Beyond Empathy

We have known one another as the
trite social parlance has it 'since forever'
but that is not our language for we are
not and have never been social butterflies.
She is like as unto a sister to me. With
her there are no barriers. She is as fully
reserved in temperament as am I yet
between us there are no avoidances. 
We relate to one another all the concerns
that weigh our hearts and consciences
as though there is nothing to be concealed
and never will be and all that moves us
to recount of the travails of life are fully
shared. She speaks and I listen to her
frank and philosophical acceptance of
her lot. I speak and she comments with
the wisdom of one who seeks to salve
with her compassionate understanding.
We quietly expound and explicate always
joining in an emotional conclusion meant
to bring understanding and relief one to
the other. The concerns and care do not
dissipate but they are lofted into a sphere
of endurance. I have her to be grateful to
and in her turn she thanks me for who I
am to whom she speaks with the candour
of her subconscious recognizing that only
to a sister does one unburden oneself.

Inspired Language

The muse of literacy is not amused.
She is in fact beyond the state of bemused
quite beside herself in the face of the
unaware unwillingness of those who
embark upon that most common of shared
human expressions to exert themselves
not fastidiously, but deliberately and
with all due courtesy to language, use
the words meant to convey their thoughts
and use them accurately, inclusive of the
specific order of the alphabet that identifies
those words, for the elegance of language
and communication demands no less.
I know all this and so would you if you
but heeded her rules through the simple
expedient of respect and admiration for
all that language allows. That which has
the effect of demeaning language in turn
identifies the abuser as one unworthy of
the gift of communication. A visual blight
and an assault on one's sensibilities when
a blissfully unaware mangler of prose
poses as one whose opinions are fraught
with meaning and substance, all flown off
in an embarrassment of sad association.

Dominion of Restraint

The influence of small towns on the
character and behaviour of its residents
is a matter of historical nostalgia, places
where, as villages gathering farmers and
craftspeople together in a common area
where all were known to one another
resulted in a community of personalities
where the perennial divisive crank was
identified along with the meek mild
tempered man living with the harridan
and the local professionals in law and
medicine and church represented the
refined gentry, mercantile interests held
by those of exotic backgrounds and any
whiffs of impropriety sniffed out by
those with arcane talents from whom
nothing could be hidden. Proliferating
by word of mouth and a movable press
naming, blaming and shaming might
convince all and sundry to improve mode
of conduct lest local law enforcement be
moved to custodianship. That world of 
tight community surrendered to a world
where the population pool is immense
no longer confined to towns and villages 
of yore, where scandals and anti-social 
events of psychotic dimension continually 
flavour the news. The intimacy of belonging 
evaporated, the flamboyant flaunting of
celebrity absent moral boundaries reigns.


 

Meaning

Indispensable to the day we begin
each morning showering together and
afterward he gilds with glimmering lotion
those parts of my anatomy I cannot myself
reach, gently and thoroughly. It takes but
a moment to think ahead, ask a casual
question, activate the yeast, combine
honey, butter, milk and scald together
add eggs, salt, flour and knead, knead
knead. Then, in the warmth of the kitchen
leave it to rise. When conveniently timely
form into a bread and bake, so the yeasty
fragrance and the honeyed appeal sends
its yearning mist throughout the house
whetting an appetite for dinner. Remove
from the oven, cool, slice and serve, an
enticement rich with significance as the
staff of life mingles with the stuff of your
lives and you know, you and he, that love
rises and blossoms, swells and infuses all
that transpires day to day between you.

Realities

When does common assumption
collide with reasonable observation
for which no research is required
merely the ability to apply logic in
interpreting the obvious displayed
before us. As example, the elderly
years do not equate with sudden onset
of wisdom. Those among us whom
nature bestowed a deficit of sense
within will always live up to and not
beyond their intelligence, sparse and
pathetic in its various manifestations
throughout life. Wisdom falls to those
who experience life while advantaging
themselves to investigate and conclude
facts reaching their strategic level of
comprehension and creative parsing
of situations enabling them to express
an opinion whose worth is well evident.
As for endowing the recently deceased
with attributes never possessed when
in reality they were while alive mean
spirited and miserable creatures best
avoided, death cannot and should not
be seen as an expedient to alter the
fact that the world has been improved
not impoverished with their absence.

 

Winter Twilight

This day has been reserved for snow. The
lid of the sky clamped tight shutting out a
winter-clear sky, refusing entry to the sun
a pervasive aluminum sheen, silvery-white
overall, the colour of the snow tumbling
lazily through the atmosphere. If you are
ambling through the woods, you note how
blanketed the depth of white on the forest floor
how limned every branch of every tree
from the last snowfall still burdening
needled boughs of evergreens. There is
a hush throughout in the tranquility of the
landscape as snow descends touching your
cheeks, your eyelashes. Wait, that sudden
movement over there -- no, over there!
Imagined, or real, surely there are other
creatures besides yourself there, where you
intrude and they live their lives. With the
Winter Solstice dusk creeps early and
swiftly, and suddenly twilight with its
merest hint of shadows is no more, for you
see, this is winter and night has arrived.

Sanctioning Israel

Truly, humankind is amazing in its endless 
capacity to mount episode after episode of 
boundless inchoate rage, all targeting one 
minuscule sliver of a nation whose very 
existence sends its despisers into paroxysms 
of twisted fantasies to support their contention 
of its evil illegitimacy. Its accusers, those 
whose actions are rife with atrocities inflicted 
upon their own wax shrill in concerted 
sanctimony over a hated nation indifferent 
 to their accusations, itself a paragon of civility
-- in an uncivil geography -- where various
religions, ethnic groups and minorities share 
a just system of equal rights. This tiny nation
embattled and slandered gives the United Nations 
that august bastion of universal human rights 
and equality among member states the very
reason for its existence for its unifying
force is not unqualified support of the qualities
it claims, but mutual agreement in a self
serving pact to ensure that hostile denunciations
of that nation continue unabated, a purpose
for which gratitude can be detected when
hypocritical accusers mount central stage as
appointed arbiters of justice and fairness
foreign in application in their own nations
deflecting notice to mete out sanction after
insult even while the appointees launch deadly
conflict within their spheres of influence
littering their worlds with the corpses 
of those they identify as enemies of the state. 
Those nations whose values and customs echo
that of Israel's see fit to cravenly stand witness.

Judge Not

Yes, you live in a free and democratic
society which sanctifies your right to
free speech, yet beware if that society has
also trended toward progressivism where
suddenly the icons of years past are imbued
with the unforgivable sin of imperial racism
and all vestiges of pride in their place in
history must be expunged. Feel perfectly
free to state your opinion for it is your
inalienable right to so do, but do make an
effort to restrain your absent credulity on
the runaway issue of transgendered children
let alone the wrath of the LGBTQ-2 community
for failing to recognize their exceptional
entitlement to be addressed in novel non
gendered salutations for their identities as
they see the issue are not to be trifled with.
You will receive yourself the honorific of
fascist, bigot, Nazi, racist and the like in
return. And lest you seek to relieve yourself
in polite company of your opinion linking
terrorism with Islam, the most opulent of
ad honimems will be reserved for your
incautious admissions, Islamophobe!

The Revelation

That bright star in their lives
that child that derived from their
happy indulgence in matrimonial
conjugal language of physical
dimensions so vital to their health
and the longevity of their union
graces their lives with silence. The
sturdy infant with her plump limbs
lustrous skin and bright eyes ardently
follows their every move listening
carefully to parse their language
and intention, this they know. But
she of the impish grin and lightning
scrambles is mute. No babble has
ever emitted from her pink-hued
cupid's bow, the child inclines her
head to weigh and evaluate all she
sees and hears tucking knowledge
securely into her mind unwilling
to share with the world what she
knows, not yet. She will in her own
good time express what she will
despite her parents' bewilderment
that their clever little girl speaks not
a syllable, utters nothing, confines
herself to nodding, eyes speaking
adequately of her intelligence, 
unwilling but not unable to speak. 
Their consternation is theirs alone.
Nature has designed this child to a
future of distinction but for the moment
no sound escapes her lips and will not
until that time her ascent to the world
stage welcomes a prodigy's wisdom.

Master of Disguise

A blowhard, pretender, bully, cheat
threat and soother, its many guises and
intentions sober and confuse its victims
who are on occasion its beneficiaries. A
master of disguise and guile both, a
powerfully belligerent force and a tranquil
companion, occasions vary as do those
personae illuminating the complexity
irascibility and moodiness of the wind.
It is always there, at times covertly biding
its time out of sight, hearing and tension 
until it awakens roaring and bellowing
through treetops, invading unprotected
crevices, allying itself with rain and snow
to ensure that inclement days of freezing
temperatures morbidly threaten creatures
unprepared to defend themselves from
its intemperate excesses. Reverting to
its impudent stage as a tease, relaxing
its rages to become a gentle breeze one
takes nothing for granted. The gentle
cooling of a midsummer breeze weighed
against the lashing of downpours inundating
fields and drowning crops, all manifestations
of the wind's roles upon nature's stage.
Here, in the forest, nudging snow-laden
boughs to surrender their burden in a
white-veiled ectoplasmic spill.  Here in
the forest an abrasively violent thrust
to fell a hollow tree, the wind reigns.

A Time to be Born And . . .

Yes, we evade the inevitable, the very
thought of which is anathema to our soul.
Why would we not? We value existence and
life is all we have familiarity with, its solid
comfort and the constant introductions to
variations on nature's thematic realities
induce us to prefer the familiar and neglect
what threatens our comfortable equilibrium.
We evade nothing in fact. Death will beckon
when it will decide to crook its bony hand
in our direction. In the meanwhile we pursue
life in all its fascinating dimensions, admire
what nature has given us, endure what we
cannot appreciate, and forge on into the
future. Yes, as we grow older thoughts creep
unbidden into mind and they linger, dark
shadows on the certainty of the future. We
think at times of how ordained the inexorable
trajectory is, how repetitive, how cyclic
and we wonder why, though we know the
how if not the when. The puzzle teasing our 
minds is just that; our minds. What becomes 
of them? As our bodies wilt and decompose 
and the brain ceases its functioning where 
wanders febrile, dislocated minds, pray tell?

The Neighbours

So you see, evidence to the contrary
set aside, your suspicions were
quite correct, the house next door
is not actually imbued with mystic
properties whereby it presents
as a theatrical set awaiting arrival
of the actors. No arcane acts of
magic were required to set out
household waste, mow the lawns
and shovel the snow though by
hands unseen. There is the evidence
up straight my friend, the house
exterior festooned with festive lights
colours of every hue, little elves
guiding an inflated Santa to the
door in the season of light and joy
and celebration of Christ. No mere
theatrical set after all, although now
puzzlingly, it more than ever does in
fact resemble one. There are residents
irrespective of the fact you've never
seen them and you see, they wish 
you a Merry Christmas and a Happy
New Year. Isn't that neighbourly?

How Cool It is

How cool to live now in an unquestioned
euphoric world of enlightenment where
the inexorable bonds of nature are not
only tested but defied and the gravity
of gender endowment through birth to
the grave has become so flexible that
parents now guide their year-old babes
toward the orientation they intuit is that
child's destiny. Sex, it seems, is variable
it presents in ways one might barely
have imagined. In our innocence or
perhaps inattention we believed in the
limited existence of male and female
that nature's creativity failed to imagine
a need for more; how we underestimated
the fecundity of that creative impulse. We
are confronted now with a myriad of sex
identities; two logically harnessed in pursuit
of species survival and others, oh others
mysterious and bedevilling. We usher
innocents toward their natural choice so
at variance from what nature had chosen.
Truly nature has endowed humankind
with an inheritance of her own bold
initiatives in invention of purpose and by
happenstance shedding of that purpose. 

Challenging Nature

At one time -- as in the proverbial 
'once upon a time', there was a certain
predictability of life. You could hope
and you could aspire but seldom did
beyond what your forbears anticipated.
The very rhythm of life was one of
lived expectations in synchronization
with nature and her elements. We're
free of that anchor now, so removed
from nature we hardly note its presence
for we've manipulated it as we tore
into a technological horizon people
back then would view, head spinning.
Just as nature became expendable over
time everything now falls into that
category and our entitlements have
risen far beyond what even we in our
early days might have imagined. Of
course nature is critically involved but not 
invoked; using her resources we have
industrialized and technologized the
world well beyond her simple blueprint
of survival. And in the process left
our own blueprint sprawling all over
the globe that is our home, the oceans
overrun with discards we've scattered
on the land, and the land reserved
for our imaginative creations geared
to expansive tastes which disentitle
other occupants squeezing them out of
their native habitats. Pity, that, but
after all the most intelligent, creative
life form on the planet does have the
final say, not? Right, not according to
nature's disposition and her proclivity
to allow those powerful elements of
her reign to react to the new self-rule
world of humankind, leaving us now
in a suspense of witnessing extremes of
yet another kind, inimical to ourselves.

The Galactic Messenger

Its stealth mission if indeed it is that may be to
puzzle out what could be worthwhile its inventors'
curiosity in seeking planetary intelligence. 
But then who can say how extraterrestrials weigh
intelligence? And how might we here on
Earth judge theirs if their great scientific minds
felt that rough camouflage might suffice to shield
their probe from discovery? A mission meant
to probe life forms in other galaxies perhaps
not intentionally targeting Earth but any
viable prospects to beam back data gleaned
through bypasses in the greater interests of
acquiring knowledge just as SETI here has
in situ attempted. If so a Trojan horse device
surely hints at an aversion for direct contact.
Unconvinced but suspecting, Earth's excited
astronomical community have named the
suspect laboratory disguised as an asteroid
Oumuamua, on guard for emissions to betray
its purpose -- that strange object defying 
Breakthrough Listen and Stephen Hawking
to halt its 195,000 miles per hour trajectory
as it zooms toward this planet, rotating its
outer shell of space-derived rock concealing
its planetary sourcing-detection devices furtively
approaching a night sky near you and near me.

The Crystallized Garden

There the garden sits, unfamiliar and
remote, a mere vestige of its summer
self, the gardener's pride in its exquisite
perfection nursed and primped to bloom
and thrive, all now desiccated, shrivelled
and wan. And nor can its pleas to be
tended be detected under the weight of
its shroud of ice and snow. The stalks
once verdant and boasting blossoms
stark and dark thrusting defiantly from
the frozen soil. All is silent speaking
of despair as the garden sleeps and
there is no movement from the birds
that once sang in the trees and butterflies
wafting into the shrubbery. The hostile 
wind arouses foliage still clinging to 
vines and stalks, rusted brown and black
unfamiliar and bearing no resemblance
to its fresh piquancy of summer. Nor 
are the impudent garden pests of summer 
that feasted on the fresh green and pastel 
layered petals in evidence, their grubs 
hibernating within the soil below the 
line of frost prepared to emerge in 
distant spring to renew their predatory
 life-cycle in partnership with the
awakening garden demanding restoration.

The Argument

Protestors hurl stones at police near Ramallah (credit: Mohamad Torokman/ Reuters)

The Argument

Yes, I admit it is a complicated issue made 
further so by the fact that peoples' attitudes
and conceptions can be obtuse at times so
really, it's a matter of perception, interpretation
and empathy, you see? Yes, I do admit when
they feel provoked their reaction is somewhat
um, extreme, disturbing to some who may
not sympathize with the fact of cultural
differences for theirs is a tendency to
become rather frenzied, given to inflamed
rhetoric, yes this is true. Oh yes, violence
that too, but consider the source of their
anxiety as victims. They make a fetish of
victimhood you say? Well, again, it's the
culture, they are passionate people easily
aroused, for honour and shame are so very
important in this culture, you know. How to
deal with such people? Well, my friend from
our own culture of civilized discourse we
cannot but pacify them, seek to conciliate
their grievances, bring them to calmness and
make it plain how much we feel for them.
Infantalizing them? You might see it that way
of course from your experience of course
and of course dealing with bigotry
slander and deadly attacks is difficult
but consider the source, I say, these are
people convinced of their entitlements all
of which your very presence denies them.
Just trying to help here, you know, even
though you think advice is cheap and we
over here don't have to deal with what you
so callously label homicidal maniacs. It is
after all your problem, so I say - deal with it.

 

Snow

Overnight the forest was transformed
and the following day the very
atmosphere was tufted with snow
and a blanket of serenity sifted over
all that was inanimate illuminating
the landscape, lifting it from the
dull depression of the sullen mood
that overtakes even a forest when
it is oppressed with the weight of
seasonal expectation, when between
colourful autumn and sparkling
winter, all is mired in the doldrums
of an opaque dusk casting muffled
shadows barely discernible and the
creatures that call the woodlands home
creep dismally about in the cold and
the wind unrelieved by the presence
of sun. The sheen and glitter of snow
on the forest floor mellowing all
surfaces creates its own glow, soft
and magical, the living treasure of
winter's tardy arrival on seasonal call.

Encounter

This day of perpetual shadow-grey dusk
had a strange quality about it as though
night had forgotten to depart and dawn
made no appearance at all. House interiors
were dark and the appearance of a day
anxious to close into the velvety dark
comfort of sleep added a touch of mystery
to the biting wind whipping winter air
through the forest, wispy traces of snow
here and there on the forest floor. She
walking briskly with her Golden by her
side, felt the uncanny sensation there 
was someone else, a presence that stood
still and vigilant and for all she knew
watching her. She hesitated, glanced about
seeing nothing to arrest her attention.
And then arrest her attention it did. A
grey apparition barely to be distinguished
from the mist-like conditions enveloping
the trees. Until it moved and she assessed
its height, its gaunt appearance, the long
shaggy grey hair; above all its piercing
eyes glaring. The animal remained where
it stood, dauntless, unafraid. The fear
had been appropriated, nestling within
her abdomen, her chest, her head. And
then she stirred, uttered a sharp denial
and the coyote turned, slipping swiftly
into the ravine, soon hidden by trees
into its recently adopted habitat, that
familiar, long known forest with its varied
trails suddenly altered, newly unfamiliar.

Gifting

It's taken a veritable lifetime. The journey
was long but well-spent with no regrets
and lined with memories lodged deep
within. She began with nothing eventually
acquiring everything, and then stopped
looked about her and yearned for nothing.
It is a type of ceremonial acknowledgment
when people attain another year after
reaching year after year and if they are
fortunate they lack for little appreciating
all that life has afforded them in its
timeless rhythms and repetitions and the
need of its creatures for emotional warmth
and reciprocation. So when he asked she
responded 'nothing'. Her acquisitiveness
had evaporated, there was no inner urge
to sharpen her need for it had diminished
its ghost informing her to dissent. He, on
the other hand listened to his own psyche
long regulated by familiarity's habitual
response, recognizing yet setting aside
her appeal to reason when she spoke of
having everything, needing nothing, quite
understanding that to her he was everything.

Into The Fire

Blink fractionally at a map and you'll miss
noticing the presence of a minuscules-sized
country with a Biblical name surrounded by
large, hostile neighbours eyeing its presence
with the malevolence of epic-scale destroyers
prepared to accomplish what in ancient times
they could not complete, and though there was
a modern equivalent that almost succeeded
these neighbours are determined that their
final effort will.The intended victim is fully
determined otherwise, refusing wilfully to
surrender to the vitriolic acid of hatred, extending
efforts to placate, to accommodate, to forgive
but never to allow itself to be exterminated 
for that level of satisfaction will never be
extended to the forces of diabolical evil. The 
beleaguered people, devoted to their god 
believing themselves beloved of that deity 
benign and merciful, feel not abandoned but 
tested, that their mettle and devotion to the 
divine must be proven through suffering. 
And suffer they have. In the process never 
discarding hope, all the while aspiring to 
become what he wills of them achieving 
great forward strides in the humanities and 
science and technology, the recognition of 
their surpassing genius beyond those of
any other nation. Their trials will never cease
and they must forever strive to achieve.

Cycles

The wind, robust and raging refused
to be placated, shrugging away the
naked branches confronting it as it
tore its way through the forest canopy
in its ferocious passage rampaging
across the sky from night's deepest hours
on to the morning light of dawn and on
throughout the afternoon of brilliant
sunshine, it tore its way through the
landscape, ruffling the waters of the
muddy creek winding through the forest
and running rampant through the branches
and twigs long dead but resistant to decay
demanding they loose their holds and
obey the wind's imperative. Under the 
influence of the unruly wind all of the
forest detritus now litters the floor of
the forest, from the most delicate of
twigs to the roughest limbs loathe to
leave the sturdy trunks of still-living trees.
The mass of decaying fall foliage joined
now with the mass of the upper-story 
discards. And among them the dainty
construct of a migratory bird's home.

In Darkest Africa

Remote, isolated, they are living relics of
a long distant past on the very continent where
the homo erectus developed in the timeless
mists of the earliest ages of species' development.
Self-sustaining, oblivious of the presence of
any geography outside their savannas
providing them with all the existential
sustenance to maintain themselves they live
as did their ancestors with no thought or
curiosity of whatever might exist elsewhere
for to this finite group of tribes there is no
elsewhere since they are themselves everyone
and all that surrounds them is everything.
Their lives parallel those of modernity where
young girls are taught to walk gracefully
though ballet is not the tool, but water jugs
balanced perfectly on neat little heads whose
faces have been skilfully decorated with tribal
scarification since beauty is a recognized grace.
Their shelter is portable though their lifestyle
is not, huts of sticks and grass as roofs, haven
from the tempests of the seasons. Adorned in
beaded necklaces women grind sorghum on
stone while men sit in groups with much to
discuss. Naked children disport themselves
on the banks of rivers, dipping where crocodiles
also gather. Other tribes adjacent their own 
reflect similar village occupations with their 
own ceremonial traditions, young men with
ochre-painted faces, young women dancing 
provocatively, switches liberally lashing 
bare backs while blood runs freely and then 
the piece de resistance; the boys initiated to
manhood by effortlessly leaping onto a row
of bulls' spines, leaping one to another beast
never faltering as colobus monkeys watch and
shriek from above. Their lives unmarred by an
influx of modern technology, what need do
they have of it? While young men tend cattle 
others stand guard on hilltops, over their
shoulders spears discarded in favour of a
peculiar contraption recognizable as AK-47s.

The Snub

Voyager 1    NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

The Snub

As missives go, this one was nothing short
of monumental. All was revealed, humbly
and yet elegantly, in prose meant to disarm
and to invite. Communication of the most
hopeful kind, the written word so anxious
to convey the need to keep in touch that 
it was seen as paramount to miss nothing
and so the appeal was repeated and repeated
no fewer than fifty times in fifty languages
in the fervent hope that the reader would
be convinced of the moral, philosophical
scientific need to respond. In kind most
preferably. Yet despite the outreach with the
use of the most bliss-inducing music on
Earth, and the voyage undertaken as a
celestial messenger of curiosity and agape
it is as though the appeal to get in touch
please, we do so very much want to hear
from you, failed to touch an equal eagerness
and curiosity in the recipient. Where did 
the message go astray? Obviously the
errand of delivery failed ending up in
the Dead Letter Box of an endless void in
time and space known affectionately as
the Universe. What did we do wrong? How
did we err in our presumptuous message in
the certainty that a higher, more advanced
alien life would be the least bit interested in
exposing itself to the virus of humankind?