On The Soul

Words by the brilliant poet, Carl Dennis.

On the Soul

They told you you owned it and you believed them,
Flattered as if a real-estate man,
Pointing to a mansion with a lofty portico
On the crest of a hill, had assured you it was yours,
And the dream sounded too good to be resisted
Even when the doorman had sent you around back,
Even after ten years’ work in the kitchen,
Ten years on your bed of straw
Dreaming of the empty suite upstairs
And of the empty bed with the crown
Hanging from the bedpost, bejeweled with your name.

It would have been better if they’d said nothing,
Or told you it lived its own life, like deer
Hidden in the woods, not seen from the road
As you drive past in the car, not seen
When you stop and climb the fence.
Even if they browse on your own land,
They’re happiest left alone,
Stepping down in the evening to the stream,
Bedding down in silence under a screen of thickets
To dream what you may guess at and can’t know.

Photo: Liz Julian/USFWS

Environmental Crisis — What, Me Worry?

Environmental Crisis — 

What, Me Worry?

1

WILDLIFE

While Rainforest Frogs are disappearing along with the Amazon there seem to be plenty of these colorful gummy ones.

2

FOOD 

Changing food consumption habits.

These protein-filled treats come in Sour Cream & Onion, Salt & Vinegar and Bacon & Cheese flavors.   

Larvetes, Cheddar Cheese flavored, are also available.

3

WATER 

Wash it all down with some sugar-water. Then toss it all—plastic cup, straw and ice—anywhere. 

Mom will pick it up.

4
KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

Plump kisses and hugs.
The magic of cosmetics injectables. 
Achieve subtle pout-magnification by flipping out the lip line and rolling the lip gently outward to give the appearance of a fuller pout. 

Thoughts & Prayers—

we'll need 'em. 

Action—who's got the time?

Onward into 2020!

Einstein on God

An abridgment of the letter from Albert Einstein to Eric Gutkind from Princeton in January 1954, translated from German by Joan Stambaugh. 

... I read a great deal in the last days of your book, and thank you very much for sending it to me. What especially struck me about it was this. With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common.

... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the priviliege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, ie in our evalutations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and 'rationalisation' in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things. With friendly thanks and best wishes

Yours, A. Einstein

Beware

 click on images to enlarge

1953 comic book

The Big Picture

“You start to think, when you’re younger, how important everything is and how things have to go right—your job, your career, your life, your choices, and all of that. Then, after a while, you start to realize that – I’m talking the big picture here – eventually you die, and eventually the sun burns out and the earth is gone, and eventually all the stars and all the planets in the entire universe go, disappear, and nothing is left at all. Nothing – Shakespeare and Beethoven and Michelangelo gone. And you think to yourself that there’s a lot of noise and sound and fury – and where’s it going? It’s not going any place… Now, you can’t actually live your life like that, because if you do you just sit there and – why do anything? Why get up in the morning and do anything? So I think it’s the job of the artist to try and figure out why, given this terrible fact, you want to go on living.” ~  Woody Allen

Automated Crucifiction

Birth Of A Salesman

Hole vs Soul

"Hole vs Soul"

I swallowed a camera to take a photo of the Hole.

At a conference across the street, celebrated speakers postulated theories
on this Vacuum whose hunger attracts, like gravity.
Passed the hat, pulled out a name: Soul.
And in the naming: infused it with a see-through substance,
a transparent soil where gods & demons could grow and crow,
A geography of imaginary lands providing jobs for amateur map makers,
and a history proposing additional lives, past and future,
Populated with super-hero spirits, with powers and abilities
claiming to match the odds of Lady Luck.
(forgetting their own hypothesis: the Sin of Pride),
And mathematics that propose answers to the cause of tears.
It was all there -
along with human sacrifice and sunday school lessons,
indigo conspiracies and pushpin chart connections,
magic walls and pillars, whispering invisible friends,
the face of the north wind, unidentified objects in the night sky,
and so much more.

But me,
I am looking forward to developing, and further examining,
the photos of the Hole.

Faith In Foxholes

In response to the infamous "There are no atheists in foxholes" aphorism . . .

"You'll never find a dead Christian in a foxhole who didn't pray."

" 'There are no atheists in foxholes'  isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes." - James Morrow

Jesus Behind Bars

It is Sunday, the Lord's Day, so you will just have to defer your longing for this very realistic likeness of Him until the boutique opens on Monday.

"Conflict"

"Choosing to live with questions that may never be answered, rather than with answers that can never be questioned."

Without determined principals we are destined to stagnate as a civilization. This piece soberly presents the two sides to many issues facing modern society for what they are in their simplest terms.
 
Click on image 
to watch the video
"Conflict"



 
Winner of the 2012  Project Reason video contest.

What is"atheism"?

Running into Jesus in The Bronx

Salvation summed up!

Sharing the blessed work of the most sacred Betty Bowers - America's Best Christian!

Regarding the Idiot Box.

Photograph taken at art installation @ Burning Man 2005.

"If you can't determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy, not religion."

Determine Something

What is the frame of mind of a human - New York City, 2013 - that they would be drawn to this "Walk-In Special", put down an Alexander Hamilton or more, and have someone determine something from looking at patterns in wet tea leaves.

Depends On How You Look At It

Is this an apparition of Jesus Christ, or [fill in blank],
on a chair in an office where I work.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Did Jesus Christ, he asked, suspect that someday his church would spread to the farthest corners of Earth? Did Jesus Christ, he asked, ever have what we, today, call an idea of the world? Did Jesus Christ, who apparently knew everything, know that the world was round and to the east lived the Chinese (this sentence he spat out, as if it cost him great effort to utter it) and to the west the primitive peoples of America? And he answered himself, no, although of course in a way having an idea of the world is easy, everybody has one, generally an idea restricted to one's village, bound to the land, to the tangible and mediocre things before one's eyes, and this idea of the world, petty, limited, crusted with the grime of the familiar, tends to persist and acquire authority and eloquence with the passage of time.” 
                           ~ Roberto Bolaño,  "2666"

Thoughts on Patriotism

The red-white-blue 'n' bar-be-cue (& fireworks) fumes from the 4th of July have faded into the ozone.  Now is a good time to share some thoughts regarding this deeply ingrained mental and emotional disorder called patriotism.

"Imagine there's no countries / It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion too." - John Lennon
______________________________

Naturally the common people don’t want war . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. – Hermann Goering
______________________________

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein
______________________________

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be “American” before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? It is really too easy a disguise for our shortcomings to dress them up as a form of patriotism. – Edith Wharton
______________________________

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. – Luis Buñuel
______________________________

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. – Arthur Schopenhauer
______________________________

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. – George Bernard Shaw
______________________________

Open Minds, Holes in Parachutes

If You Open Your Mind Too Much,
Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife) - Tim Minchin

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.” - Frank Zappa

"If a mind or a parachute are open in such a way that the necessary barriers don't hold, and air flows through them freely - you spiral, dangerously fast, towards a thud." - Zena Koan