grand opening

one open . . . 

two . . . .

three. . . 

will there be more?

I'm happy just to see the three

after two long years of drought.

Even in the most dry times,

with some of the rarer creatures,

there is hope.

More Chain Letter Hopefulness

( artlies )

It appears that

the second most popular post on this blog

is called 

"The Hopefulness of the Chain Letter."

I wrote it about a particular chain letter,

well, really it was a chain e-mail,

that I received about a year ago.

That chain e-mail was called

"My Room of Eight."

(I note that a couple female bloggers have written about that same message now.

For instance, Boston Margy 

and

struckbylightening

Well, wouldn't you know it?

I got the same chain e-mail again. 

What goes around comes around, eh?

Anyway, it has been abbreviated.  I like this new version.  It goes like this:

My Table of 8 
> I am supposed to pick 8 women who have touched my life
> and whom I think might participate. Please send this back to me.
> Remember to just read the quotation. That's all you have to do. There
> is nothing attached. Just send this to eight women and let me know what
> happens on the fourth day. Sorry you have to forward the message, but
> try not to break this, please.
> 
> 
> Quote: 
> "May today there be peace within. May you trust that
> you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the
> infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others.
> May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that
> has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way
> you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul
> the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and
> every one of us."
> 
> 
> Now, send this to 8 women or more within the next 5

> minutes. And remember to send this back. I count as 1. You'll see why.

~ ~ ~

If you read my earlier post,

you'll see why I think it's really cool

that this little message is still

in circulation.

( constable )

So I again chose my room of eight.

I chose them from the women I know closely,

and the women who I would like to have know

that I write this blog.

You see, not many people know

who writes this blog.

And that's just fine.

And I included a link to my earlier entry,

and asked them to read it,

and send it on.

This is the message I sent to them:

"This is kind of goofy.  About a year ago, I got a chain letter just like the
 one below.  And now I'm getting it again.  After receiving the first, I wrote
 something about it.  I'm attaching a link to what I wrote.  Yes, I wrote it
 under another name.

http://makropulos.blogspot.com/2010/06/hopefulness-of-chain-letter.html


Yes, you can ignore this message, and quite frankly, I don't care if you do.
 Or you can read it and send it on.  Include my link, if you want to.  And
 know, please, that you are in my room of eight."









Pass it on.
Pass it on.

The Alchemy of Tears

(alchemicaldiagrams)

When seeking out the formula for gold,

Faust, in his blindness,

overlooked the soul.

Its insubstantial quickness

as it grinds

against the course rough edges

of the mind

produces just the proper

substantiation,

                          that

when applied to physical

limitation,

produces the balm of the priceless:

                  

                                            tears.

My tears fall

for the boundless hopes

I've borne

that were cut short

by the miserable, measurable truths

of living among men (and women).

My tears                 Yours, too:

            delicate, 

          painful

&

          fleeting.

They are the priceless

elements we humans

all

have the capacity to produce:

                   the miracles of

                       compassion

                                   loss

                                   and

                                  love

that help us to live on.

( buriedinwater )

(The tiny blue teardrop above comes from the following website,
http://webbyfun.lbbhost.com/Homepage/teardrops.html
and should include the language:
"I put this teardrop here to show my support for all the abused children of the world."




The poem above 
is mine.)

The Audacity of Hopefulness

Hi.

Sorry I've been away for a little while.

The other day I was getting dressed,

and I looked down at the books that were

 holding my bedroom door open,

and this one was on top:

Audacity/Wikipedia

Audacity/Amazon

That's right,

it's been holding my door open,

for nearly a year.

And as I saw it there, I felt a pang

of grief and regret,

because I really do believe that Barack Obama is both 

hopeful and audacious,

underneath it all,

and then I wrote the following post:

I want to live in the country where

Barack Obama is president, and nobody

criticizes him for not fixing

in two years

the mess made by all the presidents we've had

for thirty years

(give or take a decade or two)

I want to live in a place where people

are only held accountable for what 

they themselves have done, 

no more, no less,

and where

they are not judged for what they haven't done,

when they haven't finished the job

yet.

I want to live in a land

of reason and clarity

and truth,

not to mention a good sense of humour,

a place where, if someone lies,

their nose turns red,

or their hair falls out,

and everyone immediately knows

they are a liar.

Sometimes I think:

the worst offense that somone can commit

in civil society 

is to lie.

wikipedia

Nietzsche "On Truth & Lying in a Nonmoral Sense

I saw a movie a couple years ago, with Ricky Gervaise in it;

it was called The Invention of Lying.

The friend who was with me really didn't like it;

as many of the critics seem

to have not liked it; but

I did like it.

It treated the whole issue of lying

like a parable, and the end conclusion

appeared to be a few things:

a) people are gullible

b) you can tell people anything, and they'll 

believe you.

Of course, it also begins in a world

where all people are truthful; 

indeed, at the beginning of the film,

no one can even conceive of someone who lies.

And in this world of comical honesty,

a character discovers the power of 

falsehood.  If you live in a world

where people are honest, and you lie, well,

they'll believe you.

The liar in the movie becomes

famous and walthy, espeically when he

lies to his dying mother

and tells here there's a heaven,

when he really has no clue

what comes after this life.

The film really celebrates

the concept of 

"what you don't know won't

hurt you,"  and that's just fine

and dandy, as long as it's something simple

like the tooth fairy.

The film is correct

on many points:

people are fundamentally

gullible and truthful,

so you can indeed lie to them

and gain power of them

to varying degrees.

And for awhile, in the world of lies,

all is fine, while the lie

maintains the impression of a perfect world,

that is,

until the lie is revealed to be a lie.

And then he or she or those

who have been lied to

is shattered,

and may even start lying, too,

and society itself becomes a maze

of mirrors and poses where

pretense is the only way to survive.

And the only way to see the truth,

is by distorting it.

I'm sorry, but I"m here to declare,

we've reached 

- and bypassed -

our critical limit of lying.

Only the truth can set us free now.

mmwindowart

The biggest lie

you can tell

is the lie you tell

to your inner self,

and the lies you tell

to the ones who love you,

and whom you love,

too.

Start by telling the truth to them.

Noah: a channelling

I wake up in the morning,

numbed by winter's chill,

listening to the news

of shootings, revolutions, starvings, floods,

etc,  etc.,

and I think:

Are we there yet?

Is it Armageddon

yet?

How far do we have to go

before it's sheer hell

on earth?

We don't really have to destroy it,

we just have to destroy

each other --

and in the last
desperate gasp
of humankind as it extinguishes
itself
we'll see it:

the end of time

as we know it

because TIME,

as we know it,

is time.

Outside of our perception of time,

there is no time.

(My cats have no conception of time;

they siddle up to the table

when I sit down to eat, 

and not because they know

it's "dinner time."

I eat at all times,

and they

are always not too far

away.  They're dictated by pack,
not temporal,

instincts)

So once we destroy

each other,

our conception of time

will be gone

(though earth will go on, and regenerate.)

And the humans who will live on

are the ones who don't give a damn;

they're the ones who pay attention not

to the rat race created by humans, not

to Wall Street, or the New York Times

or not even Aljazeera

;

the humans who will live on

are the ones who don't give a damn;

they only pay attention

to the earth,

and they see the signs

and build a boat

(or a flying machine,

or a solar paneled house)

or whatever the earth seems to be telling them

that they need to build.

This is all we really have to do

to survive

as a race and as a planet;

just stop

being such stupid bastards

and killing 

each other so much.

( 5magazine )

`

Let's imagine this:

for a second:

Jesus will come again . . . 

in 2012 if we --

                  all humanity --

could make peace before then.

Because if we all make peace,

and

if we find a way to live

with one another,

Jesus will not have to 

make a journey,

S(H)e will 

be here.

~ ~

( APOD 11/27/2011 )

~ ~

Let's imagine this,

for a second:

what if 

there really is to be

a spectacular planetary alignment

on 

12/21/2012,

and that alignment produces,

(imagine,

for a minute)

no explosion,

but instead, 

a mere glasslike,

placid

timelessness

,

and in that glasslike

placed

timelessness,

we were challenged

to look at ourselves

in a mirror

for an eternity.

(After about 2 weeks of looking in that kind of mirror, believe me, you would start seeing your

flaws,

and, well into eternity,

they would be all that you would see.)

And imagine this:

the image we must face,

is only us, individually, no one

else is anywhere to be seen, just

you                      

and

you                        

and

you                          

and

you                           

and

                         I

each held before the mirror

of eternity,

                                      for a eternity.

The thing is:
now we have the choice to decide
what we will see
in that moment

of facing the mirror

of individual and communal extinction:

we can either have an individual & communal

image of hatred and loathing

for eternity

                     or

we can have an individual and communal

image of caring and forgiving

 for eternity

or we could have an eternal image

of something in between.

Imagine

that.

 ( experience project )

 We,

we happy humans

are the species

who were given the job

to go further

                        and further and further

and with each step forward, we --

both as individual 

and as a group --

get more perfect.

Like Tiammat and her youth,

each generation

perfects the features

of its generator.

Imagine that:

it's just the nature

of the human

beast:

Each generation is meant to be

better than the last.

and if they're not,

it's stasis,

even

self destruction.

Like an eternal winter.

Imagine that.

~ ~ ~

I woke up this morning

numbed                                     

by winter's chill, listening

to the news

of shootings, explosions, jihad,

illness, and homelessness,

and I wonder:

are we there yet?

Is it Armageddon

yet?

The Hopefulness of the Chain Letter

1.

I got this e-mail the other day from an old friend.

It went like this:

Dear XXXX,  
You are my 8 women, who if we were in a room together, 
could accomplish anything we set our minds to. 
So read the directions below and send this to 7 more women. 
I count as the eighth woman. 
 
I am supposed to pick 7 women who have touched my life and who 
I think might participate. 
I think that if this group of women were ever to be in a room together, 
there is nothing that would be impossible. 
I hope I chose the right six... Please send this back to me.

Remember to make a wish before you read the quotation.. 
That's all you have to do. 
There is nothing attached. 
Just send this to six women and let me know what happens on the fourth day. 
Sorry you have to forward the message, 
but try not to break this, please. Did you make a wish yet? 
If you don't make a wish, it won't come true. This is your last chance to make a wish!
 
 

My room of 8

May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

Now, I really hate this kind of e-mail.

I hate this kind of e-mail for a couple reasons:

1.  I'm usually about the fourth in the chain, and by

the time it gets to me, the formatting of the actual

special little message is so messed up, I can't even read

the thing.  In the case of this message, it ran way off 

the page, and I had to scroll scroll scroll to read the

entire sentence.

2.  I often get them from people I haven't heard from in 

awhile, but they're people I care about.  So I want to let 

them know that I really value being one of the eight women

in her room of eight women, and the most efficient way to do that

is to send this message to eight women (one being her)

so she knows she's in my room of eight women, too.

3.  But then I leave six of my friends in the same quandary.

4. There's this question of something special, perhaps even magical

that will happen after four days.  Now, I happen to believe

in magic.

Or at least I'm hopeful.

So there's this tantalizing possibility

that in four days,

I'll discover something very 

mysterious and magical.

And part of me wants to believe

that that is possible.  When in 

actual fact, what I'll discover is

which of my friends is sucker enough

to send this on.

Probably one.

In fact, she did it already, because

I fell for it.

In a moment of weakness, I chose

that lucky seven.

(or should it be six?--

if I'm one and the friend

who sent me the message

is two, then it should be 

six.  Yes, it should be six.)

Whatever.

I did it.

And one of my friends

did it too

already.

3.

Well,

the morning after I sent this poorly formatted message

to seven lucky people, six of whom probably hit

"delete" without even bothering to read the thing,

I started thinking about it, 

and thinking about

why the heck I sent that

to my sister-in-law.

I actually really do like her.

And then, I started thinking,

as I am prone to do,

I started thinking about earlier versions of these

messages:

the chain letter.

(chainletterevolution an interesting article!)

I remember the first one I ever got,

when I was about eight years old.

I think it was from my cousin, S, and 

she sent this tightly folded sheet of 

notebook paper, scrawled in pencil, telling me to 

copy it and send it

to twelve other people.  The bulk of the letter

was a list of fifteen names, with my cousin's

at the bottom.  The letter told me to copy the letter, with all the names except the first one,

and make sure my name was

at the bottom of the list.

I was then supposed to take that name that I deleted from the top of the list

and send that person at the top of the list

one dollar.

The hope is that,

if I sent this letter to the right people,

they would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would send it to the right people,

who would

ultimately

all send me a dollar

and I'd be able to retire at the age of 

sixteen.

My mother

saw the letter, and said:

"don't you dare send that letter to twelve people,

and don't you dare send her a dollar.  I'm 

going to tell S's mother (my mother's sister)

that she's sending those awful things out."

Awful things.

"The only person who is going to make money off of that

will be your cousin, and she'll make a dollar,

off of you!"

That's what my mother said.

And I sure as hell wasn't going

to be a fool

and send my stinking cousin

a dollar.

So I threw the thing out,

with my mother watching,

before she marched to the phone

and called her sister.

From that point on,

I considered

chain letters to be

vile,

a thing of the devil,

designed to deceive

pathetic people

like me.

~

Moms seem to be central figures in Chain Letters, and they tend to be

the voices of reason:

I'm not sure when this happened,

but mom has been replaced:

the Federal Government has 

acknowledged that people who trust

are fools, and that people who start

chain letters are scam artists.

They made it illegal;

here's a message about that

from the 

Federal Trade Commission.

4.

Clearly,

there is an evil side to chain letters,

if chain letters

threaten

death to your mother

death to you

death to your dog

traffic accidents

bad dreams

whatever. . . .

It appears that the internet has caused 

the proliferation

of this genre

and no one is ever

asked to send

a dollar

to anyone anymore,

you just have to send the thing on

or be scared shitless.

That particularly type of chain letter

tends to target young people

who are easily scared shitless.

Now, why isn't there a law about that?

5.

The thing about Chain Letters

and our distrust of them

is that in our society,

there is the belief

that there are, essentially,

two different kind of people:

the scammers

and

the scammed;

aka

the wise

and 

the stupid;

aka

the deceitful

and

the trusting;

aka

the evil

and 

the good

and the two twains shall never meet,

and people never change.

This is a fundamental premise in our society.

And people are, either by choice or by nature,

one or the other,

and

if you send a dollar to the first name on the chain letter,

you will surely 

never receive a dollar.

You're better off

not sending the dollar and therefore not receiving the dollar,

rather than sending the dollar and being made to look like

a fool.

6.

Still, I look back

at the message I sent

to seven of my most forgiving friends,

and I am struck by the hope in it

a hope not too different

from my youthful hope

as I contemplating sending a dollar to someone I didn't know.

That message promised me something

magical,

something special.

And I think:

what is the most magical thing that could happen?

I won't get a penny,

nor will any of my friends,

but perhaps,

if I could throw aside my distrust --

indeed, if distrust was not the norm --

in four days,

my inbox will have six or seven messages in it

from six or seven women who would put me 

in their room of eight,

and each of those messages would have

the names of seven other women;

and each of those women would get e-mails

in four days

with seven more friends of friends.

And all these women let themselves think, for a little while at least:

May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

We would create an endless chain of women

all living in a virtual place called

our collective brains,

and if we all worked together,

we might actually accomplish

something peaceful 

and good.

We'd be wise, too,

to invite men, as well.

Men who won't break the chain.

Inherent in this type of chain letter

is a belief 

that there is a potential magic

in collective action

when that action involves

positive thought,

or thought that is grounded

unselfishly, 

in love.

Now that's worth more than a dollar.

~

At the heart of the chain letter,

even the evil chain letter,

are some essential human

emotions:

hope and fear, and

they are two sides

of the same coin

that we tender as we

plan for the future.

We hope for more money;

we fear someone will 

kill us

before we get more money,

and we fret over that

and then

we do nothing;

and nothing happens to us.

Society has a job

to keep us from

deceiving and destroying one another,

but that job would be easier

if people took the risk

to trust, 

to show love,

to love 

and 

be loved.

Generally,

for most people, 

the concept of doing those things

is pretty geeky, stupid, weak

gullible, naive,

when in actual fact,

to do those things

takes the most superhuman strength 

one can imagine.

And that could

have the power

to make magic.

Naive,

young, even,

but look at me,

after 424 years

of watching people

deceive,

lie,

kill,

rape,

abuse,

tease,

torment,

etcetcetcetc,

this is the only thing that makes sense.