Oh where is my road, my precious road, where life is only what it is, and what it is, is freedom?
Today, I am trapped, held prisoner in a world of ignorant indulgence. Forced to live under a skin of lies, I conceal all that i am inside. My jailed soul screams out from my silent depths, starved of genuine human kindness in a world of ‘me first.’
Daily, I am blessed to live in the powerful love of my family, my friends and the pleasant stranger across the counter. And while my friendly smile is true, I am lost and alone in a world that is no longer mine. My own deep inner peace rests far from this world of tomorrow’s predictions and yesterday’s news. Canada, infatuated with its ever growing pile of possessions, is no longer my home.
There is such beauty all around us! Oh the precious beauty, shoved beyond the margins by the grammatical order of line after line after line of perfectly formed emptiness.
“I will be a good boy and do what I am told.”
“I will be a good boy and do what I am told.”
“I will be a good boy and do what I am told.”
What is a tree, planted in a sidewalk, surrounded by a perfect circle of decorative stones? What is treated water, flowing over the straight and even edges of the mall water fountain? Such perversion of nature’s infinitely flawed perfection! And us, animals, beautiful and unique as a bird in flight, chained and constrained by order and rules and the way things simply must be.
What of freedom?
What of life?
Oh, to just run away! Of course I can’t. After all, one must be reasonable right? I don’t have the slightest idea why one must be reasonable. Being sensible and realistic sounds truly like the least reasonable choice of all. To be reasonable is to buy our cages, and sacrifice the very meaning of freedom. To be reasonable is to surrender the priceless individuality that is the gift of life itself.
I close my eyes and I am on the Kenyan savannah, in depths of the Great Rift Valley, where our species first took shape. I am on foot and alone, sharing the silent serenity of sunrise with herd upon herd of gently grazing animals. At once, they sense danger and flee, flowing like a wave down one hillside and up the next. My breath catches in my throat, and I feel in my heart the wild beauty of life itself. Tears fill my eyes, as for the first time in my life, I am as one.
The orderly chaos of hundreds of animals in flight, and the exhilaration and awe give way to envy. Anatomically, my body and theirs are identical. Heads, limbs, organs and emotions; our differences are mere variations on the same blueprint. And yet, there is no reconciling our distinct animal experiences of life. They live as one with all that is alive around them. I live in a box made of concrete and steel, breathing re-circulated air and eating processed chemicals.
What is this uniquely human ‘gift of reason’ if not a wall that separates us from everything it means to be alive? There is no moment more human than the moment at which death becomes possible. In that moment, all that is empty and meaningless fades away, leaving only life’s love to fill the void. So what of our world, our lives, riddled with self-indulgent distraction? Where is the unique beauty of the urbanite, except in the colour of their tie or the make of their shoes? Where is passion’s wild expression in a school system designed to make everyone the same?
In our world, to stand out is to give a different answer to the same question asked of everyone else. To succeed is to get exactly what everyone else has, only bigger, better, newer and more expensive. I have seen nothing in my life so quintessentially ugly as the sub-urban subdivision. Home after home, identical except for the shoes and tie. They represent the realization of success for millions of people, and yet are the very epitome of conformity and thus the destruction of what it means to be unique. Our world is founded on the obscuring and obstruction of the individual. We are raised from birth to fit into the slots of our well oiled society.
Well fuck that! Fuck money, careers, homes, cars, iphones and rooms full of useless shit. To hell with passive entertainment, canned opinions, suits and ties, sidewalks, malls, Wal-Mart and ‘don’t walk.’ I do not choose 3 square meals a day, or going to bed at night and getting up in the morning so that I can afford to conform.
Give me family and friends. Give me lust and pain and hunger and fear. Give me mountains, forests, oceans and animals. Give me food that doesn’t need shit poured on it to do what it has been doing for the last 3 billion years. Give me freedom and fun and life and love. I have one life to live, and I don’t want to waste another moment purchasing chains for my soul or the cage in which I will die.
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves”
–Henry David Thoreau
Peace and love.
a quote from his farewell speech …
“But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.”
Definition of “ideology” from dictionary.reference.com/
= i⋅de⋅ol⋅o⋅gy
1. the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group
examples of ideologies:
- capitalist
- democratic
- free market
what a complete jackass …
CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES COME ON !!!
Filed under: Uncategorized
everzthing is great … except this kezboard that has the y and z in the wrong places … just verz confused and not feeling verz good about mz words … i will post something proper soon … its spinning in mz head …
much love zall
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Afghanistan, Heroism, Remembrance Day, War
Remembrance day. A ‘be honest’ donation and a little plastic flower on the lapel to show due respect for those who died to protect our ‘freedom’ … whatever that means. Seems a bit of a farce, doesn’t it? A sea of little plastic flowers, filling trash cans across the country on November 12, but nobody can say we didn’t remember, right? Most people don’t even get the day off work. So much for paying respect.
I wonder what is worse, not paying any respect at all, or doing so as shamefully as we do? Generations of Canadians learning to honor and respect our fallen heroes by going about business as usual with a little red flower on, and maybe catching a couple snippets of the ceremony on the news. What’s for dinner?
I would like to place a vote in the ‘forgetting is better’ column.
Don’t get me wrong. What our veterans did was great. Great! Full stop! The world was different then. They were needed. They went at great personal cost. None came back as he/she left. Our great nation was founded on their backs and the strength of their character is something, I think, we can all take pride in. Destroyed lives, torn families and decades of anguish and pain deserve more, however, than a ****ing plastic flower.
But, since there are far more important things to distract our attention, paying due deference to our greatest generation is not a possibility. In the absence of a real choice, I choose to forget entirely. I would rather promote the reality that a) doesn’t provide the Canadian forces with another opportunity to recruit, b) doesn’t subconsciously entrench the idea of Canada as a war nation, c) doesn’t perpetuate the idea that war is a justifiable solution to problems and d) doesn’t teach kids that the path to glory and heroism is a path strewn with guns and blood. (“You see, war is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate”)
We really have never been good at respecting our heroes though. The nurse who grants quiet dignity to a person at their very weakest. A teacher who gives up their spare time to do what they can to best prepare their student for the big bad world. Police officers working in remote locations, under difficult circumstances, to maintain the ideals of Canada’s democracy. Why don’t we have days with crappy plastic flowers for the heroes who continue to make a profound difference in our lives? Why no 2 minutes of silence to remember a teacher who made a difference in your life, or even the stranger who helped you by the side of the road? Wayne Gretzky though. That guy could hit a little disc with a stick. Isn’t there some way we can name the whole country after him.
On another topic entirely, I wonder how many times the parallel was drawn between the modern war in Afghanistan and the glories of the past century? The same dusty, decades old rhetoric about ‘men and women making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of freedom.’ This, perhaps, is the greatest crime of all.
Hitler invaded Europe. We kill the invaders to liberate it. Thus, we are heroes.
We invaded Afghanistan. Taliban fighters kill the Canadians invaders to liberate it. Who are the heroes again?
You say, ‘come on Brandon, the world isn’t black and white like that.’ You, of course, are right. In a black and white world, we would be properly condemned as murdering thugs, pursuing an imperialist agenda on behalf of the princes and earls of our corporate elite. In our world of grey … well … Winston Churchill said ‘I know history will be kind to me as I intend to write it.’ War, they say, does not answer the question of who is right. It only answers the question of who is left.
At what point does kicking down the doors of poor peasants who have never done anything but fight off the foreign invaders become heroic? How does the fact that not one of them has ever made anything resembling a hostile act towards our country justify us mocking their religion, humiliating them in front of their families and taking their lives? And let me just abandon all the sarcasm and say the fact that we are supporting our allies who use torture to satiate their greed makes me want to smash my face agasint the wall and then put a gun to my head. True patriot love, in all thy sons command. Lest we forget.
It’s Remembrance day in Afghanistan. I wonder how many Afghanis are left to remember a happier time, before their country became a ping-pong ball in regional geo-politics because we allow war after war to be fought in our name. I hear heroin production is up a few hundred percent since we invaded (underline: INVADED). At least their poppies are real. I hear they can give you a real kick if you know how to use them properly too. Now that’s a happy remembrance day!
Peace and Love
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VOTE NADER 08 !!!!!!
