Multicultural Center

Humanity:

a plural noun,
naming a species
known as mankind.

Swift to divide, conquer,
label, condemn and control;
soon to be extinct
—unless a maturing
awakens people
from a childish
and deadly
slumber.

Awakening is not a revolution
of wars, weapons and
the spilling of blood,
innocent and guilty,
but is nothing less
than an evolution
to the Grand Opening
of the Multicultural Center.

This is the place
where divided mind
becomes one,
melting alchemically
into a plural Heart,
the seat of universal
compassion.

At that opening,
every window and
all the doors
of every singular heart
shall be flung wide open
to the light of Life,
a truer rite of passage,
so that the living play of radiance
reveals the visible spectrum
of all people
as joined in living
a lifelong embrace
of all colors,
all kinds,
all sounds
of life,
to be of one being
on the Earth.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Far to the West

Far to the west,
a people lives well,
believes they know best,
thrives on buy and sell,
yet finds little rest.

But there is a farther west, even,
and in that unmapped place,
the echoes of our struggles
sound tinny and insubstantial
as they cast thin and painful shadows,
a belying of what could be.

From that far off place,
fuller, more placid reflections and vibrations
find their way to inspire and refresh the mind and spirit,
perhaps even to stem tides of disharmony here.

May those vibrations
meet us in the gloaming,
change us from mindset best,
cease us from mindless roaming,
make us more the earth’s guest,
and guide us to gentle rest.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Of Ballots and Broadsides...

I am a permanent absentee voter. I have received my ballot in the mail. I have voted.

If you are also an absentee voter, and have received your absentee ballot, PLEASE VOTE.

"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right." ~ H.L. Mencken

This election is one of the most contentious I have ever experienced, in all my voting years. Aside from the various candidates who are trying to buy their office, there are some citizen's initiatives that have been written not by citizens but by corporate interests, and there are many attempts at ballot box budgeting in the works. I have done homework on all of this, and I confess to you that it is confusing, as well as contentious--nothing is straightforward; nothing is black and white; it is ALL about MONEY.

"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves." ~ Thomas Sowell (writer and economist)

Even in the small town, in which I reside, the campaigning is as serious and hardball as at the state level. I have received no less than 45 non-personal phone calls in the past three weeks: campaign messages, push polls, surveys and robocalls that are undisguised smears of specific candidates, as well as one promotion for rug cleaning.

In this day, we are more distracted than ever. Politicians and their campaign managers count on this.

I urge you to do your homework. I urge you to see what your party endorses. I urge you to find out what your local service organizations and newspapers endorse. I urge you to carry on discussions with friends and neighbors.  I urge you to read the contents of the Voter Guide. I urge you to read between the lines, with your critical thinking cap firmly on your head.

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." ~James Bovard, author of Attention Deficit Democracy (2006)

And then, I urge you to VOTE! It is your right, and your civic duty.

"Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting." ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt 

Spleen

Herein, I had a brilliant idea, and had been so inclined with wherewithal to work onward until completion of said thought-train, when, of the sudden, the roar of one machine was followed by the roar of another, seemingly right in my near ear, but followed closely into my far left ear, so that both ears were hounded with the founding and sounding and the veritable pounding in the roundhouse of my mind, until the turntable began to melt and then to roll impossibly down the tracks of my spine, infecting the words on the pages of my work and the pen in my hand, to the point that all were melting and rolling over the edges of the pages, into blackening pools of pain and despair at my feet.

The tyranny of machines, pushing us to the nether regions of our living quarters and our sanity. "Resistance is futile," a space zombie said to the characters in the play and also to the audience. Does the machine outdo the gentle rake for speed and efficiency? Surveys and science say no. But nothing shall impede the progress and deafness of civilization!

The resultant black pools of words stared silently back at me, with reproach. Separating them, once in this mood and state, would not be possible, not even with finepoint needle-nosed tweezers, which I would have to borrow from a friend.

For the accomplished pleasure of dispensing noizazy noise and rackety racket, as well as hectares of dirt blown about and abroad, the lawns of the land look lean and kempt, free from the carpeting of leaves and other foreign objects, for mine benefit and convenience--as if I have chosen and ordered such amenity, all over the land--and money is taken in exchange by the prime noizazter, a polite gentleman with three arms, a motor and no ears, who distributes it among his roving team of noizazters.

My work, damp, dark, shredded and pooled irretrievably, further excuses itself from my shaking hands, and what blotchy puddles are left completely drip from my mind--claiming the call of another errand--and move on, pouring themselves through the floorboards and into the ground beneath the house. Someday, they might return, when I least expect, so I had better call in a repairman to fix the sump pump, however bumptiously that work might thump.

Nothing against the noizazters, but their noizaz, with their soaring roar and pounding round and particulate pollution take me away from where I am and even beyond the point wherever I thought I was going or even want to be.

As the noizazters bundle their many arms and motors into their truck and roar away, I say to myself, that prime noizazter,  he is a fortunate one: he makes more money than I do, and is able to help four or five families to subsistence livelihood.

When they are gone, I hold my cleaved and aching head in my hands and weep.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

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See how someone else describes dealing with noise: "Old Bag" by Jenny Diski for the London Review of Books

Rest

Unhurried;

no pace, all space
—place
unflurried.

Moon arose,
intending to strike a pose,
instead, smiled into tired eyes,
with a long, lingering embrace.

Time chooses to slow apace,
an act of accommodation laws may belie.

Weary eyes close,
folding the soul slowly inward,
past the silent steps of sleep,
toward a farther vale of stillness,
the involution of consciousness,
beyond and Beyond Within,
until there is no farther to go,
but there nevertheless is,
for is Is, as it would be,
will Be forever.

Within the self-womb of this soft spiral,
Mind’s eye can close,
to dream tomorrow into being.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Silly Bandz: cute fad or environmental hazard?

Kids have been coming home with Silly Bandz now for weeks, trading them on the playground, giving them as party favors. These are brightly colored little rubber band-like items made of silicone, formed in different shapes, worn as bracelets. Inexpensive, and popular they are, yes. For now.

However, once Silly Bandz cease to be popular, they will end their life cycle as garbage. I have already seen broken ones littering the playground and street gutters near schools. Silicone is proven to be a bad thing for people, pets and other animals, birds and fish.

I point this out because our communities pride themselves in teaching "Green Thinking" and "Life Skills" to our children. I know that there are schools and even school districts that have been banning these seemingly innocent toys, mainly because they prove to be a distraction in class, even leading to problems on the playground. But parents should be thinking beyond the distraction factor, thinking in greater depth about the ramifications of ubiquitous, faddy, non-biodegradable products that are marketed to our children.

The fact is, Silly Bandz will eventually become part of the landfill and end up in our waterways, killing particularly birds and fish (they look like brightly colored worms, don't they?), but also posing a danger to other creatures. By the time that fad dies, and a new one is born, the creators of Silly Bandz (and like products) will have raked in millions of our dollars, but will not be accountable when the product becomes part of the mix of environmental problems facing the planet.

The fact that these items are cheap, numerous and readily available means that we are inadvertently teaching our kids (1) to be consumers and (2) to thoughtlessly assign value to items that have a dubious use and value, yet a life cycle that poses a future environmental threat.

Perhaps this seems a silly topic to be writing about, but we must now, at all times, be thinking seriously about the life cycle of the items we mass produce, whether they are cute toys or packaging, processed food, or whatever the items are. When we see the all too real stories about toxic sludge byproducts of aluminum manufacturing inundating Hungarian villages and flowing into the Danube river, we need to wake up to the fact that there needs to be more thought, regulation and oversight in the manufacture of just about everything.

I won't suggest that Silly Bandz need to be banned, because I know that parents will balk at the suggestion, and that I will accused of raining on everyone's parade of fun with junk.  However, I believe that this, and many other products, offer thoughtful and caring parents opportunities to teach children about consumerism of products that we know to be ultimately unhealthy for our planet.

To date, I have not spent a dime on Silly Bandz, and I have spoken of my misgivings to other parents on a selective basis. I have spoken to my children about why I think they are bad. They have a few of them, but they are informed now (by what I told them and by what they experienced recently, while volunteering on Coastal Cleanup Day), and they don't seem to be interested in collecting them.

This is a good sign.

The Right To Be Ugly

We live in a country that has many inalienable rights. Apparently, one of those rights is to be an ugly American.

People running live action video feed of another person's private activities. Woman destroys artwork because she thinks it demeans Jesus. Motorcycles and cars with tips welded on their mufflers, in order to drastically raise the decibel level and make your hair stand on end. Cars that block parking lot circulation so that their sole occupants can wait for someone to pull out of the parking slot closest to the entrance to the grocery store. Drivers who have their car stereo systems roaring at the highest volume and deepest bass rumble, so that everyone within a two block radius is forced to hear it. The garbage that is dumped on sidewalks, beaches and parks, sometimes within 8 feet of a receptacle. Runaway computer viruses that anonymously destroy equipment, while hijacking the victims' contact lists. The one-sided cell phone rants, where everyone else, standing in any line, anywhere, is a captive audience. Tailgating drivers, speeders, speed-weavers, stop sign runners, double-parkers, three-point-turners in school zones and those drivers who abandon their cars in passenger loading zones, despite the clear directives of posted signs. Bullies, bigots, bashers and trashers. This is, I hope you realize, only a partial list; you have your own list of minor to major irritants.

When did we become such rude, arrogant and narcissistic pigs?

The reason I ask this question is because the bad behavior seems to get worse as the days go by.  Celebrities, politicians and religious leaders lead the fashion trend and tend to model this behavior more than the average person; bad press is better than no press at all, I suppose. The constant need to fill 24 hours of network television on hundreds of channels heightens the visibility of the trend by creating an endless stream of trashy entertainment content, for our viewing pleasure or horror. Certainly, this all provides more that we can all natter on about. "Did you see what they did?" and "Did you hear what they said?" If you don't remember the 1998 film, The Truman Show, it is worth a watch now.

What is it all about? How about alienation?  In The Sane Society, Erich Fromm posited:

We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.

It seems as if we have moved beyond this to something even worse, a lack of concrete relatedness to the people who drift through our daily lives. Whatever the cause, there seem to be a lot of people who really only act and care about what they are doing in any given moment; consequences, intended or otherwise, don't seem to come into the thought process at all--it could be overstating to suggest that there might be a thought process involved. Meanwhile, there are other people who get their jollies from being intentionally irritating to every person within reach of their chosen mode of ugliness. What an alienable use and waste of inalienable rights and freedoms! What a waste of mind, body, spirit! What a waste of life!

I have to be honest and say that I really enjoy thoughtful people, people who think about and care about the consequences of their actions, people who are not out for everything they can get, people who will drive around the block just because they know it won't take any longer than making that dangerous three-point turn that will have them backing up into a crosswalk. I find it a blessing to be standing in a line, if it must be so, with people who are able to smile, pass the time civilly, and make a dull moment into something fresh.

If I have to live in a world that gyrates to the beat of thoughtless boobs, I say a prayer of thanksgiving for all of you thoughtful and beautiful people who redeem ugly moments, created by ugly people, with a smile and a relaxed "we're all in this together" attitude.