Swiftly Now, It Passes

The old year is on its way out.

This has generally been a bad year, for the earth and for people. A good year for greed and hubris. A hard year for the average person, the sick person, poor person, the creative person, the giving person, the person whose plans do not include taking wealth and power into the next world.

Pages have turned in the Book of Life, many of them. Most everyone I know has lost at least one family member, friend or loved one. I have lost several friends and mentors.

Despite the losses that there are to report in this annus horibbilis, there is great good to report and reflect on, and to give thanks for.

There is goodness among people of the world. At times goodness seems outweighed and blunted by greed, disregard and cruelty; but the one of the miracles of life is that good cannot die, no matter how bleak things can seem. There are good people who know what is right and who travel their life journey doing the good deeds that come naturally to them. The smile, the warm touch, the small act of kindness travels as far as any ray of light may go.

This is a blessing above all blessings. I feel blessed. I hope you do, also.

If there is anything I could wish for this coming year, it would be that humankind would begin to awaken from the pathetic neoteny that threatens our whole existence. Human always seem poised to evolve into true adult beings that have a greater respect for all life, but then fail to move beyond the self-interest that moves individuals and groups to deplorable actions against others, particularly with regard to money. As adults, we are children in most ways but wisdom; as ancient and modern prophets and sages have suggested, we need to grow up.

If there is anything I could wish for you in this coming year, it would be that you have good health, a stable job, good food and fresh water, a safe dwelling and a peaceful, caring community in which to live. May your smile lighten the darkness of others; may the work of your hands be useful, fulfilling and sustaining; may you give more than you receive; may you recycle, reuse, renew and remember, with honor, the earth in all that you do; may you help enable others to have the good things you enjoy; may your awareness and love of life join with that of others to create and ensure a life of peace and equity for all;

And may you find blessing on your Soul Journey.

Aggregation Aggravation

The "Brave New World" of internet aggregation is upon us! Rejoice and be glad for all the freedom we now have!

Freedom. Hmmm. Freedom of information? Well, that is the "product" that we have been sold (hook, line and sinker). But is it really ours? And is it really free? Are there unseen costs associated with this freedom?

These questions are too big for a little blogger to answer. But I will endeavor to give us all some food for thought.

I recently finished reading "You Are Not A Gadget; a manifesto" by Jaron Lanier. (Some of you may remember that I had read an article in the London Review of Books that referred to this book; see the November 21st blog entry from this year, entitled Reflections on Social Networking By Computer.) I found Lanier’s writing voice to be awkward, in that computerese/geeky way that gizmo folk have. However, when I got past that, the ultimate message he was trying to impart was vivid and riveting, on many levels.

Lanier gives MIDI coding and technology as an example of what is limiting our creativity, in the world of computing.

Before MIDI, a musical note was a bottomless idea that transcended absolute definition. 

It was a way for a musician to think, or a way to teach and document music. It was a mental tool 

distinguishable from the music itself...

After MIDI, a musical note was no longer just an idea, but a rigid, mandatory structure 

you couldn‟t avoid in the aspects of life that had gone digital. The process of lock-in is like a 

wave gradually washing over the rulebook of life, culling the ambiguities of flexible thoughts as 

more and more thought structures are solidified into effectively permanent reality. 

This notion of computer code "lock-in" is developed by Lanier, throughout his book, as being the great weakness in all of computing. If you know what a MIDI file is, and have ever heard MIDI files, they are music that is not musical, but probably the tinniest representations of music imaginable. MIDI, because it is low level, is the base on which all digital music is founded. MIDI, Lanier suggests, is one of the factors of modern computing that limits human creativity, and he lists many others.

Having worked for a company that wrote proprietary software used in direct mail marketing, I know what he is talking about when he speaks of "lock-in" from the standpoint of limiting the way people can think, as well as limiting what they can do. The programming department wanted to create programs that the users could not use. The programmers did not want users to understand what the programs were doing because they wanted the users to use the programs in only one way. The programmers did not want the users to think, only to do, and do things only the way that the programmers wanted things done.

As a consequence of so much of our computing being based on what I might call codes of limitations, we are now into the second and third generation of people using computers and other electronic products that are frustrating because they do not work at the speed of our thoughts, nor with the naturalness of our body movements.


I want you to think on this, particularly as you consider the many products that you have purchased in the past few years, or even over the recent holidays, that all contain proprietary software and proprietary hardware and yet one more power cord that you have to keep track of (and have an available power source socket to plug into), because it is different from all the power cords you have in your house.

As you think on this, turn your attention to the internet and to social networking, information and marketing. Wow! That is a big shift, and a lot to consider at a crack, isn’t it?

Think about anytime recently when you have used a search engine on the internet to look up specific information.  I have noticed a few disturbing things about internet information: first, it is superficial; it is either completely contradictory from article to or it is nearly verbatim the same from article to article. The rush to fill up bandwidth with content from everyone and their extended families has meant a lot of copying as in duplicating and as in not original work. Lots and lots of useless and repetitive or even incorrect information is available for free all over the place. But you have to pay, just as you always did, for the in depth, likely more accurate information via a subscription service.

And what about all those ads that are festooned all over the articles you try to wade through? What is that all about? Well, this is called monetization, but you can seriously doubt that people are really making any money. I could, for example, be monetizing this blog, but that is not the point of this blog. I don’t want to be a product; I want to be a person. But there are web URLs that are trying to get my attention (can you believe it?), perhaps as a subtle bid to get me to put up their ads.

These aggregation tools are all over the place, every time you use the internet to find a product or even to look up articles, your use of the internet is tabulated, categorized and parsed, then used to send you ads on Facebook, Amazon, AOL or any of the many services where you have a sign-in account.

I commend Jaron Lanier’s book to you, which you can read via the link below, or check out from your local library, or purchase in hardcopy. I also include a link to a white paper put out by a consulting firm, a mere five years ago, called Re-Inventing Aggregation. This paper reveals, with simplistic brevity, the thinking behind modern aggregation (and also causes me to wonder how much work was put into it and how much money was made off of it).

My point in this article is to get us all to think about all the ways in which the world is getting small. We need to consider whether the information available to us is limiting. We need to consider whether our personal creativity is being limited by all that is electronic. We need to consider the role of the internet in terms of privacy, creative ownership, marketing and finance. Wars are waged and people die over the energy and resources the internet sucks from our environment. I believe that the freedom, creativity and privacy of us all hangs in the balance of this fragmentary, aggregate world of internet, and I ask you to think on all this, long and hard.

//

Lanier, Jaron.  You Are Not A Gadget. 2010. http://r-u-ins.org/resource/pdfs/YouAreNotAGadget-A_Manifesto.pdf

Electronic Publishing Services  Ltd, in association with Peter Sefton-Williams. Re-Inventing Aggregation. 2005. http://www.verisign.com/stellent/groups/public/documents/white_paper/dev035582.pdf

Oceans and Nights

Over the oceans of blue,

the reflected azure of night
draws an expectant sigh;

stars seem like a map
to places unknown,
ideas untested,
dreamscapes
abroad.

Star
radiance
draws the eye
no differently now
than in the millions
of years of observance
and ritual tracing of sky
within the mind of humankind.

Moonlit skies lead travelers
across the barren deserts
of time and mind and
deep space dreams,
great journeys
into the why
and how.

Believe:
answers
await those
abstract followers,
who strive to arrive at
those weightless keys
that unlock the internal
mysteries of undivided self,
of nothingness and eternity.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Earth Psalm

             The 23rd Psalm Re-envisioned

The Earth is my mother; within her gardens, I shall walk upright.

She grows within green pastures, she sings in the still waters;
She gives life to my soul. She leads me on right paths
            for no other reason than love.
Truly, though I walk from my infancy to my dying,
            I have nothing to fear;
            ever she is with me:
            from her arms she loosed me,
            and into her arms shall I fall at the last.
The bounty of her table humbles me,
            feeding both friend and foe;
            for all are equal in her sight
            —this teaches me life’s meaning.
She fills my hands with blessing,
            fills my heart with joy.
She moves me to experience
            the heights and depths of being.
When my time comes,
            within her bosom shall I rest
            until she calls my essence to return.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Starlight from the Heavens

Light,

a thread of that
from the very first invocation,
shines from the realm of infinity
to the shores of our consciousness.

Light,
resonant,
vibrant mystery,
shimmering and reverberant through time;
it is a song we strive to comprehend.

Light,
shining from the far distant nebulae,
sings through the darkness
and through all the nights of our soul,
filling, filling, filling all with song
and the sound of brightness as it goes.

Light
illumines a path in the desert places,
inspires us to guide our feet rightly,
and enlivens our lives with song.

From first utterance to the present day,
light has been witness to all creation;
light has explored the known and unknown,
light has filled the dark places;
light sings, bearing the good news
that all of existence, even the darkness,
is good and beautiful and worthy of love.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Small Miracles

At the risk of sounding maudlin, I wish to report another holiday miracle.

It is a small thing, but I believe it illustrates something significant about humanity.

At least six months ago, both of my children's scooters were stolen. I had gone to the trouble of marking them, both with indelible markers and with a metal etching tool, with each child's name and my phone number.

Alas, the phone did not ring.

I sent an email request to my local FreeCycle network, to see if anyone had a scooter or two piled up in the garage.  FreeCycle, by the way, is a fabulous help when it comes to household management. All the world is a swap meet, after all, and if you need to get rid of that something that has been gathering dust, but that someone else might want enough to drive to your house and pick up, this is the network for you.

After a few weeks, I received a reply from a woman who was clearing out her garage. Evidently, her teens had moved on from kick scooters to bicycles or even cars. So she had a tangled mass of scooter frames in various states of disrepair. I took those off her hands, but we hadn't gotten around to reconstruction.

("HA!" You say. "You just added to your JUNK!" Read on.)

Just the other day, we received a phone call from a woman who had been cleaning out her back yard and had discovered a scooter that did not belong to her family, with this name and phone number. Did the scooter belong to us?

My husband had to drive half an hour to retrieve the scooter, which had seen much use during its walkabout. I was emboldened to pull out the snaggle of scooter frames from the garage. From five scooter skeletons, we were able to reconstruct two useable scooters, one of which I carefully inscribed with my daughter's name and my phone number.

The children were delighted to have scooters once again.

I, meanwhile, have resolved to obtain the needed parts for the remaining three frames and to finish fixing them up. I will then donate the four extra scooters to a nearby homeless shelter. One good turn deserves another. Amen! And, let us pass it on!

Even at this time of year, when people seem to be all about things and commerce, there are golden individuals who will go out of their way do the right thing. This is the significant point about humanity.

May your Winter Holiday, whichever it may be, be filled with the goodness and kindness of humanity in all your travels and meetings.

Be filled, and pass it ON!

Feelings

A certain poverty,

the lack of touch,
is felt as isolation of the flesh
from all that is and would be sensuous.

Long the light ponders this quandry,
playing over limpid surfaces,
tracing each plane and place,
'til at last each body is kindled
with the truth:

All that it is not
is touched by all that is;
sensual it is to be,
completely sensual,
in this ever-renewing event,
where one is, where all are,

sensed,
noted,
checked,
equated,
felt,
explored,
and known.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Heavenly Alignment

When I was a child, I remember all the excitement around eclipses. My parents would wake us up in the middle of the night and drive to mountain peaks so that we could see lunar eclipses. If there was a solar eclipse due, the schools turned the day into an astronomy experiment, and everyone made safe viewers and we all viewed, and it was so cool.

Two nights ago, we were all a party to a total lunar eclipse. In the time-honored tradition, even though the weather was iffy, we set the alarm for midnight.

When the alarm went off, we ran out to see if there was anything to see. Yes! And so, we ran back in, to wake the children, telling them to bundle up.

Once outside, I said to the kids, "look straight up, and you see the full moon. We are standing on the earth. In nearly a straight line below the earth, millions of miles away, is the sun. In the next half hour, our earth will completely block the light of the sun from the moon, as it moves into a complete straight line with the earth and the moon!"

A few minutes later, clouds accumulated overhead, obscuring our view. Back to bed went the children.

But for a moment, I think that they could feel that ancient sense of alignment that all people who have ever been stargazers feel when such events occur. That sense of being part of a great celestial mobile of gravitational pull and mathematically precise patterns of movement.

The human story is filled with stars and planets and the wonder of being among them. The earth moves under our feet, as it floats in its course through space in attraction with the glorious light of the sun.

Such events remind us that we really are, all of us, astronauts, flying through space.

Lights vs. Illumination

I admit to being unusual, in that I get into the spirit of the winter festivals by way of music.

So many others prefer lights. Lots of them. Lots too many, sometimes. Well, more than sometimes.

Some of these displays are just butt ugly. Tasteless is too kind a description. Just how much blinking wattage can we add to our house? And bubbles! How about canned music! All night, every night for a month, to the distraction of our neighbors. WooHOO!

Thorstein Veblen talked about displays of material consumption in his Theory of the Leisure Class. All of this costly and conspicuous consumption (yes, some people are using energy saving lights, but however much they supposedly save, they do require energy, after all... and some people think that using them means they can put up twice as many lights as in the past...) is meant to prove something about the person who puts up the lights, not about the festival that the lights are (supposedly) intended to honor.

There was a preacher man who once spoke of each person being a lamp, but hiding that illuminating light under a basket. That preacher man figures greatly at this time of year, in these latter days. And other sages and prophets repeat the message in their own way, both earlier and later in the timelines of humanity.

I will go right ahead and boldly make this gross generalization: No amount of kilowatts can display a person's spirit to the world. It is deeds, even the smallest selfless deed, that show who a person is and measure that person's connection and care of others in their orbit.

Bright light bulbs may offer momentary delight, but it is the smile that lightens difficult moments in a person's day, little kindnesses, a spontaneous offering of food to a homeless person who is begging for change on the corner. These acts are more real than strands of lights, sucking up vital energy, could ever be. These acts create a warmth so much more true than any artificial light can lend its false brightness.

How do we greet the Winter Festival that has arrived? For ourselves alone, in our conspicuously lit houses, or for others, in acts of kindness?

It is up to you and it is up to me.

Light your inner lamps with care and be the light of the world; and may your festivals be merry and bright based on what you give, not what you show!

Presence

      Mornings of Perpetual motion
      roll and swi Rl about me

         without h Esitation—
    time will not Stand still;
             but h Ere I am,
      preserving a N island, of sorts,
       within an o Cean of motion,
         close, pr Ecious and warm.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

stillness, time and music

one body stands,
collecting time into stillness.

the heart of stillness
blesses time in the body
with feeling.

the blessed body,
arms raised to the assemblage,
offers time and feeling,
a gift
granting freedom
and time
to express
each individual talent
as concerted sound:

a joyful noise
that is both
gift and offering,
time and again.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Annunciation

Oh, magnificent existent I,
light a lamp within me,
build me, thy temple;
inspire me, thy thought;
name me, thy song;
enliven me, thy work.

Breath of Love,
blow through the temple gate,
and define the life within,
dispel all darkness,
   all mystery;
tune the amplitude
of my vibrations,
that their simple truth
shall suffice to render
an edifying music.

© 2010 by Elisabeth Eliassen

A Seasonal Cinquain: Salt

Salt:
flavors soup;
clears the throat
when mixed with water
gargled.

//

For all my singer friends out there, slaving (as we all are) over holiday music.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Remembering Nina

She was a modern day Miriam. Her timbrel had 88 keys and was somewhat less than portable, but every place she where she went and worked had at least one.

Life was all about music, meetings, collaborations and friendship. She lived the life of "music for awhile", where "awhile" meant all the time for her lifetime, and "music" meant any individual's sonorous contribution, from that person's level and heart. She loved community concerts, and led quite a few of them.

The twinkle in her eye was a gift from her mother. There was fabulous humor attached to that twinkle. But it was a quiet humor; sometimes meant to slide under the radar of the less adept listener.

Hers was a quiet revolution. Hacking into the community vibe with strands and strains and daisy chains of sounds from every era (even and especially new works), the magic that she worked was music, musical, and it was indeed viral. None of us who knew her will ever recover. And that is as it should be.

We, her many friends and colleagues, gathered on this cool morning, on a hill in the country. She was returned to the earth, and we helped to return her there, knowing that she has flown on to another realm, and that it is our own healing that will continue to require songs and stories, and even a little piano jazz, as salve for our loss. We received a heavenly gift in that the sun broke through the fog, bringing with it blue sky, light and warmth. Could that have been her smile, coming to us from another dimension?

The mother and the rabbi wondered that she had requested "Danny Boy" to be sung at her graveside. But, sung it was, by a large and familiar choir. When her mother heard the words, she understood completely.

I gave her mother a beautiful yellow winter rose from my garden, saying, "This flower is for you, because you brought to all of us a beautiful gift, who was your daughter. Thank you."

Nina was her name.

The Loneliness of Perfection

I know someone who can’t stand community concerts.

I think that is a darned shame.

Community concerts and theater are what community is all about. People sharing something loved and lived, like music and stagecraft, with people who want to receive the gift, whether they be friends, Romans or country folk.

This someone I know is all tangled up in perfection. Perfection is a really difficult place to live. There isn’t really a whole lot of wiggle-room where perfection is concerned. Dealing in perfection means dealing heavily in value judgment and criticism. I sometimes think that dealing in perfection means not having much of a good time.

When I participate in or attend a community event, I do my best to meet the event where it is. I find it tiring to go to such events and be handed commentary by others on what is wrong with it, or how it could be done better. I’d like to make up my own mind. And, if I am enjoying the event, I don’t particularly want to be talked out of it.

I mean, we all know it could be done better. But we would have to drive a long way to see it done to near perfection by professionals who get paid to do it and belong to unions and have salaries with benefits, wouldn’t we? That can be a very worthwhile experience, and it has its place. Everyone should set aside time and finances to invest in what promises to be a sublime experience. (Promises are no guarantee, but sublime experiences are out there, and they can be fabulous, uplifting, even life-altering. Sometimes, however, we discover that perfection is not sublime, but bland.)

At home, we might be able to walk to the event. At home, we might pay less or even nothing. At home, we would see and hear the results of people, even some with whom we are acquainted, putting their whole heart into their offering. At home, there would be a reception afterward with snacks and fellowship, kids running around under foot, and friendly conversation with friends and neighbors.

Art, music, theater—these modes of expression are explorations of what is possible. If perfection were the point of it all, no one would do anything.

People who are brave enough to give it a go deserve their shot at the limelight. Friends, family, and those few others of us that blunder in are waiting to see what the brave ones can do. Amazing things can happen here, also. The unexpected richness of a girl’s voice can reach out to you from the choral texture with a solo lick. You might discover the hidden instrumental talent of a young man whose parents you know. Small delights can rise from the texture and touch you.

Perfectionists may be outstanding in their respective fields—or they might just be frozen from doing anything because it would have to be perfect—but I expect that many of them stand in their fields alone.

I say, come join the group! So it won’t be perfect; life isn’t perfect, is it?

We’re all in it together, anyway, so why not make it a celebration of people giving it a go.

Black and White, or Grey?

Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomenon of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged.

The Chün Chou Record of Huang Po *

It was grey this morning. I kind of liked having the morning be grey. Or, at least, I wasn’t bothered by it.

We seem to live in a world that worships black and white divisions of people and things. You must be this, and if you aren’t this, then you are that, and so forth. I have a feeling that the purpose of polar extremes is to diminish and separate people, rather than build them up and unite them. These days, spin can be spun in either direction, one way or the other, and the power behind the spin can flip-flop at will. If you don’t keep abreast with the current direction of the pole, you could find yourself off the map of the known world. The black and white discussions and arguments and ideologies and wars do not lend themselves to progress, or even regression—more often than not, they lead to paralysis.

We are not yet near the end of December, but the two faces of Janus are in our face, recording our doings as wishy-washy and indecisive. Stuck. Janus was not meant to symbolize being in a rut, however—this Roman god was all about beginnings and endings; about transitions, not paralysis.

Janus is the open door, not the closed mind. Janus is really all about the middle ground, what I call the grey area.

I prefer to enter and center myself in the grey area. The grey area seems more spacious, or at least pleasantly removed from all the one-sided black and white discussions, the flip-flops that go nowhere and the cultural paralysis that seems to plague our world just now.

The grey area seems very like the zen, described as void in the quote above. There is freedom there, and openness to possibility. Freedom to think, to judge, to move and act omni-directionally.

//

* Blofeld, John (translator). The Zen Teaching of Huang Po On the Transmission of Mind. Rider & Company, 1958. Page 31.

Here Now

—an homage to John Lennon

Only dimly aware of where you have been,

I really don’t know all the ins and outs,
but none of that matters now,
because you are here with me now.

You don’t know where I’ve been,
sometimes stuck in fears and doubts,
but none of that matters now,
because you are here with me now.

Coming of age from the children we’ve been,
we’re learning to sing by softening our shouts,
but none of that matters now,
because you are here with me now.

And Wow! Now is why we are here, then—
the now, the how and the why withouts;
simple, but not so that it matters,
because we are together here now.

Here is where we go from where we’ve been
to where we’ve never been, before or about,
and really nothing else much matters,
because on we go, together from here, now.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Message in a Bottle

        for Nina Shuman

A Love-O-Gram,

to put in the pram
of your thoughts
            as they billow thither,
full sail on the yacht
Unbound.

A Love-O-Gram
from where I am
to wherever you may be,
            and to where you see all
that sun and moon trace:
the revolution that is each day.

O, Love-O-Gram,
come only as I am
to your thoughts,
            speak only as I can speak,
with fullest of heart,
to toast the beauty of your art
and you.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Within the Embrace

Between sound and silence,

one kiss, one embrace,
one bed of contemplation.

Speculations as to
which one is holding the other?
—an irrelevant conversation.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

From a chapbook entitled “Brief Encounters With Fluidity” © 2008 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen, this poem and others from this collection have been set to music by composer Carson P. Cooman in his cycle for solo voice (unaccompanied) Brief Vibrations op. 870.

Indivisibility

Through now’s vast dreaming space,
light passes through and through the me I know as mine,
enlivening, crystallizing, enlightening, singing
--singing within me, singing through me, singing of me--
to every other facet of now as it passes through happening,
carrying my essence,
like a delicate thread,
to gently weave,
with all the others,
into a pulsing brocade of Being.

Light,
unseen while visible worker of miracles,
interleaving, interweaving, transporting, transforming
each uniqueness from simple melody into a symphony of life
by the mere whispering of each name through every other,
a subtle grafting of every loose end or fragment,
onto every complement that could ever be devised,
and some beyond imagining,
until all endings and all beginnings blur… blur… blur…
so that there are no more boundaries
and there is but a single name
carried on the head of the mystery called light:
an invocation of all-that-is, of all-that-could-be,
of all-that-shall-ever…

--One body streams
across the shadows of yet-to-be
unfolding into the awakening smile of now.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Tower of Babel

Creation hangs on one word alone.

S’truth, one was the word, and
of one accord was the song,
by which the tower was begun.

But each ascending storey
found diversion and division.

The word splintered from one
into a world of words;
the people from friends
into nameless ranks of strangers.

At every turn, every new height
the plans and styles change;
right hand knows not left,
nor wants to.

The Witness had only to watch,
with heaviness of heart,
as the great structure
began its collapse from within.

unraveling into flames,
consternation and war.

From that time forward,
diversity has yet to discover
its sacred power to build.

No human tower shall ever reach God,
until the daughters of woman,
and the sons of man
remember that

Creation hangs on one word alone.

© 2010 by Elisabeth Eliassen

A Season of Giving (All Year Long and For A Lifetime)

Give, give, give. And when you have given, give more.

I am no preacher, but I think on words from the Bible, every once in a while. Last Sunday, we read what John the Baptist (in Matthew 3:1-12) said about trees. Trees either bear fruit or they don’t. John said that the trees that bear fruit will be cultivated by the farmer, while those that do not will be cut down and consigned to the flames.

Of course, this preacher man was talking about people.

This time of year is called “The Season of Giving”. I think this is a sad commentary on our culture. Giving is not something to be shoved in a month or two, but it is an everyday event, week in and out, every month, all year long.

Here is a riddle: How can genuinely generous people limit their generosity? Well, the answer is they cannot, you cannot make them do so, and they simply won’t.

This season we call “The Season of Giving” is really about taking, isn’t it? How much money can the marketplace take from consumers? How much can consumers take for personal consumption, while under the guise of doing for others? How much more can government take or borrow or steal from public programs, public schools, public health and public parks, so that the rich can take bailouts, bonuses, undeserved tax cuts and lucrative government contracts, and take our people’s jobs overseas to bestow on others? By their absence of fruit, we know them only too well; there is an absence of generosity toward the average person in these dread deeds. These trees do not bear fruit; these are ornamental trees that suck up more nutrients than they need, starving the rest of the orchard.

We, the People, are being taken for a ride.

And yet, and still, the spirit of giving is alive. It is not in the running around and buying of things. It is not in the rushing and the stress.

Giving is alive in the magic of the unexpected. The smile from someone, waiting in line just like you are. The tokens of friendship that start with a warm cup of tea and radiate outward. The giving of food, not just to the Food Bank, but to your neighbor—just because. The passing on of kids' clothes to younger children of another family. Freecycling any and all things that you no longer want or need, so that someone else can extend the life of perfectly good manufactured items. This is good fruit.

This good fruit is all day, everyday giving. These are trees that bear fruit and prosper, in spite of all the taking that goes on around them.

As for that other kind of tree, the preacher man John said there is an ax, waiting to cut down those non-fruit-bearing trees. In history, we have seen this come to pass. It is a sad story, and innocent people are also hurt. How it will play out in our time, we cannot see.

What we can see (and delight in and give thanks for) is that there are many lowly and unassuming trees bearing good fruit everyday, whether or not they are properly nourished, whether it is asked of them or not. There are no limits to what good trees will bear. There are no limits to what good people will do.

God bless the beautiful people that make everyday a gift! 

Singing

Walking,

forward motion,
a gathering of energy.

Halting,

a planting of feet,
rooting deep into the earth.

Reaching,
deep within the soul,
to the farthest interior places.

Breathing,
all the way down,
filling the roots to earth’s core.

Opening,
with skill and intent,
awaiting an optimal cue.

Releasing
the voice into waiting space,
words floating on waves of song.

Singing:
defying rooted gravity
to soul-fly with the birds of the sky.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Through A Looking-Glass

Reflection,

beyond reflected image,
to a world apart?
Not at all,
            no, not at all.

If one could truly reach out
from the mirrored soul chamber,
among and through the atoms
of material dimension,
the truth would be known,
            more softly,
                        more constantly,
                                    in the shadows of our soul-gleaming.

For that is all we are,
            all there is,
                        and ever would be,
were it not for wondering,
            were it not for wandering,
                        were it not for seeking
                                    something else.

Creation, ever evolving
            beyond itself and possibility,
is but the reflection of our soul-gleaming,
            beyond reflected image,
                        to a world apart
—though not a world apart, at all.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Flickerings

Sun,
insatiably in combustion;
our best metaphor
of that eternal blending:
being.

I Am
but one of billions of strands
of the same growing shape
that startles darkness.

We hang together
center of the core,
there we melt,
for opposites attract.

Fire and ice,
they blend as we do,
somethings into nothing,
into something else again.

Such meetings are flickerings;
they light up life.

© 2010 by Elisabeth Eliassen

Some Reflections on Time and Technology

We live in a culture where we can have everything now.

We can talk to anyone, no matter where we are or when—even while we are operating a motor vehicle or anesthetizing a patient for a surgical procedure. Have we lost our senses of self-control and anticipation?

Partners go to the grocery store with a list, but still need to call home from the aisles to clarify or to question—sometimes more than once in the same trip. Have we lost the ability to exercise judgment?

We crave connection with people, and yet, it seems easier for some to send electronic mail messages, than to converse directly to a person on a phone. This gives rise to a trail of electronic messages, backing up in the incoming mailbox, because someone couldn’t have a conversation that would have taken a few minutes. One has to follow the trail of messages, even if only to see that one doesn’t need to respond. This takes time. Conferences are sometimes inadvertently run in this fashion. Real time conferences would seem to be more efficient, but no one has time to meet.

Those who send electronic messages, eschewing the opportunity of speaking directly with a person or a group, sit at the other end of the technological device(s), waiting impatiently for a reply.

Electronic messages take time to compose and send, to read and answer. You have to turn on an electronic device to do that. The device needs to be charged with energy. Is this the most efficient means of communication, if , for example, you live across the street from the person you are trying to contact? Perhaps we should think of the waste of time that emerges when we tally all the time we spend on the contraptions, rather than out in the world, talking and touching, seeing and breathing.

Words of wisdom that you heard, because they were spoken by particular a person in a particular way, by means of a certain emphasis, the inclusion of a smile, or some other nuance, stick with you your whole life. This is true even if the precise memory of the actual event, when the words were uttered, has faded. This is timelessness, that words can carry themselves across the span of a lifetime, and call to mind a living, breathing person.

Technology is wondrous, but it is a robber of time, as well a thin veneer of connection and communication. We have reduced our discussions to cute quips and sound bytes. I wonder, can words of wisdom stick in our head because they were sent to us via email? Have our thoughts also been reduced, to fit the medium? And our spirits?

This is unthinkable. But I want you to think on it, as I am thinking on it.

This life is an unfolding of time. While we are here, we fill our moments with the imprint of our existential experience, our struggles, our failures, our rebirths, our touch, our glances, our conversations, our laughter and our songs. This is time, and takes time to be well and truly spent.

The reduction of this wonder of time, unfolding through our very being, into sound bytes and badly typed quips saves nothing, says nothing and is worth very little. It will all be deleted in a second; which shows how important it all is in the scheme of things.

Brewing: My Continuing Adventures in Herbalism

Mugwort, plantain which has opened from the east, lamb's cress, attorlothe [possibly black nightshade], chamomile, nettle, wood sour apple, chervil and fennel, old soap; work the herbs into powder, mix with the soap and the apple's juice. Make a paste of water and of ash; take the fennel, boil in the paste and warm it with the mixture when he puts on the salve, and before and after. Sing that charm on each of the herbs thrice before he prepares them, and on the apple also, and sing into the mouth of the man and both the ears and on the wound that same charm before he puts on the salve.

Believe it or not, this is an ancient recipe for an herbal healing salve, including the prescribed method of treatment. It appears at the very end of a long poem in Old English, known as the Nine Herbs Charm. In this poetic incantation, both Woden and Christ are mentioned, linking the pagan world to the Christianized. The incantations are supposed to be made three times respectively over each of the nine herbs, as they are added into the recipe, in order to maximize the potency of the medicine.

I mention this by way of introduction to my topic for today.  I have become something of an amateur herbalist in recent years, and I find herb lore very interesting—although, I have to say that the lore is not more interesting than what herbs can actually do when you use them.

The reason I got deeper into this whole herb thing is because I love to cook. At some point,  I received the handsome gift of a bread machine. I loved that machine. I wore it out, and had to get a second one. I now bake nearly all the bread my family eats. The kids particularly love the rosemary French bread that I make. One week, I decided to make that and also make a loaf of pumpernickel. If it had not been for this double loaf adventure, I would never have noticed something interesting about rosemary.

The loaves had been made in the same day, but the pumpernickel was made after the rosemary French bread. The loaves are stored in zip-locked plastic bags. A few days later, the remaining pumpernickel started to develop mold. The rosemary French bread did not develop mold. And I have never experienced this particular loaf to do so, but I just supposed that was because we were consuming the bread so fast.

I don’t think that is the reason, however; I think I discovered by experience that rosemary acts as a natural preservative in this situation. When I looked in my various books on herbs, I didn’t find this specific information, although rosemary is listed in some volumes as being an antioxidant and, in others, as having antibacterial properties.

This led me to try brewing the dried herb as an infusion, just to satisfy a curiosity I had. The taste was unexpectedly lovely!

I then added a few more ingredients to the rosemary and re-brewed: anise seed, elder flowers, rosehips, mullein, hyssop and peppermint. I created this seemingly peculiar mixture because my son has a yucky cough. I had an intuition, based on previous experience with these other herbs, that this mixture would be helpful. Several days later, he was still coughing, but without as much of the yuck part; he is not coughing up nearly as much phlegm. And, the infusion has a delicate flavor, is not at all horrid—so a child will drink it willingly, particularly if a bit of honey is added.

I pass this story on to you because it is a good personal account. Please note that I do not set myself up to advise you on what herbs are best for you to use—this is something you must discover on your own. Herbal usage is, I continue to discover, very personal and very subtle. Some herbs that are indicated for certain conditions just simply do not work for everyone. I discovered years ago that Echinacea does not work for me, though I can derive similar benefits from Holy Basil.

Experimentation with common herbs is wholeheartedly advised, as long as good sense is also exercised; herbs that you know to be dangerous probably should not enter your home, much less your body. A general safety rule is this: if it is something you would cook with and eat in food, then by all means, make use of it in other ways than in cookery. 

The only caution I would offer is that there is a lot of misinformation and conflicting information available on the internet; in the rush for content to populate every single page hawking some sort of product or service, the so-called noosphere is filled with shameless duplications of the same articles all over the place (authored originally by whom, one wonders?), and they do not necessarily inform you in a useful way or accurate way.


If you want to get into herbs, you need to do three things: (1) get into your garden; (2) consult books on herbs (whatever you have on hand, or references at the library); and (3) brew. I keep a handy notebook and make notations of the various herbs I have used, and if they have been combined with other herbs, what circumstance that combination was used for, and what the results were.


I am sitting here with a warm cup of something good. How about you?

Yawning

Stifling a yawn,

I felt my body reset itself, cat-like,
to normal flexibilities, albeit aging,
and stretch to realign with the more fluid now.

Perhaps the yawn does not prefigure boredom,
but rather points toward a yearning:
for movement,
for light and lightness,
for that which will not settle,
but take up any stray parths
and rise up in winding spirals
of exploratory spirit
of muses and musing,
and discovery.

Whereas boredom cannot reach beyond itself,
light crosses borders,
gathers creative dust,
and sings the planets and stars to life.

Let my yawn be bent on travel,
calling forth invisible wings
to open out and,
stretching fluidly,
to carry me upward and
liberate me radially,
from my inner world
to all outer worlds.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Advent

When the feasting is done,
the workers return to the fields,
the householders return to the hearth;
the boards are swept of the leavings,
and actions return to sameness.

Is this indeed our lot?
Is this what all the celebration was for?

That being abounds in sameness
is a misapprehension
of our purpose.

The Divine One sighs.

Celebration,
it should be a sending forth
into revolution,
nothing less than
a miracle of conception,
that will be nurtured
with warm and loving hands,
an alchemy of all the elements
and all that is unseen.

Life cannot be measured,
cannot be calculated
into minutes of this,
hours of that.

Life is even beyond
the measure of the mead
that raises warmth to the cheek,
that raises the inner spirit toward
the unexpected.

Life is the journey,
pushing beyond all boundaries
of the known and comfortable,
to a place wholly unknown.

There is no arrival,
but expect the abyss
to be open before you,
waiting.

A divine bridge will appear
for all who have the courage
to step forward.

This is the morning after,
the Dawning Day of Next,
wherein we meet God
in the work of creation.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Pointed

Words and numbers are pointers
leading to infinity,
asking to be traveled long and well,
poetically.

Points are not fixed;
they cannot stand still,
but shimmer and fly,
depending on the weather.

The relative atmospheric pressure
depends upon Mind and Soul,
and an apprehension of Tomorrow,
the child of time and timelessness.

Gathering creative wool,
the planets roll in search of nextness,
being points not fixed,
bur rather poetical.

Meanwhile, the unspeakable mystery
casts its pointed light on All,
making visible the invisible
for all that are poetically ready.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Sabbath Rest

Oh, for a quiet day,

a day where there is no rush at all,
because there is no place to go
and nothing that needs doing.

Oh, for a quiet day,
and a ramble over frost-frizzed fields,
tracing a circle that begins and ends
at a hallowed hollow called home.

On that quiet day,
we can contemplate all we have done
and all we that might yet to do,
within the spectrum of desires.

But this is quite a day,
for there is no expectation of doing,
accomplishment, planning or plotting;
today, all that is beside the point.

Oh, bless this cold, quiet day!
Day where all the world finds rest
away from all trials and tasks, to bask,
in the unexpected warmth of the sun.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Passages

An image forms in my internal spaces,
brought by a sudden breeze off the water,
a message from a twin being
somewhere, beyond the seas
of my imaginings
            and of quantum realities.

My thoughts break from mundane patterns
to recourse themselves
along deeper channels of my knowing,
to weather among more ancient longings,
connecting earth to sky and ocean.

Where I am embedded in this life's frame,
the meaning of the message is perplexing.

But where my unseen roots in the earth
reach depths beyond fathoms,
where my invisible wings soar
to heights beyond the moon,
I know, my dear, I know.

It is from those places
that a song wells up for you,
a return message sent up, out and over,
back on the changing breeze,
back through the waters
that bind and sustain us.

© 2010 Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Black Friday: In the Vale of Retail

The term “Black Friday” is only endearing to big business. This is the day that launches the annual ritualized cultural insanity of consumerism that lasts until the New Year, and keeps most companies afloat, if not overflowing.

Historically, the term “Black Friday” started out as a description for the stock market meltdown of 1864, but was, in 1966, used by law enforcement in Philadelphia, PA to describe the traffic management problem that was on their hands—holiday shopping mob control.

Later on, accountants were able to see the silver—or gold—lining in the ugly term. Ka-ching, ka-ching!

We all know what it means, but do we really understand what it does to us?

Crowds will jam the malls between now and Christmas, like ants on a hill. When I worked in retail, we called these people mall maulers. They were pushy, nasty and rude. Driving anywhere becomes a drudgery, most especially if you are not headed to shop. Drivers are pushy, nasty, rude and full of rage.

People will be rushing to buy the very latest gizmos, not to mention clothes and brick-a-brack, for themselves, as much as for others.

Psychologically, many of us talk ourselves into it because it is supposed to be all about an event; our obligatory gift giving is supposed to commemorate the alleged gifts that wise men apocryphally gave to a baby, after whom a religion was named, thousands of years ago. We imagine ourselves kings and queens (perhaps not wise persons) when we flex our buying power, don’t we? But is this spiritual? I think that if it is spiritual, it is most clearly defined as spiritually material.

Another aspect to this is that we must have it NOW (or “off with their heads!)”

Some people talk themselves into this madness by pretending that they can purchase everything they want for prices that are lower than they would be at any other time of the year.

However the incantation goes that allows people to join the grasping throngs, this is all really nothing more than rampant consumerism, and it is inexcusable. Everything purchased is overpriced, over-packaged and overblown—which is to say that it will all blow over, and the gizmos du jour will be yesterday’s news very shortly, and stacked in your garage or the nearest landfill not too long after that.

What is this collective insanity worth? Of what value is it? How can this be an expression of gratitude or faith—or love—when it lines the pockets of some and renders others destitute, as well as damages the earth?

I want you to think on these things, as you follow in the footsteps of millions of other drones on this Black Friday death march through the vale of retail.

Gratitude

thanks,
such a small word
to exchange for
the magnificence
of glittering pools of light that,
spilling through
all the mornings of my life,
stir me first to wakefulness,
and then to rapture,
at the illumined beauty
of the world;
of family, friends &
familiar places;
of tactile relationships &
flavors on the tongue;
of music to the ears &
flower scented air;
of being empty &
then being filled, full and
fully satisfied;
of being busy,
in work and in play,
then to stop for rest &
for the sleep that renews—
all of this in daily doses,
for a lifetime of wonder
—thanks,
this word so small, so humble,
is really all that can sound
from these lips,
awed by life’s beauty,
the so far & the more

I know is yet
to be revealed.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

From Scratch

Ah! The rains pour down

their balm for the earth,
and in the night, cold
brings on a freeze
that will break
the buried seeds,
when spring finally leaps
out of the womb of winter.

Morning is announced
by a blazing sunrise.

This calls for
Celebration!

Warm the ovens;
oil the pans;
bake ye the bread of life!

Start again from scratch:
chopping onions,
adding herbs,
roasting roots and meats,
tossing a mild salad;
in all things,
be the salt
you sprinkle
with care,
the sugar added to balance,
and test the flavors
as you go!

At last,
fill all the glasses
to their fullest
from any flagon
stayed upon you
[setting aside the best for later]
and place baskets of apples
on the candlelit table.

The time has always been Now!
But, see, you are ready:
Fling wide the doors,
with welcome
and with Love.

Warm embraces of greeting
will lead us to the table,
where we may
fill our hands with
the blessings of this day,
and delight
in the bounty
we all share
that is Life.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Sudden Storm

Clouds burst overhead,

yet wind floods the vision,
blowing rain sideways,
and the world flows away.

At last,
washed away,
we fall off the edge,
only to float upward,
improbable
as that seems.

Laugh,
it’s all we can do
when we find ourselves
on vertical planes,
horizons having
become extinct
in our wake
and our waking.

Laugh,
and look around,
and discover what you are:
a missing link,
a wave of laughter,
or a crazy music,
propelled omni-directionally
through a gold-lined, purple cloud of rain.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Threads

Dangling threads command your attention.

They wait for you to weave them,
first inward,
then outward
on your spiraling strands.

It never will be done;
the weaving goes on forever.

Hard work,
even tedious;
But what you weave is a garden,
the garden of your soul,
in which you grow yourself,
and the places you’ll go
will glow
with all the colors of your dreams.

So, let those threads command!
The Kosmos awaits your reply:
what are you waiting for?
Weave, weave; for God’s sake, weave!

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Reflections on Social Networking by Computer: Living From Our Smallness

If you have not read it, I highly commend to you an article (in the November 2010 issue of the New York Review of Books) by Zadie Smith, entitled Generation Why? 


The article offers some review and commentary on the much discussed film The Social Network, and also includes some bit of review and context from You are not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jerome Lanier.

Zadie Smith amazed me by putting into print a lot of the discussion I have been having (with myself in my mind, and with peers) about being part of the "Facebook Generation". The title grabbed me, first of all: why? Is all really about networking? What do we get from sharing what is often most banal of our daily existence with our list of friends?

Not much in the way of substance seems to be my answer and Smith's.

I don't ultimately think this lack of substance is horrible, but I do think that if one seeks deeper and more integral relationship with family, friends and other travelers on this grand journey of ours, the first place one can count on not finding that is on Facebook.

Once again, I can feel the outcry "Luddite! Luddite!"

Not at all, not at all. No, not so.

Here are the things I really like about Facebook: I have been able to reconnect with people I knew in High School and elsewhere. There are people that I really wanted to keep in touch with, and it was a shame that we all lost track of one another when we went off to university, got married, moved away, such and so on, etc. I love being able to see what people have done in their lives. It is marvelous to be able to "chat" with people in other parts of the world. To share recipes and jokes. Possibly the biggest plus is to get the earliest report of some critical national or international news happening from someone closest to the scene.

But, as Ms. Smith points out in her article, all this had been possible before Facebook, and is possible now through various other computer options. While Facebook is touted as being all about networking, it is really all about taking our "personal information," mostly in the form of our likes and dislikes, and forwarding this to various parsing agencies that will, over time, bombard us with offers based on them. In other words, it is not about promoting brotherhood and sisterhood, but about promoting sales.

If you are a member of Facebook, you don't have as many choices as you might think you have for controlling the your personal information, and what is available reaches a wider audience than you would imagine. You might not want to have everyone be your friend, first of all. And you might not want to have some of the quips you share with pals be shared with absolutely everyone you know and all the people they and their friends and family know. But that happens, and we have no control over it. We are at the mercy of our most unguarded moments on the internet. And it is can be hilariously laughable, such as this very funny BBC satire of Queen Elizabeth as Facebook member.

Hilarious. Laughable. Okay, now what?

The internet was invented to be a tool for the free exchange of information, but, to some extent there is nothing free about it, and what is being exchanged is our personal dignity. Why? Because all of our cute (or not so cute) little quips and quirks live on and on, even after we have departed from the internet or, indeed, the world. Zadie Smith recounts that the FB "wall" of a murdered British teen had notices from people to the deceased, as if she was still alive or would be checking her FB account from the grave.

I have not seen The Social Network, yet, and I am not sure that I particularly want to. Yes, I am sure that the portrait of Mark Zuckerberg is slanted in a particularly vile way, and I am equally sure that Zuckerberg is the kind of geek that lives from and through his computer.

There is a smallness about boiling the human brain and heart down to binary code in "if-then-else" language parsing. I have not read You Are Not A Gadget, by Lanier--but I plan to, based on what Zadie Smith has shared in her NY Review article, and what I see in an excerpt made available by the publisher through the New York Times. It is clear the book is a reminder that being is much more than the sum of parts. Here is a quote from Lanier's book: "Information systems need to have information in order to run, but information underrepresents reality."

Facebook can only ever show an extremely limited portion of our reality. It boils us down to the smallest we can be, for as many people as want to view that. This is not where revolutions will be fostered, or world peace, or very much, indeed, in the way of achievement. Marketing and sales are likely all we can expect of Facebook. And what we share there, discreet or indiscreet, will be "carried forward" into whatever fad the next computer generation cooks up, networking or otherwise.

We'll never be able to live large or deeply on Facebook. And, thankfully, we don't have to live on Facebook at all.

Rain in the Desert

Drops fall from the sky;
infinite views of life that glitter
as small globes of resonance,
while they land and find place,
pooling in community to be
common with one another,
one in another,
ad infinitum.

Each a message,
together a manifesto,
a movement gradual
that gathers swift momentum,
swirling from puddle to pool to rivulet,
thence on to stream and river,
then rolling on into ocean.

This is love;
without this wet and wild kiss,
there is no life.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Mandoline

Plectrum moves across the strings,
finding melodies
in imitation
of songs ancient and modern.

She does not sing the words
--that would be superfluous:
life is the music,
the words are the life;
unbidden, they float on the melodies
of their own concordant accord,
weaving the world into being.

The player smiles,
knowing this.

There is even no need to make music:

We are the instruments,
all of life is the music,
if we would but listen
to one another;
within and without,
we should be able to hear it
playing our hearts.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Dreaming

The desert has been so wide,
no thought has been able to take root.

At once, a passing thought did tread,
only to die for lack of food and water;
relegated to delusion by way of miraging masquerade
for lack of moisture that might explore a truer shape.

Loneliness and wondering;
Loneliness and wandering.

The sun carves deep shadows and dries them
into the shape the arroyos take.

Thirst—
drought—
death…

Lightening—
storm—
flood—

Motions of notions,
so thick the whole earth could not contain them,
and caught, as I am, in this flash flooded desert,
I can barely grasp a single thread,
much less find my feet long enough
to follow any path that might be drawn.

Follow!  Follow us!  Follow us all!
taunt the silken strands of thought,
but I cannot stem their tide and bide,
and so caught in their merry pranking pools,
I drown.

© 2010 Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Fear and Trembling, Sold and Purchased

More and more, I think we live in what Frances Moore Lappé calls “a thin Democracy.” In her 2007 book, Getting A Grip, she demonstrates that one of the major thinning aspect of democracy is the existence of, not to mention the over-riding interest of, capitalism and free market economy. Lappé suggests that we are sold on the idea of scarcity, and that the complicit, if not leading, marketplace drives consumption by promoting fear. Lappé is not the only person to have made this observation.

In an interview with Amy Goodman on the radio program Democracy Now!, Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctrine; the Rise of Disaster Capitalism and other books, said. 

[Milton] Friedman believed in a radical vision of society in which profit and the market drive every aspect of life, from schools to healthcare, even the army. He called for abolishing all trade protections, deregulating all prices and eviscerating government services.

These ideas have always been tremendously unpopular, and understandably so. They cause waves of unemployment, send prices soaring, and make life more precarious for millions. Unable to advance their agenda democratically, Friedman and his disciples were drawn to the power of shock… Friedman understood that just as prisoners are softened up for interrogation by the shock of their capture, massive disasters could serve to soften us up for his radical free-market crusade. He advised politicians that immediately after a crisis, they should push through all the painful policies at once, before people could regain their footing. He called this method "economic shock treatment." I call it "the shock doctrine."

Take a second look at the iconic events of our era, and behind many you will find its logic at work. This is the secret history of the free market. It wasn’t born in freedom and democracy; it was born in shock.

To return to Frances Moore Lappe:

… Private power supersedes public power—as FDR warned us seven decades ago… To pick just a few frightening examples:

* for almost six years after 9/11, the chemical industry lobby was able to resist measures needed to secure fifteen thousand chemical plants against attack.

* While five thousand Americans die annually from food-borne illnesses, the food industry is able to block mandatory recalls.

* Ex-oil lobbyist Philip Cooney was so tight with the Bush White House that he edited official reports to downplay climate change.

* Pharmaceutical lobbyists helped craft a healthcare law that forbids Medicare to negotiate drug prices—while we pay double what Europeans do for identical drugs.

The biggest product on the market today is fear. We purchase fear every day, in the form of some product marketed to protect us. Overstatement?

Think about the recent H1N1 pandemic that was forecast and, supposedly, averted by means of a vaccine. Do you remember how there was a scarcity of the vaccine? Then, suddenly, a huge flood of the vaccine hit the marketplace, but mostly right after the containment of the outbreaks. This did not stop people from purchasing the vaccine. Interesting that we had to purchase it, if we wanted it and didn't have a health plan that provided it. When I was a child, inoculations against Rubella were given to every school child by the county health department, for free. People purchased the H1N1 vaccine based on their fear, not because there was an outbreak, or even just a few reported cases, in their area.

Now, think about the new TSA (Transportation Security Administration) airport security pat downs. The fear being marketed here is terrorism. The price of your airline ticket entitles you to the indignities of an extremely invasive full-body search, that by law you must submit yourself to. The public outcry has been loud. But Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and TSA Administrator John Pistole Monday claim the new practices are necessary to protect the flying public.

Now, recall the last visit you made to your local pharmacy. Have you looked around the shelves immediately adjacent to the pharmacist’s window? What are the primary products lining those shelves? I’ll tell: hand sanitizer. The fear being marketed here is germs, viruses and bacteria that lead to sickness and possibly death. The sanitizers that are alcohol based are probably fine, unless over-used, but those that are marketed as being anti-bacterial are probably overkill. Why? Because, as a friend of mine who is an emergency room physician said, “oh, these products are good. They are so good that they take away the good stuff as well as the bad stuff.”  The human body naturally contains bacteria, yeast fungi,  and bunches of other things like protists and archaea. Details from www.wisegeek.com: 

Bacteria help digest complex carbohydrates which would be indigestible otherwise, promote growth of intestinal cells, repress pathogenic microbes, prevent allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, and play crucial roles in the immune system. Body flora and the body it occupies have been co-evolving for tens of millions of years. 

Is it possible that we are fiddling with the delicate balance of our immune systems when we over-use some of these products, rather than rely on soap and water as our first line of hygiene? I know octogenarians who have never received flu shots and have never used hand sanitizers. They are some of the healthiest people I have ever met.

On a website called Medical News Today, there is a “fact” page about hand sanitizer. The information for this “fact” page has been provided by Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies the makers of Purell ®. I quote from it: 

Do you have enough PURELL(R) products available to consumers? 

We are committed to providing optimal distribution of the product to meet the increasing need and demand, particularly in areas where cases of illness outbreaks have been reported.

I find that an interesting statement, from a marketing perspective. It speaks to the issue of scarcity,  relieving potential consumer fear of not being able to obtain the product.

I do not suggest that an alcohol based hand product is a necessarily a bad thing for people, but that we have been advised to use a lot of it, and in situations where washing the hands with soap and water might be quite sufficient. This USA Today article from 2007 talks about the kind of money these products generate for their producers: 

U.S. hand sanitizer sales have grown in double digits since 2003, according to marketing data company ACNielsen. Through late 2006, sales in supermarkets and drugstores alone were up 14.4% from 2005 to $70 million, with Purell the market leader at $36.6 million. That growth built on a huge 53.5% rise in 2005, according to ACNielsen.

 What I suggest is that we need to think about what is being marketed and by whom. I think that we are steered into paying out big money to buy fear, and that there are no regulations to protect us from the fear peddlers, many of whom are big business lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

If you have not read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, I highly recommend the book.

// 

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/17/the_shock_doctrine_naomi_klein_on

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/148203.php

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2007-01-03-santizers_x.htm

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-some-types-of-body-flora.htm

Moore Lappé, Frances. Getting A Grip. Small Planet Media Group, 2007. Pp. 13, 17.

Book of Hours

As if in manuscript,

our days and hours
drift, as they will,
like autumn leaves
falling from a tree.

Pages turn,
although some marginalia
tries to overcome errata
by means of a tenuous grip
on aging parchment,
so to further one conversation
over another.

Pages turn,
witnessing the passing
of time and place,
and people.

As the pages turn,
we remember
the counterpoint
of joy and woe
as a fuller music,
more strident,
even more poignant,
though now we sense it
as a gentler melody.

As the pages turn,
a time will come
when we are there no longer
to witness or feel the change,
and no witness left to us.

Pages turn;
for now, awareness and being
are grounded in being fully here,
of mind and spirit,
while we can be,
to greet the subtle music
of sun and moon,
even as the body
drifts away, towards
a different kind of voyage.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen