Hello, Winter!

Well, hello, Winter, what a surprise. We
hardly expected to see you back again
so soon. You're perfectly right, we're not
smiling, and that isn't much of a welcome
but we thought we had good reason to believe
you had decided on an early departure this
year. After all, it's been unseasonably mild
we've had oodles of clear skies, the winds
have abated and the snowpack has been
melting apace. Obviously, we were wrong
and that's the reason we're scowling in
uncivil disbelief at the snow swirling about
and the winds howling above, the cold
that has descended once again disabusing us
of the fantasy we were celebrating prematurely.
Now, don't go off huffing and puffing, you'll
only make things worse. Can we assume
that you will in your own good time
embark on a more permanent seasonal
absence, giving spring the opportunity to
finally arrive? We did appreciate you, honestly
we did when you were younger and fresher
it's just that we think you've worked too hard
for too long and you really could use a rest.
Rest assured we value your presence, but
guess what? you could use a break and so
can we, and then after awhile we'll be more
than prepared to welcome you back properly
once spring, summer and fall wear out
their welcomes in the fullness of time....

The Skill of Compassion

Listen well. For no one in their allotted
lifespan is ever exempt. To everyone no
matter what their status comes an equal
share of misery, all things being equal. 
Among them are those whose travails are 
without peer, a matter of sheer perception.
Many stolidly accept their lot without 
question knowing in reality there are
no answers. At least none that explain
why they should suffer and others will
appear not to. No answers forthcoming
whatever the source suffice to give
comfort and surcease to misery. Not
the knowledge that behind every
facade within society's teeming masses
there are living details of unsolvable pain.
Concerns threatening children, parents
difficult personalities harbouring malice
or dread diagnoses of diseases so well
known in their absolute destruction of
mind or body as to be devastating beyond
recourse. And then there is this; for many
there is no release nor relief, no one
to confide in, no one to turn to, no one
to care. In such desperate straits anyone
can care enough to give the comfort to
another of simply being there, listening.

Legendarily Enduring 

Their numbers, dispersed across the globe
are anything but impressive in the aggregate.
They can be found in discrete numbers just
about anywhere in any latitude; any area of
the world's geography, there will be among
the indigenous, representatives of these obdurate
enduring, persistent people. Stubborn they most
certainly are, a tribal characteristic that might
appear unseemly given their status as outsiders
a condition that most would hold pejorative
but in their particular circumstances a downright
positive without which they would represent a
long-withdrawn legend of antiquity. During
the pre-dawn of civilization they were in fact
nomadic desert tribes given to conflict and
survival. Now they are the targets of conflict
and manage thanks to their stubbornness, to
survive, still. Assailed by the vast majority of
others as a people endowed with unpleasant 
traits, they nonetheless have managed to gift 
the world with their presence and the gifts that 
their presence has precipitated. Though they 
garnered more Nobel Laureates than any other
segment of humanity they remain scorned and 
rejected. A condition surmounted by a thick 
hide, an utter absolute necessity to survive a 
global pandemic of paranoia centered on 
conspiracy theories when they have no intention 
whatever of dominion over the entire world
being quite satisfied, thank you, with maintaining
the security of their tiny sliver of heritage 
geography surrounded by what else but hostile
threatening inheritors of rabidly unreasoning 
hatred geared toward belligerent parodies of
history's documented failures to achieve 
that undeserved obliteration from earth's face.

 

Blood and Belonging

Might the sages of antiquity have possibly
discovered a miraculous solution to warped
minds, the convoluted and confused thought
processes pressing their maleficent content
deep within a child's mind? This would be a 
child introduced to the nightmare reflective
of life deep in the bowels of hell established
on the crust of the Earth in a misbegotten
ideology of estrangement, exceptionalism
and blind cynical hatred exemplifying the
utter excesses of religious conquest vilifying
all those outside the covenant that promises
life everlasting to believers and celebrity
to martyrs. Exposing and delivering the
impressionable young to the glories inherent
in this death cult while guiding them in the
exquisite details in the use of deadly weapons 
teaching them that courage and valour are 
expressed in committing atrocities against 
those whom god disfavours impressings upon
their shrivelled souls expectations they must
never shirk. These are the abandoned destroyed 
minds forever dwelling on lessons taught 
whose longing focuses on parents gone to
Paradise as they await their eventual release
from the strained confines of this mortal coil.

On His Authority

We know this to be true: there is no fury
like that unleashed by the spurned tyrant of
an unrecognized superpower whose cunning
matches the malevolence with which he has
confounded critics in pursuing a global agenda 
of deceit, corruption and destabilizing force 
causing near nations to tremble in fear, their 
collegial nations to proffer defence and
rogue nations to celebrate another capable of
attaining advanced technological challenges
threatening world upheaval and taking them
along for the glory of domination of the
presumed weak and submissive. Boasting
of unparalleled success in engineering nuclear
armaments larger, faster, more powerful than
those in any other nation's possession, the
tyrant gloats and mockingly threatens all the
while denying any threat exists, that the massive
destructive power he is now capable of ordering
into action is meant solely to persuade any
aggressor-nations of which he and his sort are
not, to withhold their plans to challenge the
superiority of what they have in contrast to the
newer, unexpected armaments now held by
his command. There is no intention, none
whatever for these lethally unmatched weapons
to be used offensively; peremptorily however
to halt an incoming aggression another matter.
These weapons at the command of this man
suffused with pride at his coup await orders
to define offence/defence and this is reality.

The Human Condition

Who exactly is this officious stranger taken
to bustling about in my bedroom as though my
personal agency has been lifted and she has
been authorized to act on my behalf, tersely
barking instructions I am to be compliant
with. My husband, sleeping soundly, knows
nothing though he lies beside me as though
complacent and unaware while I am all too
aware, confused and vulnerably victimized,
enfeebled. Who is she and how is it that she
feels entitled to disrupt my well-being under
the guise of empathetic concern, someone I
have never before seen? She is indifferent
and hostile, reproachful and distant, no one
I would ever under any circumstances wish
to be in close confines with, much less be
agreeable to her presence in my bedroom.
Who is responsible for this affront to my
dignity much less my privacy and why does
my husband fail to react? The questions are
many and the response self-revealing as I
awaken and the offender disappears. I reach
over to my husband for reassurance in the
realization that my sleeping imagination is
responsible for conjuring up this nightmare to
which there is no immediately obvious solution.

Devotion to Honour

Such pure souls are they and immensely proud
that Islam restrains their baser instincts to
hold them to the honourable way of strife
to refrain from heedlessly bombing helpless
civilians and this is why it takes them so long
you see, to overcome the resistance of Kurdish
men and women resolved to defend themselves
from the Turkish onslaught in Afrin. The
Turkish honour is such that unlike infidels
like the Americans who unleashed mass murder
on vulnerable folk in Iraq, slaughtering a
million Muslims, Turkish soldiers choose to suffer
personal harm in favour of protecting their
adversaries from the lethal effects of full-on
attacks. They take their inspiration, one cannot
help but suspect from another ideology of hatred
that unleashed its bitter rage on an earlier
occasion in Europe, to rid the world of the
ugly blemish of Jews tarnishing Europe by
their presence, sacrificing in their organized
effort to free themselves from the pestilential
presence of Jews by devoting men and materiel
to the extermination of men, women and
babes, diverting focus from the wider war
they waged for world domination as the
master race; their honourable decision one
born of principle and devotion to the cause.