Archive for the ‘Philosophizing’ Category
“I Contain Multitudes” –Photo-Artistry by kenne
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then,
I contradict myself;
I am large –
I contain multitudes.”
— Walt Whitman
* * * * *
“I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys, The Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge, I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost are made good again
I sing the songs of experience like William Blake
I have no apologies to make
Everything’s flowing all at the same time
I live on the boulevard of crime
I drive fast cars, and I eat fast foods
I contain multitudes”
— Bob Dylan
“The Worker” — Image by kenne
I AM the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of this world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world’s food & clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me & the Lincolns. They die. &
then I send forth more Napoleons & Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out & wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me &
makes me work & give up what I have. & I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself & spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then — I forget.
When I, the people, learn to remember, when I, the People
use the lessons of yesterday & no longer forget
who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool — then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: “The People”, with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far off smile of derision.
The mob — The crowd — The mass — will arrive then.
— Carl Sandburg
Turned Around — Image by kenne
Turned around,
Here am I.
Knowing how,
Not the why.
Young in heart
Old in age.
Feeling the itch,
Pacing the cage.
Inner peace,
Knowing the thou.
Learning to write
Thesis of now.
Turned around,
Found love.
Living the moment,
Free as a dove.
Still learning,
When to talk.
Listening for,
Beat of the walk.
Reality is now,
Truth in the heart.
Singing the knowledge,
Requiem to smart.
Turned around,
Found beauty in art.
Traveling the future,
With Dylan and Descartes
— kenne
4th Avenue Street Fair Musician (Tucson, 12/12/14) — Image by kenne
I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil.
And that no one knows the truth.
— Molly Ivins
Flashback, 1972 at SIU — The Pipe Smoking Days
In the early 1970s, I worked with Dr. Larry J. Bailey, my friend, and mentor, on the Career Development for Children Project (CDCP). Several of us worked on the project to produced a career development curriculum for elementary school children. In 1973 I went to work at McKnight Publishing Company to help produce project materials. Career development is not obtaining knowledge in preparation for living, but rather it is a process of experiencing living.
Before leaving CDCP, I prepared a paper titled, “A Theory of the Functional Self.” The paper reviewed self-theory that explores self a being a product of social interactions. From this theory, we have seen that self-information is a developmental process that takes place within the social system. A social system may be a peer group, a single classroom, school, community, occupational establishment, or any other organized group of individuals.
It is also assumed that a social system has two dimensions, the individual and the institution, and the patterns resulting from the interaction of these dimensions are social behavior. The individual’s inferences from his behavior define his self-concept, and a self-concept that has career relevance is the functional self.
The functional self, like the self-concept, is a self-process, a process of being and becoming. It is the functional self’s developmental process that should enable educators to develop a process career developmental curriculum, rather than a content occupational information curriculum. Career development is not obtaining knowledge in preparation for a living; rather, it is a process of experiencing living.
— kenne
“I think every man is his own Pygmalion and
spends his life fashioning himself. And in
fashioning himself, for good or ill, he
fashions the human race and its future.”
— I.F. Stone (1971)
Hiker On The Phoneline Trail (December in Sabino Canyon) — Image by kenne
There’s no remaking reality…
Just take it as it comes.
Hold your ground and
take it as it comes.
There’s no other way.
— Philip Roth
Desert Photo Shoot, A Different Perspective — Image by kenne
Each day take a fresh look at the world around you.
— kenne
Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
This posting is the sixth, and last, I will be sharing from a long poem written by Tom
sometime around 1980 after his wife left him. Today is the fifth anniversary of his death.
24 to Harwood and Cropsy: No Road Back Home
(Taken from a Brooklyn Bus Route and the Title of a Blues Album.)
The nuances between us were scattered with the
January snows of Peter's arrival.
Ambiguities, second starts and brokendreams were too
Tangled up in Blue to
Cut to the exact place on the page where our rhythm had
Broken.
I'm not that young any more.
"Get off your stagnant ass and do something."
The scenario years later would speak.
The Pacific Northwest and a three quarter profile statement
Echoing out Denny's window
Why I never got a job during all those summers.
Only the facts she put to me.
I couldn't keep in step with the definitions you
Dreamed.
We speculated endlessly in different directions
Whether our togethrness might might imaginable be framed
From inside so that the usual connection between lover
And lover and loved and loved would be interchangeable but
Paradoxically unchanging.
(For my benefit, I suppose)
Was the fiction of my eroticism so damn necessary?
Somewhere I glimpsed you
Coming at me; balancing cryptic hats . . .
Laughing comic confusion.
Now I never see you anymore.
The summers are much colder tha used to be
In that other time, when you and I were young.
I miss the human truth of your smile;
The half-hearted gaze of your voice and all the things
That you'll always be to me.
Only thee is no comic relief
Just a
Curious translation of cracked nostalgia.
But lets
Skip the arguments.
I already know how the story ends:
A-not-so-crytic-message:
Don't be naive
You could only gaze into the distance at my life.
Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
This posting is the fifth of several I will be sharing from a long poem written by Tom
sometime around 1980 after his wife left him. Today is the fifth anniversary of his death.
24 to Harwood and Cropsy: No Road Back Home
(Taken from a Brooklyn Bus Route and the Title of a Blues Album.)
In the inerstices of "hold me," and "stop hovering,"
The symbiosis of us succumbed
An anamoly had intruded
The desideratum of my life found my eyes
Bestial and sought transcendence through "appointments-only."
The spontaneity of our quick was cheapened.
(Funny how incredulity becomes more than a word)
The aesthetics of my artifice went against the grain;
Recreation, utilitarian achievement and another sexuality
Were the hidden Karmas of your soul.
My recondite preoccupations rung-up as
No sale.
Impressions filtered through my extranceous fictions
Single out shared neck massages and inept peeling of oranges.
Her solipsistic soaking in the tub found me
Speaking my love through
Closed doors. Anxiety and discontent had obscured our moments
Together.
My metamorphosis was quixotic and debilitating
Labor for the demensional person on which
Her eyes tried to focus.
Making love in the afternoon was an
Extreme of ethos a sexual shadow world for her
Yet the doctrine-of-discontinous-selves found a measure of
Your accentance.
Odd.
Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
This posting is the fourth of several I will be sharing from a long poem written by Tom
sometime around 1980 after his wife left him. Today is the fifth anniversary of his death.
24 to Harwood and Cropsy: No Road Back Home
(Taken from a Brooklyn Bus Route and the Title of a Blues Album.)
Closely watched trains came and went without me without us
I somehow missed you
Eyes have a way.
After love with my caliban sweat and noises
A vacant resentment would knife
From glares askance
First seen in the pain of Vanessa-labor.
And this is what happens when you love someone?
Progeny and sunburn haired sensualness
Prefaced Rare-Earth and a student nurse.
The ideology of lesbos intimacy had
Clandestinely raised its latent head.
But it doesn't matter anymore.
(You were the poet in my heart)
91st street was the end
Wasn't it?
Curious how our windows are always steamed-up
On Autumnal days.
(Was ANYTHING central?)
The "is-this-all-there-is" syndrome sums up the
Period: Existentialist discontent
With a walk-up duplex decor.
A matter-of-fact sexuality
Presaged a psychic-incarnation I couldn't see.
Lisa brought home a metamorphosis I didn't
Realize.
They cut your "tubes" after she came and that was that.
Funny how I thought even then that is was
All a matter of hormonal imbalance. Shit!
And what about you?
Paradoxes betray the limits of logic
Not of the reality we shared.
Your "passion" was stillborn though so damn necessary.
A dissolution of absence into substance sucked
Screaming through a Rimbaud-Day-On-Fire.
I could't laugh enough for the
Frivolity she needed but detested.
Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
This posting is the third of several I will be sharing from a long poem written by Tom
sometime around 1980 after his wife left him. Today is the fifth anniversary of his death.
24 to Harwood and Cropsy: No Road Back Home
(Taken from a Brooklyn Bus Route and the Title of a Blues Album.)
The metaphor Milwaukee-East-Side
Found an oblique happiness on Newhall street and other avenues.
A thirty-three-o-one flight walk-up
Mingled with a sweaty montage of
Walk-down circus parades:
Beer with Richard punctuating assassinations
Democratic conventions and
Halloween readings.
My movements in a not-always-silent
Desperation enveloped the shit of a B.S. paperchase.
(My illusions were so intensed christ I missed you)
"Im Home:" used to reverberate through someone's contentment
Of newhall evenings and milwaukee days.
Introspective space refracted my looking-glass image and the
Ennui of your self-esteem.
The enigmatic fruit of our "intimacy"
Was even then becoming spurious and estranged
Yet continued to sustain me and confine you.
Our spring had clouded into a season of
Discontinuities.
Snap-shot ambiguities cannot clarify
Where we were
Only echo tangents of truth
Which negate explanations of a then with Allison:
Lake Michigan shoreline Dr's Park Flag day
Too much to drink
We ate dogs with laughter went to bed at ten
And felt safe.
(I still see the scenes, but no longer see
myself among those present no longer
can improvise the dialogue)
Reflections In The Moment — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us.”
— Alan Cohen
California Primrose — Image by kenne
Life is short
how short,
who Knows?
Enjoying
the time
maybe
the only
thing
that matters.
— kenne
Moon Man — Photo-Artistry by kenne
(This poem was originally posted a several years ago.)
. . . guilty.
Embracing reason
Sharing time
Finding reality
Existing in space
For these things I am . . .
Loving the underdog
Catching the moment
Believing others’ lies
Crying alone
For these things I am . . .
Watching sunsets
Experiencing truth
Awakening before dawn
Catching the light
For these things I am . . .
Taking things apart
Looking for curves
Believing in art
Believing in you
For these things I am . . .
Caring about life
Climbing trees
Walking in pastures
Keeping stray dogs
For these things I am . . .
Believing in Hobbits
Flying the redeye
Losing my head
Expressing anger
For these things I am . . .
Sharing expectations
Learning from asking
Solving problems
Admiring thought
For these things I am . . .
Talking to plants
Understanding cats
Swimming nude
Experiencing love
For these things I am . . .
Improvising life
Rejecting suppression
Questioning rules
Asking, “Why?”
For these things I am . . .
Making mistakes
Forgiving myself
Taking offense
Forgiving others
For these things I am . . .
Listening in silence
Always learning
Making things happen
Giving respect
For these things I am . . .
Being timid
Becoming self-assured
Being assertive
Being misunderstood
For these things I am . . .
Feeling the Blues
Embracing imagination
Overcoming mediocrity
Expressing gratitude
For these things I am . . .
Loving poetry
Reading poetry
Quoting poetry
Writing poetry
For these things I am . . .
Assessing existence
Separating the noise
Being in love
Going crazy
For these things, I am . . . guilty.
kenne
Greater Roadrunner Sitting On Nest In A Cholla Cacti — Image by kenne
A capitalist society requires a culture based on images.
It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to
stimulate buying and anesthetize the injuries of class, race, and sex.”
— from “On Photography” by Susan Sontag
![[ ... the whisper of fall ]](https://i0.wp.com/live.staticflickr.com/65535/55554365880_8da128c729_s.jpg?w=1000&ssl=1 "[ ... the whisper of fall ]")
