Time keeps on slipping, slipping, into the future

I turned sixty last month. A lot of things are never going to get done. Nothing in particular, just a lot of them. Everything else being equal, there’s just not enough time. Even if money wasn’t an issue, there’s still not enough time. There’s too many places to see, trails to hike, stories to tell, roads to ride, mistakes to correct, too many books to read.
And there’s something wrong with part of my brain. It thinks I’m thirty, or that’s not it exactly, but it definitely thinks I should be, or it forgets sometimes that I’m not. It gets reminded pretty fast when I stand up and, just like my old man, it takes me seven eight steps to straighten my back. Do you remember that song; Peter, Paul and Mary might have done it?

“Work your fingers to the bone and what do you get?
Boney fingers. Boney fingers.”

That was my old man. It’s beginning to look like it’s going to be me. Sometimes I can feel my fingers trying to twist over one another. I have to grab them and force them back. Who’d a thought?
It seems life is about getting sidetracked. Best laid plans, as they say. It ain’t till your looking back you can see where you’ve been going and you thank whoever there is to thank if you’re in a half way decent place because there’s no going back to change things and how ever far you are when you look back there’s always more coming. And things don’t ever stop, at least not when your eyes are open, usually not even then.
So what choice is there? I’ll keep living the life I got, breathe in breathe out, keep stepping out having faith there’ll be something to catch my foot when it comes down.

Cold feet vs pie

The economy being what it is, this winter is going to be hard on a lot of people. I write this sitting in my kitchen with my fleece vest on, putting off as long as I can turning on the pellet stove. Well, I have a pellet stove to put off turning on. And I’m not going to go hungry or lose my house. I have a lot to be thankful for and I could write about that, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the widening gap between the one and the ninety-nine.
This post is about fat cats here in the states knowingly selling a lot of people a bill of goods, making an obscene amount of money, and, not only getting off, but getting huge bonuses for piloting their ships into the rocks. It’s not like they didn’t see the rocks. They were in plain sight. And everybody knows what they did. There is no mystery, or if there is it’s how much governments were a part of this gigantic Ponzi scheme?
And what of the ninety-nine? We’re getting cold here. We’re putting on extra clothes and downgrading our dinner menus. We’re buying used tires. We’re adjusting the hell out of our expectations. We seem to have the right to free speech as long as we don’t cause any inconveniences to commerce. People are getting arrested for trampling the grass while those trampling on the lives and futures of millions are getting another piece of pie.

Remember The White

Everything is broken, in the sea, on the land, in the air, and we who go about proclaiming our knowledge; we are the most profoundly broken of all. The best of us, with the best of intensions, hit so wide of the mark, are so blind to the infinite amount of things we do not know existing outside the reach of our puny grasp, we fail to judge rightly the inadequacy of our assumptions, refuse to understand the infinite cannot by us be divided into its components, studied under a microscope, and figured out.
This is the failure of both the Red and the Blue factions. The limitations of their private vision elude them obscuring the wisdom of the other and the foolishness of the self. They cannot hear the other not because they are deaf, but because of the belief there is nothing to learn.
The dragons of the Black are not hindered by this dilemma. The single mindedness of their devotion concerns itself only superficially, if at all, with the discussion of right or wrong. The bottom line is always the bottom line. All things must come under subjection to it. Mercy is only a viable option if it serves the ultimate goal of accumulation.
There is a longing for the White to come forth, to speak a new hope into the realm of the dispossessed beginning to occupy the public squares; the cobbled together meeting places, clamoring inarticulately for a better way. The White has been silent for too long. Its voice is barely remembered. It is like a word on the tip of the tongue one fails to grasp. Then, when one least expects, it suddenly burst forth, and White is remembered and believed. This is the only thing the Black fears.
Let this be the cry; Remember the White.

The Hall of Wizards

The hall of wizards is in an uproar, divided Red and Blue. They raise their fists across the aisle shouting accusations, hurling counter spells until nobody knows what confusion their magic brings.
In secret chambers upon the great wall gleeful hands are rubbed together. Overlords assure one another. “The fools,” said the fattest. “Let them argue. Let them believe their own lies. Let them fill their grubby pockets with our leavings. As long as they are at each other’s throats they leave ours alone. Always have we profited. Always has our secret incantation been proclaimed. Let the Red and Blue squabble among themselves. The tentacles of our dragons continue to multiply, search out ever more pockets. We continue to prosper. It is good to be in the Black.”
“Hail the Black.”
“Oh yes. Hail we Black wizards.”
And all their bellies shook as they roared out, “Hail the Black wizards.”
“What of the White? They attempt to stir the rabble.”
“Let them stir. It will be a weak broth. None believe in the White. Without belief their spells amount to nothing.

In the old days dragons hid in the dark recesses of the earth guarding their hoard of ill-gotten treasure. Today they sit on their treasure and gloat in broad daylight. Those of the occupy movement are the peasants with their pitch forks and torches, slightly amusing to the ruling class until the rabble become too much of a nuisance at which point the king’s men are called out to disperse them.
I don’t know where the dragon slayers are. The only one I know is Ralph Nadir and he is getting to old even to tilt at windmills.
The church, as usual seems to have taken residence with the dragon. They drink tea together lamenting days gone by when the rabble seemed to know their place.