left-laner in usually. More than one disrespects the hundred of cars behind me that will suffer for the extra intrusion if additional minutes and potentially tens of minutes, depending how far back they are. Occasional, when I'm feeling rather disgusted with the rude, "me first" driving generation, I just tailgate and block. No one gets in. I don't look left, cutting off any negotiation for center lane access. My only focus is the one foot space been me and the car in front of me. I hate it when I'm like that and it doesn't balance out the left-laner problem at all. I get to be human sometimes.

On those occasions that I left someone in, they usually wave. All fingers and full back of the hand, they wave. The wave usually is more about "we negotiated things and I got in front of you" and less about a real "thank you." Think about it and you'll know the difference between the two gestures. It's in the intensity of the wave.

Still, there is an element of "thank you" and I do appreciate each wave, even from the left-laners that force into my lane without regard to anyone else. It's at least an acknowledge of me, whether of me as "a driver that didn't ram them" or them as "the conquering driver hero", it's really unclear and mostly unimportant by that time.

"Thank you"... "Thank you." A lot of people thinks that "Please" and "Thank you" is all that's needed to get by in the world, all that's need to get what you want. This is how seems to be with young children. They understand the "magic words" and use them to customize their experience, either in advance or after wards. "Magic words" - bad idea.

Sadly, we are losing the understanding that "please" and "thank you" aren't the beginning and end of a human interactions. They are side effects of a larger concept: respect. Respecting someone holds the chance they your request may be declined and that it'll be okay, either way. Respect holds the concept of "other" and even more dear concept "value of other". I have been "please"d and "thank you"d many times and without respect for my person. Without respect, "please" and "thank you" are nothing more than a verbal and/or non-verbal victory dance for getting what you wanted from someone else, regardless of anyone but self.

More than a "please" or a "thank you", I'd like a bit more respect in my world.

Poem: A Blade of Grass

Dawn, then twilight; the dew collects on a blade of grass. A single drop at the loped-over tip end of a wide grass blade dangles sweet and quiet the morning hues.

As the sun slowly slips from it's other journeys into these skies, a golden shower of light, winding through the trees and meadows, finds it way to a drop of dew at the ends of a blade of grass.