Run Hillary! Run!

Good Morning Relatives

Well Hillary is running   and guess what  I believe her presidency will be an interesting time.  Yep  I believe she will be elected  I dreamed years ago that she was president and she was using the resources of her office to rebuild the house for the children   how cool is that

Im for cool

Im also for finishing my tattoos     I think its time to fill in the blanks so to speak and bring joy to the change  

I have been cleaning out my own house,  metaphorically and physically and the most important thing is to realize that its ok to let go of things  why is that possible  because when I stand still  when I feel me and how I feel feeling good about me then what I feel in that feeling is the clarity that comes from not needing any add ons to feel that clear and clean and peaceful   wow how cool is that?

I think Imelda Marcos must have been in charge of my closet  there are way too many shoes in here  and lets face it we don't need a revolution we just need to stop acting like and thinking as if and ignoring the fact that big money somehow values those of us who are little money for any other purpose than being the gerbil on their wheel   I was a gerbil for a long long time and I thought I was supposed to work hard and spend hard and accumulate and run run run  but all that running just ran me down (maybe thats why I kept buying shoes, maybe I thought I'd eventually be able to find or afford the pair that would end all the running)  I had to crash before I realized that running wasn't taking care of me and when all was said and done I would be dead and not very happy in the process one day so I began to try and find my own happy my own investment in me and it took a while to get out of the habit of running and to get the impetus that I had swallowed for so long out of my mind and body like the backwash of years of brainwashing

thats the most important thing that we can ask Hillary to do for us  and ask ourselves and other new politicians policy makers  teachers and if we have to have them religious guidance counselors to do for us   to help us identify and deconstruct the brainwashing that somehow became a twisted and all powerful OZ of the American ideal and took over our lives like maze rats on Emerald City crack  we have to actually find out what really is the American idea of life what is freedom and life that is not controlled by credit or hours and hours of work or rate of financial return.  We have to take out the trash without throwing out the baby  to not fill the babies head with stories and class oriented money oriented right is might oriented salvation is worth dying and killing for ideologies that will continue and have destroyed the beautiful opportunity that life here in this country can be

be brave relatives  be radical   throw out the running and I promise you that the morning will come when you will see all the shoes and not only wonder why did I buy these  but I don't need them any more and you can toss them out

be a part of disentaglement theory in action

attachment shows up right away if I pick something up  and immediately begin to tell myself a story about it and me   then its like tendrils of intertwinement which interestingly enough the spell checker wants to change to entertainment   which is the point isn't it?  the point of letting ourselves bloom without being intertwined in ownership of something to have ourselves our lives without the need to fill or define our lives with a wish or a fantasy or a story of who we are or what our lives meant when this thing is or was a part of it  and liking that story we travel away from where we are right now

right now I am typing so that I can practice using my fingers in a coordinated manner,  also so that I can get my brain back on line after it got knocked loose when I fell in 2012  and I am sitting  the fire is going  and I am having turkish coffee  I didn't burn the bacon this morning which means my brain is able to remember a multitask  and the smoke alarm is chirping so I need to go and take a moment to reset it   and my lungs feel good   each breath feels like life  like a virgin opportunity  my trunk feels steady  and my legs willing and my left and right arm feel like distant cousins  one attached to the rest of me and one sort of here painfully so  tentative  like a ghost of its previous self  but not fearful today

now is the time to get involved in self government to try and try again and make a place for the common human being to do well   its time to let go of the idea that more money is worth more of your life   to let go of the idea that more stuff makes things more valuable

there is great value in enjoying how it feels to be able to walk   to laugh   to watch the nankin cherry bushes outside the window bud out a little more each day  to see the lilacs begin to leaf out
do you think that the spring robins are fat or just still encased in their winter down ?

watch yourselves  relatives  beware of old stories that trap you somewhere than in the day that is in your hands right this moment  

beware of anything that promises that you will be or become or achieve something that relies of carrying around or holding onto a weight or an artificial light or a premise that wants you to dance around its maypole    remember when we trade our work  our effort our brilliance we are making a trade of our life for something that will end something that will wear out or down and we must make sure that we remain sustainable as our own resource  we must make sure that we understand that trading our life  our time  our effort is incredibly valuable  and if who or what we are trading for wants us to believe we are less than them or it  or that we are less if we let go of them or it then they and perhaps we if we buy into that idea are mistaken

do not trade your life, your breath your weight your appetite or your present moment for something that needs you to give more to it than it gives to you

water poured out on the ground takes a long time to come back as rain, or as food, or as breath

best
mb

How does your garden grow

Good Morning Relatives

Well   April Fools  or maybe March Madness or perhaps Spring forward

either way   it is today isn't it?

I looked through my audio books and realized that I have moved on from subscribing the the self help  through listening to what others think ideology

like stones in the stream that I crossed and left behind me they have no more place in my day than the old ah-ha moments that formed in my body brain synapses as I was learning to stand, walk and eventually run.

I am grateful to the stones that helped me when I was convinced that I needed them  but, there is no need to continue to carry them around, or to center my life as if they are an altar that I must chain myself to as if I am incapable of learning  of shedding my own cocoon

don't look back


There is a woman that is running for congress in Maryland  Her name is Kristin Beck and although like most newly formed ideologies that are a departure from the old school that is running us into the ground she is not perfect, she is I think on the right track. she is also someone who learns and is unafraid to change and grow, she has depth and she has willingness and intelligence and courage to apply herself to the things that are larger than what I can do with my day and effort and that is why I am sending her $20 a month, because she is willing to do work that I am unable to but which will benefit me when she succeeds.   I am going to give to her because I believe that small voices and small money gathered together will in fact get the attention of those who think they own all of us and at a minimum they will want to stop the leak in their system, at an middle they will want to recruit or destroy her which means they see her and our breaking free of their dominance as a credible threat, at an unimaginable fairy tale ending they will change their ways or die trying which is fine with me actually   gardens turn over and it is up to the gardener as to what type of perennials they perpetrate isn't it?

I am going to give to her work because it is the most effective use of my money towards the future of my own country that I have found available this year and I want to do something to make my own difference

I am going to give to her because I believe she is well aware that she will be derided, mislabeled, her own past used against her and still she is willing to take the hit, to stand for me, for you for herself. What that tells me is not that she is naive but that she is steadfast, that she has watched, and understands that it not the pristine that gets through the firefight for freedom, but the experienced soul that is incorruptible that makes it to the day of reckoning. that the day of reckoning isn't about retribution or profit, but about absolute change for the better, I believe she understands what it takes to take the life, the lie, out of the the system that has become so gross and dysfunctional that it is capable of being crippled by the simple idea that people outside of a district, even people outside of the country can band together and make a candidate for the american congress a winner.  Kind of cool isn't it? the idea that as human beings we can garden in the part of the plot that is not in our back yard.

she is practiced at this as you will see as you look into her and that is why I believe she is a good investment  because she has succeeded, and she has failed, and she has continued to find her truest self so that when she takes a stand she is solid,
not perfect,
not a virgin,
not a nun,
not a hero,
but a woman who is willing to come home from war and bring her awareness of the sacredness of life to its full circle by not pretending any more that our government is acting in our best interests as simple hard working valuable human beings

look her up   contribute to her cause   send $10 or $20 to her effort  I believe that she will invest it well
her website is:

http://www.beck4congress.us

spend a little of your time and then your dime on changing what needs to be changed by working on the part of the garden that is active. That is growing and willing to take a foothold in the early spring growth.  change in Maryland means change is possible anywhere  so go for it

be bold  be brave   step out of connivence or best return on the dollar or fear or reluctance and contribute


I have an active mind that is not sure what to do with itself.  thus the grubbing around looking for audio books that are worth listening to

it seems like all at once we, the human race are going to outgrow our past like the bean sprouting from the long frozen recently thawed ground


so get to work gardeners   I challenge you to make the garden grow

love ya
mean it
mb

cooooooool beans

Good Morning Relatives

its a perfect spring day   we have a covering of snow/pellet snow on the ground  just enough to fill the air with the smell of snow and crisp new opportunity.   what an awesome thing

There are happening things going on in Minnesota    this Monday  at 8pm there is a meeting to review and discuss the legislation that is coming up that will affect the habitat of bees.  The campaign is called Pollinate Minnesota and you can find them at the web address below.  Just reading the information on the list of proposed bills and areas of change that affect the lives of bees makes me feel like I am on the way to actually helping heal my planet and care for more than just my own 2.3meter squared space.

http://www.pollinatemn.org/mnsession2015/

I encourage you to find people in your state if it is not Mn that are like minded and help them make a difference for the bees.  we can also donate to help with plantings and to help support the education that teaches awareness and care of bees.  Awesome!

follow the links and make a change with your change

There is a new sheriff  here in pipestone   and already the town feels less creepy.  how funny is that.  our town was actually known to be a hotbed of drugs and just walking around the air felt oppressive. at night there was lots of strange traffic, speeding cars, and cops creeping around but not changing anything.  we have had several local drug guys who would get busted every two or three months go to jail get out of jail free and then start over and over again   now it seems that has changed  all because what ever it was that was locking the old sheriff in place  changed and he moved on and the new guy who did work for the old sheriff at one point but quit for some unknown personal difference in opinion or protocol  came back and ran for sheriff against one of the drug deputies and won!  now things are different  how cool is that   Im for it

and we have new equipment at the rec center gym  

so new opportunities abound  and it seems that I get to choose what I do with those daily chances at choosing my own surroundings

things add up don't they   time spent at the gym changes how my body feels which changes what I feel I can and can't do  and also changes how I feel inside my own opportunity   there is some uncomfortableness   Im not sure why it is a part of expending the effort   it is like pushing through negativity and holding my breath  only I have always disliked that idea in me  that feeling of enduring negativity thinking it will bring me a positive outcome

so I can think something else can't I ?  I can think about my body and the effort and the feeling of the doing  differently  kind of like a chick pecking though a shell seeking more than the limitations it finds its awareness was born into   its the old glass half empty thing   it is up to me to decide to look for positivity and enjoy it rather than to confirm negativity and carry it or endure it like sludge that can never be escaped

I don't have to know all the answers like a magic bullet and then wear them or repeat them like a mantra   I just have to look at the light that is me and trust it to see to understand to shape and to enjoy    I think it feels much better than pushing myself and what I am doing away   better than holding my breath

so heres to breathing in the fresh spring air and then back out again and again and again

Hannah Arendt where are you today? There are Monsters under our beds.

Good Morning Humans

Well late to the party. But as Far Side cards and the longest joke in the world assure me Better Nate than Lever. If you are curious about that you can google it.

Thats what it does for us;  curiosity, it helps us find our way.  Hannah Arendt did not lack curiosity. Nor did she lack the bravery that it required to take a simple singular stand. She used her voice, and the opportunity that the New Yorker gave her in 1961 when they sent her to Jerusalem to report on the   trial of Adolf Eichmann, as an attempt to engage the human beings around her in a productive dialogue about what it was that she glimpsed when she took the light of her inquiring mind and shown it in the dark corners in one of the most empty souls the world had ever had the opportunity to observe and question. I was two years old in 1961. Too young to drive to New York and thank her. Too young to use my voice to cry out for anything other than food, water and perhaps an comforting hand. I think Hannah Arendt was thinking about me and others like me who would be born and grow up in the world that lay before us when she took a good long look at Eichmann. I think back in 1961 rather than thinking about what she could get for herself, she was thinking about me. Now I would like to return the favor.

By choosing to dissect and then publish what she believed to be the mentation of the mechanism of this man, she recognized the danger that he still represented. Her response by writing, and then the response of the editor of the New Yorker at that time by publishing what she observed, served to demonstrate what the actions of one, and then two people, can do. When they recognize something that is bad. Something that is wrong. Something that is growing in front of their eyes. When they chose to stand up for what is the right thing at the right time, rather than deciding to turn aside, or to modify, or to ignore the responsibility that they recognized we have to ourselves as human beings in favor of approval, protection, or economic security they gave us an example to help us find our way. 

Hannah Arendt decided not to simply reiterate the horror Eichmann embodied and then join the crowd to throw stones of justice at him. When she listened to him, and watched him, she did not see the dangers that had been narrowly escaped. Rather, she observed in this man a clear insight into the perils that we faced in our future. She recognized, that if what is at the core of this type of evil was not brought to light, so that it could be identified and stopped, it would return.

She was the only reporter at the trial who dared to actually face the monster of the holocaust and then publicly speak about the fact that what that monster is, was not a man, or a group of men, or a political, or religious belief that got carried away. It was the expression of a new kind of inhumanity that was just beginning to find its way on the world stage.

I believe that she viewed what she saw in Eichmann, as if it was just the mother of a type of monster whose offspring, seeded amongst the bureaucracy of government, (whether it be capitalism, totalitarianism, or simply bankers and CEO's who control the housing, food, economic, and education opportunities of the world or religious leaders attempting to control and direct the force of human life) would grow into a new type of evil that is very much alive in our world today. I think that Eisenhower also recognized this monster. He called his monster The Military-Industrial Complex. 

I think Hannah Arendt recognized that the mutation of this monster would bring about a different, perhaps, but just as deadly repeat of the Holocaust she had lived through. She was right actually. The monster of the Third Reich lived long enough to breed and its children are alive a well in todays world. Busily going about the dismemberment of society, and the degradation of human life. They just have different uniforms now and are much, much better at camouflage, distraction, and the dissemination of information than their procreators.

In using her glamorous opportunity to publish in the New Yorker in this way, Hannah Arendt did not take the easy road or the one that was immediately understood. She took the necessary road. The road that was in the best interests of Humanity. It was a unique action. Brave in a way that both demonstrated what could have been done to prevent, as well as a model for those of us, who years later, need a leader to turn to. Someone who is willing to teach us to think, to examine, to review and speak up. Someone who is willing to demand that the humanity of our lives not be divided from the mechanisms that run our neighborhoods, our banks, our schools, our houses of worship, our grocery stores, our civic and economic opportunities.

Hannah Arendt understood that the individual had to remain closely self identified as a human being, always. She also recognized that the definition of a human being had to include all the things that Eichmann and those like him sought to destroy, like so much waste being poured down a drain. I also believe that she recognized that we were slipping as a race. That some time in the future, people would need to be reminded that they are human beings.

Hannah Arendt dared to propose with her life's work, that each of us in the society that we live, has the capacity to create a unique perspective with which we train ourselves to see and respond to ourselves and each other as we observe and participate in the miasma of the social human construct that surrounds and governs our lives. More importantly, she also taught that our action and reaction as individuals within that society has an accumulated effect. It is the capacity of the human being to distance itself quite clearly, cleanly, and throughly from any kind of moral attachment or ownership or self recognition to amoral acts self perpetrated against other human beings that she found was so dangerous to our future and so subtle in its ability to perpetuate itself.

We are unique in that as human beings, our response to the bureaucratic mechanisms we see affecting the lives of our neighbors; be they the same or different color, race, religion, economic status, sexual preference, language, hair color, age and social circumstance, our response to how we allow or permit or condone the authorities to treat any human being, has the potential to have an tremendous accumulative effect on the humanity in which we all reside as fellow members.

The small, innocuous, purposeful ignorance, is the sleight of hand that is used perhaps as an act of self preservation or, to garner advancement, to profit in a momentary or eventually sustainable way, that is the beginning that separates us within ourselves from the hands that commit the acts that are unspeakably inappropriate or inhumane. When we witness these activities in the flow around us and yet find that within our selves we lack the capacity to speak up, or out, against the perversion of authoritative opportunity and how it moves amongst ours lives, we are failing humanity in a way that is perhaps not as grand or as gross as Eichmann did, but we are failing it nonetheless.

Our own self preserving separation rather than cleaving us from the action of the perpetrator, immediately binds us, irrevocably, to the pattern of silence and non thinking that contributes to the slippery slope of the habit of dehumanization that surely as a train headed for Auschwitz will result in the loss of innocent life. It is important to make sure that in your own minds eye, your neighbor is not oppressed, or exploited, or relegated to an identity that is less than someone you would die for. It is important that we exercise our right to speak, to think, to challenge each other non violently. To try again, and again, and again. Even if it seems we have failed in the moment, history tells us that we have not failed. Even if we die in the attempt, we have not lost our life, but invested it. Like Hannah Arendt did with hers for me. It is our human responsibility, to try and get it, if not right, or left, then perhaps to a good middle way. It is better to have a purposeful and radical good life, rather than a banal one. To have the desire to do good, and to feed it, rather than to turn off in ourselves the little thing that might be even just a tiny bit adding to the tide of evil that lives amongst us today.

by the way I discovered the google doodles today   today's is to honor the volt-master I'll let you take it from there although I would like to say thanx to Google for this one thing  the doodles they are imaginative and interesting prompts to explore  even if the rest of your machine has its suspect aspects for the doodles I say way to go

now as far as throwing the baby out with the bathwater I want to use todays blog to write an editorial letter or response to an article that appeared in the New Yorker magazine June 4th 2013 in the Page Turner section written by Michelle Dean titled "The Formidable Friendship of Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt.

Right up front I want to say Michelle you have missed the point and badly and in so many ways.

As to the New Yorker I'm not sure if they will print my letter to the editor as it is, as I said up front, late to the party. But it is, of course because it is mine, important to me no matter when it arrives. Like I said, better Nate than Lever as the Far Side reminds us that timeliness may be more and also less important than the content that eventually gets aired.

Hannah Arendt 

I recently signed up for netflix and watched the movie "Hannah Arendt" a movie directed by Margarethe von Trotta  released in the US in May of 2013. The movie is an interesting and dispassionate recreation of a purposefully directed point of view aimed I believe by the movie's writers to give the viewer a visual/visceral experience of what it may have been like to be this extraordinary woman at a time in her life that few people it seems, including Michelle Dean 54 years later, were capable of understanding.

The movie, on the surface, is impersonal; just like Hannah's writings and her public persona were. However, that does not imply that either are not of great value. Quite the opposite in fact. The movie creates a perpetual surface assault on the sensibilities and opinions of the viewer that are in direct and judgmental conflict with the value of the message that it is trying to deliver. The movie simultaneously distracts as it delivers the underlying message. Enduring the onslaught of the debris while keeping the eye on the prize is a skill that todays world is lacking. It is however the skill Hannah Arendt had.

In a time when Humanity was still reeling from having barely survived a type of world encompassing horror that not many thought at the time about tracking down and killing, she could think of little else. Hannah used her opportunity to track the monster to it's lair, wait for it's offspring to rear their heads and then she proceeded to go at them with the best weapon she had at hand; her writings, her ability to think and report on what she thought was a very current, rather than defeated or past affair.  It is an example of a modern day quest where most of the bodies lost on the thorny patch or in the desert of impossible practicality are piling up and beginning to stink on a grand scale while the heroine is attacked from all sides not by the enemy, but by those she is desperately trying to save. It seems that today, we are lacking a heroine that can find her way off of the beaten path and lead humanity into a less dangerous world. I miss Hannah Arendt and I never even got to meet her.

It is unfortunate that the review of the movie in the New Yorker by Michelle Dean 54 years after Hannah Arendt also wrote for the New Yorker, that we rather than finding our reporter to be someone who is capable of being our heroine, realize that she is just one more body piled up on the pyre of the same monster that drove Eichmann in 1961.

It does not take very much digging to see, or perhaps understand, that Hannah Arendt, perhaps like her movie crew, did not concern herself with public image, ratings or box office return. To her the point is the point, and the movie makes it nicely even if it is presented in a form that is not designed as fodder for the masses.

Hannah like her movie making cohorts dared to present to the world something that had depth and essence to it on a level that was and is critical to what type of humanity we aspire to become. It is, frankly, a compliment that she would think that we still have the chance to aspire to choose a humanity that is purposeful and radical because it is good, rather than allow our humanity to become banal, evil, predictable and destructive.

As far as the audience is concerned, I think that when Hannah wrote her articles for the New Yorker in 1961, she expected that somewhere out there was someone who would get the message in the bottle that was presented to the world in the media form that was so very effective in her time. We can thank her later when we run into her down the road, for her stalwart, unwavering commitment to humanity.

In the interim, if we want to use her gift for that which it is intended rather than as a springboard to show our own shallowness, ahem. We can take the time, spend the effort, to dig a little deeper into the movie, the current state of affairs, and the new totalitarianism that frankly appears to have our world by the short hairs. We as human beings who cannot all pay attention in the moment the way that Hannah did, at least can stand up and contribute a small voice to, or if need be against, the louder one. Rather than simply allow those who are not thinking, and who have demonstrated that they are not capable of thinking, to decide for us what and how our world should look and operate.

Hannah Arendt made her difference Michelle. Now, what are you going to do about the difference that you have the opportunity to make? For me as a human being, reading the New Yorker, and as a person of my time who has to live in the holocaust of the economic and cultural failure of democracy in the United States, I would say that it appears to me that you didn't do your homework. You didn't think. You didn't even try. It appears to me that you didn't use the opportunity you were given by the New Yorker to perpetrate anything that even comes close to what Hannah Arendt did with her opportunity. Instead like the Jewish leadership that Hannah reported on in her review of the Eichmann assignment you went for the banal. You went for what would not ruffle the feathers of the proletariat.  You went for the laugh or the smirk or the ratings. Good for you for the moment. Not so good for all of us in the long run.

Like those who designed and followed through on this movie, Hannah Arendt went after the unseen as if her life depended on it. Or perhaps as if my life did. She recognized then cornered and identified for all the world to see, the not to be missed but easily mislaid, mistaken, misappropriated missing link that held together the mentalities of the men and women (or at least the one who she was able to personally observe and listen to), who perpetrated the unthinkable horror that she was willing to stand up and say human beings are capable of. This kind of failure of humanity was not just an occasional isolated thing that happened at a death camp. It started and was perpetrated in hearts, homes and neighborhoods. Lives were destroyed, not only once in a while, as if Hitler and his group were some sort of serial killer aberration, but for years in a horrible sustainable wave of casual inattention that begs to be gutted and rooted out of our species. I think she saw the choices that Eichmann made were choices that many people made in their own way, amplified on a massive scale that when accumulated and given time redirected human behavior in a way that should be understood and addressed so that that type of accumulated disfunction would never be repeated.

Hannah Arendt took a long and dark look at the mentality that enabled a man, a human, to not only facilitate but also to personally profit from the mass destruction of human life because he, in his mind and from his mind made his effort, his own humanity, his own work, he made himself into something that is void of humanity so that he was capable of sustaining the active mentality that other human beings are a void in which he could act with no compunction. Eichmann believed that humans were not only worthless, but useless in a deep and terrible lasting way.

I encourage anyone who reads this blog to watch the movie and in doing so to watch and listen to Hannah. Her mind and her action and her words are not reactive, they are steps, stones that are not thrown at the enemy, but rocks that are carefully laid down so that we can depend on them to help us escape our own lack of purpose and training.

Eichmann's banality was deadly. He and others like him did not just transition into the monsters under the bed. They took over the whole house, the neighborhood, the town, the country.  The difficulty with what Hannah reported on back in 1961, was that everyone had skeletons in their closets, and she was willing to see the pedantry that people who could have stopped what happened hid behind. She was correct in understanding if not addressing or overstating that when the holocaust happened the Jewish people did not yet have the mentality and resources that the State of Israel gave them in the 60's. Just like the Homosexuals who were not yet Free to Be You and Me as we are in the present day, it is not a radical thought to understand that people who were family and friends of those who died in the death camps did not prevent those people from being taken there.

this is an excerpt from a paper written by
Karen Silverstrim, MA CandidateUniversity of Central Arkansas

Overlooked Millions: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust
Records kept by the Germans prove they exterminated millions of Communists, Czechs, Greeks, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, mentally and physically handicapped, Poles, resistance fighters, Russians, Serbs, Socialists, Spanish Republicans, trade unionists, Ukrainians, Yugoslavians, prisoners of war of many nations, and still others whose identity may never be recognized.⁽¹⁾ Their victims, according to one survivor of four different concentration camps, "were of some thirty nationalities, from Nepalese to Andorrans, and of a variety of racial and linguistic stocks ranging from Basques to Buriats and from Ladinos to Lapps".⁽²⁾

Hannah Arendt wasn't playing the race card when she addressed the complicity of the Jewish leaders in the deaths of their neighbors and countrymen, women and children. She was commenting as carefully as possible what the proper response was when people banded together played it, as if they are separate from their neighbors. Israel played such a card when they made the move to capture and keep Eichmann to themselves rather than bring him to justice in a world court. There is no doubt that the formation of their own nation allowed the Jewish race the opportunity to stand unified on the world stage and speak of their pain. However, one could argue that their selfishness robbed millions of other peoples from having their own moment to face their perpetrator. 

Rather than delve into what was possible or probable, Hannah Arendt stuck to the facts of the trial.  I believe Hannah simply reflected back to the Jewish leadership what they themselves were asking the world to ignore so that they could have their day in court, or in monstrosity as it were. She was brave enough to be fair. To demonstrate and take the hit that clearly would show that she was not playing sides or valuing one race or religion or people over another when it came to taking care of the future of her species. 

It is unfortunate when human beings allow themselves to be taken over by an authority that they mistakenly believe has their best interests at heart. When in fact that authority has already demonstrated that they are willing to use banal pedantic bureaucratic fabrications to ignore their dehumanization and persecution of their neighbors, fellow countrymen and women, and peoples of any other nation as well. What Hannah was trying to get everyone to see was that even our neighbor, our cultural representative, our people who we think of as family, have the capacity to some extent to see us off to the gas chamber; if we/they allow ourselves to profit from looking the other way. This subtle choice to detach from the consequence of one's capacity to relocate, redefine the status of a person inside of our hearts and minds exists in not just one of us, but millions of us. As was demonstrated over and over again and again by a bureaucrat who could have chosen to resist, to say no, to refuse, to do anything other than continue to do his job, the job of making sure that human beings were loaded on trains that took them to their deaths; simply because someone signed a paper that authorized that action.

This sustainable, hollow, non-thinking mentation that results in the type of crime that Eichmann committed, is as Hannah might say, easier said than done.  We are not talking about one body, or one moment, or one event or one life. We are talking about the mechanism that became within a human being, and as the facts of history displayed for all of us in multiple human beings, created the ability to sustainably disregard and destroy with creativity, purpose, and a businesslike efficiency the lives of those who were available to use to perfect this mental mechanism within himself and his peers. A mechanism that made the voices and lives of those who in his moral compass have no presence. Lives that were at best irrelevant to the future that this man and others like him were marching towards. At worst, lives that were simply debris that needed to be swept away.

In her own words, works, critically reviewed and publicly reviled, emotionless examination of the effect of the mechanism of the thoughtlessness of the men who were behind and responsible for not only the war crimes against the human beings who died at their hands, but also and perhaps more importantly responsible for creating a model of dehumanization that was dangerous in that no one at the time (except Hannah apparently) observed; Hannah Arendt was willing to pull back the curtain and not only try and understand but also to publicly make the world aware of what it was that motivated this man. Hannah recognized that the mechanism that was driving the man and men and women who were behind the curtain of what drove the wizard that made Hitler's emerald city so attractive to so many people, was something that was not dangerous because it would haunt us after it was defeated, but because it was something that obviously could reproduce itself amongst humanity.

I believe that Hannah understood that what happened inside the mind of Eichmann was something that was obviously critical, but more importantly, she recognized that it was possible to reproduce his banality in other human beings. I think she didn't see Eichmann as an anomaly but as a sign of an outbreak. It was almost like she saw him as contagious, and because of that she knew that we were still at risk. That meant, that the mechanism that existed within Eichmann could and most likely would come back. When it returned once again under a different guise, mutated as monsters do, it would rise again through the subtle permission of those who decide not to look, those who turn their head, those who want their own profitable moment and take it, when they contribute to, or give permission for, or facilitate, crimes against humanity. It can after all only be human beings that destroy other human beings one at a time, or en-masse.

Personally, I think the film is extraordinary. We are exposed to rivers of cigarette smoke, seemingly hours of banal conversation, purposefully social misdirection in the form of cheating husbands, silent support staff, vapish female friends, ignorant bureaucrats, administrators worried about their reputations, faint hearted friends, Israeli goon squads, and brooding intellectuals who seem to only talk around the point rather than get to it. Hannha is un moved by all of this. Steadfastly our heroine encourages us to march like Nazi's through the debris around us so that we arrive at out destination no matter what it costs us.

The difference however,  in the Nazi's and in Hannah Arendt, was simply that she did not seek to destroy anyone in an her attempt to comment and effect the outcome of the lives of the humanity in which she lived. Although she ultimately destroyed herself in the minds eye of the unthinking easily manipulated social mentality of those who were around her or who came in contact with her simple exercise of taking a good look at what she was interested in and making an intelligent and educated concise effort to give back to humanity the things that she believed would protect it from itself; it appears that unlike the nihilist culture that almost destroyed the humanity of Europe, Hannah Arendt didn't grouse about how humanity treated her.

She simply thought that it was interesting that no-one commented on the fact that she herself had made a small mistake in her analysis.  Good on ya, Hannah. Good on ya.

The nihilism that lay behind and in the hearts and minds of Eichmann and others like him, was and is alive and well in todays world. It is apparent even in the subtle simplistic efforts of reporters like Michelle Dean when they excuse and deflect what is the deeper movement of the forces that are going on behind the scenes.

There are human beings in countries in our world who believe and perpetrate that it is acceptable to risk family homes for the profits gained in mortgage manipulation. There are human beings in countries in our world who believe and perpetrate that the lives of their citizens are expendable as political statements and life destroying acts that annihilate the opportunity of the bomb wearers as if their life could never, would never have any meaning except as a mule used to carry death to those who are different in some unradical, seemingly intolerable existence. There are human beings who use television as an opportunity to profit from the systematic public dehumanization, abuse, and perpetration of self harm of "contestants" in "reality" programs as if they are not human beings with desires, dreams, frailties, and real lives they have to return to once the producers have wrung all the profit they can from them. There are human beings who use the opportunity for technological advancement, for profit margins, and for returns on investments to prevent education, conversation, sexual awareness that results in self aware care and thoughtfulness. There are human beings in countries who use education not to teach us to educate ourselves in the skills of awareness, effective singular value that makes a whole invaluable, communication that allows for differences that lead not to one thought or one design but to a better, richer, more diverse and peaceful purposefully perpetrated whole humanity that recognizes and trades not on the dehumanization of humanity, but on its incredible beauty. There are human beings that use religion as a weapon against humanity.

And in all the above circumstances, there are millions of people who are making the same small, self profiting choices inside themselves that Eichmann did as they help perpetrate these atrocities against humanity because they are entertained, or they don't want to be involved, or they don't see the harm, or they just needed the job, or what ever.  That's it really isn't it? Thats the point that Hannah was trying to make.

Whatever.

So Michelle, I hope the New Yorker asks more from you in the future. I do

mb

burn after reading

Good Morning Relatives

Have you noticed that this blog doesn't have ads running when you pull it up?  have you noticed that there isn't a tracker imbedded in it so that when you pull up your Facebook or next query page on your internet browser that this blog doesn't sneak itself into your visual field and try to run away with your mind and attention?

well you can come here and just hang out  if you like   I think the biggest day we've ever had has been 19 or so   usually there are two or three who come here for a nap  not too many ad companies want to hitch their wagon to this one.  and thats ok with me  its still content that is uncensored and nonfat based and not owned by any political parties  its not bad really  I am not sure why so many blogs and information pages are so crazy full of things that are linked together to the browser on google or whomever is running the search engines these days

its like all the ads from tv and radio went viral and multiplied into the inability to even pull up a medical article and read it without having to learn how to not accidentally click on a celebrity gossip or the crazy get rid of belly fat by avoiding these five food thingy  

how things have changed  not sure how to stop this visual and web page viral overloaded ad crazy ness  maybe just wait till it crashes or find a teenager who understands how to block a web browser better than I do  maybe just making sure I am not caught up in it  or driven by it   like the gas coupon thing at the grocery store   cents off a gallon if I buy a product manufactured by a certain large company wonder if they own the gas also?   its still irksome to live where the stores are small and the shelf space and ad space in coupons are driven by the large soft drink, chip and cracker and frozen food entree manufacturers    there is no way to actually have a grocery store that offers regular non shelf space and paid by subsidies food that determines what I get to choose to eat   is there?  grocery stores are dependent on customers spending and like this blog if numbers were the game we would starve to death wouldn't we   well no actually I wouldn't  I won't

money really has become a god hasn't it?  and if the housing market crash happened because people were willing to get something for nothing and there were people willing to sell and trade futures  our futures over and over until the root traders were secure enough with their compounded moneys that they could turn around and pull the plug on those who were out there dangling on mortgages and credit cards that they couldn't hope to afford  like drunk lemmings running for the cliff instead of the sea  and everyone crashed except those who planned and traded on that money scam that was sold over and over and over

those who got out early got out   but I doubt they are idle   It was after that that the internet changed wasn't it?  it was after that that viral ads went viral

someone is paying money to make produce and sell those ads  someone is selling the space on your computer and the space in your face and is tracking and selling anything and everything that you browse through so that they can sell sell sell

why are people allowing so many Facebook and twitter and pintrest and ad linking viruses to attach themselves to their blogs or articles or what ever

so they can have exposure  so they can be liked so they can get paid to rent space on their dime hoping that you will spend your dime in their store

sway out there somewhere is another deficit  it has a face   it has a viral infection fed by someone who wants money   doesn't have to be my money or yours as long as they get it in the end '

wonder what that crash will do

did you realize that so many people are on prescription medications in this country that we who are required to have insurance are required to have and pay for a prescription medication plan even if we do not, cannot, and will not take them?  

well what is the option   ?  well  people will die won't they?  if we don't pay for them then what is the cost ? the cost is not life  its not that people will die if untreated  its that their income generating stream will end for someone else if they die.  that is why they are supported through insurance and "care" programs that reduce one cost but jack up so many others that the income streams are innumerable linked to one person who is paying paying paying  and believe me when the paying is not enough to justify the out lay  then you die any way

sound depressing   no worse than five belly fat items whatever they are

so make a decision to feed the rats or jump the ship  it will cost you your life either way  it just depends on what kind of life you want in the interim doesn't it ?

its going to smell really bad when all this stuff crashes isn't it?  clean water and really good septic systems are going to be really important  and a really good dog

keep your money in your pocket and stop "sharing" see what happens next

Pema and Johnny Cash and the IRS whats a name anyway

Good Morning Relatives 

well I decided to do a little meditation last night before bed so I soaked in a hot bath of korean sea salt and epsom salt and rosemary and eucalyptis    nice   then I read a bit in Pema Chodrons book the places that scare you  only reading from a held back meditative place which by that point was quite easy 

it allowed me to observe and see something that I had not previously  which is always interesting isn't it   

Pema is big on meditation and on labeling her source of effort as bodhichitta  which is a nice effort  and all but there is way too much emphasis on levels and achievement  if we are then we are and why not 
I say go for it Pema and let yourself be an original and all encompassing source already  don't hold yourself back out of some sort of respect for those who have and those who can't or won't  its not worth it  so forget the bodhichitta or becoming a bodhisattva   be Pema  she is grand don't settle for  the prelim stage of enlightenment 

   anyhow that note aside I was enjoying the reading and not reading at the same time as the intense saltyness drew myself out of myself and allowed me to be me in a whole different way   that is when something that Pema said or rather she wrote on the page that I was reading caught my ah ha moment 

it is the idea that intensity let loose in side of me (usually in the dream time)  triggers such deep and intense breathtaking feeling that before I know it in an attempt to get away from myself   from that fire that is destroying me inside which I don't remember inviting in the door by the way  I end up leaping onto a story board and running down the road riding what is often a very dead horse till the emotion or the fuel burns out of me or burns me up and hopefully in the midst of all that conflagration if I can hold on and not harm myself  then I can phone a friend (though it seems no one gets up early any more do they at least not in my time zone) and if they answer and I havnt set myself or the house on fire I can ask them to help me please  help me while I burn to death in my own cauldron of fear that has somehow caught on fire in the night and is out of control inside my very own self   thank life for old childhood friends who do answer the phone and who know what a horrible and unremovable thing it was to have to live through my sister shooting herself and dying before I was done loving her or needing her to love me back   thank life for friends who can just say I understand and I am holding you even from thousands of miles away steadfast and long enough and strong enough that I can die and be reborn again into my own reality  thank life for the truly loving and selfless friend of mine

Pema said to let go of the story and have the intensity of the emotion and while having it sort of like the bath and the book and meditation all at once adding up to a fourth dimension  let it flow and yet don't be consumed by it but take a look at it while I am in it   that was an interesting thing that I as it so happens was doing while reading and soaking so the idea was already present (kind of like Pema being Pema without the boddi butting in)

so I thought about that  

then she said that when we hold ourselves to a story or a action or non action while we are having this eruption of fuel if we are fearful which is the point of the book to learn not to be fearful then we are simply using the fuel and the fire (the story we are telling our selves) to avoid the underlying fear and so in a way we are harming ourselves   which may not be overt but is definitely accumulative like steps on the treadmill or four or six too many m&m's or one more chip or one less hug eh?

so my project this week is to recognize when I am telling me a story and stop and take a face on look at the underlying fear    I may not change avoiding going to the gym on sunday because the guy who mans the desk not only watches in the cameras everything I am doing but comments to me about what he thinks of me when I come by the desk which I must  so what is the underlying fear?  a creepy dude watching me makes me feel awful and I don't want to feel powerless and exposed  so what is the story I tell me? that if I go to the gym I will be victimized   brrrr ugh yuck yuck yuck   since it is not socially acceptable to whack his head off  either I go and ask for his schedule so that I can go when he is not there  or I don't go at all  and or I tell his super visor what he did and does  and I recognized that I was avoiding going because I could feel myself holding myself back from going,  I could feel the part of me that wants to go work out and wants to not keep eating or reading or sitting for hours on end but I would ignore it. I would push it aside. I would push me aside and not listen to me.  thus the emotional cauldron fills with fire while I am looking away pretending that I am doing what I want to do when what I want to do is not what I am doing. Capisce?

all this from Pema  imagine that   anyhow  I don't feel less creeped out or less vulnerable knowing what is behind the story of why I am not going and allowing myself to add one more day of blobness to my already unwelcome days of blobness due to my injuries  but what I feel is that I am honest and clear and not carrying an extra layer of nasty crap just so that I don't have to think about facing the creepy dude at the gym because lets face it  what girl knows how to deal with her fear of creepy dudes?  I really don't understand how those girls who go about exposed do that knowing that there are creepy people out there oggling  them  not that I think I am ogable these days Im not but it makes it more creepy that someone would watch someone who is as out of shape as me urgh brrrr yuck  anyhow  I know as women we are supposed to take back the night and all of that but really it is exhausting having to deal with creepy people and in a small town there seems to be even more of them per capita than in the big city  creepy! ok enough of that

so I went to bed thinking about how to use Pema's looking glass today which is now and I was happy about it  a way to explore and reauthenticate my life  may not change what I do but really who wants to be a self induced zombie?  so i went to bed and thought about a friend of mine who is being reviewed by the IRS (by the way it seems despite the propaganda that they have cut back on staff and the audits are less than 1% that everyone is being audited except the rich and famous or the republicans or the Koch brothers) any how I was sending her a good night best of luck thought because I knew she was up late organizing old tax crap  and I woke up at one in the morning with this poem :

Lay down your burden as well as your hed
Let us sleep together the sleep of the ded

For the ded think not on things that are fled
Or let things go round and round in their hed

Like poems or loves that cannot be hed
For the ded be not afraid of ser dred

Nor do they toss and take to their bed
Memories of lives that have long since fled

Narrie do Thoughts of food, wine or bed
Cross their sleep nor worried their hed

Sleep ye now with neither harm nor dred
The sweet sweet sleep that comforts the ded


ta da!  nice eh  so I texted it to her in the early morning

then I finally fell asleep  and woke somewhere in Scotland with a bunch of old women who were trying to get their act together for a lament  but none of them were quite through the barrier that was holding them back  so I stood up and began to meditate out loud the song that Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple sang as a duet on one of his last albums  Bridge over Troubled Water   only they jumped right in on the first cue and took it off like a sunday school rhyme  which was all wrong  so I had to make them stop and begin again  and over and over they bungled it with their fast pony sunday school mantra carry me away down the river singing
I could feel that they weren't feeling the song  just singsonging it and that felt to me like so much less than what I could feel and wanted to bring to them  and to the ded

I kept telling them NO NO NO  it is a lament  a LAMENT you feel it and that is what makes the words come out that is what makes the song  only they weren't getting it  that it is FEELING that brings the song  and if we FEEL then the song shows up on our lips and we don't get lost down the river of denial

so Pema I feel ya

best mb

fortune cookie

Good Morning Relatives 

I've been working on the kung fu panda handbook  it is coming along   I also am trying to reconnect, to remake and perhaps rewire my brain as I go   when I fell back in 2012 I really smacked my brain and it had to take a break.  then, just when I thought I was breaking out of that healing cusp I fell again in feb last year and reinsured my shoulder and I am sure smacked my brain again though not quite as hard, and have had some setbacks due to that fall on the ice last year 

now every dark has its light if we can find the matches or where we put our glasses to find those matches and then locate the candle to find our way back into normal life   Im still working on finding my glasses for those of you who are interested  

I have chronic pain in my left brachial plexus  by chronic I mean it is ever-present in varying stages of attention controlling awareness  which is exhausting actually  who would have thought my days would become exhausting?  the brachial plexus which you can look up if you are curious and my shoulder were something that I really took for granted most of my life, as to what that plexus affects  the effect it has on me is that I get tired, I have very little ability to function for very long at all during the day and if I work on writing it can be the end of me for the remainder of the day  because of the nerve and muscle pain it triggers or exacerbates in my left neck, shoulder, arm, hand 

to top that all off I have been working on my brain  trying to restore and recapture what I think of as myself in that capacity  I cannot tell you how horrible it was to find that parts of it were inaccessible to me after the traumas I had   not good bad in fact   so I have been trying to fix that and it causes me to have headaches  odd dry pain that is not quite finger point able but present  very not good   but I trust the process actually and understand that with nerve injuries going back through the pain to find the way back to no pain but functional is the way it works or is supposed to work  

I am someone who gains comfort and peace and extreme well being from snow  from the silence and the cold and the beauty of its perfection and its smell and texture  on and on  everything about snow makes me happy  so my brain decided to interpret my wanting to have my brain back as me going skiing in new snow in an amazing place with amazing drops and twists and turns  what is funny is that there was the old me skiing with me and the new me following  that is until I got to the place where the old way led into a deep well worn actually scorched (imagine scorched snow) very deep track that looked way over skied so I made the decision to hop up on my skis and take myself down a different track  leaving my old self to find its way in its past on its own 

thus the headaches eh?  so new snow new tracks new schussing  kind of scary eh?  no not for me  who knows what I will find the the vast reservoirs of my giant snow brain as I make my way across its landscape  at least I am home at last 

anyhow  I got stuck while working on the panda and had to wait a bit while the pieces found their way to the top and I could put them together.  I realize that not all of what is put together for me is immediately recognizable for you  but that is the nice thing about having your own blog  it is yours as is mine so it makes sense to me which if you read it and you are welcome to it it may or may not make sense to you  se-la-ve 

anyhow I was thinking about how like my shoulder before it made itself so ever presently present to me through loss, I was thinking about how Po's skill as a kung fu master is over looked. Not recognized until he becomes recognizable by learning the standardized forms    what is it that Master OOgway sees when he sees Po? what is it that Po is before he is trained? what is it that makes him Him?  Him of course  like my shoulder. it is the unseen the behind the camera that makes the film  it is the life that is brought to the action that makes the action valuable  not the action itself  so I thought I would share a little of what I wrote this morning  

good luck star troopers,  have fun with your life 

How do we teach that kung fu is everything, everywhere, all the time? That we are its’ essence. We are kung fu always even as we are always language, emotion, give and take, curiosity, and that which must attempt. We are always all of these things. Even if we have not mastered our Effort so that like a horse charging under fire we are able to hold our purpose, our intent and our motion channelled through a form that is particular in its path. WE are that. 

Why do I understand this? Because it is everywhere, every moment that I am. Because I am it, and if I am here it is here. If I am moving it is moving. I am the ball of clay it makes itself from. Therefore in me is all that it is or can be. As I make my way through my life, through the things that I choose to use to shape me or that my own push pull with life molds me into or out of, it still remains that all that is possible, came from me.  How cool is that. 

How do we teach ourselves to return to the understanding that we are masters?  That we are born fully capable of all that we want to be. It is an simple matter of believing we already are extraordinary rather than thinking that we have to achieve something or the other in order to be extraordinary. The only permission we need is our own. 

We are all already all that we can be.  Without me there is no kung fu, I am kung fu, I just may not be disciplined yet, or fully trained. But I am what creates kung fu. Without me kung fu is nothing. I am the everything that kung fu needs so that it can exist. Kung fu comes to my table to eat not, the other way around.  It is very important that we take this tiger by the right tale so that it doesn't eat us alive. 

How do we reverse the mirror in which our lives are viewed so that the vast hidden reservoir of our ability is not misfiled in our psyche and shelved as insignificant the moment we walk out of the door of our yoga class, our tai-chi practice, our church study group, or our compassion as a second language study group?

When we push who we are to the back of our minds and forget that we are who we are all the time we become as dry and dusty as a discarded book lost on a forgotten library shelf. When I look back at my life, or at the system of lives around me I see that we are and have been living our lives as if we need some sort of special permission, degree or certificate of competency in order to own them. In order to simply enjoy them. I see so much loss through the loss of all our magnificence because we have come to believe that without what is without whatever that is or may be we are nothing. Worse than nothing, most of us believe we are less than.  Brrrr-ugh, yuck yuck yuck.

When Mr Ping teaches Po that in order to make something special you just have to believe that it is special, he is also saying the opposite. That in order to make something insignificant you just have to believe that it is not special. Our lives, our system of enslavement which is bowing down the heads of our society almost to the breaking point was not created by picking the right or wrong system with which to align ourselves. It was created by thinking that we needed a system at all in order for us to have value, to have purpose, to blossom or make the most of ourselves, or to come to the conclusion that life after going to so much trouble and particular magnificence in creating us would discard us as if we did not matter after all. 

Life is not impersonal. It is not meaningless. It is amazingly, extraordinarily, extravagantly magnificent. And each of us. Each living thing has it wholly in our own hands from the moment we are born until the moment we lay down our little clay suits and move on to the next glorious adventure. We have forgotten that without the magnificent gerbil, the wheel is irrelevant.  When we become salves to the wheel that cannot because of its very nature encompass all of the extraordinary ordinariness of our own simple selves we have lost sight of the original gift of the wheel. 

How do we teach ourselves and thus each other that we already own and in fact embody a tremendous vast incalculable opportunity and competency that is so singularly amazing that there is only one of each of us ever created? How is it that the tools that were created to sharpen our wit, dulled our sense of awareness? Why is it that when I was sent to school and driven to church that the very essence of my own value, my own extraordinary capability was denied, discounted, eliminated from the equation of a successful me as if it was never a divine gift of life fully delivered the moment I was born?

Rather than receive me as the overflowing well that I am, I was taught, brainwashed into thinking that without the permission of that which is without I was less than the meanest thing, even to the point of non existence. I am not the only one who was taught and has used the mirror to destroy myself before it ever occurred to me to see in that mirror looking back at me the infinite capacity that I AM. When education, or persuasion of any kind depends on the premise that without its’ approval, without its’ mastery I am less it is a false teacher. 

Any skill, any discipline, any idea pursued to its infinite application is in fact itself dependent on the presence of the student. Without the student there is no discipline. The student brings to the practice the infinite possibility of learning, adaptation, assimilation, incredulity, curiosity, resilience, application, repetition, opposition, and eventually the ability to discard and move beyond the static realm of the classroom.  Between the small number of practical and personal extraordinary gifts that each student brings to any class, practice, or study of any form of applied learning are the infinite nuances that each student carries within him or herself. Each of us has the seed of infinite possibility bursting open deep inside of us, and reaching and growing towards the light of our own experience in a way that no master will ever experience or have the pleasure of its extraordinary essence of life. 

How do I teach myself? How do I teach all of us to turn the mirror around and instead of seeing what is lacking through some small thimble of controlled negative dialogue, teach myself and others to see what it is, who it is that I bring to the equation just be being present. Just by showing up. Hmm? How do we accomplish this extraordinary reversal of fortune and restore ourselves to our own lives?

Personally for me it is all right here in the Kung Fu Panda. Thank you very much DreamWorks Animation. I just have to believe that I already have the eyes to see it, that I already have the ability to be whatever it is that I see or understand. Then I simply have to get up and get on with it. With me.  No need to be God, or have a degree, or be able to write a masterpiece, do 183 asanas perfectly, or even go on a successful blind date. I just have to get up and be me. Every moment of every day trusting that I am already capable of finding my Way, enjoying what I choose to take on as a discipline or discard as not my cup of tea; as long as I do not leave me behind as I make my way through my own day, my own present presence I will be more than ok. I will be more than enough. I will be, I am my own dragon warrior.