“why? why so bright?”
it was an exclamation,
a shout of fearful shock
to his spotlight friend
“so bright as to shear away
my self-same soul
you stride as burning phosphor
and blaze away till i lose everything”
“i live in sunlight all my days”
was simple said response
“ahh, such sense
you have become
that which you swim in
and cast no shadow
but sail as through life
a living apocalypse”
Have you ever noticed those times when you say or do something stupid or mean to someone and than later you find out something awful happened to them that day? You know you reamed someone out for something silly and than later you find out they lost their job that day or someone close to them died.
Then you actually call, text or email them and apologize along the lines of “I had no idea..” etc.
It’s kind of like saying – “If I had known ahead of time that something bad happened to you today I would never have been such a douche to you earlier.”
Here’s a thought – what if we were just nice to people as a default. Then we wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by those moments when we come across like insensitive dicks.
ancient tree is armour
to the outside world
grey-scale wrinkled wall
impenetrable and stoic
silent watcher of the dying
and old overseer of the newborn
but at oaken heart
sap still flows as lifeblood
fresh as first days
youth buried in time
but youth still
They are in the end, just words but words – they are unlike any other power.
Words can undo and they can build both people and kingdoms.
Words can secretly carve the world anew.
So while they may be just words in the right hands they can be everything…they can be Word.
this beautiful agony
is a myrrh-scented wellspring
that muddies the waters
at first bright bursting
but the darkening dirt settles
eventually
till cold clarity remain
true and transparent
as new washed glass
There was always the cathedral of pines
column after column
bleeding light between the shadows
it was a dark place
it was an alone place
it was the right place
my thin place to send it all
like ashes to the sky
waiting for it to fall back to earth
and cover me over
the deep darkening
bowl of the lake
with surface sinking
from blue to black
is lost in the haze
sun once white hot
now warm orange
and bloated on the hours
of ever-ending days
sinks low and casts about
with liquid amber gaze
lifted to the coming night
lover pulling love down
the deep darkening
bowl of the lake
fills with
lost vapours
lost light
lost life
it fills with loss
it fills with the lost
to sleep and dream
of new things
in the morning bright
We are incomplete.
We know when we end but we do not know when we begin…this makes us incomplete.
To make matters worse, the weight of political and religious ideological agendas from left and right and in-between have created a massive culture of fear that drives us away from the subject like monsters from torches being waved in anger by small-minded villagers who do not understand the nature of the thing that scares them.
Frankenstein is a good metaphor for the discussion of when life begins and what constitutes life.
The story written by 18 year old Mary Shelley in the early 19th century touches the heart of the question – what does it mean to be alive? If life can be defined by some as monstrous then it is much easier to justify its destruction. This is one of the many points in that excellent and complex novel.
When is a human a human?
It seems to me a human is a human the moment he or she is has a full set of DNA…so I guess I believe that the moment an egg and sperm combine we have a human being, albeit one whose future is unfilfulled and fraught with danger in terms of surviving nine months in the womb given the number of things that can go wrong.
Still is life outside the womb in less dangerous? I would suggest it is likely more dangerous in some ways.
I sometimes believe that when discussions (we will be polite and call them discussions) about human life occur that people are not really talking about when a human becomes a human so much as when a human gains worth and value.
There is a utilitarian perspective that essentially states that a human life increases in value with experience and contribution to society. Essentially you start at zero (less than zero until a certain arbitrary point in utero). The problem with that argument is that it has terrible implications from a eugenics perspective.
Humans are not houses…we do not appreciate in value simply because of age. Frankly from a utilitarian perspective there comes a point in a human life where we depreciate as we age and become a drain on the health care system and society around us. Why should we take care of and value our senile grandmothers and spend thousands of dollars a year maintaining them in expensive wombs for the elderly called nursing homes? Simply because we know them? Simply because they managed to exist for 80 or 90 years?
On the other hand there is the very real problem of life in-utero and the impact on women that frankly men cannot understand. We will never understand what it is like to be a 13 year old girl and finding out that you are pregnant, to use an extreme example. We will never understand the profound life changing implications that has. What a man can understand is the affect of being told that a life that you contributed to will be ended and you have absolutely no say or right to a say in it. This is the pendulum having swung to the other extreme.
Of course the question arises does the fact that a human life is using your body as a life support system give you the right to terminate it should you choose to? There are circumstances where one must decide which life is more valuable…in those circumstances who chooses? The mother? The father? Faceless society and politicians? The courts? What basis are those decisions made? The utilitarian variable value system? Do we not have any inherent, unchangeable value as human beings at all? If so than we are back to the original question that people fear – when?
The person that is most directly impacted by these questions is the unborn child, followed by the mother, followed by the father, etc.How do we decide who should die in rare circumstances when it is one life or the other but not both?
There is no satisfying answer and less so without an adequate definition of when life begins.
Intolerance at either end of the spectrum is ultimately unhelpful. We seek to establish rigid definitions and rules for a circumstance that is fluid and intensely contextual and that simply does not work.
In the meantime life continues to be incomplete as long as we are afraid to delve into and define its beginning.
That takes courage…to avoid it is simply cowardice.
We are incomplete.
We know when we end but we do not know when we begin…this makes us incomplete.
To make matters worse, the weight of political and religious ideological agendas from left and right and in-between have created a massive culture of fear that drives us away from the subject like monsters from torches being waved in anger by small-minded villagers who do not understand the nature of the thing that scares them.
Frankenstein is a good metaphor for the discussion of when life begins and what constitutes life.
The story written by 18 year old Mary Shelley in the early 19th century touches the heart of the question – what does it mean to be alive? If life can be defined by some as monstrous then it is much easier to justify its destruction. This is one of the many points in that excellent and complex novel.
When is a human a human?
It seems to me a human is a human the moment he or she is has a full set of DNA…so I guess I believe that the moment an egg and sperm combine we have a human being, albeit one whose future is unfilfulled and fraught with danger in terms of surviving nine months in the womb given the number of things that can go wrong.
Still is life outside the womb in less dangerous? I would suggest it is likely more dangerous in some ways.
I sometimes believe that when discussions (we will be polite and call them discussions) about human life occur that people are not really talking about when a human becomes a human so much as when a human gains worth and value.
There is a utilitarian perspective that essentially states that a human life increases in value with experience and contribution to society. Essentially you start at zero (less than zero until a certain arbitrary point in utero). The problem with that argument is that it has terrible implications from a eugenics perspective.
Humans are not houses…we do not appreciate in value simply because of age. Frankly from a utilitarian perspective there comes a point in a human life where we depreciate as we age and become a drain on the health care system and society around us. Why should we take care of and value our senile grandmothers and spend thousands of dollars a year maintaining them in expensive wombs for the elderly called nursing homes? Simply because we know them? Simply because they managed to exist for 80 or 90 years?
On the other hand there is the very real problem of life in-utero and the impact on women that frankly men cannot understand. We will never understand what it is like to be a 13 year old girl and finding out that you are pregnant, to use an extreme example. We will never understand the profound life changing implications that has. What a man can understand is the affect of being told that a life that you contributed to will be ended and you have absolutely no say or right to a say in it. This is the pendulum having swung to the other extreme.
Of course the question arises does the fact that a human life is using your body as a life support system give you the right to terminate it should you choose to? There are circumstances where one must decide which life is more valuable…in those circumstances who chooses? The mother? The father? Faceless society and politicians? The courts? What basis are those decisions made? The utilitarian variable value system? Do we not have any inherent, unchangeable value as human beings at all? If so than we are back to the original question that people fear – when?
The person that is most directly impacted by these questions is the unborn child, followed by the mother, followed by the father, etc.How do we decide who should die in rare circumstances when it is one life or the other but not both?
There is no satisfying answer and less so without an adequate definition of when life begins.
Intolerance at either end of the spectrum is ultimately unhelpful. We seek to establish rigid definitions and rules for a circumstance that is fluid and intensely contextual and that simply does not work.
In the meantime life continues to be incomplete as long as we are afraid to delve into and define its beginning.
there are 250,000 words in the English language
(give or take)
but sometimes
there are no words
just the mute unspoken
and the silent
Harnessing Chaos 