All the world's a stage and all of us players with equal parts...At what stage are you? Join the cast and we will help catalyze you to further analyze your important role in our global colony.
As the giant bade goodbye to his welcome frequent guest, anxious pressmen of the day pressed the tenacious Frederick, as if seeking agitation’s very reply to their baiting questions; slowly, his dark eyes cast a placid gaze---as if his being were the eye of a hurricane-force tempest---through their petty turbulence, softly musing: “There is safety in his atmosphere.”
‘We’ are here; ‘here’ is called Earth; sometimes we capitalize it, like I just did. Other times we don’t, say when we just want to identify dirt, which is very strange and often confusing since books we call holy devote quite a lot of proverbial verses to basically reducing everything to dirt, which is sometimes-- especially in those books-- called ‘dust’, a thing we, they say, come from and go back to, also known as ‘ashes’, something we hope we won’t be reduced to before our time at the hands of….’others’.
We, all of us, would probably agree that it would be useful to carefully define some terms….here goes, this is the best ‘we’ve’ come up with:
It makes us (a number of ‘I’s that agree on things) nervous and somehow uneasy to not be able to use all the categorical words we’ve invented, after much thinking by some really smart-sounding people about the whole business, to describe others, a.k.a., ‘them’, made up of various worlds inhabited by entities which are at odds with us… ‘I’ worlders.
All these worlds, strangely enough, agree on one thing: we, sometimes known as us, have many, many names for ‘us’, and even ‘us’ or ‘we’ isn’t one of them unless it’s a world, sometimes with just two members, which is supposed to be different from another small or large world. This is confusing and sometimes exhausting for any world because it makes it spend a lot of time and energy thinking up things that only it has or does. By the way, the thing called ‘they’ or ‘them’ is never ‘us’ or ‘we’.
Back to Earth, with a capital ‘e’; it is inhabited by separate mini-worlds of entities (let’s call them ‘people’ for user-friendliness) whose ancestors decided, for one reason…(Note: this word can include things that are not at all reasonable, and often really means ‘excuse’, also a verb describing something we should not do when it’s a noun) or another, to call certain areas of earth (here, we use the lower case) countries or nations, where lots of those people get as far away from that earth as possible, ending up in what are called cities where, out of some kind of longing, these same people will do almost anything to have a small patch of it to grow things in, mostly flowers, to remind them of how beautiful and giving the big ‘e’ Earth is. Some of these people often feel sorry for ‘others’---those who live in a world named ‘second’ or ‘third’--- who have no choice and are forced to live close to the earth/dirt, eating whatever it, the dirt, will allow them to grow in it. Still, many people who live in the cities like their food grown only in dirt, without poisoning it with chemicals and things, calling it ‘organic’. Many people of big ‘e’ Earth like to use words like ‘organic’, which is used to both make them feel closer to the earth, little ‘e’--- although, they’d, still, rather not be around too much and let it get their hands ‘dirty’ (one of those few names that really gets to the point without beating around any kind of bush, also rooted in…..well, dirt)---unless it’s close by, with flowers and in a world known as ‘first’--- and to also make them feel smart and well-informed.
This feeling is what people from the world known as ‘first’ literately call irony which often makes them feel both clever and sad; this sadness is, ironically, mostly caused by these names themselves, things we call things so that we won’t get them mixed up with other things, even though, at the risk of being redundant and, well, preachy, our holy books say that in the end this is pretty pointless as they start out and end up the exact same thing (see your local holy man/woman for further details; see, also, any good physics textbook).
And, so, we consider ourselves (though, not necessarily ‘others’, especially ones without really high-tech machines) intelligent beings and pretty much expect other intelligent beings from other worlds… when they encounter us in one of several possible ways, including close ones of the third kind, to call us Earthlings. But, for some reason we can’t explain, except with words like ‘sovereign’ and ‘ancestors’, we never call ourselves that, even in science fiction stories---only the scary, hostile-intentioned aliens would use that word. Curiously enough, when a world or worlds on Earth can’t seem to get along with others, we call this ‘alienation’.
Nevertheless, we, on behalf of the inhabitants of Earth---okay, at least the ones with really advanced machines, wish to be very clear: we would be so very glad to meet other beings from other….worlds; then we could get to know them and they……….. ‘us.’
Then, finally, at long last, we would no longer be alone.
The Foundation’s many Boards were badly split---and had been for some considerable time---characterized by neither speed nor deliberation in its core mission----having focused on exterior repairs to the exclusion of the adequacy of its tools.
Passing yet another resolute resolution at an secret temporary facility, it voted to put its dark past behind it.
Vintage wine was served in self-congratulation, served up by crisply uniformed servers in dress whites.
In a muzzled flash they were there,
Seeming cops, at the copse,
Their scene of crime, bathetic;
Erect a, now, yellowed barrier,
They did attempt to,
While a nation pined, palsied by adieu,
For a blasted crown loftier, then as now,
Than Greece’s Attic.
“On the other hand…” said the much-admired, always demonstrative one-armed philosophy professor, having just made a central point concerning nihilism: not a single hand went up amongst his enthralled students.
Hardly known for their high Iqs, the KKK’s membership chairman’s proposal for black hoods and sheets as an overt gesture of outreach to potential black members was ‘shot down’, literally, by the condescending though equally clueless Grand Supreme Night Emeritus who pointed out that dark fabrics retain heat and, what with humidity in the South, not to mention burning crosses radiant heat, it just wouldn’t work.
No Greater Fool or
Another Domesday Book by JB Pravda
He liked its ‘divine heaviness’; the scribe had been careful (what was, after all, the alternative?) to record the exact phrase in the prescribed lapidarian medium, granite, highly polished. Marble had been officially deemed, declared, ‘decadent’ and consigned therefore to that marriage of stone and steel, withal the lordly Byronic dictum, prisons do make.
The iron-y of so bizarre a structure escaped none so completely as its Mandator, for this was his unanimously affirmed title, for life and eternity, whichever came later.
The writing itself was prodigious----nothing less than encyclopedic, even thesauric according to leading historians, albeit those in his service.
“First and Final Edition” boldly embossed---he was especially fond of this most transitive of verbs conveying durability---upon the golden covering leaf. It seemed that its only omission, while later officially deemed intentional during his lifeterm, this time in the grandest marbled abode for those guilty of weaknesses also catalogued in his ponderous tome, had been any sense of irony.
For, in its---His---zeal to reveal all, he had stumbled over a fatal delimiter, invisible to its perfecters: vanity.
As his eyes slowly, and for the first time, rose from the gleaming text, now having been declaimed for five consecutive hours, his visage took the pallor of the platinum adornments of his person: he had, intentionally he recalled for this chronicler, omitted to mandate…..an audience. After all, who would dare…….
As his voice faded, I thought to comfort his with a poignant reminder which uniquely and definitively seemed to cheer him: “But sir, you have already achieved immortality----your favorite poet, the equally mighty Shelley, has seen to that!”
My sense of irony was not lost upon his now present television audience, as I handed him a pewter copy of ….. ‘Ozymandias’.
The deep tragedy of the soulless slaughter of 11 September, 2001 has touched the life of every person of conscience the world over; now, in its aftermath it is that same conscience that is called to action in the name of those who have needlessly perished at Ground Zero as well as worldwide: how might each of us have made its occurrence less likely?
There is a sad truth to face: a zero-sum mindset has, however unwittingly, governed our behavior here in the privileged West, in such a way as to have led those less privileged (perhaps as a result, direct or indirect, of our way of life) to perceive us as effective elitists at best, not-so-subtle racists at worst.
In the soulful closing words of Lincoln’s first Inaugural, “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”
In thus summoning the ‘better angels of our nature’, he sought to avoid fraternal slaughter; in that same spirit, we must now take concrete measures demonstrative of those guardian spirits within us all, if we but acknowledge them, in embracing our ‘brothers/sisters’ in humanity.
One such pragmatic measure, designed to so act and, thereby, insure against future acts of desperation by those somehow forgotten in the now global reach of materialism’s virtues and vices is our RejuveNATIONS project.
What is envisioned is simply a smartly organized, efficient and highly visible ‘shadow’ United Nations, peopled by persons aged 10-16, from every part of the World, however remote, however heretofore insignificant or “Third World”, to use the language of zero-sumness.
It is sponsors such as you, world leaders in the burgeoning high-technology which embodies in its potential so much of the good and/or ill of which its users are capable, who now, at this seminal moment, without precedent in our history in terms of the potential for our ultimate self-destruction either by default or design, hold the key to the realization of RejuveNATIONS.
Page Two/RejuveNations Project Outreach Campaign
Characterized by the cost-effectiveness and otherwise cutting-edge capabilities aimed at eliminating the very notion of space as an impediment to meaningful communication and consequent understanding, enabling its salutary reach anywhere, this Electronic Empowerment of the Future alive here in the present is now possible-------indeed, necessary.
With your allegiance we envision a co-equal permanent ‘virtual’ body politic of the world’s young, at least equal in regular media coverage, perhaps superior in its facilitative qualities. You will help to realize the practical wisdom of no less a technological seer than Buckminster Fuller in helping to literally rejuvenate his deep insight: “All children are born geniuses.”
As all parents know from firsthand experience, theirs is a wisdom so unfettered by so-called ‘adult’ compromise of so simple a proposition as human understanding that it holds the very real promise of ‘shaming’ their counterpart United Nations toward what can be so relatively simple once the zero-sum agendas uknown to them are stripped away.
Enclosed please find a detailed plan illustrating your potential role as our strategic ally; with your help, we may soon see the day when the ancient tragedy of unnecessary conflict and its consequent suffering will become truly exceptional, not the rule.
Let us avoid, for the sake of our future world, the haunting refrain from the last scene of Romeo & Juliet wherein the authority figure decries the failure of the adult world to heed the love enabled by their now dead children: “ALL are punish-ed!”
Most sincerely,
Joseph Baron-Pravda, J.D./Founder/Washington, DC
Pro Bono Undertaking / DC Bar Member #238899 / site coming soon
After having been attacked by the police dog, the person of color, who had organized the peaceful vigil, smiled, peacefully, then wincing, observed that he now understood his terrible deficiency: he would need to somehow grow two more legs to accompany his tail if he expected to enjoy a humane society.
The Conference on Diversity in the Boardroom was given the green light, steps having been taken by Chairman Al White, carefully addressing any red flags, to insure that the event would not, in any way, give the organizers a black eye.
Perhaps like you, I am intrigued by ancient wisdom, especially given that it arose within and largely despite the oppressive slave states it somehow----likely from the impervious human heart, with its own neural structure and properties----defeated, ultimately.
‘Eironeia’ is for me the utmost of that wisdom tradition, at least in the West; from Tom Stoppard’s marvelous play ‘Hapgood’ to Depak Chopra’s writings having to do with the flow which is possible between this physical realm and those virutal/spiritual and quantum realms invisibly interwoven with the physical, I have gleaned this core principle governing the universe and, indeed, the universal physics which manifests in nature and, therefore, all of us.
Specifically, as a writer, largely of comedy, I have found that this ‘the firehouse is burning’ mode of thinking and seeing is perhaps the most effective key to comprehending a multiverse in which most that is essential is hidden from our pedestrian and rather slow-witted sensory apparati.
It has opened up transdimensional vistas to my mind which have led me to the flow you so wisely point to; having gone from a difficult childhood trauma to a frustrated, unhappy career in law (which literally gave me prostate cancer) to now, the place I dwell in blissful awe of the irony which is us. Bucky Fuller said it best (like Goethe and others before him in their times): ‘All children are born geniuses….’; unlearning the conditioning which de-genuised us all to varying degrees is what this wondrous irony at the heart of life itself has meant to me and my writing.
He was dragged before the Duke’s court, now overflowing with kinsmen of the two young lovers mournfully laid out on funeral piers for all to see.
“Friar Lawrence, you are charged with having procured a lethal dose of certain alchemical substances for these, but babes who lay before you! What have you to say to this Court before it judges you!?”
The gentle friar, still clothed in his monk’s cowl slowly revealed his enshrouded head and began in rhymes not heard before at court:
“Yo, yo, Eminen-sa, what’s a brutha ta do, aw-right?! But fight, da hip-ok-rah-see…..they parents too busy fussin ‘n fightin, you lookin da otha way, I suggest ta you we all get on our knees ta pray!”
A sigh of shared guilt could be heard to at once pass the downturned mouths’ lips of all; the Duke rose, slowly.
“Kind sir…….dear brother….” His eyes now hopeless dry lands soon to flood; “That ain’t in da scrip!”
Another voice broke in: “Alright, let’s take a break” shouted the director; he knew then that his innovative prison production at the Joliet Federal Pen would, in its own unique way, help to decode this story, finally, as our story.
As he steadily weakened, his far different life force draining away, the visitor from beyond Earth had barely enough strength to sit upright in his temporary atmosphere suit in the form of the humanoid frame; as the scientist in the employ of the national security state approached, ambivalent to his ‘duty’ and, in genuine awe, harking back to his boyhood interest in the unknown, the stranger spoke softly:”Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you?”
The government scientist, unable to speak, simply said yes with his now kind face.
“You are at your best….when things are at their worst..”
The scientist, reminded by the strange being of his innate humanity, relented, releasing the stranger to rendezvous with his rescue vessel.
‘Mama, my dream…my dream was nice, everyone held hands; do you think white people dream, too?.....I sure hope so, ‘cause, then, even poor, sad folks can…..feel free, right?’
Then,in New York,on a 1963 evening a certain Mr. ‘X’ told them:
“….you’re nothing but Africans; just stop being a Negro. Change your name to Hoogagagooba…”
The now famously famous agent of disquiet in deserving smug pale nation had reminded the hued world just how ‘silly’---his proper word---rather than formidable their debtor was; and he was the trustee for those patient creditors.
Trust me, he seemed to say, when he told the story of a dark-hued friend who had, wearing only a turban to distinguish himself from those not served, taken his advice and had thusly been served in a restaurant of the Deep South…….as an African!
Rename to reclaim, he urged, and, that which the fool’s language sees as ‘beneath’ becomes ‘beside.’
"Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed - be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization - will be unavoidable. . . The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility." – Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia in his address to the U.S. Congress
Here is called Earth; sometimes we capitalize it, like I just did. Other times we don’t, say when we just want to identify dirt, which is very strange and often confusing since books we call holy basically reduce everything to dirt, which we sometimes, especially in those books, call ‘dust’.
Names are things we call things so that we won’t get them mixed up, even though our holy books say that they start out and end up the exact same thing, dirt.
We are intelligent things and pretty much expect other intelligent things, when they encounter us in one of several possible ways, including close ones of the third kind, to call us Earthlings. But, we never call ourselves that, even in science fiction stories.
We have many, many names for all of ‘us’, and even ‘us’ or ‘we’ isn’t one of them unless it’s a small, sometimes even with just two members, group which is supposed to be different from another small or large group. This is confusing and sometimes exhaustin, for any small or large group because it makes them spend a lot of time and energy thinking up things that only they do. By the way, the thing called ‘they’ is never ‘us’ or ‘we’.
We hope and expect that we are not alone because ‘we’, the part of the human species with really advanced machines, want and need others to coexist with. We would be very glad to meet other life forms; then we could get to know them and they……….. ‘us.’
Then, we would no longer be alone.
In what amounted to an abrupt about face, the new breed of dog-collared leatherneck leaders decided to go in another direction---critics calling it a march to the rear, both ways--- welcoming suggestions from a certain group of designers for their new tank tops.
In their faces, likeness, of dear family, he told a band member; feted like no other visitor for, they had said, hundreds of years, the beloved music maven felt at home, loved and accepted. Africa, on a visit for his birth home, for its government. He felt the treatment of a King.
Mardi Gras, his place of birth’s biggest party, and he was honored as ‘King of the Zulus’, greeting all the black Indian Chiefs regaled in their feathered costumes. The City government had gone all out, even naming a park along the parade route for him; the whole town would turn out for his evening concert. The concert, though could not happen, despite his fame and the glory it bestowed upon New Orleans, his birthplace. The city government was upset that a white man, the best trombonist in the country, was to play in the Negro band, Louis’ band.
Louis Armstrong, honorary King of the Zulus, was deeply offended, as Jack Teargarden was honored to be in Louis’ band……..he refused to be buried in New Orleans, and never returned….to the place where he was truly from.
Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong, buried as the king he was,wearing humility’s crown, in Queens, Corona, NY.
“Why, I’d ruther be called a liar then a hypocrite, yessir!” spewed the demagogue of the Old South; it was his signature campaign line and it never failed to put him back in office.
Another election won, he returned to his old plantation style manse, where his child’s ‘mammy’ suckled his hungry infant progeny on the front porch.
This message has been edited by AngrySponge on May 16, 2005 6:15 PM