hello mrs goldfinch

9.22.14

It is a scientific fact that your body can’t differentiate between fake laughter and real laughter.  Well, let’s laugh because there cannot be anything selfish about laughter.  Do you laugh when you watch 200,000 Kurdish Syrians flee for their lives?  No, so I shouldn't watch the news when I wanna be happy?   I can't be happy and watch the news at the same time.  Sigh, I am so tired of this. I wanna be happy and not feel selfish when I know there are children fleeing for their lives.  WTF? 

There’s no place for compassion when you confront evil.  What do the swamis say when those opposites collide?  Well, when your home is invaded you don’t offer the perp a cup of chamomile, you defend and if necessary God forbid, you kill.  What an awful predicament.  Hey God permits evil's existence and when mankind is left to his own defenses he is once again one with the animal kingdom. 

How do we inspire ourselves when no one else can?  Consider others before you consider yourself.  What?  I am the master of my fate.  I am the captain of my soul.

Complacency is my enemy. 

Today is the last day of summer.  I enjoy Autumn though not necessarily here.  There are no blazing reds and yellows and oranges, no oaks and maples for thousands of miles in either direction.  How does one ever know when the season is changing in the hottest place on the map?  The sun’s rise in the east moves to the right.

9.24.14

Dark times, light times, we’re all stuck between the realms.  Poverty has been cut in half.  The achievements of mankind have made now the best time in history to be alive, and yet a collective unease is pervasive.  Disease and war reveal an international failure to maintain security and hope in constant change. 

I want to choose hope over fear.  I reject (?) fate and believe there is hope.  Hope in peace but seriously, as long as mankind lives between the chasm of light and darkness there will always be evil, always, and peace will elude when there is selfishness and narrow-mindedness.  You got an agenda?  You think your faith is the only faith?  Faith's original intentions were not to compete with each other.  God didn't see this coming?  Tsk tsk.  God sees the evolution of thought and permits evil to exist via screwy ways of interpreting divinity.  What the hell. 

Obama speaks to the UN Assembly and there's no clapping.  I like that.  They’re listening but there’s no need for approval and bravado.  The Pharisees and Sadducees wanted to stone Jesus.  Obama is no Jesus, though many would like to throw stones.  Or lattes.

He’s too hopeful.  The world is safer and healthier today than ever before.  Is the media to blame for showing us the evil 24/7?  The perversion of Islam.  The extremists kill their own, that’s extreme.  They kill the infidel.  The Koran teaches peace and the interpretation and pervasive poverty draws flies to their fire.

Twenty five percent of the youth in the Middle East are unemployed.  The extremists had no jobs and is this really why they joined up to kill?  They steal their food, they bond, the camaraderie intensifies until you drop bombs on them.  How romantic.

And it is time the Muslims in the Middle East speak out against extremism.  There should be an end to the intolerance of people who think differently.  C’mon shout out the Saudis.  The ideology of evil will wither and die as long as it is exposed.  Declare war on war, establish an Islamic reformation and get everyone on the same crystalized page. 

Sectarian conflict.  Christianity had it.  Proxy wars, Islam isn’t winning this one.  The two will never win.  How to find peace.  It is madness.  And isn’t it time they looked at each other and said, God, we’ve been dumb.  Why did we believe an ideology, submission to Allah at all costs, was more important than peace and love for each other.  The Golden rule is fool’s gold dude. 

Speaking to the muslim youth.  Innovation, the dignity of life, not murder. Education that doesn’t teach indoctrination but openness.  Change ought not to happen at the expense of tradition and faith.  Right.  Hope is not copywrited in the west.  Reject ideologies that believe in hate and death and do not respect someone else's belief.  If your faith is right you don't need to impose it on anyone.  Christian-Muslim-Hindu folks too smart for their own good become legalists and that is not what divinity is about.  At all.

A universal declaration of human rights.  C’mon a shout out at Beijing.  Diversity and tradition work together if you can imagine that.  Where do universal human rights begin?  Roosevelt said they begin at home.  The Arab world is slow to understand this.  China is slow to understand this. 

The Nepalese man is silent.  He might disapprove of the mistreatment of women but he won’t say anything.  Is that fatalism plus tradition plus chauvinism?  The poor rural bound woman has no chance if man doesn’t look at his wife and think differently.  How do you reach this man? Religion is flawed because man is flawed.

A week from now I am scheduled to take a holiday but I am anything but up for it.  Constant dental discomfort is a bummer but staying in the grotto is also a bummer.  I gotta get out but I feel blah, but what the bleep should I do?  What the bleep will I do?  Why not take off to Europe, five days is enough.  Ha at what expense, pray tell, is worth wandering from one fantastic museum to another.  Maybe the goldfinch is there.  Is that even real?  Inspiration awaits somewhere but not here.