Aging by kenne
Archive for the ‘Philosophizing’ Category
Aging 2 comments
A beard teaches patience:
You learn what it means
Desert Existenial Moment Leave a comment
Desert Existential Moment — Image by kenne
Thinking is the fever we mistake for health.
We name the world to quiet it,
draw borders around what frightens us.
But fear is faithful—
it returns with every sunrise,
reminding us the map is not the mountain,
and reason only another storm
in the endless desert of being.
— kenne
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This Old Saguaro Bends 1 comment
Saguaro Cactus Down By The Wash — Image by kenne
Gravity Prevails
This old saguaro bends,
arms too heavy for the trunk,
two pressed down to the ground
like crutches that keep it standing.
I know the feeling — knees gone,
back stiff in the mornings,
each step a small negotiation
with the earth below.
They say the cactus has lived
a hundred years, maybe two —
having seen men die younger,
and still it leans,
still it finds a way
to stay upright,
though gravity has claimed
every inch of it.
I used to think
I could resist—
work harder,
drink less,
walk farther,
but the cactus
tells me the truth:
sooner or later,
you bow down.
What matters
is how long you keep
your arms in the air,
catching light,
refusing to be silenced,
before the earth
pulls you all the way down.
— kenne
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Life Is A Poem 10 comments
Love Birds — Photo-artistry by kenne
Life Is a Poem
Life is a poem, not written in lines,
but walked in winds, in roots, in signs—
in acts that echo canyon walls,
in leaps, in loss, in sudden calls.
Not crafted solely out of speech,
but in the places words can’t reach—
the morning’s hush, the falling rain,
the joy that rises after pain.
I move through days like verse unfolds,
not always neat, not always told.
Yet something vast moves deep within—
a rhythm wide as where I’ve been.
And so I walk, and so I try,
to live in tune with earth and sky—
each breath, each step, a sacred part
of that great poem beyond the heart.
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Further On (Up The Road) Leave a comment
Desert Sunset — Image by kenne
“Now I’ve been out in the desert, just doin’ my timeSearchin’ through the dust, lookin’ for a signIf there’s a light up ahead, well brother I don’t knowBut I got this fever burnin’ in my soul”
— from Further On (Up The Road) by Bruce Springteen
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There Is Nothing More Unqual . . . 1 comment
. . . Then The Equal Treatment Of Unequals.
Markus Schöberl
I first heard the phrase, ‘There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequals, ‘ from a professor in graduate school. It stuck in my head, and I’ve used it many times over the years. Some credit it to Aristotle. Regardless, it’s another way of saying ‘equity.’
People often use the terms “equity” and “equality” interchangeably when discussing matters related to race and social justice. While both terms have to do with fairness, there are key differences as the application of one over the other may lead to drastically different outcomes. While equality requires that everyone receives the same resources and opportunities, regardless of circumstances and despite any inherent advantages or disadvantages that apply to certain groups, on the other hand, equity considers the specific needs or circumstances of a person or group and provides the types of resources needed to be successful.
In today’s world, one hears the term equity often sandwiched between ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ DEI. DEI programs are much more than a passing fad. They are a framework for engaging an organization’s full strength. However, since Trump has taken over the GOP, such programs are being dismantled. That pace has been accelerated after the US Supreme Court handed down their decision striking down affirmative action this past June and casting many other diversity programs into doubt.
Don’t just listen to me; you can read more about DEI at Stanford Social Innovation Review and decide on its value.
— kenne
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Catching Up With The Week That Was, January 31, 2010 — Revisited 2 comments
Much has happened since going to Memphis to attend the International Blues Challenge. For starters, the NY Times Travel section was two weeks late in providing a good article, “Roll Over, Elvis. Meet Indie Memphis.” We now know we missed a lot.
While in Memphis, the US Supreme Court decision involving the Fair Elections Now Act works against the continued corporate takeover of our government. Are corporations evil? No! Neither are the people who work within their controlling environments. However, with the Supreme Court’s recent decision, it is becoming even more convincing that we need to redesign a poorly designed invention of our culture (corporations). I know this will not be an easy task since most of us are products of the corporate mentality and lifestyle. Still, if we value the mystery and categories of human enterprise, we must find ways to level the playing field. It is important to remember that there is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequals.
The great US historian and activist Howard Zinn, who helped change many Americans’ conscience, passed away this week at age 87. I first learned about Howard Zinn in the late sixties while still in the Army. During this time, frustrated by our continued involvement in Vietnam, I began keeping a scrapbook of articles, opt-ad columns, political cartoons, and photos. During this time, I first read the Zinn quote, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” which has since been carved into my very being. Although many have read his book, The People’s History of the United States, which gives voice to Native Americans, Blacks, women, immigrants, poor laborers, and others not covered in mainstream history, still many only got to know of him through the recent History Channel, The People Speak. A believer in democracy by the people, and in light of the above mentioned US Supreme Court decision, I share this Zinn quote: “If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”
This past week witnessed two examples of a great leader in action: President Barak Obama’s State of the Union speech and, two days later, his appearance before and discussion with the Republican Caucus. I urge you to make your own judgment by viewing the videos on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kYW_fgaDDM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOzyk9smcQ0
Lastly, this past week also so the death of J.D. Salinger. Not being a “reader” as a child and young adult, one of the first novels I read (all-be-it because I had to in senior English) in the late ’50s was Catcher In The Rye, and like so many young people of the time, it had a lasting impression. So many of us share a kinship with Holden and the phony world we live in.
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it if you want to know the truth.”
Tom TurnerThe opening line from Catcher in The Rye.
I will end this posting by sharing an email from my brother Tom:
The cat and I were laughing ( As in J.D. Salinger’s story. “The Laughing Man” ) about persons who repeatedly speak of “coming-out” with their BOOK explaining “IT” all….. And we thought of Theroux’s quote :
“A person becomes a writer because they are DEFICIENT.
They have problems;
They are “crazy”;
They have unhappy families…
They are “eccentric” and…
Not because they read a LOT of books;
but on the contrary…
Maybe they haven’t read enough books!!!!!!!!
There is a strong irrationality about THE WRITING LIFE…
Often a writer writes to maintain a need to be HUGGED and told that she is loved.”
t.
Thanks, Tom. We may be far from one another, but we remain on the same wave link.
— kenne
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Conversations 2 comments
Conversations — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Lovers
Learn from yesterday
Laugh about today, but
talk about
tomorrow
— John Boynton
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Saguaro — Ink Stamp Art, A Visual Dichotomy Leave a comment
Saguaro — Ink Stamp Art by kenne
A genuine (true) dichotomy is a set of alternatives that are both mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive.
A set of alternatives A and B are mutually exclusive if and only if no member of A is a member of B.
This image is a visual example of a genuine (true) dichotomy.
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Southern Dogface Butterfly Leave a comment
Southern Dogface Butterfly — Image by kenne
Life is so full of rough edges –
small tasks and expectations
that scratch you bloody
and remind you that
you’re naked and alone.
— Alexis Hall
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Invoking the Full Meaning of Life 6 comments
I’m Just A Traveler In Other People’s Reality — Image by a Fellow Higher On The Trail
Invoking the Full Meaning of Life
How best to express sharing new life
when each moment deserves its face.
What seems apropos for the moment,
when the next moment fosters a unique experience.
Is it in a number?
The number of days?
The number of thoughts?
The number of heartbeats?
The number of turns?
The number of prayers?
. . . you can count the ways,
only to still not know life’s score.
Is it in a word?
Loving?
Caring?
Sharing?
Giving?
Sheltering?
Words to communicate thoughts and feelings
when manifested in knowledge and experience.
Or is it in art?
Transforming thought,
expressing feeling,
experiencing emotions and
the desire to evoke life,
even when distance
appears to separate a lifelong bond.
I wrote this in the 1990s. Since then, retirement and moved 1,000 miles from where we had spent 25 years, putting distance between bonds. In the twelve years since moving, we have watched the bonds drift away, causing me to question the desire to evoke life, even when distance can’t separate a lifelong bond.
We moved to the Sonoran desert with the illusion that friends and family would be beating a path to our new home in the desert southwest — not such luck. So we try staying in touch through social media, often questioning whether the bonds were ever real — confirming that we remain tourists in other people’s reality.
I once read a posting by blogger Old Jules, “These damned ego-warts.”
Old Jules was a 70-year-old hermit, living with three cats somewhere in the Texas Hill Country and writing a blog I enjoyed reading from time to time. Old Jules, who passed away April 21, 2020 at 74, had concluded that he has spent over a third of his life “being insignificant in the lives of others.”
In 1992, after 25 years of marriage and a career of 20 years, he began a new career and life in Santa Fe.
“All secure in the knowledge the extended family and friends remaining behind were part of my life in which I’d been and remained important.”
Over time he concluded it was all an illusion.
“Kids, young adult nephews, and nieces I’d coddled and bounced on my knee pealed out of my life-like layers of an onion. Most I never heard from again.”
He began to realize that he was merely tolerated, “. . . a piece of furniture in their lives.”
Over time he rebuilt his life with a more potent dose of skepticism concerning his worth and place in the lives of others, which resulted in his becoming a hermit.
“I no longer assume I’m important in the lives of other human beings and get my satisfaction in knowing I’m at least relevant to the cats.
Because cats, though sometimes dishonest, aren’t capable of the depth and duration of dishonesty humans indulge regularly.”
Old Jules had come to believe “. . . that life is entirely too important and too short to be wasted in insignificance.”
His new awareness of life is now in teaspoon measurements, “. . . measured in contracts with cats not equipped to lie. A determination in the direction of significance measured in teaspoons of reality,
as opposed to 55-gallon drums of dishonesty and self-delusion.”
“Teaspoons, I find, don’t spill away as much life in the discovery
when they’re found to be just another ego-wart of pride and self-importance.”
Bonds, illusion or not, have difficulty being when the moments are separated by time and distance, becoming gleams of light, for an instant, in the long night.
I understand where Old Jules was coming from and feel his disillusionment. There is, however, a binding force that comes from a homesick longing to be whole, to have completion, as Plato described in the myth of the human halves passionately striving towards one. Like all mythical totalities, humans are subject to the triple dramaturgical rhythm of primal completeness, separation catastrophe, and restoration. The most significant attraction effect occurs between the second and third acts of life’s drama, which is where I find myself today — maybe this is also where Old Jules is. I am learning to understand myself from a new divide, one half experienced, the other inexperienced — in such a way that I’m learning to understand myself in new ways.
But then, there are the darn cats!
Kika, what do you think?
Kika (She passed away December 10, 2011.)
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A Secure Landing 1 comment
Brown Pelican Landing — HDR Image by kenne
“To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing.
To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing
but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.”
— from The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts
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Easter Is Gone, But Not The Bunny In The Moment Leave a comment
Easter Is Gone, But Not The Bunny — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“Existence only becomes clear through reason;
reason only has content through existence.
By philosophizing, I seek to call attention to the limits of knowledge,
not with the skeptical purpose of disposing of knowledge altogether,
but rather in order to let the truth which always lies just beyond
those limits shine through for a moment.”
— kenne
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An Old Man’s Goal 4 comments
self-portrait
An Old Man’s Goal
To walk the earth
as long as I can
feeling the earth
benight my feet
learning from nature
becoming free of my
own freedom.
— kenne
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Book Banning In School Libraries 3 comments
This open letter to the parents in Texas who want to ban THE BRIDGE from school libraries is posted on Twitter. We cannot let people who want to erase history and people who think differently from libraries and curriculum.
An Open Letter to Parents Who Wish to Ban My Books from School Libraries
I recently read with interest your call to remove 282 books from your local school library. In it, you claim to have reviewed yourself all of these books and deemed them unfit for K-12 usage (quite a range there!).
I saw that you included among these books my 2020 novel, THE BRIDGE.
First off, thank you for reading my book! I would be happy to chat with you about the book, to see what you took from it.
Second, I want to say up front that I believe your intent here is to protect your children. I echo your concern; I also want safety for children. It’s one of the main reasons I write books for young adults.
THE BRIDGE, as you know, is about two teens, Aaron and Tillie, who are severely depressed. They are both suicidal, and they meet atop the George Washington Bridge in New York City. From there, the book splits into four parts, illustrating all the possible scenarios about what could happen: they could both jump, they could both NOT jump. Or one or the other could jump. The novel follows the impacts of these decisions all the way out, so that readers can come to understand two things—just how difficult it is to be depressed and navigate the disease of depression, and also just how devastating one loss to suicide is to the whole world.
I was a bit surprised to see THE BRIDGE on your list for removal from the library. Not entirely surprised, as I was aware of Matt Krause’s list of 850 books he wants removed, which includes five of my titles. But still I was a bit startled, especially when I read your review of why the book ought to be removed.
You wrote that the book “Contains 1 or more of the following: Marxism, incest, sexual explicit material — in written form and/ or visual pictures, pornography, CRT, immoral activities, rebellious against parents, and the material contradicts the ISD’s student handbook.” As I looked through your screeds, it seems that this is how you describe each of these books. It’s as if you cut and pasted that complaint 282 times. That surprised me, because you took the time, you say, to read each of these books. That’s a lot of reading! Surely you have thoughts about these books you read beyond some cut and paste jargon?
So I want to address these concerns. While I disagree that books should be removed from libraries because some people are uncomfortable with the content, I felt it made sense to go through these since you specified your issues with THE BRIDGE.
- There is no Marxist philosophy in this book. In fact, its author is a capitalist. Of course, since we live in a free country, a book with Marxist philosophy ought to be able to exist in a library, so long as it isn’t threatening to overthrow the government. But that seems like a moot point here.
- Incest is not a part of THE BRIDGE. In fact, my book does not include explicit sexual activity, though one student at one time writes a poem about wishing she hadn’t had sex with a boy. It is not explicit. In fact, I have read a lot of young adult lit, and I know very few books that include incest, and in each of those cases, it depicts incest in order to help readers who have been through that trauma, not to glamorize it. If you wish to start a petition banning books that glamorize incest in school libraries, I might actually sign it. That’s simply not happening here.
- Sexual (sic) explicit behavior: I had to think about that one, since teens are sexual beings and sometimes have sexual thoughts. Both Tillie and Aaron have sexual thoughts, but they aren’t explicit in their thinking. No one has sex in this book. That is not what the book is about.
- Pornography: There is no pornography in my novel.
- CRT: I believe you are referring to Critical Race Theory. My book doesn’t touch on this. Some of my others do, but this book, again, is about suicide and depression. One of the characters is Korean and was adopted at a young age by a white family. At moments she describes what it feels like to be of a different race than her parents and sister, but at no point does this novel delve into theories about race or a screed about racial inequality. I do wonder what your concern is here, as my understanding is that CRT is a scary buzzword for “teaching history as it happened.” What is the problem with teaching American history, and the fact that this country was built on slave labor? What would you have books say instead? I think it is very important to learn about history. We learn about challenging times in history so that we don’t repeat them.
- Immoral Activities: Wow, that’s quite an umbrella there. We’d have to dig a bit deeper to know what you mean, but one thing I will say is that misbehaving is often central to literature, as novels always have a conflict. If you are referring, as sometimes people do, to sex before marriage, or taking street drugs, I think you will agree that these things do not happen in THE BRIDGE. I have read some books in which characters do have sex and take drugs, and my take is that it is rarely done to titillate, or to glamorize drug use. Usually in YA literature, drug use is depicted as something negative, and that is as it should be. Now, it is possible you consider Aaron’s sexuality immoral, since he’s gay, but Aaron has never had sex. So unless you are the thought police (and I’m pretty sure those people are on the Left, correct?), I can’t really see how anything about Aaron’s behavior in this book is immoral.
- Rebellious (sic) against parents: Ah. I think at one point in this book, Tillie skips school. She is depressed, and she is in a therapist’s office with her mother in the waiting room, and she realizes they want to commit her to an institution because she is so deeply depressed, and she freaks out and flees the office. This is, in fact, rebellious behavior. It is also exactly the kind of thing that could happen in the world. I read that you have an elementary school daughter. Congratulations! I don’t have kids, but I have many friends who do. If this sort of rebellious behavior is means for taking a book out of a library, I think you have some exciting and potentially difficult discoveries in front of you when your daughter reaches adolescence. I won’t spoil them. You’ll find out when you have a teenager!
- I don’t have the ISD handbook, so I don’t know what’s in it specifically. But I do think that if you want to have all the characters in novels adhere to a school handbook, you might have trouble finding novels. In THE WIZARD OF OZ, Dorothy drops a house on a witch. Is murder allowed in the handbook? In A TALE OF TWO CITIES, a French aristocrat runs down a working-class child with his carriage. I would assume this would be considered poor behavior in your district. Should we ban these books, too? Mr. and Mrs. Elliott, the truth is that stories, both fictional and non-fictional, include behaviors that might be considered outside the bounds of how schools might like their students to behave. People lie and cheat and steal. Find me a book for teenagers where no one behaves poorly, and I’ll show you a boring book!
You suggest that the libraries in your district remove THE BRIDGE from its shelves. I guess the question I want to ask, since you have read the book, is: why?
Why, exactly, are you wishing to remove a book about suicide and depression from your libraries?
Perhaps you are concerned for the safety of your students. If so, I applaud you. Health and safety of young people is at the top of my list of concerns, too. As I wrote THE BRIDGE, I spent a lot of time ensuring that I wrote my book in a way that would help teens, not trigger them by making suicide somehow glamorous or sexy. Just like a doctor, who takes an oath to “do no harm,” I take my craft very seriously. I want my books to leave the world better than they found it.
That said, we live in a society where, increasingly, young people are dying by suicide. The reasons for this are too long to go into here, but I would say that among the reasons is isolation and feeling alone and misunderstood.
Right there, in a nutshell, is why I write books for teens. I felt isolated and alone and misunderstood as a teen. I so wished there was a book out there that had a person going through what I was going through. See, I was gay. I knew I was gay because of my thoughts, not because of any book or TV show, because there were basically none of those things back when I was in school. At the time, I was depressed and suicidal because I felt so alone. So I wanted to make sure no other young person went through that.
I am concerned about the young people in the McKinney Independent School District, because in my experience, kids are the same everywhere. There are depressed kids everywhere. There are isolated, at-risk kids everywhere. There are LGBTQ kids everywhere. Getting rid of books from the library won’t change that; it will just make life that much harder and more isolated for those children.
Do you think there should be books in the library that might help a depressed teenager feel a bit more understood? A book that stresses the importance of staying another day, even when everything feels hopeless? Knowing how concerned you are for the safety of your daughter, I would actually guess you would want a book like that available to your child when she gets older. Perhaps I am wrong.
My concern is that you didn’t actually read THE BRIDGE and said that you did. I say this because your list of 282 books includes the exact same concerns for each book. That seems lazy, at best. At worst, it is deceitful, which, I imagine, goes against the ISD handbook. I certainly hope you’re not doing that! It would be hypocritical to behave in ways that go against the values we try to instill in our children.
I think you didn’t read THE BRIDGE, and that in fact you would have been better served to include a book of mine that was more focused on LGBTQ representation. Not because you would be right, but at least then we could have a conversation about why you’re wrong about that, too.
I can say with total honesty that I wish the best for your child. I want for her to have every opportunity for joy and success in life. To experience freedom and happiness.
What I wonder, though, is whether you feel the same way for kids who suffer from depression? Or for kids who are gay? The truth is that like it or not, some kids are gay. Some kids are trans. To make the world safer and better for them, we need to have representation of those people in books. Books with LGBTQ characters save lives. I know because of the hundreds of emails I’ve received from kids who have told me my books saved their life.
Perhaps you would like it better if those kids repressed those desires and didn’t act upon them. Or tried to pray the gay away. I’ve seen that movie. I have met hundreds of men and women over the course of my life who have tried to do that. It doesn’t end well for them, nor does it end well for their spouses.
You might say this is blasphemous, but here is a question for you: what if it turns out your daughter is lesbian or bisexual? You might think this is impossible; I can tell you from experience that I have met hundreds if not thousands of teens and parents in that situation. Kids from conservative, religious households. Parents who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and anything else is immoral.
My question is, if it turns out your child is lesbian, or bi, or trans, what would you wish for them? Would you want them to feel loved and safe, or would you want them to feel alone and ashamed?
You might think now you’d prefer the latter, but I see from the fact that you are doing so much to try to keep your child safe that perhaps you might change your mind about that. According to a 2021 national study by The Trevor Project, 42 percent of LGBTQ youth considered suicide last year. The number is much higher for trans and non-binary youth. I have heard the argument that this shows that LGBTQ youth are simply troubled, but I can tell you that’s not right. LGBTQ youth are at risk precisely because of endeavors like yours that aim to erase people like them from the library.
I’ll end with a prayer for you, because I know that you are religious. I pray that you and your family find prosperity and joy. I hope that in your prayers tonight, you will pray for at-risk kids who need these books. Because in many cases, their lives depend on it.
Sincerely,
Bill Konigsberg
