Spotted amidst the wreckage:

God hath not promised

Peace without pain.

Link

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I’ve been watching the poet and translator Coleman Barks, reading the poetry of Rumi, as well as his own, on the UC Santa Barbara channel. Beautiful poems. This was taped in March 2003, and one of the things he read was a poem of his, which was in progress on the eve of Shock and Awe. In it, he speaks to President Bush, offering a peaceful alternative to killing. Send people to carry goodwill; people eager to learn about the vestiges of the culture that inspired Rumi.

We’re different now. We are in Vietnam again, and people are dying, and we don’t know why. It doesn’t make any sense. We have accomplished nothing.

• Countless gallons of blood has been spilled, and Iraq is in chaos.

• The threat we thought we would eliminate never existed.

• We toppled Saddam and dragged him from his hole, only to see him replaced by more tyrants, of various stripe.

• Democracy is an insane improbability of absurd dimensions. People are still without power; their lives are still fraught with difficulty.

• Here at home, reactionary ideologues are running roughshod over our freedoms, all the while lifting a litany of vague and inexorable fear to justify their power and keep a megalomaniac in office.

• The coffins keep landing at Andrews AFB unabated, whether we can see pictures or not.

• Half the country still supports the inarticulate, audacious presidential pretender who got us into this mess.

Sound, rational voices were raised in the days and months leading to this ruddy, unmitigated debacle. Calmer heads failed to prevail, which is no surprise. I just don’t want it forgotten. We told them so.

It’s too late to turn back. Too late for anything approaching victory. The best we can hope for is someone to pull us back from the madness and hose us down, mop up the exsanguination that can never be explained but to God.

But first, November 2 isn’t the Ides of March, but lend me your ears: I tell you Caesar is an ambitious man.

This hurricane has just caused terrible damage, hasn’t it? I feel very sorry for all the people whose lives have been wrecked by this storm. I hope the readers of my blog will join me in praying for them.

Passengers on a small commuter plane are waiting for the flight to leave. The entrance opens, and two men walk up the aisle, dressed in pilots’ uniforms–both are wearing dark glasses, one is using a seeing-eye dog, and the other is tapping his way up the aisle with a cane.

Nervous laughter spreads through the cabin; but the men enter the cockpit, the door closes, and the engines start up. The passengers begin glancing nervously around, searching for some sign that this is just a little practical joke. None is forthcoming.

The plane moves faster and faster down the runway, and people at the windows realize that they’re headed straight for the water at the edge of the airport territory. As it begins to look as though the plane will never take off, that it will plow into the water, panicked screams fill the cabin–but at that moment, the plane lifts smoothly into the air.

The passengers relax and laugh a little sheepishly, and soon they have all retreated into their magazines, secure in the knowledge that the plane is in good hands. Up in the cockpit, the copilot turns to the pilot and says, “You know, Bob, one of these days, they’re going to scream too late, and we’re all gonna die.”

I’ve been sitting here since Letterman went off, trying to think of something unusual in the dawning, arching and dying of this Friday that might bear observation on this blog. Comin’ up with bupkis. I had lunch in one of my usual places, where the owners know me by name, watched my family leave for warmer parts of the state, did a little reading, writing, paid some bills ….

About the only thing I can think of is that I have the song “Benson Arizona,” from the movie Dark Star, floating around in my head.

Benson, Arizona, the warm wind through your hair

My body flies the galaxy, my heart longs to be there

Benson, Arizona, the same stars in the sky

But they seemed so much kinder when we watched them, you and I

Other than that, I suppose I’m doing alright. Good grip on cognitive functions. All five senses percolating along — in sync with the rotation of our arguably stable planet.

POWELL

Phenomenology…

OK, my blog is starting to see dead people, and that’s enough for today. You guys quit dyin’ out there already. Here’s a quote:

“It doesn’t matter if you yourself are among the medal winners, what matters is that you represent yourself and your sport and our great country with class and dignity, come what may.”

— Former U.S. President George Bush to American athletes getting ready for the Olympics in Athens.

What a crock, huh? Fire ’em up, George! America’s amoral collapse, at the hands of Junior, has made us the normative whipping boy of the planet. And losing medals to the Coalition of the Unwilling and Morally Superior won’t insprire them to show up for the ass-kicking in the middle east. We might as well continue our national arrogance in Athens. To do otherwise only protracts the Fall of the New Rome beyond what’s aesthetically tolerable. We just ain’t good entertainment anymore.

If this doesn’t draw a few comments, y’all must be sleepin’ through the blog.

Well I see on Yahoo that Julia Child has Died. I’m sorry to see that. The world needs more people like her, who are celebratory, positive and not trying to cause anyone else any grief.

It’s interesting that the article I linked to says she moved to Santa Barbara in 2001. I know for a fact that she lived here, at least part time, for many years before that. In 1988, I attended a party at the home of my employer, attorney Barry Cappello. The house was a rambling and beautiful Tudor in the Hope Ranch section of Santa Barbara. It had previously belonged to Julia Child.

The way I picture heaven, there’s no need for food up there. But bon appetit anyway.

The New York Times: Poet Admired for Precise Beauty

Bio/interview

From the liner notes of Steve Earle’s album, “The Revolution Starts … Now,” due out August 24:

“The Constitution of The United States of America is a REVOLUTIONARY document in every sense of the word. It was designed to evolve, to live, and to breathe like the people that it governs. It is, ingeniously, and perhaps conversely, resilient enough to change with the times in order to meet the challenges of its third century and rigid enough to preserve the ideals that inspired its original articles and amendments. As long as we are willing to put in the work required to defend and nurture this remarkable invention of our forefathers, then I believe with all my heart that it will continue to thrive for generations to come. Without our active participation, however, the future is far from certain. For without the lifeblood of the human spirit even the greatest documents produced by humankind are only words on paper or parchment, destined to yellow and crack and eventually crumble to dust. “

Link

This single sentence sums up the crux of Bush’s election plan:

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (Reuters) – President Bush warned Americans on Saturday last weekend’s terrorism alert was another sign the country was still not safe but said he was taking steps to prevent future attacks.

Be afraid, be very afraid. Be much too afraid to vote for anyone else, because we’re all about to die and only the Crawford Cretin can save us. oooooh.

And notice how it’s the terror alert itself — not the reality of the threat — that is the sign we’re not safe. In the New Speak, The Message is reality. Ridge makes an alert, Bush waits a week for the herd to get headed up, then he saddled up and keeps us mooovin’ along towards Nov. 2.

Meadow muffins.

Has anybody out there been waiting to see democracy in action in the newly sovereign Iraq? Boy, I have. I’ve been expecting the spirit of Jefferson to appear in the crater-pocked streets of Baghdad. My wait is over. Regrettably, my skepticism has been justified; democracy is stillborn in Iraq.

The closure of AlJazeera has proven to me, once and for all, that all pretense of democracy can be abandoned. We have hatched a totalitarian puppet government, doubtless on it’s way to being another inscrutable theocracy.

Nuts.

Aljazeera.Net

NO C-heney

NO A-shcroft

NO R-umsfeld

NO B-ush

and “Absolutely NO RICE!”

This is a diet that will take you successfully through the next

election.

Thanks Cindy!