magic happened
that tender night
you took me by surprise
and swept me off my feet
high over the dark hills
dancing with the twinkling stars
an evening designed to delight
romanced to perfection
eyes alight with our smiles
coming soul to soul
captured wholly by the fleeting moment
a dream that love could be
###
Happily grateful to Eugie’s Causerie for this week’s prompt, “magic.”
come out of the dark place
let us find each other there
where fear is not the dictator
but love finally rules the land
summer heat fades
into cool and dark
stars begin to shine
and the pixies dance their lark
the fireflies
enchant the night
Tinker Bell’s muse
in fairy flight
the mystery of their twinkling
I may never really know
but I’m grateful for the simple joy
of a summer evening’s show
up ahead
just around that curve
it’s not far
i know it’s scary
i’m going with you
i know we can do it
we have to
just set all that stuff down
leave it behind
let’s go
here, take my hand
So this morning while standing waiting behind another person at a service desk at a big box store, I got yelled at by a store employee for not positioning myself by a red X. I was not too close, mind you. I was actually at a further distance from any one else because no one else was in the vicinity and it didn’t matter.
I turned around and looked at the man who had yelled at me. I looked him in the eye, both of us masked. I just stayed put.
I fear the mentality with which we are dealing right now. I fear where that mentality is going.
I see both sides of the freedom versus fear schism we are watching in society right now.
The fear people are all about following the rules to make sure we are all somehow safe, trusting that masks and distancing and locking down and all will make us safe.
The freedom people have a heightened alertness to the dangers of those protocols. They are more questioning about the information they are given to justify the extreme measures.
The fear people resent the freedom people for not being considerate about everyone else’s health. The freedom people resent the fear people for not allowing them to make their own decisions and for not questioning the information and spectrum of risks associated with their actions.
And people are digging in their heels, like my store employee this morning feeling so emboldened with a perceived power he has never had before to actually yell at a person for not conforming to the red X.
Is this how it’s going to be? And where, exactly, does that go?
I confess I left the store feeling very down and very concerned for this path we are on. I don’t feel safer on any level for all the mandates. If anything, I feel far more at risk now than I have ever felt. Worse, I fear for the world we are swiftly creating for our children and theirs.
At the end of the day, we are all just people. We need to find our way together rather than picking sides and doubling down.
we walk onto the stage
innocent
naive
our eyes trace
the dollar bill
waved before us
deep into the trance
we sleepwalk
together
responding
unquestioning
to hypnotic cues
no matter how absurd
but for a few
who suddenly wake
look around
find nothing
is as it seems
dumbfounded by reality
free now
floating unfettered
alone
amongst
the riches and the power
they never knew was theirs
all the while
the magician at their heels
waving dollar bills
frantically trying to pull rabbits from a hat
but armed
just in case
Yesterday, the United States almost had its first federal execution since 2003. The scheduled execution was halted by a last minute ruling that questioned whether the intended pentobarbital method constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Late yesterday, the Supreme Court expedited things in a whirlwind, handing over a 5-4 decision at 2 a.m. allowing the execution to proceed. The dissenting justices question the constitutionality of capital punishment.
Why, after all these years, and in the midst of a ‘pandemic’ where everyone breathlessly watches daily death counts in manifest fear, is the federal government aggressively pursuing the death penalty?
It solves nothing in any given case. It can only be designed as a demonstration of the absolute and brutal power the government is prepared to wield against its own citizenry, and serves to engender a climate of fear — as if we don’t have enough of that going around. This, while giving societal ills the brush-off.
There is no man or woman who can properly sit in judgment with the power to dole out death. Aside from the fundamental moral void of such a presumption, we have seen far too many instances in which “justice” has been delivered to the wrong person. It is a revolting hubris that presumes the power to deliver death in judgment. It is depraved. It is all the more barbaric in the hands of a government so assiduously courting the disaffection of the people on so many fronts.
Last night’s ruling paves the way for four executions in the near term death queue, with more on the calendar later this year. Given that there have been three federal executions carried out since 1963, this is a disturbingly enthusiastic leap back into this sickening protocol. According to the Bureau of Prisons, a total of 37 federal executions took place since 1927 — that’s a span of almost 100 years. The administration plans to make up for lost time, apparently.
No. Stop. It is time to absolutely abolish the death penalty, both at the federal and state level. It is time to halt our descent into further depravity.
silence
but for the whisper of a breeze
the fluttering call of a bird
the breath of love close by
then the myriad other muted signs of life
begin to spin, spin
themselves into a frenzy
as money changes hands
over and over and over again
and soon that’s all that can be heard
from a distance
across the divide
a chasm of failed understanding
cling to the coo of the mourning dove
the rustling of the trees
the flash of the comet singing out loud
if love only infused
maybe it could all work
somehow
We are hearing “science” every day. Our lives have been torn asunder the last few months because “science.”
Except it hasn’t really been science we’ve been hearing. We’ve been hearing selected pieces of science accompanied by some mixed up data that serves a specific narrative.
As we all know, if what someone has to say does not agree with the selected science of the World Health Organization, it is likely to be censored on platforms like Facebook or YouTube or Twitter. When you’re doing that, it’s not science anymore, it’s dogma.
Way back when, Galileo was censored by the Pope because of his belief in a heliocentric system. He was finally hauled up before the Inquisition and condemned to life imprisonment for “heresy.” Hmm.
Or how about the somewhat less well known Ignaz Semmelweis who made the observation back in the mid-19th century that hand-washing could positively impact mortality rates in the hospital where he worked as an obstetrician? Others in his profession did not appreciate the inference that they were ‘dirty’ and it didn’t end well for him.
Even Einstein’s theory of relativity was largely dismissed by many for a good long while.
My point is simple. I believe in keeping an open mind and being fully informed. We need to hear it all. We need to discuss all of it.
We don’t need Big Brother-style fact checkers out there filtering what we can and can’t read or consider. We need to recognize that science has limitations, and that it can be politicized, subverted for particular purposes, or handled incorrectly.
We need to hear about all of the research, not just some of it. We need to hear about more than the industry-funded, cherry-picked studies. We need to entertain opposing points of view rather than rejecting them out of hand with scorn and labels of quackery. And, as always, we need to follow the money.
I do not believe the WHO is the final arbiter of TRUTH. Nor is Anthony Fauci or Deborah Birx. Or Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or Andrew Cuomo.
There is so much money and power involved in the current life-impacting decision-making, that we cannot afford to settle for dogma.
We want science. And we want it in the context of objectivity and freedom.
adrift
in the stillness
where no winds fill the sails
ideas begin to surface.
focus
###
So this is a cinquain that was doubly inspired by the folks at Go Dog Go Cafe. Thanks to Donna Matthews for reminding me about cinquains. And thanks to Devereaux Frazier and Beth Amanda for the Tuesday prompt!
earth sky air 