Monday, August 31, 2009

Coming out heathen


In case you missed it, I am an atheist. That is not what I believe - merely what I lack a belief in...

Being an atheist  means I do not have a belief in a god or gods. By inference it means that I regard religion as a vestigial organ of human culture best understood as psychological metaphor. I think that human beings invented gods and god-appeasement rituals, partly in an attempt get protection and control over a dangerous natural world beyond their understanding. And partly in an attempt to get control over their own impulses for the good of the tribe. And often to get and keep control over each other....

As a possible hanger on of the brights movement ** with a naturalistic world view - I am interested in living in this world, this universe, and in this present life. I believe that everything that is, both within us and without us, arises from the natural physical world. That what most folks refer to as the soul is merely the amazingly intricate human brain. (I suggest a book called "The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks which shows how our very core changes when the brain is injured...)

I think when we die, that we are gone forever - so cherish this one life you have. Never throw it away as few folks I know have done. Cherish it. You only get this one, so live it well.

For those of you who think an Atheist is an immoral angry monster - well, you are suffering from a stereotype - a prejudice - a form of bigotry. I am just a human being, with a catalog of merit and defect, just as all you religious folks are. Nothing more, but nothing less. A human being. As a secular humanist, I believe that each human being should endeavor to live a good and moral life using his or her individual talents for the good of society, life in general, and for the life of the planet. Living toward this ideal does not requires the assistance, inspiration, commandment or hellfire threats of various gods and religions.

** the brights movement is a loose internet-based alliance of people with a naturalistic view of the world, who see life in terms of the testable, beautiful physical world and who do not find it necessary to cobble imagined gods or goblins, spirits, ghosts, supernatural powers, fairies, what have you, onto a reality that is already complex and amazing.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Poem: Tea at the end of the World - how crazy people who fear it mightcause it

a poem from my chapbook, Inverse Origami
Incoming at 4 oíclock... "Tea?" he asks,
slinging shiny steel kettle onto black coils,
citing communist conspiracy
revealing two red mugs
and two tarnish-patina-ed teaspoons,
my host, a post-glasnost peddler
of prefab fiberglass bomb shelters
pounds the pine table
predicting economic collapse
and unidentified flying objects
from the Book of Revelations.

Circumlocution, no pause, no breathing,
he's apple-pie slicing,
cerated knife in hands
ticking minutes
he does not have
years he will refuse to see
that he ís plastering over gaps in the logic
smoothing over the entrance
to a room under the lawn.

No matter if some other pie bakes
fragrant apples cooking easily
peeled and unpeeled the same,
he would seal his own fragility
under the browning crust
in under ground chambers,
closing his steel door
with its peephole and gun-sight,
sheltered from nuclear hell
by a thickness of cement
from change by brittleness of belief.

Radioactive words
firestorms over tea with mint:
"Commie pinko feds, homos with aids, the IRS,
fat people, stock brokers, illegal aliens
Don't trust, just stock up
on canned goods and ammo....."

He shoots peach-marmalade volleys,
apple-crisp pudding, his eyes, his ears impervious
to the kettleís screaming, to oven doors slamming
his cards face down, without looking, he folds,
pours boiling water for tea,
smiles and makes a little joke,
flexes eyebrows overgrown
as untended graves,
arching hoar-frosted inch worms
measuring Armageddon.






from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Mail Snoopers, Identity Theft, A Locking Mail Box

Monday, I answered the doorbell to discover a visitor with my family’s U.S. Mail cradled in one hand while the other hand flipped slowly through the first class envelopes. This is the second time I have found this nosy individual going through the mail. Getting caught garnered neither an apology or an explanation, not a blush or a fumble on either occasion.

I have done my share of house and pet sitting, and done numerous stints taking in mail. I have retrieved mail for friends and neighbors. I just don’t look at it letter by letter – it’s not my business even when I have been asked to retrieve the mail – unless i have been asked to watch for something in particular.

But this person has not been asked to bring in the mail and it is none of her business. I am very offended by it. And TAMPERING WITH THE MAIL IS ILLEGAL!

And I thought, if this woman is reading the envelopes, what is she looking for? Is she planning on Identity theft? I didn’t think so BUT it did raise the question – who else might be pawing through the mail without ringing the bell?

So I went to Lowes the same day and spent $27 on a locking mail box. You can’t tell it locks until after you lift the lid. Would love to see her face when she realizes….

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

So-called medium reveals her intentions

“I’d love to go to a Red Hat meeting with you,” a so called "psychic" & "medium" declared to my 80-year-old Mom who had not invited her to go. She inquired about details, while Mom remained vague, and pointedly did not mention any. ”I LOVE hats! I have a whole collection of hats! We’ll go, just you and I,” she continued with considerable enthusiasm .

Poor Mom didn’t invite her, barely knows her, has been something of a captive audience until this point. This person failed to notice her silence,  or the grimly bemused smile on her face. After several more comments along this line, she announced “It’s a date then,” as she heads toward the door without once noticing the older woman’s reaction. So much for her claim to be psychic…. or even sensitive to others….

After the woman left, my mother turns to me and I know I am in trouble… “If she shows up there I am going to stop going to meetings,” she said glaring at me. (And, in fact, she did stop going!)  This woman was not listening to her, and Mom hates that. She didn't care what Mom wanted, she wanted what SHE wanted - which was to invite herself along to her group meeting.

It was me who brought this person, who is a self-declared psychic, self-declared spiritual “guide” into the house. The so-called psychic and I serve in a volunteer organization I am fond of, and I have been trying to figure out how to handle our philosophical differences for over a year now. (I am a secular humanist, a non-theist, a naturalist. etc) She has aggressively befriended me, calling repeatedly with invitations - which makes me a bit nervous - and we always avoid talking about our core beliefs.

Now my Mom has been a realist all her life, worked for 25 years for a police group, has seen all manner of hucksters, deceit and fraud. Because of her police background, Mom thinks such people are purposefully manipulative con-artists looking for bereaved emotional marks to swindle. And she might be right..  Mom  noted many of the red hats are widows, vulnerable to someone who might "guide" them to dead loved ones for a fee, or to curry favor, or find a place to live for a while...

And, though I worry about the sanity of this tale-spinner who says she talks to the dead, guides people to recall their past lives and has “remembered” over 100 of her own (story telling of a different magnitude indeed….) –  Mom might have the clearer view. And I am sure this so called "psychic" woman is “telling stories” – but to us or to herself? I wonder if her "stories" have become such an integral part of her persona, that she can no longer separate her self from her inventions.

The other alternative is the possibility that she is a charming manipulator. She is a careful listener, an astute observer of body language, a clever story-teller, seemingly a very caring sort. Surely she is self-deceived, not inwardly cold and calculating. Maybe. But this bid to get Mom alone has given me doubts. What could make it easier for a faker to channel the dead to the living - then talking to them when they are still ALIVE, and asking just the right questions about their relations to younger relatives and friends? She has confided about other elderly folks who she'd "befriended, who had "passed over," mentioning furniture and even a car "gifted" to her by grateful relatives." Once she asked a grieving relative if she could live in the departed's home until it was sold. That request was not granted. Who know's what "psychic" revealations might have resulted from unfettered access to the deceased's belongings.....

This culture wants to believe so badly it tosses science and logic aside, gives credence to folk who need to feel "special" by inventing supernatural powers for themselves, and who are accepted because of their very real and often quite subtle,  talents of listening carefully, observing carefully, recalling details, having a good sympathetic "graveside" manner.  Yet often these same folks blatantly manipulate others for emotional or financial gain, for services, support, living quarters,  or items tossed out when the estate is dissolved, stored and later sold on ebay or the like. (This particular woman did maintain a storage locker crammed with stuff and an active ebay account.)  Today we have psychics featured on tv shows, we have fraudulent ghost hunters – ( and these folks really ought to be ashamed because deception is involved in each filming….

But what can be expected in culture where a large segment of the populace can no longer make a cogent argument, separate opinion from fact, tell fakery from science, where warm fuzzy but false feelings are valued over what is real….

Thursday, August 20, 2009

A Song: It's love that makes you free

Here is yet another song resurrected from my past. I am testing a new mic on this recording and it looks like it's a move in right direction. The mic is a Blue Snowball. So far so good. For other recordings I have had trouble with distortion on loud or high notes and had to jump through technical hoops to minimize it. This mic seems to handle it all well.. Just a bit a reverb added to this one no noise control needed.



Just a note: It's NOT romantic love nor religious nor spiritual love that I think sets anyone free -- it's the aspect of love which is accepting self and others as they really are - as full human beings with both virtues and vices - with a rational mind, a slippery core of emotion from the rat brain too.....

It's love that sets you free
by Mad Mar Walker

Stubble-Bearded Papa
What have you got to say?
We never did that much talkin' anyway
Half of what you tell me
I know it is a lie
The other half is guaranteed to make me cry

Refrain:
Love won't grow that easily
It's raging up like the sea
Love it is that pains your heart
And It's love that makes you free

Weather can be sunny
Weather can be mean and bad
Love can be sweet
it can be sour and sad
Try to start a fire in the pouring rain
You can light the body
Buddy, can you light the brain?

Ref.

I've known my share of stubborn old men
One or two I'd like to see again
Faces like sand paper
hearts like stone
Breathing fire they burn you
right to the bone

Ref.
coda: It's love that makes you free

All Rights Reserved

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The Kerry Boys & Pierce Campbell

Well, let's see -- what have I been up to. Late Sunday afternoon I took a trip to Bethel to check out a well-known group The Kerry Boys with Pierce Campbell at the gazebo:


Very folky. Absolutely perfect production and sound. Smooth, flawless and everything you would expect. Attendees were mostly grey which surprised me, with a smattering of families with kids playing on the grass. The concert was free, and fairly well attended though the attendees spread out in what little shade was available. 

Saturday, July 11, 2009

15 Books that stayed with me over the years

  • The Greek Way (Hamilton) I read this in high school, and it gave me the crazy idea that I should try different things. (Try reading my resume...) The ancient Greeks believed in the well-rounded man who could recite a poem, play the lyre, make a speech, etc etc etc according to Hamilton. Jack of all trades master of none, oh well....
  • The True Believer (Eric HOFFER) I read this book right after I dropped out of born-againism around 1972. I think it made me wary of other fanatical things I might have fallen into....
  • Utopia Minus X (Rex Gordon) Science Fiction, and now out of print - people are codified and some people are classed X because they don't fit. Hmmm . Classifiable folks get to live in Utopia, the oddballs get launched out into space....
  • The Adogmatic State (Apostolos N Depastas) This one also reenforced the dangers of dogmatsm in a cultural sense rather than a personal one.
  • Working (Terkel) I didn't read this until later in my job-hopping life. Too bad. What a great project.
  • Times Arrow (Martin Amis) In this book, time runs backwards which is the only way the life of a Dr. Mengela makes any sense - he takes the dead, broken or tortured and turns them back into whole human beings.
  • The Road to Wellville (TC Boyle) OMG. This is the funniest book and makes you not want to take any claim at face value. Oh for a good colonic... haha
  • Does Poetry Matter? (edited by ?) This book is a series of essays by different people on the meaning and function of poetry. And yes it does too matter!
  • Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman) Whitman goes with Turkel's Working somehow. Leaves of Grass is a celebration of the everyman...
  • Why I am not a Christian (Russell) Two other books on this line that influenced me were The American Religion, (Harold Bloom) and the Lucifer Principal (Howard Bloom)
  • Mount Annalouge (by Rene Dumal) Hmm. Holding the incongruous and eccentric, striving for metaphorical heights, but helping on the way up and down.
  • Owning Your Own Shadow (by somebody johnson) At some point in your life, you might find that this slim volume is worth a library of self help books. A novel I read around that time was The Man Who Would be Thursday by Chesterton? which featured the idea of a doppleganger
  • Pale Fire (by Nabakov) This is the first book I had read where the narrator cannot be trusted to tell you the truth. But you don't realize this at first. Slowly it dawns on you that the narrator is fabricating.
  • Einstein's Dreams (by Alan Lightman) ...a series of vignettes portraying different imagined mechanisms of time and their effect on a town or a few individuals -- written in a clean yet lyrical way.
  • Labinrynth (by Louis Borges) A collection of his short odd works. The Garden of Many Paths. etc My dog orginally chewed up seven of my hats, then abruptlly switched and pulled this book out of the book shelf and chewed it to shreds. I was so upset I bought a crate and crate trained her....)
  • On Writing Well (Zinsser) This guy's advice can enable you to trim Doughboy prose into a jaguar..... Other than the inestimable Jack Sanders, I can't think of anything that has changed my writing more. Hmm - a reread may be in order.
-- Mar Walker