Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category
Signposts — Image by kenne
Life is easy.
Why
make it
so hard —
it’s easy,
don’t kill
the time
you have
to give.
Look around
you will see
good times
and lonely times,
so ride
the blues train
down life’s
slippery slopes
looking
for what is
just around
the bend,
cause baby
it’s a wild world —
beware
and live your
fairy tales,
for falling
out of love
will not
set you free —
keep looking
for the signposts.
— kenne
The trail begins merciful,
level and wide for
our first steps.
The sun greeting us
rising above the mountains
warming the morning air.
Our path is straight
into the canyon
through winter’s brown.
Soon the trail narrows
turning left, then right
with carved rock stairs.
The pace slows as
fellow hikers snake-line
up the steep slopes.
As we near the first ridge,
the sky seems smaller,
staying alert with each step.
Hiking the lower canyon walls,
soon we reach the first saddle,
we break for the vistas.
Seeing no bighorn sheep,
only white rocks mistook
for their white rumps.
Climbing up and
around the next ridge,
water flowing from its top.
A steep drop in the trail
beckons thoughts of yet
another ridge to climb.
Reaching a thousand feet
above the trailhead before
hiking down to the pools.
Winter rains have provided
plenty of water for breathtaking
views of the pools and falls.
Spring break will bring
students’ cliff jumping into
the deeper Romero Pools.
I share a silent moment
above the pools with
only my shadow companion.
— kenne
Images by kenne
CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL PHOTOS OF HIKING ROMERO POOLS TRAIL, JANUARY 2015.
Invoking the Mystery By Giving Of One’s Time — Computer Painting by kenne
(The following was first posted on September 26, 2009, on this blog. In the process of writing about my dear friend, Linda Ricketts, who passed away recently, I was doing a tab search on this blog when this posting was among those identified. So much has happened in the intervening years that make the premise of “Invoking the Mystery” even more critical and timely, especially with the Supreme Court’s deeply flawed 2010 decision in Citizens United.)
The book club to which I belong, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” comprises members, all-be-it old educated professionals, males who pride themselves in being specialists in many areas, but with age accepting the reality of being skilled in few. Mostly politically right of center seeking to help me see the light, convinced that those with opposing views are also conducting their act of ministry. Wrong, oh truth sayers! Although I may debate a position, I don’t want everyone to agree with me, and I want each person to think. That’s why I selected Life Inc. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff for September reading. (Click here to see Rushkoff on Colbert Nation.) It is a book that can help people better understand many of today’s economic and financial issues, which Rushkoff feels are not a problem of reality or nature but a problem of design. Are corporations evil? No! Neither are the people who work within their controlling environments. Instead, there is a convincing case to be made for redesigning a poorly designed invention of our culture by identifying non-market ways of developing gift-exchange institutions.
We humanize the corporation, so much so that many who may take a road-trip vacation tend to seek out a McDonald’s in which to eat rather than going to a local establishment. If this is your comfort level, you don’t want to be traveling between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley. According to Stephen Von Worley on the Weather-Sealed blog, this is where you will be hurtin’ if you suffer a Big Mac Attack.
Most of us are products of the corporate mentality and lifestyle. I have worked hard to get to an age where I’ve collected enough assets to make money by having money. Even though recognizing that my life and my fortune are controlled and manipulated by our corporate state, I’m now working hard to become part of the gift economy –- doing something for nothing and stop behaving like corporations who “express charitable and community impulses from afar.” A gift economy is a society where goods and services are exchanged without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
“By donating to charities in the same manner as our corporate equivalents, we succumb to the proxy system that dissocializes in the first place.” Instead, we can start reclaiming what has been lost by accepting that small is the new big and that through a highly networked world, we can begin making local impacts that it spreads. Rushkoff gives many examples of local, sustainable efforts that effectively trickle up in profound ways. The more we network doing something for nothing, the more one voluntary act encourages another. The act of giving is a social phenomenon that should be a fundamental life skill. As Walt Whitman wrote in Carol of Words: “The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.”
Rushkoff’s belief that commerce has been separated from the people who are doing the stuff and his reference to the gift economy brought to mind Lewis Hyde’s excellent book, The Gift – Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Written over twenty-seven years ago, his insight and guidance are even more apropos given today’s economic and financial challenges. Here is how Hyde summarizes The Gift:
“The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace. That includes artistic practice, which the book is mostly about, and pure science, spiritual life, healing, and teaching…. Therefore, this book is about the alternative economy of artistic practice. For most artists, the actual working life of art does not fit well into a market economy. This book explains why and builds out on the alternative, which is to imagine the commerce of art to be well described by gift exchange.”
In his chapter titled “The Labor of Gratitude,” Hyde uses the folk tale “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” a tale of a gifted person, as a model of the labor of gratitude. In the tale, the shoemaker makes his first pair of shoes to dress the elves, which is the last act in his labor of gratitude. When Hyde speaks of labor, he refers to human endeavors such as “writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms,” as distinguished from “work,” that we do by the hour. Labor has its own schedule. Things are accomplished, but often we as if wasn’t us who did them. This is always a bit mysterious. It is the mystery Federico Garcia Lorca was referring to when he wrote at the bottom of one of his drawings he did in Buenos Aires — “Only mystery enables us to live.” Invoking the mystery is to gather the Duende.
Suppose we value the mystery and the categories of human enterprise that invoke the mystery, such as family life, spiritual life, public service, pure science, and artistic practice, none of which operates well in the corporate marketplace. In that case, we must find non-corporate ways to organize and support them.
— kenne
Capturing the Moment. . . For Now — Computer art by kenne
All bubbles will burst
Fear as to when
Creating a bubble for now.
Yesterday has gone
Greed wears the
mask of reality.
Tomorrow arrived
A day too early for most —
It is better now.
A new adventure
Following the pendulum —
Soon gone for now.
Returning in time
With new values
replacing the old.
In a new harmony
Swinging to-and-fro —
A fix for now.
kenne
Sabino Canyon Scene — Computer Painting by kenne
Life is not to be passed by in a rush.
— Tom Turner
*****
Progress is measured
by richness and intensity of experience –
by a wider and deeper apprehension
of the significance and scope of human existence.
*****
Art is an indecent exposure of the consciousness.
— Herbert Read
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall — Image by kenne
Selfies
Before the iPhone
and selfies,
there was the
self-portrait.
Children drew stick-figures
of themselves,
and still do.
Artisits painted
reflected images
of themselves,
and still do.
The images of life
we find most
fascinating
are of ourselves —
mirror, mirror
on the wall . . .
Tell me your stories
of unknown pleasures
as seen in the eyes of others.
— kenne
Joy Otrey and Kenne Turner On Butterfly Trail In The Santa Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne
Keep practicing the art of living.
Like any art, the art of living
will evaporate if you don’t stay involved.
We often hear the statement,
“If you don’t use, you lose” —
a principle most obvious
in our physical bodies.
Spend three years sitting down,
when the three years are up,
you won’t be able to walk.
The same applies to any skill.
Stop using your
creative imagination
and it will evaporate.
Stop stimulating
and challenging your brain,
it will slowly deteriorate.
Stop caring,
and your conscience can switch off.
Look for opportunities to stay involved.
Not only should you stay involved,
but the quality of involvement
can produce a better understanding of reality.
None of us are immune
to the influence of our own world –
our friends, our family, and the books we read
are constantly shaping our thoughts and our feelings.
Life is what our thoughts make of it.
George Bernard Shaw
won a Nobel Prize when nearly seventy;
Ben Franklin
produced some of his best writings age eighty-four;
Pablo Picasso
put brush to canvas right through his eighties.
Isn’t the issue how old we think we are,
not how old we are?
Keep practicing the art of living.
“May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
when the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
and may you song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.” *
— kenne
( *from Bob Dylan’s song, “Forever Young )
Texas Johnny Brown at Shakespeare’s Pub, Houston — Image kenne
We all need the blues
To better understand life
All its ups and downs.
— kenne
Bryan Lee at The Corner Pub, Conroe — Image by kenne
Morning Along The Colorado River — Image by kenne
The river’s water
A source of life in the west,
The Dawn of the Past.
— kenne
“Manly Legs In Manly Shorts” — Image by kenne
The latest WSJ men’s fashion headline:
“Men’s Cargo Pants Turn Refined for Spring:
No longer weighted down by its sloppy,
collegiate reputation.”
Seems that a Massachusetts bro
was mourning over, “retiring bigass
suburban dad cargo shorts.
Godspeed, old friend.”
Sounds like a personal problem
for those who walk The Halls of Ivy,
not the hiking trails of the
great outdoors.
“But there may be life in those pockets yet,”
proclaims the WSJ with a photo
of smooth-faced young men in their
“debonair cargo pants.”
Give thanks, there is a god after all,
but “with real New York attitude” —
this god’s east of the Hudson River.
Give thanks!
— kenne
(This one is for my hiking buddy, Jeff B.)
“Magic” — Image by kenne
“Everything tells me
that I am about to
make a wrong decision,
but making mistakes
is just part of life.
What does the world want of me?
Does it want me to take no risks,
to go back to where I came from
because I didn’t have the courage
to say “yes” to life?”
— Paulo Coelho
Incoming Sunlight — Image by kenne
Insolation Controls in the Age of Anthropocene
(Understanding Global Warming)
Anthropocene
newly coined
unknown to
Joe the . . . ,
a new human
condition
argued as
invalid
only to be
based
on the invalid
alignment of
insolations
maxima and minima
questioning the new
condition
of our condition
— kenne
My 2007 BMW 3-Series coupé next to an intruder! — Image by kenne
TURNER’S LAW
If you park your car far away from other cars in a parking lot, some asshole in a pick-up truck will park next to you. Go figure!
“Half-full glass of water view: Maybe it’s just a thoughtful asshole — whatever, it’s still my law.
kenne
“Sharing The Moment” — Image by kenne
All time is created equal,
but we don’t use it equally.
Some are livin’ on Tulsa time,
others in a New York minute.
My time is your time,
but it is not mine to give.
You can’t give away
something that isn’t yours.
…unless
you share the moment.
— kenne
Image by kenne
Rodents and their tails
some short, some long, some bushy,
some cute, some ugly.
— kenne
- Of Mice and Men (arrowbugblog.wordpress.com)
Life is easy.
Why
make it
so hard —
it’s easy,
don’t kill
the time
you have
to give.
Look around
you will see
good times
and lonely times,
so ride
the blues train
down life’s
slippery slopes
looking
for what is
just around
the bend,
cause baby
it’s a wild world —
beware
and live your
fairy tales,
for falling
out of love
will not
set you free —
keep looking
for the signposts.
— kenne
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