Newness Isn’t the Only Thing...but it is a new thing
During these times of political madness, we are hearing lots of brilliant, new, I mean NEW, shiny ideas. Risky ideas.
Here’s a New Idea. It is one you haven’t considered before, but it is really a great idea. Trust me, it’s gonna change your life forever for the better!!! It’s brilliant and it’s shiny and it’s NEW.
Only, in order to understand this idea you are going to have to let go of several ideas you presently hold. No biggie right?
These ideas that you are kissing goodbye, and hold close have been quite dear to you, I know that and they have been with you for a long time..
But again, this brilliant, NEW shiny idea will make your life and everyone else’s lives infinitely better. In order to have this happen, you will have to let go of that half a loaf of bread you are holding, more like crushing, right now…
In fact I see you pulling that half loaf, (with its expiration date showing it as already past its prime) harder and harder against your chest…
And you are clinging to it as if your life depended on it…
Oh, sorry, I see that’s a “sell by” date not an actual expiration, nonetheless, the same principle applies, you have to let go of that to open up for accepting something new, whether a fresh loaf of bread or a brilliant NEW shiny idea.
But either way don’t you think you should stop squeezing it so hard?
Anyway, this new idea…
Wait…
Where’re you going? This new idea is NEW brilliant, shiny and it is...
Oh, okay, bye.
“It is what it is” Indeed it is:
The world is full of new ideas and shiny brilliant stuff that asks us to let go of some of our most cherished, treasured old ideas and ways of seeing things, but I get it, there’s risk involved in trying to understand something new.
Risks of looking foolish for not understanding.
Risks of feeling afraid that the ground beneath your feet is shaking and rattling and about to fall away.
Risks of becoming someone you don’t recognize and changing forever.
All that is new, even the brilliant, NEW, shiny ideas we share here, are risky.
But it is what it is; as can be spoken by an idiot or a genius, and it is up to each of us to figure out who is saying, “It is what it is.” A tautology with a far more noble and ignoble history than most of them ever achieve.
Zero for Two How to double down on assuring that a friendship is over
50-plus years ago, I had a best friend. About 25 years ago he became “politically engaged,” via fox news and his own pathological fucked-up-ness. It was difficult to maintain a friendship, but for years I kept trying. When, out of his fears and loneliness, he became a devout hater in the name of his love for Jesus, he became impossible. And a few years back, I wrote about it: he said, “you despise me” and my first reaction was to claim that’s untrue. But the more I thought about his racism, selfishness, cruelty, and general negativity, spiced-up by his recently found prosperity gospel Christianity absent any sense of Christ’s decency, love, and kindness, manifesting itself in everything he says, does and thinks, I realized that he was actually right. If you find someone’s every utterance and action despicable you probably despise that person. Or at least you should and you might as well. But here’s the deal, I’ll forgive him if he’ll forgive me. Now that is Christianity, despite my atheism. Nothing has gotten better and it may have gotten worse but I don’t know because I try and not pay attention at all anymore.
The All-American Waste Cycle
We all know this is true & insane, but we all keep doing it
Products and Growth
The idea that an economy must keep growing to be okay and thus ever new products must become available to fill illusionary “needs” and that this is the only way the world can and should work, feels false to me —
Like so much else and so many other ridiculous bullshit things we’re taught and told and that we accept pretty much without question or even thinking about it.
Humans are capable of doing much better than this. Capable but unwilling.
So get out there and buy some shit, do your part. Then settle down tonight and choose between my 600 pound life, hoarders intervention or re-runs of Swamp People.
Enjoy…
And that’s an order, not a suggestion.
Giraffes Rising In An Early Morning African Mist
Sometimes the title gives you all you need
Some memories are so precious and indelible to us and being on an early morning safari, the camera, not the hunting type, on a South African Game reserve, I saw a giraffe moving through the scrubby trees and later, zebras, their black and white stripes standing out in the whiteish-grayish light of the mist —
This memory serves a function for me. In my dream last night the giraffe visited me and he seemed upset but I wasn’t sure if he was angry or simply an agitated giraffe, which gave me this poem, because based on this memory I have the opportunity to type, “agitated giraffe,” which I’d never done before but have just done twice.
Our words can be weapons of love and life and humor or of death.
Put away your rifles boys, these animals mean us no harm.
