Thursday, October 19
No Threat
Monday, October 16
Spoken Plainly
My family was here over the weekend to visit, they live across the border a ways. Amazing the border, just that line and so much changes, the view just takes on a whole other aspect, in so many ways. It was brought up in conversation with them, my family, that Hugo Chavez was undignified and distasteful to talk about Bush the way he did, even if they are against him. I think strong truths are not popular in America, they want them in shades that better match the trimmings of their minds. Everything broken down into something else, fragmented. What else should a pow wow of governements be for if it is not to tell the truth and expose the liars. The whole world would do well to shout America is evil and Bush is the devil. Perfect words and fitting concepts.
Mexico is more plain speaking than America, they do not pad their sentences so and are use to just simply saying what a thing is. I have learned from this to pick the simplest idea. Plain speaking. But this conversation happened over dinner in a good restaurant with good music with a family I love despite their American faults. I realize they are trapped within their culture so they can move smoothly to get what they want and go where they are lead to go. So I could not call them on their smug attitudes that Chavez committed a social sin by resorting to saying what he really thought. All I did say is I thought him a hero of the poor and that all leaders should be as honest in their attitude. But of course this brought a change in conversation back to childhood memories and what else to order next. Oh well, no sense to make war at the dinner table, its bad for indigestion, I let that battle be lost. But thinking back on it, I could tell, that was an adopted attitude, one they have been groomed for. That they could not accept the truth and the message behind what Chavez said and instead look down on him shows their minds have been manipulated to all think the way their government wants them. They cannot accept strong truths. It is easy to look down on actions, the American media told them to have that attitude. Its strange to watch people who have been so easily brainwashed. Why could they not have cheered Chavez for having the bravery and the heart to bring up something so important as the evil of Bush and his country. We need so much more of this.
No wonder I let this go over dinner, because now that I think about it, it makes my head ache that a society could be more concerned with their reaction of dislike for the way the message was delivered, than for the actual truth behind the message itself. Here was a chance to call out yes, yes, this is true, that is what this president is, let the world know it and beware, let our people see what the world thinks of him. Help us stop him. But all Americans want to do is just look down on this and belittle it. Which is defending Bush and all his evil.
Wednesday, October 11
Without Cars
So many people in my area where I live here in Mexico don´t have cars, never have. I get to thinking about what that means and how it changes my life from theirs. It is simpler in that it requires a simple routine. Choices narrow down. Life must be lead less spread out. No major expense of it either, the freedom from the responsibility of a car. The bus to the last stop then walk. One can only carry so much groceries when they walk. These people walk past my house, I´m beyond the bus stop too, with my cars. There is no sidewalks, just a dirt road so everyone picks the easiest route between holes and rocks while the cars and trucks dodge them. I´m on a very steep long hill. Lots of traffic comes by too, they have to drive to the top of the hill to drive down the other streets as they are too steep and rocky to drive upwards on. My street is the best for that, paved almost to my house. No cars, no payments and they are walking to houses they own. They may not be finished and they might be crude but it is theirs. Sometimes modern man gets so stretched out in his needs and making life comfortable and good for himself that he looses it. Like he is always chasing it, while I see simpler people so very happy, content, and in place. One cannot help but wonder what all this drive to get ahead and more is about. Eat what you can carry home and most of your money for food. Base your entertainment around the life of your house. All those needs cut out. I watch these people walking, laughing, talking, smiling, you can tell by the way they carry themselves, they feel good about life. The further you go into being modern the more complicated it gets and the more responsibility. Simple looks in balance and very good indeed.
Monday, October 9
It Is Obvious
Thursday, October 5
Litany for Dictatorship
A poem by Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)
For all those beaten, for the broken heads,
The fosterless, the simple, the oppressed,
The ghosts in the burning city of our time…
For those taken in rapid cars to the house and beaten
By the skillful boys with the rubber fists,
-Held down and beaten, the table cutting the loins
Or kicked in the groin and left, with the muscles jerking
Like a headless hen's on the floor of the slaughter-house
While they brought the next man in with his white eyes staring.
For those who still said "Red Front" or "God save the Crown!"
And for those who were not courageous
But were beaten nevertheless.
For those who spit out the bloody stumps of their teeth
Quietly in the hall,
Sleep well on stone or iron, watch for the time
And kill the guard in the privy before they die,
Those with the deep-socketed eyes and the lamp burning.
For those who carry the scars, who walk lame - for those
Whose nameless graves are made in the prison-yard
And the earth smoothed back before the morning and the lime scattered.
For those slain at once.
For those living through the months and years
Enduring, watching, hoping, going each day
To the work or the queue for meat or the secret club,
Living meanwhile, begetting children, smuggling guns,
And found and killed at the end like rats in a drain.
For those escaping
Incredibly into exile and wandering there.
For those who live in the small rooms of foreign cities
And who yet think of the country, the long green grass,
The childhood voices, the language, the way wind smelt then,
The shape of rooms, the coffee drunk at the table,
The talk with friends, the loved city, the waiter's face,
The gravestones, with the name, where they will not lie
Nor in any of that earth.
Their children are strangers.
For those who planned and were leaders and were beaten
And for those, humble and stupid, who had no plan
But were denounced, but were angry, but told a joke,
But could not explain, but were sent away to the camp,
But had their bodies shipped back in the sealed coffins,
"Died of pneumonia." "Died trying to escape."
For those growers of wheat who were shot by their own wheat-stacks,
For those growers of bread who were sent to the ice-locked wastes.
And their flesh remembers the fields.
For those denounced by their smug, horrible children
For a peppermint-star and the praise of the Perfect State,
For all those strangled, gelded or merely starved
To make perfect states; for the priest hanged in his cassock,
The Jew with his chest crushed in and his eyes dying,
The revolutionist lynched by the private guards
To make perfect states, in the names of the perfect states.
For those betrayed by the neigbours they shook hands with
And for the traitors, sitting in the hard chair
With the loose sweat crawling their hair and their fingers restless
As they tell the street and the house and the man's name.
And for those sitting at the table in the house
With the lamp lit and the plates and the smell of food,
Talking so quietly; when they hear the cars
And the knock at the door, and they look at each other quickly
And the woman goes to the door with a stiff face,
Smoothing her dress.
"We are all good citizens here. We believe in the Perfect State."
And that was the last time Tony or Karl or Shorty came to the house
And the family was liquidated later.
It was the last time.
We heard the shots in the night
But nobody knew next day what the trouble was
And a man must go to his work.
So I didn't see him
For three days, then, and me near out of my mind
And all the patrols on the streets with their dirty guns
And when he came back, he looked drunk, and the blood was on him.
For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night,
For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children,
The children spat-on at school.
For the wrecked laboratory,
The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well
The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the square
And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.
For the cold of the pistol-butt and the bullet's heat,
For the ropes that choke, the manacles that bind,
The huge voice, metal, that lies from a thousand tubes
And the stuttering machine-gun that answers all.
For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns
Without name, without ressurection, without stars,
His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour
With the smell of his many prisons - John Smith, John Doe,
John Nobody - oh, crack your mind for his name!
Faceless as water, naked as the dust,
Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison
And barbarous with portent.
This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.
We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men