Be wary wanderer
Freya's mailbox is filled with challenging reminders . . .
The world becomes only what it is, the flow of an unfathomable river. – Jim Harrison
There’s always some Solomon cutting down Lebanon’s cedars, building a house for a God who moves on. – Michael Kriesel from “As Crickets Chip Away at the Light” posted to Rattle 7.18.23
We don’t have time for group-centric religion anymore. There is too much suffering . . . from the millennia-old prejudices and discriminations of the male-dominated cultures of both East and West, from rampant socio-political exploitations, and from their structural vulnerability. The consequent insistence on our individuated separateness has turned us into the flotsam and jetsam of The Way, stuck in an eddy contradicting the very thing we are told we must become. We have robbed ourselves of our personhood, rendering us as individual no-bodies. Yet we continue to gather in our tribal collectives perpetuating the contradiction. – adapted and edited from Fr. Richard Rohr's Meditations.
[There is] a deep, ongoing political project of forgetting – of teaching others to forget themselves and teaching ourselves to forget, too. This collective amnesia manifests through the destruction of Indigenous peoples and cultures [in the literal thousands], but also through the older ideologies and institutions that sought to ‘correct’ outsiders who did not align with the values of a seemingly progressive, modern world. Do not forget them. – Steve Minton
Almost
I wish I knew another language
so I could translate the poems
and life of others in that far place
free of the tethers of my past
binding me
to what I now would forget.
Looking through the silence
I can almost see the mountain
across the river
where I would live next door to you
listening through the mist
to something almost near a song
so long forgotten no one remembers.
– jb, unplublished collection “Prelude to the Afternoon of an Echo.”
Beware wanderer, the road is walking too...listen to the gods, they're shouting in your ears. – Jim Harrison
Raising consciousness with Barbie and Ken
Thor's hammer hangs over the mailbox pending a promised afternoon visit to Okieland . . .
Only the Kens of the world need their consciousness raised, and Greta Gerwig makes the case in Barbie.
There is a non-cognitive creative space that lies beyond our thinking – Kim Hermanson in Deep Knowing: Entering the Realm of Non-Ordinary Intelligence, Rawberry Books 2022.
Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you—catching crystallizing your simpler clearer version of life—only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead—that you must always keep working to grasp—the form must take care of its self if you can keep your vision clear . . . You and I don’t know whether our vision is clear in relation to our time or not—No matter what failure or success we may have—we will not know—But we can keep our integrity—according to our own sense of balance with the world and that creates our form – Georgia O'keeffe in today’s Marginalian
Genetic Pornograph
On an acne covered sidewalk, lovers stroll
In an acid rain.
Jontue and Aramis hand in hand,
Rarely eye to eye,
Wondering what they're about to do.
Innocence awaits its demise.
Looking forward across
Baby Love Soft cosmetic counters,
pheromes linked to hormones
count beyond consciousness
the quantum leap into the ecstasy to come
to come from the army-green-jacket-
wet-T-shirt blue- jean-video moment
of innocence awaiting its demise.
— in jb’s collection “Halloween Songs”
Making happy at the red light . . .
Odin's heat-hammer continues to pound the Okieland sand . . .
Reminders in the jetsam of the mailbox:
Today is the the 175th anniversary of the first women's rights convention, organized on this date in 1848 Seneca Falls, New York. It took over 70 years before women and men joined forces sufficient to acquire legal access for women's vote. They still have not accessed full equality under the law. That Constitutional Amendment remains pending.
It was on this day in 1954 that the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out. The Fellowship of the Ring was the sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which was published in 1937.
Tomorrow, PEN Tulsa and the Tulsa Press Club host an evening of dialogue and collaboration to promote inclusive reporting. TPC is on the ground floor of the Atlas Life Building, 400 block on Boulder. Plan on 6:30 pm gathering for a 7pm prompt start.
Gratitude arises while paying attention – David Whyte
Forgive reality – Richard Rohr (making happy)