A Global Pestilence ... Pathogen/Protest

 

Oh ye of little faith in world leadership ...

Pause and consider how heartwarming it is

when presidents and prime ministers consult

discovering how much in common they share.

Take the instance of the unabashed admiration

Canada's prime minister has for China's premier 

a democracy looking on in awe at the ease 

in which a dictatorship is able to exert dominion 

over a vast multitude whose numbers dwarf 

those of Canada. Yet generous to a fault Canada's 

own premier advises China's that in the face

of public disaffection and mounting protests it is 

best to allow the public to ventilate its frustrations 

honouring the human right to exercise free speech. 

Canada's own response to group protests of hundreds 

as opposed to China's vast protests of hundreds of 

thousands swiftly settled inconvenient issues by the

timely invocation of what was once identified as the 

War Measures Act. China's admirable restraint in only 

ordering its national police to secure public safety 

honouring the rule of the Chinese Communist Party 

in its diligent concern for public health and social 

cohesion strikingly similar in text and tenor to Canada's 

own. Brought to agreement by a global pestilence.

Reductio ad Absurdum

What is the meaning of life? Must it

have a meaning? Cannot we exist simply

because we do? Did Nature have a purpose

when she devised a creature that celebrates

itself as an expression of the highest order

of animal life? What other animals of her

creative imagination are themselves creative

capable of deep, dense thought in the sublime

exercise of reason? We are, therefore we think.

Think of this: the three common elements of

the animal kingdom from infancy to agedness 

in the foundational fundamentals of nature's 

injunction to her offspring in pursuit of the 

elements of survival: Our needfully functional 

existential fixation motivating all of nature's 

creatures: food, play, sleep. Unique are we?

The Function of Language

As infants humanity searches for language

in the babbling babies invoke as they

emulate what they hear to make sense

of communication until finally they

achieve language skills mimicking what

they hear in the knowledge of being well

understood, an induction into personhood

impressing with their uncanny facility to

form and understand messages. As for the

convention of language exchange as the

fulcrum for fully understanding how others

think, feel and behave in a world that

inherited the chaos of the genesis of language

great minds of communication come to

appreciate that a common universal speech

does not lead to a cessation of human

hostilities for even in speaking the same

language, comprehension evades for the

fact is humanity even in uttering similar

words speaks a language evasive, intentions

hidden from scrutiny and Babel persists.

An Alternate Universe

It is more than a hypothesis. There are alternate

worlds in existence and it is unknown whether 

one is born into one world or instead drifts into 

one world or the other. One, a world where 

reason prevails and truth and reality honoured

the other where its inhabitants trust that the world 

reflects their preferences. Where reality becomes 

a movable feast where the succulent tidbits are 

chosen and the unpalatable set aside and spurned. 

As an accompaniment to selecting personal realities

the aggressor invariably becomes the victim

rallying support to the cause he insists is just

while brandishing a sabre against a presumed

adversary possessing resources he craves. When

the attacked defend themselves they are accused

of fomenting violence by the fantasyworld

dwellers who view themselves as allies of any

whom their worldview entitles to shape the

kind of reality they see utility in for themselves.

The Candidates

 

Smug, intemperate, crass and arrogant

to mention but a few of the indispensable

attributes qualifying personages of great

self-importance for high public office these

days. It helps to be born with that fabled

silver spoon with a background of entitlement

and the self-assurance of one whose every

whim and whimper has never been denied

grown to adulthood yet lacking emotional 

maturity and a reasonable degree of intelligence

aside from the craft of modelling self as the

answer to the universal search for a candidate

of sound mind, experience and honour-bound

to think first and foremost of the welfare of

the nation whose fortunes have been dropped

in the lap of the aristocratic scion of the past.

Dictator or democrat they share much in common

and the public weal does not dominate either

their thoughts or their actions, united in praise

of their own illiberally corrupt investment in self.

The Distempered Mind

The human mind is truly a remarkable

instrument toying with fantasy in a game 

to shape-shift reality to whatever the creative 

possibilities can offer in service to a brain 

convinced that its enemies lurk everywhere

threatening and awaiting the opportunity

to leap upon the unwary with deadly precision. 

The mind is only too adeptly prepared to 

usher that brain to endless scenarios to identify 

the enemy, heap malicious intent over vicious 

assaults the wary must elude by preempting 

that lethal force by one of their own. Hostility 

is put to work devising deadly bombs meant to 

mutilate and kill. The enemy is transcribed as 

any man, woman or child the targeted bomb

is able to reach and destroy, bringing joy and 

celebration to terrorist groups triumphant

in purpose and practise -- heroes to some.

Approaching the Ineffable

The origins of the universal creative force

that is nature will remain forever unknown

for the originator of all that is in its wholesale

complexity shuns intimacy with the curious

the very mind and intelligence that nature

itself is responsible for as but one speck in the

vast universe still unfolding beyond the reach

of mere human understanding. Nature holds its

blueprints of being and origination in the vault 

of the universe unreachable by the questing 

mind endowed with the hypotheses of vision

and imagination destined to forever flaunt its

brilliance through the sublime intricacy of its 

outreach leaving us gasping with incredulity

spurred to ever greater invention destined to fail.

Desolation

What are the chances that fate with its 

twisted equilibrium of finality would write 

such an implausible plot guiding a life-saving

professional toward a scene of disaster and 

in the process screen the victim beyond

recognition impelling medical aid to

desperately bring all its considerable skills

and experience to mitigate the condition of

a dying girl to enable surgeons to restore

her to life, only to reveal no life left to save

for the soul had left the body the paramedic

so assiduously strove to preserve. Only to 

discover her frantic efforts that ultimately

failed to save a life was that of a young woman

so gravely and horrendously injured nothing

could persuade fate to preserve her future. The

agony of the medic reverberated through the empty 

chasm of space as she raised her head and loosed 

her incredulous grief in the revelation she had

lost her only child whose familiar features were so

mutilated she was unrecognizable to her mother.

 

 

Challenging Gravity

Gravity is the glue that nature provides

to keep us in our place. It tethers us, we do

not flitter and flutter remaining solidly on

terra firma as animals like us are meant to do.

Gravity throughout the universe creates the

attraction of bodies one to another although

humanity's attraction to one another is one of

emotion not gravity proving how complex is

the nature of nature. We have been nurtured 

by that ineffable source of all that is and all

that will ever be through gifts of curiosity

and creative thought to believe we are meant

to break the bonds of gravity in exploration

of the universe, leaving our calling cards 

floating serenely in space to prove we were

there. Like a mother anchoring her child to

the assurance of a safe place only to see her

offspring solve the puzzle of escape, nature

must of a certainty wonder why bother to tame

the spirit of adventure in the untamable.

 

Doha Doubter

Honour among thieves? In the world

of men even the implausible may be

possible. Where there is power and profit

to be made there are accommodations to

bypass in strictest confidence the byways of

ethical morality in the greater interests of

satisfying lust and cupidity in exchanges

between principals not known for scrupulous

adherence to social conventions arranged and

generally agreed upon as best-practice scenarios

satisfying the imperatives of decency and human

rights. And thus is it that a wealthy kingdom

is granted the privilege of hosting the world's

most favoured sport, its sole qualification vast

wealth, persuasively negating the most basic of

required accommodations. The theocratic influence

that creates its hostile environment to any not of

their religious persuasion, the geography that

mitigates against athletic energy expended in 

inappropriate weather conditions, the impulsive

declarations testing credulity all aside, the venue

built on the backs of indentured labour in a death

count rivalling the construction of the Pyramids

all niggling complaints raised by unworthy doubts.

 

 

 

The Forest Rests

 

Dusk's soft grey entrance has tamed the wind's

raging tantrum, the signal for nature's elements

to recede and set aside their querulous 

misgivings over haphazard signals given the

day now at rest and so must they. The forest sighs

its relief as the atmosphere stills and settles.

Its canopy dishevelled by broken boughs and

cracked bark littering the forest floor's fresh

fallen comforter from last night's snowfall. 

The silhouette of gaunt trees shed of their glory

loom against an imminently-abandoned sky

the luminous ball of the sun retreating over the

horizon. A faint murmur of birds nesting for the

night, and soon the dark cloak of night descends.

 

 

His Stage

All the world's a stage

and Canada's premier thespian

plans to tread the boards on every one

to the delectation of aficionados

of the art form of narcissistic 

adoration in living colour.

Naturally endowed in lavish

entitlement he wallows in praise

of his tasteful expressions of cultural

and national solidarity donning

garish costumery offsetting his 

radiant personality as a world-class

Prince Charming capable of 

seducing an adoring woman

with his eyes alone yet pivoting on a dime

to sensuously confide his trust

one world leader to another. The

world is also his oyster

not to be overlooked his dedication

to feminism, environmentalism

omnigenderphilia and an flagrant

generosity of flinging treasury

at any problems the world encounters

for he is also Everyman in an actor's frame.

Winter-Bound

I've been where the Ice Queen reigns

where the dome of the sky when she is

in residence shines its silvery hue below

and her courtiers are never distant from

her command, the disciples of deep winter.

Snow sits obediently at her dainty blue feet

and Wind communes above with Sleet

and Snow awaiting her orders on any given

winter day. Her diaphanous mantle of

scintillating silver borrowed from the sky

spread sedately about her she observes her

queenly estate festooned in a fine filigree

of lacework shimmering from tree steeple

to fast-frozen forest brook meandering the

sleeping garden of her winter-bound estate.

 

 

Encounters

It was at one of those gatherings of the old farts

and frat boys powerful leaders of the world, free and

otherwise to discuss matters of great moment such as 

wars and economies and pandemics. An opportunity 

for leaders of opposing values and controversial actions 

to briefly meet and ventilate grievances face to face in 

private diplomacy. An unscheduled opportunity between 

a tyrannical leader and one who aspired to nominal 

dictatorship a fawning sycophant under pressure to

express his nation's dim view of oppressive, interfering 

governments overstepped the boundaries of finesse to 

provoke a bonfire of recriminatory retorts verging on

threat where adversaries bare tooth and claw in their 

custodianship of national unity and self-preservation.

Strangely enough the international incident at the

hallowed conference elicited cheers in both nations.

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.

 

 

Shifting Humanity

 

Yesterday is becoming today and soon

may be tomorrow. Generations to come

will see the past in their future, one of

post-nationalism. Gone will be the nations

of today and yesterday to be replaced by

the tribes of ancient history. The world is

becoming a melting pot where nations are 

diluted by the urgent demand of unstoppable

migration. The world is on the move as one

after another failed nations are depleted

their populations drifting after promising

prospects elsewhere. Receiving nations in

disarray incapable of holding back the tide

of swarming humanity seeking prosperity.

Will the eventuating melting pot finally

solve humanity's inequalities and render

conflict extinct? Consider this: tribal and

religious verities are exclusionary, with

them arrive suspicion and consuming hate.

Rife with the inheritance of primal drives

the savagery of instinctual preservation 

surmounts all alternate emotions; enter 

conflict and carnage to the soul of the

human collective fragmented and hostile.

 

 

Gifting an Unworthy World

Isn't it just wickedly, hilariously

satisfying to harass and slander Jews

sitting ducks in their cocoons of 

uncertainty over whether the world

will ever relent and view them with

the dispassion of disinterest, but in the

meanwhile their presence here and

there distant from the land that birthed

them offers them up as fodder for all

who feed at the trough of malevolence

ascribing to Jews all the miseries and

faults of fortune their detractors live with

taking pleasure in fomenting the rancid

bile of hate splattering its venom happily

foregoing moral verities for the comic's

healing balm found in victimizing others.

Unity in Disarranged Minds

The old adage of travel broadening the mind 

assumes that as we know other places and other 

peoples through a level of familiarity we open 

our minds to them finding our commonalities and

unity as members of the human race. Perhaps 

there is utility beyond entertainment in social media 

whereby disparate individuals the world over can 

reach out and touch one another's minds to the 

understanding that life is not a bauble to be wasted. 

But there too human nature at its most raw surfaces

in divisions and the ties that bind where one drifts 

toward shared prejudices, justifying pathologies of 

distrust and hate. World leaders meet in fora with the 

obligation to extend basic courtesies and though 

they speak and act in a presumed unison of purpose 

they too detach themselves from the universality of

humanity in preference to adherence to their

exclusionary belief in the superior justification

of assertive ideologies whose impact divides

to distinguish those of similar mind as opposed

to those whose world view cannot be endorsed.

Fragmentation by virtue of dislocated minds.

That August Body of Sanctimonious Focus

 

The League of Nations, a horror-struck world knew

had clearly outlived its usefulness. Under its guidance 

the world's failure to respond to a fascist tyranny's 

scheme of genocide was monumental. Never again 

would the global community stand by, hapless, helpless

and frankly disinterested in the plight of a people for

whom existence had always been fraught with danger 

for pogroms across Europe and the penchant of exiling 

Jews told the story of its narrow survival. Thus was 

born the United Nations, a seriously-intended world body 

with the influence and the gravitas to move the tyrants 

and mass murderers to rethink their sole focus on 

exterminating minorities. All the declarations and 

formal pledges to serve and protect those in need were

foundational to its purpose, formulated and approved 

and the United Nations General Assembly tended to 

the serious business of upholding human rights, holding 

the perpetrators of injustice to task, guiding recalcitrant 

nations to the paths of righteousness. In the process

discovering that after all the single nation to be held to

account should, in a tally of its members' values, be the 

state that resulted from the Holocaust, a state dedicating 

itself to preservation of the Jews whose first exile was 

from ancient Judea and the razing of Jerusalem in the 

realization that it had little option but to focus on its 

existential obligation to protect its people since it was 

manifestly obvious no human collective would.

 

 

Memorializing Sacrifice

The wish is to praise their courage and 

honour their sacrifice the ultimate in courage 

divesting themselves of their future for the

greater purpose of saving the live and futures 

of others. These were men who feared death 

yet feared even more what the world of men 

planned for themselves in a twisted fate of 

excess ardour in demand and command. They

found peace and surcease distanced from

the zones of combat, their souls lifted high

above their bodies to a still place of haven

and contemplation, no need to cover ears from

the shattering blasts of cannon, no need to

look to the skies to determine friend or foe

no need for hand-to-hand combat preparing 

to sink a bayonet in another man's chest. 

But wait, memorial services return them to 

the field of combat, the trumpet and bagpipe 

ushering them to the deafening roar of fighter 

planes in a courtesy flypass and cannon firing 

a 21-gun salute. Is there no escape from the 

turmoil and the frenzy of war for them?

If They Knew

If they knew from that eternal vacuum

of dark foreboding dreaded by those

still living would it give them any comfort 

that their willingness to fight for the liberty

security and safety of others which cost 

them their future that on the eleventh hour 

of the eleventh day of the eleventh month 

the solemn ritual dedicated to remembrance 

would see the world pause to honour them?

From the Great Beyond would the world 

hear that low moan, a shudder of regret 

intermingled with the agony of knowing 

their sacrifice won a brief interlude before 

the next war arose? Cold comfort indeed.

We have broken faith with those who died.

 

 

The Pogrom of Kristallnacht

It was a time for revelry a longed-for time

to unleash inhibitions when normalcy

meant civilized people were forced to

live among the detestable money-lenders

grasping, mendacious, cunning enemies

of decency pretending to worship God

in their synagogues when  the entire world

knew they worshipped Mammon plotting

the while to destroy all that was good and

gracious in the world to be replaced by

their grasping tentacles clutching the world

in an embrace of torment. To the decent and

self-respecting burghers of Germany finally

the opportunity to express their disdain while

loosing upon the demons hovering in society

the message that their time was coming. The

government had laid bare for all to recognize

the spoilers of the human race and this night 

and day were set aside for the people to express

their disgust at the wealth flaunted by Jews who

covet all that others own. Their opulent homes

to be looted, their corrupt lives upturned, fear to

grip them all, the spawns of evil; men, women 

and children. The good and the just free to rape

and to kill cheering the smashed windows in 

Jewish businesses and temples ignited, a night

to remember for its triumph over the devil! From

this day forward their evil reign will be dispatched.

 

 

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!

 

 

Absorbing Life

Surely the gift of language is the greatest treasure 

bestowed upon humankind for with that gift our 

minds expand to breathe the words and exhale the 

thoughts that enlarge our experience and expand

our souls. A book is no mere repository of words

arranged row upon row but a catalogue of expression 

capturing our imagination to send us toward worlds 

we might never know. In that knowledge lies a 

bounty without which our very existence becomes

a dreary exercise in repetitive thought and

purposeless motion. That gift sends our

consciousness soaring into the stratosphere

of excited thought forming our very being

in a comprehensive unity of body and soul.

There is exquisite music in the sounds of

language with words enunciating melodies

of purpose and design our minds muse

upon and interpret shunning and banning

the ignorance of the unlettered who choose

instead the gutterals of incomprehension.

 

 

Solutions There Are None

Deep thinkers in introspection may muse

what formula of human reason and intelligence 

it might take to rouse humanity from its steady 

state of hapless disequilibrium to measures meant

to validate and elevate the common weal, surely

a goal that vast elements of humanity could find

shared purpose in to solve the human spirit's 

duality of reverence for the sublime yet penchant

for inciting violence destroying the product of the 

heavenly spirit they so adore. The presence of a 

charismatic persona of wisdom who has imbibed a

deep draught from the legendary Tree of Knowledge?

Whose skills in persuasion and commitment to

humanity's deepest desires of universal freedoms

could usher in a common goal of peace above all?

A mass retinue of the faithful to lift the banners of

justice and mercy to convince world leaders who 

have nibbled and sputtered the values and verities of 

that same fabled source in a continuous repetition 

of the eternal search for rescue from ourselves?

The Denial of Sacred Judaism

As eras in human history are recounted

none is so redolent of divinity and its

worship, none so linked to Israel and 

Judean heritage as Jerusalem, David's

gleaming city of light glancing from its

glorious height upon the world, where his

son Solomon built his temple twice destroyed

three thousand years ago, a virtual eternity.

Its history interrupted by the sacrilege of an

Islamic invasion re-consecrating Jerusalem

and forbidding a Jewish presence of prayer

at Solomon's Temple precincts. For Islam

claims as its own that which in its current

state is the Temple Mount, the jewel of the

Jewish state where, lest surrounding Muslim

states be offended, Jews, on threat of war

may never pray lest they defile the presumed

presence of the spirit of Islam in conquest.

 

Mister President!

Well then, how far will he go? No one knows

in fact not even himself. But watch him.

He does enjoy being watched for the fillip

that elevates him in his own opinion as a

reaction to the extraordinarily bold and bizarre

decision-making his muscular imagination

leads him to. But do not provoke this man for

it is just that, capable of freeing his inner caution

to acts of brutal desperation. Aerial bomb a

market? A nursery-school? A theatre? A multi

story apartment, A hospital? All in a day's work.

Civilians become mere cannon-fodder in the fog

of war, he winks. Ah then, but there are limits

Mr. President, are there not? Say, for example a

nuclear installation?  Electrical power plants and 

Water supplies all designated military targets so

whyever not radiation risks from nuclear plants?

Role Modelling

Look on ye great unwashed and

tremble with unrequited notice as 

these refined, unapproachable women

of distinction pose and purr in their

self-appointed roles of liberated

progressives, privately venal and

self-adoring. Portraying themselves

as champions of the unadorned every

woman wedded to her societal role

too engaged in the pedestrian existence

that life has assigned, not the elite

privileged of the celebrity class. There

they are gloating and flaunting their

unique status in the pretense of briefly

abandoning child and chore to the shared

pleasures of tippling and recreational

chats in a shared congratulatory escape

from the burdens of supervising the hired

help around their opulent homes; viewers

of their recorded pantomime transfixed in

adoration in the belief that these tigers

represent their own future of lighthearted

camaraderie, no worldly cares, a time and

place that will elude them, a mere mirage.

 

 

Genocide, Interrupted

Language expressive of concepts which can

express the forbidden with its shudder effect

representing the most grievous wrongs that

humanity can conceive of. Words like deicide

fratricide, patricide, matricide set the wheels

of thought and the fear of infectious insanity

on alert; how could any level of society however

disturbed commit to such violent acts of murder?

And then there is that word signifying the intent

to annihilate an entire people, a formula so vast

and malevolently insane only a pathology of mass

dementia could aspire to its completion to satisfy 

the demonic in humanity. Yet it happened and in 

its aftermath the dread word has undergone a

transformation, casually deployed to describe

poorly imagined constructs of social meddling 

disturbing to the public weal. What is preserved

is the origins and raging hate behind genocide 

that impels the same breed of antisemites to 

deplore an uncompleted plan and to agitate anew 

for a reconstructed formula not merely to complete 

the interrupted genocide but this time to exceed 

its partially completed goals: no intact survivors.

 

 

Big Boys Don't Cry

Big boys don't cry, do they? Especially if 

they're brawny and brainy and chief of a

large metropolitan area police force. Do they 

cry then? They may, if the circumstances are 

crushing enough and personally frustrating 

given the duties of security and public order

incumbent on the holder of that office. He

is reputed to have once warned a subordinate

he was on the cusp of cutting off his 'balls'

for bookends. Faced with a crisis of public control 

when other big brawny non-security protesters 

converging on the city saw his own rebelling 

against the candidate recruited from 'outside' 

despite his 35-year experience in the profession 

and his deputy-chief role in the biggest city in the 

country, that won him the trust as winning candidate 

in a search to replace the retiring chief, the Police

Services Board saw in him a progressive-minded 

administrator capable of dealing with rising crime

but the rank and file viewed him an uppity Black.