Learn To Be Quiet

by Franz Kafka

You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait, just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Drive Thru Baby Jesus

In my America, you can get anything you want at the Drive Thru. Even a close look at the baby Jesus and his folks! Sorry, no camels or wise people...

Food, food! We all love food!!!

After listening to Bill Moyer's Journal last week, I have been thinking about food.

Hear the interview with Michael Pollan here: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11282008/profile.html

Here is an article about eating at home in hard times, which we are all likely to do more of: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/health/25brod.html?_r=1&ref=science

Here are some folks in Pasadena that make a lot of their own food.

http://www.pathtofreedom.com/

Post your thoughts in the comments section!

Alaska Rob

September Light

While the thin September light washes across the hillside,
falling along the sides of the brightly colored houses
built in jagged rows beside the lanes
which wind up the hills away from town,
the last cruise ship sounds its horn,
sailing the last of the tourist horde back to America;
We are an Alaskan town again.
While the September light flows through the windows of the office buildings
onto the desks of working folk,
who say
“It must be Monday in Juneau, the rain stopped and the Sun is shining” when it is sunny and “Another day in Paradise” when the storms howl,
the lawyers and lobbyists move through other parts of the Great Land
sipping whiskey and murmuring tales of power,
puffed up and strutting across stages in village high school gyms,
Rotary luncheons and fund-raiser dinners,
promising the world and all its riches to their constituents only;
they have not come to our town yet…
In the pale wash of September’s last light
the vast herd of wandering tourists gone for the year
the pompous law-writers not yet descended, bickering:
We are an Alaskan town again.

My Four Chocolates

This is how an addicts' mind works. Keep in mind that I have been free of drugs and alcohol and in active recovery for more than ten years.
I enjoy chocolate sometimes. I am trying to watch my weight, so I try not to eat too much chocolate.
For the past couple of months, I have kept some individually wrapped Dove chocolates in a desk drawer at work. After lunch I allow myself four of these. A co-worker I know keeps a bowl of chocolates on his desk to attract and reward people to come to visit with him. This seemed like a good idea. I would go get chocolates from him sometimes. But later I got my own bowl, except I keep my bowl in a drawer, out of sight.
Today at lunch I looked forward to the chocolates. I opened the drawer to find there were only five chocolates left. Truth be told I knew that before lunch, because I checked. So I took four out. Then I thought, "If I take only three, I will have two left tomorrow, and will have been extra virtuous". So I put one back in the drawer. I unwrapped one, and bit it in half thinking "It will seem as though I have six chocolates, if I eat them by halves".
Congratulating myself on my self control and ingenuity I went back to work.
Without thinking I popped the second one in my mouth.
"There is only one left", I thought, "One might not be enough to satisfy my sweet tooth!". (Yes, I thought this with an exclamation point!)
So I unwrapped the third and bit it in half, only eating the first half.
And I thought "If I eat all five, I can buy more tonight, and all will be well." And I ate the second half of the third chocolate.
The point of this is not that I am addicted to chocolate. I am, of course. I am addicted to everything. Right now I am actively addicted to chocolate, playing basketball, watching TV, and a computer game. I am not being glib about it, I just get addicted to everything one can get addicted to. It is the nature of my genetic code and it is a disease I have.
While I was writing that I just opened the fourth chocolate and ate it, thinking "I always get four, why should I deny myself, I work hard.". No exclamation point, just a matter of fact. That fourth chocolate was always doomed.
The point of this is not even that given a choice, I choose to indulge myself. Lots of people do that, even if they are not addicts.
The point is not even how much time I spent thinking about this. I anticipate the chocolate well before lunch. Like I said, I checked the bowl for chocolates before I went to lunch. If I don't have any in the drawer I make a point to stop by a store and buy some before returning from lunch. I will not run out, after all. And I think about the chocolate when I am walking back from lunch.
I just ate the fifth chocolate. I might feel a little guilty later, but it tastes so good and creamy in my mouth right now. Was it always doomed? I don't know.
I will have to give up this little habit soon, or risk becoming more overweight. Not today though, but someday. And I will replace it with some other little habit. Something I just fall into doing without thinking about it, and before long realize that I am addicted to something else that I will need to recover from. I know that.
I guess that is the point.

Rob Seward

July 2008

Shutters Flung Open, Daylight Streams In

A dark face, features indistinct
moves furtive through shadows:

do I believe I can deceive your heart?

I toss a stone in calm water
imagine the surface will remain still
along the far shore.

Black is White, White is Black - Most weird logic from the Conservative radio entertainers this week

Cut and pasted from Rush Limbaugh's website, 11/7/08:

RUSH: The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen. Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression. He hasn't done anything yet but his ideas are killing the economy. His ideas are killing Wall Street.

I am no economist, but how can you blame a recession on a president elect?

The funnest thing about this election is that the radio entertainment value of gas bags like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity and others will just get better and better as they dangle and turn slowly, slowly in the wind.

These people work to keep them honest. http://mediamatters.org/index

Rob

I'm voting republican

I'm voting Republican because I believe the government can successfully spend high interest borrowed money like a drunken sailor and my children will be all the better for it.

I'm voting Republican because secrecy in law enforcement is good for me and my family.

I'm voting Republican because I believe it is right to occupy other nations with military force, kill their leaders, and build permanent military bases.

I'm voting Republican because I believe that years of scientific proof of catastrophic climate change should not persuade me give up my truck, even if my children will pay the price.

I'm voting Republican because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday CAN tell us which citizens we should put to death, even though everyone knows they sometimes execute the wrong person.

I'm voting Republican because I trust the corporations of the world to do the right thing, not take advantage of the working poor, and work for the good of all even if it means fewer profits.

I'm voting Republican because I don’t trust judges whom elect to exercise constitutional checks and balances over law enforcement and law makers.

I'm voting Republican because I believe that if we make everyone in the world hate us, when they come over here with military grade weaponry I will be able to shoot them all with the handguns and hunting rifles in my house.

I'm voting Republican because I believe the government should decide who I have sex with, and that if my sex life doesn’t suit them they should be able to arrest me and throw me in jail.

I'm voting Republican because I believe Big Oil will work hard to help us solve our addiction to oil.

Makes ya wonder why anyone would EVER vote Republican, now doesn't it?

The love of the world flowing through her to you


Sunny this morning, warming up, early yet, only a few others out.
Tomorrow is Sunday, Mother’s Day.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman running to catch up with her young son.
He was sitting in a toy car. When she started jogging, he drove his little car beside her.
The little car had chrome wheels, glinting in the sunlight.

My mom used to walk with us to the store when we were that age.
We liked the little wax soda bottles with sweet water, green and red and yellow.
You would break off the top and let the sweet run over your tongue.
And the paper straws with colored sugar.
And caramels with sweet centers.

Last Sunday I went out for coffee with my daughter.
We talked about life, and her challenges, her joys, her sorrows.
She had a cookies and cream frappuccino with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.
I had coffee. Decaf.

However you remember your mom,
taking you somewhere,
some delightful outing
or epic journey
with your little toys
or on a quest for treats;
and when you think of your own young ones,
looking ahead bravely to whatever they will face
because they have you right there,
it is the love of the world flowing through her to you,
flowing through you to them.

For my mother
May 10, 2008