Ideas

Yesterday, I had an idea. Not a great one, but an idea that I would do something to prepare myself for a longer term task. I would pack my things in advance of a departure.
I found a fairly large suitcase, which would accommodate the materials I needed for this voyage of sorts. Clothing, Camera, personal items, and some electronic gizmos. After all, part of my work in life, has been to document moments. Aural and visual.

So I packed. From a faulty memory. Once again, I’d left out several items that I would need. This time it was a book for writing my poetry, my journal, my lyric book. Those sheets of paper bound together that comprise my closer held existence within its covers. And I forgot to pack my vitamins. My idea was pretty good. Prepare. My ability to store the details of that idea, were not so good. It had a mental form, but not anywhere near the substance I needed, to make it work to completion. What it lacked, was a written outline.

Ideas are like candy, sweets, as it were, without substance in fact. You can formulate an idea and it will become concrete in your mind, and perhaps your companion’s mind, but it remains a picture, without substance. Some people can create an idea so strongly, that people around them will see and feel the object, as if it WERE real, that is the domain of the mind, only.

How can this be? How can one person, relate an idea to another, and it is so powerful, that the ears of the receiver, transform that idea into a real, living, often vibrating with vitality, object? Some people are so filled with ideas, that they overflow onto other people, and once in a while, one of those people will connect with them or their ideas and go on to create those ideas.

First let’s ask, where these or any ideas, come from?

Secondly, what makes an idea seem real?

Thirdly, at what point does an idea become a solid bit of creation in your mind, so that the nails, and plastic and wood of that idea, are the next logical step?

Ideas, in their purest form, come from a fertile and creative mind….like a farmer’s field, that has good dark, brown loam in it, a mind draws upon the nutrients of its soil to grow things. Some are weeds, which grow quickly, but are of no use in a production or harvest, and others….those that bring forth fruit.

The fruit are, or is, as it were, useful in our careers, our hobbies, or even help other people. Some people have so many ideas, that their minds seem to hold rapid and concurrent multiple conversations. They can think outside the box as if it were the norm. And they tend to seek artistic forms of employment. A mind that is the milk and meat of existence, provokes both support and opposition, oft-times to the same idea, from vastly different people and perspectives. But creative and original minds find not only good in objects that the rest of us pass by, but good in people that we also pass. One person’s handicap, is another’s specialty. A man born without arms, learns to play the guitar with his feet, and plays one day for a world leader. His drawback became his primary creative force. All he needed was the idea and incipient desire to succeed. He created, within the mind, the world that he needed to make his plan work. And it did.

Our minds do generate the worlds in which our ideas would flourish. We create, not only the idea, but dozens of them simultaneously, surrounding the original seed with the soil it needs to grow. It seems real, because we built a world, a cosmos to sustain it.

Your idea, my idea, may well be bits and figments of our own imaginations, and only exist in the virtual world, so much like Second Life…and simply die the death of forgetfulness, to be replaced by another seed. But then, once in a while, one of those ideas, becomes a macrocosm, a single flame, germinating. When and why does this happen?

Each of us sees merit to one idea or another, a big picture view. We see that idea in terms of the materials available to build it. And sometimes, materials that don’t exist. A bridge, a museum, concert hall. A beautiful car, violin, guitar, a wheelchair for a marathon, a cure for breast cancer. We take that idea and begin to dig out the pieces of puzzle that will construct that idea into being, and the world in which it will collect meaning, and that seed, that cosmos, begins to take form.

Other people now see it. It is not necessary for anyone but you, to believe in that idea. But you have to be willing, cognizant of the great obstacles you must surmount, if your idea is to come to reality, to endure, ridicule, hard examination, and mountains of obstacles. Prototypical or mass produced, you idea must capture the imagination you have, from others, for its future to have a chance.

It it were not for ideas, we would not have light at the darkest hours, transportation at supersonic speeds, delicacies from around the world, nor the keyboard, on which I so effortlessly type this essay. Ideas have been the backbone of progress for the last 7,000 years of recorded history. If we are to succeed in the coming years, ideas must flow freely, without constraint, or we will regress as we have in times past. The destruction of the library of Alexandria and other more recent suppression of men’s thoughts are highly recognized examples. Ideas, however foreign to our way of thinking, are necessary to balance one side or the other on an intellectual playing field. Time has a way of even-ing things out, so that ideas that have merit, will get to the surface, and become part of history. Part of our lives, useful and productive.

Language

For some thirty five years, a portion of my life has been linked to, and a practice of, foreign languages. From 1966, when my family first attended the University of Oklahoma, sleeping in antiquated dorms, cooled only with fans, to this day, I have been a part of a group, that studied language as means of relating between humans.

The study of language, is so complex, that I have met linguists who have worked on one language group for most of their lives. We think of objects like sheep and thread to be so common that we don’t give the definition of either, a second thought. For the Mayaruna Indians in the Amazon Basin, however, the sheep was as foreign as the car, before 1975 or so. To zero in on this group, the Mayarunas are a small tribe of indigenous people to the Amazon for at least 500 years. Before that, history is both ambiguous and unknown.

Linguists look for patterns in language, as well as parallel patterns between the languages, to try to find points of commonality, sometimes to provide links between language groups, sometimes to establish historical points, other times to get meanings to words and phrases.

One phrase the Mayaruna’s had, was a lengthy description for a picture of a sheep. The word or rather phrase, was nearly 30 seconds long and went something like this…”the animal which has four legs, two ears, a nose, an eye, perhaps two, a small tail, is rather simple minded, and has a lot of curly hair, which can be the color of the clouds or the corn when it is ready for harvest” That…was a sheep to a Mayaruna, until at least 1975.

Even amongst technologically adept languages, there is disparity in meaning because of where the language is spoken and how life progressed in that geography. Even adjacent countries have developed different words for the same thing. Lift for elevator, lorrie for truck, Truck for camio’n, then camion in Spanish, to camion in French, and camion in Spanish to caminhao in Portuguese. There are even differences in European Portuguese compared to Brazilian Portuguese, just as American English differs from British English.

Conceptually, the gap widens, when one attempts to describe scenes that are common to one region and foreign to another, even in the same country and language. Language is so intricate and complex, that the people who study it, are mostly bald! Ok, I exaggerated that one. I remember seeing linguists working into the early morning hours on translations of school materials and parts of the Bible to one of these remote languages.

New Guinea, with all of it’s islands and isolation, is divided into language families, because the count of distinct languages, is in the hundreds. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_map.asp?name=pg

The problem for linguist in any place, be the scientist English, French or Korean, is that each of the mother tongues of the translators, is also at a comparative disadvantage against its sister language.

Language is only pure to the group that bore it to life. For anyone who comes in from the outside, language translation, is an approximation of definition. Words in one language have a regional meaning that is different from any other region in the whole world.

Yes, in English, means different things in the US, whether you are on a farm, or in a city. A farmer with say yes to a banker who loans him money and asks for a promise to pay it back. The farmer says yes and means, ‘I will promise to pay you all this money and the interest, so help me God”. The City person will ask for a contract, because he doesn’t trust the banker, not to over charge him, and the banker will ask for a contract, so that if the borrower lapses on a payment, the banker has recourse to get some value out of the city person for that money he loaned.

Language and it’s use, is a mighty tool. A precious jewel, and a gift for all reasons.
God may well have done us both a favor and cursed us, when He divided us in to language groups at the ancient tower of Babel. I dare say it was a good thing, because it has caused nations to work hard, not only at understanding each other, but to explore the universe and give us meaning to life.

Thank God for language! It is a far better thing I do, to speak with humility, than to grunt in greed.

Community

Community

The way I title this, does not reflect so much on a group of friends so much as a group of people. I included this shot from my visit to Stonehenge recently, to illustrate the point. Stonehenge is one of the oldest momunents to commumity and unity in the world. Shrouded in symbolism and history, before the dawn of writing, Stonhenge provided a link to our past, which is so far distant from our present, that we will study it for many years to come, in order to find out the extent of this community's unity, purpose, and....perhaps why they are no more....

One can have a sense of community right here on I Thank You. A powerful sense of friendship and affection exists here. As I contemplated who this might be about, and the profound sense of thanks I have for what I have experienced in the last month, several things, several ideas, and an overarching principle began to take shape in my mind. There are patterns of principles which stay true through out the history of man, and those which come and go, based on the applicability to a time, space and culture.

Community is an enduring idea, from which several branches of philosophy have sprung, including schools of governing, organizational togetherness, symbology, language, and lines of thinking, even cultural cohesivity. There is a bedrock of commanlity throughout the history of all mankind, which provided the impetus and framework for community for thousands of years. It could be slavery, or the advancement of civilization, two opposites, which demonstrate the importance of the idea of unity in community, if not the commonness of either idea, or any between those two extremes. Community is, if dissected to it’s base components, a unity of perspective, thought, and purpose, between two or more individuals….most likely, in a larger group, as the two individuals, perhaps long ago in history, sold the ideas they had to others, who nodded in agreement and joined minds.

And that is the premise of what I am going to present today. The internet, is a vast diverse, and huge community. But even though the feeling is strong between members of various Internet communities, it is not what I am driving toward or proposing. And there are now thousands of them. People who would love to live near each other, spend time together and enjoy the presence of each other. Internet communities have largely replaced the physical communities of our towns and neighborhoods. And that is the community I want to address.

I recently had the extreme privilege of an extended trip to Lisbon, Portugal and then on to Newbury England. What I learned, observed and participated in, brought to my scope of learning, a principle that I shall not forget. The people who taught me about this, were perhaps not seeing themselves at teachers, for we all enjoyed other activities, such as parties, photography, laughter, and even tears. But the deeper sense of fellowship I enjoyed, came as a further blessing, that spun off the original intent of my visit. That was merely to meet the people who have enriched my life over the last year or two, and to get training, in England on some specialized equipment. But to a mind that constantly inquires, is never satisfied with the learning I have, I was and am in perpetual and sometimes agonizing pursuit of knowledge.

Community. There is a general disintegration throughout the world, of a SENSE of community in our neighborhoods, towns and cities, which is gradually pulling us apart as a world of people, most of whom have the same or very similar goals. Improving life for our families. There is more, depending on the strata of life you work and play in, and the mind that you posses to drive your thoughts. Each of us longs for communication, further than the keyboards we use to type emails. But the indescribable friendships that develop between members of this world community, are only possible because the souls of the people long for more than a lifetime of internet chat. A handshake, a hug, kisses to the cheeks. Meals together, face to face conversation, laughter in dining rooms, time spent looking at photographs together. This is the stuff of not only friendship, but community.

I sat down two weeks ago, with two friends from Newbury, at a local pub, over a Shandy. The conversation that ensued, showed me the trend that I observed in the two cities I traveled through.

Pubs in England have existed for hundreds of years. Used to be, they were for men only. The rise and fall of economic times, the passage of life, politics, and work, all flowed through the pubs. Men would gather there, across the English Commonwealth, to discuss and partake. About a generation ago…a change took place that nearly destroyed the central meeting place of these men. The economy took such a down turn, that pubs which had been open since the 1500’s, were starting to close. What the towns and villages around them did, to bring on a change, to revive that ancient system of gathering, was to open the pub to the families. What this meant, was that the former men only gatherings were now open to children and wives as well.

I watched for 3 and a half weeks, through many visits to pubs all over the area around Newbury, of the interaction between people of all ages, young to old, women to men, families with each other. What I observed, made a profound impression on me. The policy of opening a pub to the family unit, drew the community, the villages, the towns, the cities, together. The neighborhood was gathering.

I noticed the same phenomena in Lisbon, London, and it appears to be happening in other European cities as well…each with its own cultural version of community. Lunch meetings, regular assembly of local organizations around food.

A sense of community is a powerful way to bring support to the individuals of that neighborhood. In a very real and palpable sense, it is a philosophical watershed. Whatever the group that homogenizes around a table, a meal, a common interest or panoply of symbols, community is a return to the ancient idea that people together, means that a village, an organization, a town, will stick together. Cohesive in friendship, philosophy.

A sense of community is a powerful weapon of unity to a town. It brings many types of strength to that geographical location. Emotional, mental, political, physical. There is a power in unity that cannot be gained in any other way….

As I compare what I observe here in the US, to the communities surrounding Lisbon, Newbury, I hope that more people throughout the world begin to think about community as a WAY OF LIFE. Perhaps the paradigm has forever changed and we are bound by love and friendship through the internet. I have deep friendships through this medium. However, there is no substitute for a shared walk down a street, conversation across a supper table. No….community has taken on many wonderful forms, but let us not forget the groups that are around us…my neighbor, Otis, our new widow, and old, old friend Betty down the street, Orlando next door….The guys at our local Freemason’s lodge.

This site teaches us much about God, philosophy, friendship, love, and each other. Let us not forget the community in our towns. If we are to make positive change in our world, and I guarantee change comes, whether you like it or not, our proactive stance, our personal philosophy must be to effect change that will grow our communities, not disintegrate them. We must come together, to promote a world of peace, my dear friends.

It starts with you and me, and you, and you….and you.

Thank you so much, if you have endured and read this.

Philosophy Can Wait One More Day

Sometimes, the mere presence of thought, like quivering Jello, causes you to wonder if you've arrived at some state of genius when all that really transpired was the caffiene from your coffee is making its way through your arteries.

Something of an intellectual rise in blood pressure, with a concurrent jolt to the nervous system. You are relieved this morning, because the alternative would be facing another day with bloodshot eyes. That realization that, upon looking in the unforgiving mirror, you are having a bad hair day. Somewhere in the restless night, you lay up on a lock of hairstrands and make a natural curl. It is cute, but in the wrong spot, so you hold it down with a brush and spray "product" on it. Ahhhh, that's better.

Now discontent with the clock, you hurry through dressing, absentmindedly pulling a polo from the closet, a pair of jeans from the stack and hurredly pull them on. Oh, gosh. I think I gained 5 pounds from partying this weekend. I thought you could only gain that much in two weeks! Gracious! And I was going to be so svelte today at work! Inwardly, you snarl at youself. It's payback time!

Facing the front door with less than satisfaction with your appearance, body, and thoughts, you turn the knob, sigh, and head for the car. So far, not one worthy shred of philosophy has escaped your infertile soul, not one redeeming sigh has wormed its way to your brain. Even a crumb of unsorted letters would be a help right now. You could pretend to catalog your idea, approach it from several perspectives and further pretend to segment, analyze, tag and hypothesize this bit of linguistic doggerel into SOMETHING!

Monday, Monday. Am I even following the mantras of my own making, much less the reading I enjoyed Friday night in that lovely book? Today, following my angelic passage through a weekend of hedonistic pursuit of foods and laughter for my grandkids, I am burrowing through the mud of a barbequed and simmered aftermath. I took it to the limits, one more time!

I practiced a philosophy of Live for the moment and am now Suffering for the moment! I would not change the philosophy, just the excess. It appears that over the past week, I've indulged several spin-offs of my proscribed and essayed world. As I faced myself during this introspection, I discovered one other thing. I practice, if not enjoy, exfoliating something of my spirit within the safe confines of this group, this family. I leveraged one thing. Trust...here amongst the brothers and sisters of our community.

You now know. I ate too much! But it was sooooo good, and my granddaughters make me laugh and smile with their shy and sweet comments. A lovely weekend with not yet corrupted grandchildren. There will be time later to lament their behavior. For now, I love the wee tykes.

Philosophy can wait one more day :)

Azoia

The Rhythm of the Planet

It was an earth, unlike this one, today,
You could smell the pine, the lilacs that lay,
The towering cedars, old buffalo bones
Water falling from the ragged stones,
No contrails from jet exhaust,
No raspy chain saws, no sawdust,
Just the quiet of the forest breeze,
The soul’s poetry, if you please…
Just the heart beating to the rhythm of the planet

A Humble Scrap of Paper

My heart cries for the pain,
That I have caused you this day,
The pain of a love nearly in your hands
A song, a few words, trying to understand
On a humble scrap of paper, caressed before it went
Can you sense the love, Touch my face,
Feel my arms around and about you,
A few tender words and not much more,
Can you live day to day, just the love I give you,
Our friendship and love are all we have in truth.

Penny

Penny stood by the bed, a plastic smile on her face,
No rich man’s mistress, no Hyde Park Place,
Still she managed a bit of dignity of sorts,
Gazing into the afternoon haze, she wasn’t so coarse.

The fan cast its shadow on the headboard’s wall
Soft and still, the blades soothed not at all
She felt more alone this day then any this year
This day, her mother’s birthday, slowly her cheek wet with a tear.

Considering her life from school to career and this tenement room
The knocks on the door each night, faces blurred in this tomb
Spasms of nothing, fake sounds to please a man
None of THEM would care or understand.

Tomorrow would bring more of the same
A knock, shuffling, squeaking, no names
Eternal sadness, and creeping death in her soul
Saturday at the park, watch the families, completely alone

Oh, the light was beautiful this Sunday afternoon,
Her bosom rounded in this forgiving gloom
She’d pretend she was at the palace, some elegant night
While her soul continued its spiral downward in the half light

A Stop-off in Lima Peru!

It's hard to think of myself,
As anything but country,
Country may have been,
Nine thousand miles away,
But next door in my philosophy.

I grew up in a wood frame house,
Not much but screens in the windows,
Barefeet was safer than shoes,
So's you wouldn't have to deal with moss on your toes.

We could play outside,
In the cool sweet grass,
Often spy a half grown boa,
As curious and fearful as we were,

The land all around,
Flooded for three months a year,
Our seasons were divided by half
Never saw a leaf turn orange.

News was what you could hear,
From VOA or Radio Havana
Them fellers from Cuba are slick,
Talked just like most New Yorkers!

I turned seventeen,
Got a letter with fancy writin,
Some man in the army,
Making requests of my presence.

They even got that mixed up,
'Cause they sent the darn thing
With dry goods and tools,
On a ship from New Orleans.

My pap, he went to the city,
Got with the bigwigs at the government
They and the Marines on guard laughed
There ain't much love 'tween the Army and Marines.

Turned out that letter,
Well, it was six weeks late,
The army was threatenin',
Wonder how the Peruvians would feel,
About our army stampin' on Peruvian dirt.

Yep, I was nine thousand miles
Fur enough from New York City
And some beaurocrat and his soldiers,
Was coming to take me away!

The folks at the embassy called to Panama,
Told a general's aid there,
In some steamy, jungle office,
Nearby that big ole Canal

How dumb his general staff was,
Writin' letters and sendin' 'em by boat!
How do you figger you're goin' to arrest,
Some feller in the backside of nowhere.

It ain't your get up to invade some country
'Cause you messed up communications
You sent a military letter in a boat bound for Malayia
With a stop off in Lima, Peru!!

Honeysuckle Yellow

I’m down in the cool grass on a Friday afternoon,
Staring at the blossoms while the sun shines through
Honeysuckle blossoms, tastin’ airy wine
I don’t even care if it’s tresspassin’ vine

That pretty yeller flower, got a language all its own
Come on, play in my yard, its magic fallin' down
It crooks a petal at me, like a siren calls my name
My mind’s playin’ tricks, fantasies and games

Inviting and enticing
Like that honeysuckle wine
I can’t turn away, girl,
From that wild in your eyes

Honeysuckle yellow,
Honeysuckle vine,
Feeling so mellow,
Kissin's so fine,
Girl, you got to get up,
You take my heart and play.
You smell like honeysuckle,
We got to dance the night away

Back in Vietnam

I cried pretty quickly, though I tried to hold them back...
it's really hard to read, then you just lose track,
No one really notices, and if they did, I wouldn't care,
It's folks like you, who are kind enough to share.

Looking at one grave, and another's headstone
you wonder how these people died, being hugged or just alone,
I guess it doesn't matter, they're heroes all the same,
'tis a sacrifice, and very little fame

I often think how it would be different, were it me, 'stead of them,
no kids in this house, just a pretty woman with no man
would I have honored myself, my family, and gramma, yes ma''am
Had I gone to war, tramped the swamps, back in Vietnam

I can hear the rolling thunder, some rifles fired near the graves
for the fellows and women, who know up in Heaven, Jesus Saves
He protected one fellow who by providence was spared
And I write this in honor of the proud ones who dared
........Back in Vietnam