Through the pane

The lion and you

How did the lion know to look you in the eyes
when communicating his thoughts?

“Beyond these bars and this cage,
out in the world where I reign,
I am indomitable,
I am superior to you and I would decide
whether you lived or died.
Despite this glass between us,
and this cage that divides us,
the same still holds true
and I am power over you.
You do not own me,
nor do you have a right
to behold my magnificence.
Only the wilds may observe my majesty,
and humanity does not deserve my magistery.
In spite of my conquered state,
I am power forlorn,
power eternal and power (once)
if only (ever again) symbolically”.

The only way to communicate so deeply is through a time-defying, space-nullifying, interlocking oneness of souls as defined by eye contact. How could the lion know that beyond the separation of that pane of glass your respective thoughts would be one? How did the lion know to look you in the eyes?

You were filled with awe as trepidation struck, then you dropped your jaw in disbelief of what had just befallen. The lion; this terrible beast, this king of the jungle, this most fierce and wild animal driven only by hunger and survival, this creature capable of swiping off your head in one manoeuvre of its massive and unruly paw, had shown you a side that hitherto was thought impossible. The lion had shown you conscious self-awareness and that he possessed the knowledge of what had happened to him.

“I have encroached upon you,
and therefor am indebted unto you.
There are no words to convey remorse
from a society that has consumed
without thought or recourse,
and worse still, most do not think twice:
for if a grain of rice can grow to feed a family
then a field of rice can grow to feed a city,
and we will knock down the trees
and continue to spread this disease
once called humanity,
and habitats be damned,
the lion cannot stand in the light of progress.
Progression is not without inevitable regression,
as I stare into your eyes,
benevolent lion,
I stand to realize
that my convenience is not equal to your freedom,
it is lesser than;
and that my inherent need for speed
that serves to constantly feed
an ever expanding belly
is the very contrast to life itself.
I understand that the expansion
of the human race at such a rapid pace
inexorably mean extinction.”

Then you thanked the mighty lion for the wordless conversation, but still begged the question: how did he know to look into your eyes?

Polyplexity

I am an animal
An over-consuming
Under-concerning
Pit of violence and hate
Yet I am a neatly intertwined
Clean-freak tapestry
Of overwhelming
Stress and worry

You are a cloud
Floating through life
On a slight breeze
To wherever the universe places you

I am the God of war
Master of the north
I dwell in the frost
Awaiting enemies of many
Yet behind insulated walls
Enemies of none
Create thunder of silence
Under feet that walk naught

You come forever
Relentlessly here and now
Like an eternal crescendo
Riding the air

I am a pacifist
Battle-locked daily
You are the center point
To which I fix my cross-hairs

You spread your wings
To scrape the sky
While I remain on Earth
Grounded like a tombstone
****
I have been there before
To the place where we see ourselves
With a kind of honesty
That does not exist
Within the realms of the corporeal
It’s an angelic truth
That besets the consciousness
Forcing one to scrupulously analyze
The self

I have been there before
Potentially many times
I have learned
And will learn again that
There is a duality
Well rooted within my soul
I’ve chosen you to create a polyplexity
A complex web of split-personae
And opposing polarities
That if properly cared for
And guided and controlled
Will propel us both
To a new level of awakening
And evolution

NHL petition

NHL petition

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/NHL_Lets_stop_hockey_shootouts_Lets_end_the_game_with_real_hockey/?Day2Share

I am petitioning to stop the shootout in the NHL from deciding the outcome of hockey games.  If you believe that regular season positioning is too important to be decided in a ‘one on none’ style game of chance, then follow this link, sign up and help me tell the NHL that the age of the shootout is over!

 

Sixes

The evil ways of the universe
That unfold in the implicate,
Do so in sixes.
Six darkened days
Spread across the great
Expanse;
Six weary, exhausted ways
To absorb the somnolence.

The devil bathe in these days
As the corps of angels
Fall lifeless from golden chorus;
These golden halls once vibrant
With heavy resonance,
Now vacant
As dead angels heed the call
Of the sixes.

God doth not dwell here.
He hath left these lands
Vacant long ago.
Emptiness resounds naught
But nothing in a black sky
That lives in fatigue.
God doth not dwell here;
We now belong to silence.

Hope is dead
Within thine perfect ear
That hears naught
But echoed silence
And the pain of cognition
Where once lain beauty
Now quelled by void
And the silence of the sixes.

This Remembrance Day

This Remembrance Day I stand conflicted.  I remember and I honour the fallen and survived men and women of the great wars; soldier and civilian alike.  I remember and honour the members of my family whom lived through and served in – some of whom died – the war so that the next generations to come could enjoy peace; enjoy life.  I honour those who went above and beyond the call of duty and stood on the front line against Hell and the Devil himself and drove him backward at a horrific and epic cost.  For if it were not for them, the fascist regime of the Nazi Party would surely have not stopped at Europe, but would have thrust forth to North America and I might not be free enough to write such a post.  I remember today and always, and thank them for the freedoms I enjoy and for the fact that those freedoms have become a basic human right.

            At the end of the Great War they said never again, and then 21 years later, just enough time to breed new armies, the next war was born.  After that they said lest we forget.  But remembrance only seems to come once a year on the 11’s.  The fact is that we, as a society and we, as governing bodies whom are elected by the people and thus make decisions about international policies, have forgotten that pledge that was forged so long ago.  We actively forget every time we put Canadian/American boots on foreign ground.  We actively forget every time we push democracy on smaller, weaker and less developed countries than our own so that our governments can establish interim leaders of their choosing who will bend to our will.  We forget that we are doing the exact same thing that our enemies did 70 and 90 years ago.  We also seem to forget that killing civilians is a war crime; a crime for which no one is held accountable unless you are a dictator in an oil rich country of the Middle East.  And if a soldier should stand against the war for moral or political reasons, and refuse re-deployment, he is incarcerated.  Somehow, I don’t think that this is what our fathers, grandfather and great-grandfather fought for.  

            “No NATO, No War” is a powerful YouTube video that serves as an awakening to the fact that so much of what we see through the media about international politics and the wars that surround them are just propaganda.  These are wars that serve only the rich and the small percentage of those with power.  This video shows men and women of the US armed forces, veterans of the war in Iraq and the “war on terror” in Afghanistan throwing their service medals away; casting them into the streets in protest and disgust against any further military action.  It is quite moving to see battle hardened soldiers apologizing to their so called enemies for reducing their homeland to rubble.  It should make everyone think that maybe things are not black and white as we would tend to believe; maybe some things are not the way they seem, but are, in fact, the way that they would have them be seen.

            Fear is a powerful tool, and one that governments use with ease to convince a populace that their cause is just.  Fear will no doubt lead us to another great war; one that we may not recover from.  In a world where conspiracy theory is just as probable and believable as the “fact” that is force-fed through the media; where governments –including Canada— are illegally spying on its and other nations’ citizens; and where fear is the primary ingredient behind the ever popular ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ ideology; I just don’t know what to believe anymore.  I do know, however, that fundamentally there is no difference between the death of an American (and by ‘American’ I mean all people on the American continents both north and south) citizen, European citizen, African citizen or an Asian citizen (and by ‘Asian citizen’ I mean to include the people of the Middle East and all those whom reside on the continent of Asia).  There is no difference because we are all citizens of the world.  The borders that have been created serve only to fragment and separate us from ourselves.  They serve only to create fear and further drive the notion of the enemy, and so long as we have enemies we will never see peace.

            I will continue to remember, this day and every other day.  What I will remember, though, will be slightly different: I will remember that once upon a time, those who came before us banded together out of necessity against a regime of evil men and died for freedom; and I will also remember that generations later, the nations that those men bravely died for slowly became the very evil that they once stood against.

            Lyrics from the metal band Lamb of God should sum up the sentiment nicely: “in honour of the strife of those who’ve died in generations before for your blood stained glory I reject you; I deny you; I defy you to continue! – Taken from the song Vigil.

Hiraeth

We form a line
Brothers in arms
Row upon row
The great god Mars.
Outside the wall
Of my city keep
I am ready to die
And welcome the honour
We fight to the death
Brother beside brother

Before us advances
An indomitable army
Likened to nothing
The Earth hath lain
Tired eyes upon.
The ground trembles
Beneath the power
Of their march
But we are steady
And mighty like the mountain

We draw our swords
As we march from the north
The army decrees:
“We are the Norse,
Men of the North!”
My shield before me
My sword which grips me
My enemy will die
Earth and sky

In a clashing raid
And a flash of the blade
They beset my shield
Thus ending my day
Monohemerous
My battle cry
And so I lay myself
Down to die
Exility overcomes me
As I bangle on the sand

Battle raging above me
As the enemy tramps my body
They break my every bone
As they push against my men
The glory of battle forgotten
As I suffocate
I succumb to numbness
And begin to slip away
The Sundance brings Valhalla
And one more brand new day

Dementia’s Wakemare

I thought that last Friday
Was this Tuesday
But it actually turned out to be
Wednesday night

And while I sit here
Contemplating oblivion
Pondering infinitum
And seeking to disprove
Popular theorem
I am confronted
With a swirling cloud
Of disbelief

I know nothing of everything
Something of nothing
Nothing of something
And everything just might be bleak

Perplexity seeps into my brain
From various design
Forcing me to lie
Lest I appear to have fear
Rooted deep in my eye
The myriad of colour
Beset on all sides
Tells me I’m confused

What is this piece of glass
And who is that man
Standing within it
If I attack him
My hands bleed
And falling shards of reality
Impale my throbbing feet
That bleed out upon the floor

I rue the emptiness innate
And ruin all we’ve created
Imprisoned in this nightmare
I live to regret my life’s wakemare
As the space becomes ever smaller
Consciousness gives way to confusion
Confusion confronts sanity
Insanity acquiesces to dementia

 

Failing the future

            Failure is just one of those things that everyone will need to deal with at one point or another in their lives.  It’s part of how we learn.  When people set out with a goal in mind, they formulate plans in order to reach that goal; sometimes the plans work out, other times they do not.  When a plan fails, the individual is confronted with a choice: either to give up and abandon the goal, or to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan.  It is in the latter where learning takes place.  These types of lessons are especially vital for children because childhood is where most, if not all, of our habits are formed, and where we build the foundations of persona that will stay with us till death.

            In Alberta, school boards across the province are calling for reform in the way they hand out grades to students from elementary through to the end of junior high in an attempt to shield struggling students from failure.  The reform would see them scrap the letter grades A to F, to be replaced with a more politically correct version of terms such as: exemplary, evident, emerging and support required.  And if that sounds a little like trading one similarity for another, that’s because it just might be.  The primary objective of this movement is to protect the children from the daunting sense of failure that comes with getting an “F” on a report card or test.  But is there going to be a real difference between the ways a child will feel upon receiving an “F” or a “support required”?  The title of the assessment may have changed, but the meaning behind it still stands.  It seems that all they are doing here is trading one form of grading for another, with the exception of a new added philosophy that teachers will no longer be cast as “taskmasters” but rather as “coaches”.  Any teacher, though, worth his or her salt, especially while dealing with children under high-school age, should be casting themselves as coaches already.

            And no doubt, with the way that the young generation of people strive to short-hand and abbreviate everything possible, the “support required” assessment will soon be known as “SR”, which is for all intents and purposes an “F” anyway.

            Worse still, students whom normally would receive “A’s” throughout the year (now will receive “exemplarys”) will not get honours from the school.  This move comes to protect the feelings of students that didn’t fare so well, and because it may be perceived as unfair treatment.  That sounds noble, in principal, but that’s not the way the world works.  Society rewards the best, brightest, smartest and hardest working of people.  It does not, however, give the people a ribbon for ‘participation’.  When the Nobel Prize is handed out, it is done so for excellence, and given to winners in their respective fields.  The whole of humanity is not given a Nobel Prize just for showing up, nor do they deserve one.  A warehouse worker doesn’t receive nor deserve a salary equivalent to a neurosurgeon.  A kid delivering the morning newspaper on a weekend does not receive nor deserve equivalent salary to a firefighter.  World renowned physicist Leonard Susskind made more money than I last year because he argued against physicist Steven Hawking and subsequently, theoretically, proved him wrong about what happens to information once absorbed by a black hole.  Why did I not argue against Steven Hawking?  Because I am not educated enough on the subject of black holes, or physics, or science or academia in any field for that matter, to go up against such minds, but if I were, then I would expect to be rewarded in kind.  Fair-play does not exist in the ‘real-world’ model of daily life.

            The point of the matter is that eliminating the honour roll and current grading system, which is based on how the student performs within the guidelines of the curriculum, regardless of whether the curriculum is the best it can be (that is another issue entirely), will be detrimental to those students that work extra hard every year to receive these honour and grades.  The message that is being delivered to all students is one of equality regardless of effort or comprehension.  It’s telling the so-called “brainiac” students that they are on par with the so-called “slackers”.  And what will happen to these kids once they get to high-school, where zeros are handed out for incomplete assignments?  What will become of the smothered children once they realize that high-school teachers rarely (if ever) will ask a student if he or she fully comprehends the material at hand and if they are in need of further explanation or personalized attention?  Failure will happen!  And it will come as a swift hard blow, and it could have the power to disrupt or destroy the fragile ecosystem of the mind of a teenager having never properly learnt how to deal with the stresses of failure.           

            Kids need to fail.  It’s part of learning and growing up.  More importantly, they need to learn how to cope with failure and how to turn it into success.  If not, they won’t be sufficiently prepared for life after school.  Failure is just as natural to life as is success.  In fact, there couldn’t really be any such thing as success without the prospect of failure; for without one, the other would have no point of reference. 

            What we, as a society, are doing by not failing students when need be, is failing our very own future.  If this movement is allowed to go forth, the next generation will be imbued with people that have never felt what it’s like to loose, fail, win or succeed; all of which are integral to living a foundationally and structurally sound life.  The path to enlightenment is not paved with hand-outs and equality among all, but rather, rife with the discarded, failed plans of old; and getting there is all about moving forth from those failed plans and finding success and thus being able to revel in the glory of achievement.  Glory and achievement walk hand in hand down the path of life with failure, and to eliminate one is to eliminate them all.