Life is a pile of Sauerkraut & Tears🍃

Choose your poison, become the medicine (notes & quotes from last century) ⛈

Our Life was a pile of Sauerkraut & a Sack of Tears, & the sack was burlap. Didn’t even hold the Tears well.

~ Brainshadow Collective

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”

“The true genius shudders at incompleteness & usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.”

~ Edgar Allen Poe

“The chief characteristic of civilization is the sacrifice of the future for the present.”

~ William James, 1890

“Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.”

~ Taisen Deshimaru

“Each genius differs only from the mass in that he has found freedom for his greatness; the greatness is everywhere, in every man, in every child. What our civilization is busy doing, mainly, is smothering that greatness.”

~ Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists of the elimination of nonessentials.”

~ Lin Yutang

“The rain it raineth on the just & also on the unjust fella: But chiefly on the just, because the unjust steals the just’s umbrella.”

~ Lord Bowden

“Better keep yourself clean & bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.”

~ G. Bernard Shaw

“Many people live in ugly wastelands but in the absence of imaginative standards most of them do not even know it.”

~ C. Wright Mills

JEREMIAH

I ain’t got no home, I’m just roaming around

Just a wandering worker, I go from town to town

And the police make it hard, wherever I may go

And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.

MARY rises, following the sound of piano to the door. She joins

in, softly at first, as pace of music picks up.

My brothers and sisters are stranded on this road

A hot, dusty road that a million feet have trod

I just ramble around to see what I can see

This wide, wicked world is a funny place to be.

MARY enters, as JEREMIAH acknowledges her, picks up the pace

of the music to optimistic.

Rich man took my home and drove me from my door

And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.

I just ramble around to see what I can see

This wide, wicked world is a funny place to be

The gambling man is rich and the working man is poor

An I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.

JEREMIAH improvises a flourishing ending as MARY drums on top

of the piano.

JEREMIAH stands up, shakes hands with MARY, bowing. MARY

does a mocking curtsy.

MARY

Woody Guthrie!

JEREMIAH

No, Jeremiah Jones I’m afraid. At your service.

JEREMIAH doffs his hat, winking.

MARY

I’ve been having some hard travelling, mister, and I know all of Woody Guthrie’s songs! Mary Wilson, pleased to meet ya’!

“To bring something out of the dark into the light of the world, you must bring together known & unknown, what exists with what does not exist, unconscious & conscious minds.”

~ Adriana Attento

“I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.”

~ Dudley Field Malone

“He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop.”

~ Sydney Smith

“Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.”

~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“To have arrived on this earth as the product of a biological accident, only to depart through human arrogance, would be the ultimate irony.”

~ Richard Leakey

How your worldview can kill the world

To believe that life, honour, talent and recognition can be bought and sold is a mistake — a harmful view deserving of contempt. It is no innocent error. A man who convinced himself that everything could be bought and sold, that a society could be the subject of a military occupation in order to create in its place his own paid-for reality, has brought not only the country, but the whole world, to a catastrophe.

Not only did he fall for his fictional reality, but he has also made it the foundation for his actions in the real world. It is now clear that his plans for a brief military operation in a friendly country got bogged down in his own constructed fiction. He was evidently expecting that the use of force by a “genuine” — that is, “his” — country could bring about the immediate demise of the “not genuine” Ukrainian statehood.

He thought he was dealing with a piece of decor ordered by forces hostile to him — perhaps created by America or Europe, a fiction with its origin in methods like his own. He really seems to have believed that his manufactured “popularity” would turn out to be real support for his actions by Russian society. He thought they would believe in the threat of Ukrainian “fascists” and in his mission as a liberator. He must have surmised, likely having listened to his own toadies, that Russia is ready for war and for sanctions.

Putin had convinced himself that Ukrainian society is the same kind of theatre into which he — using murder and intimidation — has transformed Russia. He thought that Ukrainians — from privates in the frontlines to the top leadership so loathed by him — would crumble into a deck of cards and recognise his authority. The president of Ukraine is a former comedy actor, the mayor of Kyiv, a former boxer; who do they think they are? It seems he seriously believed he has psychological and moral superiority over today’s Ukraine and over the global democratic community. His flawed worldview prevented him from realising that his “superiority” was fabricated by his court jesters. His television and radio had only one producer and real viewer — himself. He poisoned himself with his own lies.

He enjoys no moral superiority over anyone. His only superiority was in his military might. But in order to make that superiority real, you require a clear mission, focus, and the justness of your cause. Only Ukraine and the Ukrainians now have such a mission, focus and justness. It is possible that right now Putin is facing a choice whether or not to launch the nuclear weapons at his disposal. This will bring more deaths and suffering. And change nothing of substance.

His war against reality should have been a personal matter. If you want to live in resentment and anger against the whole world — go for it. But he imposed himself on the Russian people using force, manipulation and lies. For many years, he assured his “popularity” by using fair means and foul. By force and intimidation he imposed himself on to Russian society and debased the identity of his own people who once fought side by side with the Ukrainians in a mutual, just war.

He poisoned not only himself but also Russia. He predetermined the contempt with which the whole world will see not only him but every one of us from Russia. For many years ahead we will not manage to convince the world that “we are not like that”, that “this is not us”. For many years — after Putin — it will be up to us to rebuild in Russia a civic system free of any political decor or fiction.

Russia has lost this war morally, simply by starting it. Irrespective of events on the battlefield, Russia has lost this war as a political, economic and social unit, as a member of the commonwealth of nations. There was once a time when the word “war” — without any qualifiers — commonly referred to the Great Patriotic one. Now, this word has a different meaning. This is the war he initiated, the one that made me and all Russians liable for the catastrophe created by him.

https://www.numbers-stations.com/articles/soviet-and-russian-invasions-since-1917/

Pick Your Poison

“All substances are poisons; there is none which is not; the dose differentiates a poison from a remedy.” ~ Paracelsus

A toxin is a substance produced by a living organism that can cause harm, disease, or death when present in the body. Organisms that inject their toxins (through wounds, stings, and bites) are considered venomous, while those whose toxins are ingested are called poisonous. Toxicity can be found across many kingdoms on the tree of life—including animals, plants, and fungi—and it fruits with wisdom. As Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus, often recognized as the father of both modern medicinal chemistry and toxicology, famously noted: the dose makes the poison.

The plant kingdom produces some of the deadliest poisons known to humans. The most toxic plant in North America, water hemlock, is often fatally confused with parsnip and celery. Deadly nightshade (also known as belladonna) produces sweet berries that, when ingested, can paralyze muscles—including the heart. The oleander, with its beautiful pink petals, is so poisonous that even eating honey produced by bees that pollinated it can make you ill. The most deadly plant, though, is arguably tobacco; not only is it toxic to ingest, smoking it results in more than 5 million deaths every year. Sometimes, the most potent poisons are hidden in plain sight.

Fungi can be far more deceptive in their toxicity. Destroying angels are highly poisonous, yet often mistaken for edible meadow and button mushrooms. Death caps resemble harmless straw and caesar’s mushrooms, but produce a poison that can withstand even the hottest cooking temperatures and then induce violent side effects that turn lethal in half of cases. Deadly and fool’s webcaps produce side effects similar to the common flu, but left untreated, can lead to organ failure weeks later. Fly agarics, with their spotted red caps, might be recognized from fairy tales and children’s books—but when eaten, can result in delirium, seizures, and even comas.

But toxicology isn’t always black and white. Some of the world’s most venomous animals also carry the capacity for healing. Snake venom has been used to create a variety of life-saving medicines. Stonefish spear unsuspecting victims with lethal toxins, but they are also considered a delicacy in some parts of the world. Gila monsters have the most painful bite of any vertebrate due to their potent venom, though a hormone it contains is used to treat diabetes. Similarly, funnel web spiders are the most toxic arachnids—to humans and primates anyway, not other animals—but their venom could also treat heart attacks. Poison often comes down to context.

In fact, just about anything in excess can be poison. Despite how culturally ubiquitous it is, alcohol becomes toxic when we drink enough of it. Even substances we need in order to survive can kill us in excess; we will die without water, and yet too much of it can lead to water poisoning, causing our fluid-regulating sodium levels to plummet and our cells to swell. Then again, too much sodium in one’s diet can be lethal too, along with iron. And then there are the many medicines we rely on, which can save lives in the right doses and end them in others.

In abstract terms, the same can also be true. We live in a culture of extremes, when what we often need is moderation. Too little self-reflection can stunt personal growth, but too much of it can make us self-absorbed. Too little compassion can make us unkind, while too much of it can lead us to be taken advantage of. Too little vulnerability can close us off, whereas too much can expose us to harm. Too little ambition can render us lethargic, and too much can foster greed. Too little entertainment can make life feel joyless, yet too much can manifest as escapism.

While no doubt beautiful and tempting, the trappings of a society built on immoderation are deceitfully toxic—both for us and our planet, which is being poisoned by excess greenhouse gasses, waste and chemical pollution. But there is a remedy, one that we can practice embodying in our everyday lives. From the compositions of organisms to the equilibrium of ecosystems, everywhere we look in nature, we see the necessity of balance. That’s what our world needs now more than ever. Because if excess is poison, balance is the medicine.

~ Willow Defebaugh

“We will act in the service of the Earth; as its nervous system, as in the Gaia hypothesis. I think our job is to carry the message of our host being to the other like beings that exist in the Universe, to interconnect them into a civilization of planets & stars, because I think they are living organisms just as we are.”

~ Ivan Dryer (Laserium)

“I had barnacles on the back of my boat that I let grow, because they became my only friends.”

~ Matt Rutherford, solo circumnavigator Americas in 27-ft sailboat

The Profit of Doom

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My fellow Americans now led astray

toward the burning sands of Armageddon

and the gnashing teeth of Babylonia

by a jug-eared idiot son of a Bush

a Biblical twist of lost souls winning

a war on the world while watching TV

Always the same men with glaring eyes

larger than life and twice as mean

roasting the world with a roar of applause

and the waving of flags proudly held high

saluting of citizens and marching of men

shooting of cannons and broadcast of threats

America the unilateral land of the free

market of values melting pot of Mammon

boasting of greatness and oily excess

tossing all protest behind with our trash

revving the engines of our industry

in the face of a brutalized weeping world

Home of the brave few who dare to resist

an insidious slick conditioning of control

a war on the mind in the vacuum of soul

losing the world in the pledge of obedience

to spies and criminals and General Electric

a nation of fattened domesticated herd-apes

Armed with an army an air force a navy against

everyone else and even ourselves now say CIA

this time the world war includes satellites and lasers

atomic submarines the size of cities and destroyers

secret energy beams stealth bombs and viruses

enough to end the world as our children would never

All these ruthless powers we have given to an idiot

an elite cabal of fascist oilmen drug dealers and spies

for some illusion of security in the roots of slavery

America the brutal the fallen the corrupted the sold

the stolen the bloody the toxic the greedy the deadly

doom promises grand profits according to TV

Trillions of American dollars going into a war machine

who keeps track anymore and who even cares

where all this human energy and processed planet

ending in the bank accounts of whom and why again

we are blindly following behind these men for centuries

feeding their hunger for blood madness chaos and control

America has lost the war on the world before it has begun

conquered by the worms that escaped Nuremberg

sold our souls to dead presidents of the white race

followed a dangerous path carved out by the CIA

armoring ourselves with high-tech holocausts

feeding our overstocked supermarkets until spoiled

Once the war has begun does America believe it will win

with 5 billion opponents and not enough barbed wire

will our children be thanking us for saving their future

while the vast masses of mankind are cursing us

for stealing their possibilities and being so stupid

will we still be applauding the son of a Bush then

When the bombs drop and drop they will on us

if we allow these military men to loose their drones

will we all be living in bunkers or in burning heaps

our flags hidden in smoke our cities filled with bones

when our world turns grey and America is a memory

what will the world think of our war and our wasteland

If America loses the world war who will win then

China Islam Cuba Canada the Indians and Hawaiians

the coyotes the cockroaches the weeds the microbes

will our children win their world back from madmen

will women and wisdom be honored and heard

or will we keep tuned to TV until the sorry end

America, America man sheds his waste on thee

we call it progress and patriotism and pride

while the poisons seep into our skin and eyes

so we can not see the bloody stripes crooked stars

being soaked with the gore of our world at war

around a white circle and a spinning broken cross

(circa 2001, poetry slam)

"And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy."

And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats ..."

~ Monty Python

“There is nothing harder than the softness of indifference.”

~ Juan Montalvo