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Energy diversification

photo of flag painted on tin

Yours, mine, ours.

I recently finished reading a book about being trapped in the same day over and over again, which presented the concept of a rift in time in the context of complex minutiae and how we factor small events into larger ones. Even our best sense of recall leaves out quite a bit. The actual route between kitchen and bath, for example; or what happens on the other side of the switch that allows our betting apps to re-charge.

The low and slow approach to movement or reading by candlelight dispenses a luster all its own. We are free to partake, understand its nourishing powers, and to ignore these in lieu of better light and quicker options, to relegate them to novels and the pity of grateful authors.

Legs may tire and the candle burns down, marking progressive time very distinctly in ways that are only typically confusing. And these methods share something else: a hovering sense of the immediate. We declaim poetry in the same manner that we accept a holiday, earned or not, observant of its nature or not. That is, gladly. Attuned to bare arms and all they may evoke, how they interrupt our struggle for productivity with suggestion. Seen in this light, the need to produce, develop, accrue is as unnatural as time travel. The many dumb reasons behind events of note and other current happenings dumb us down, so be wary. Be suspect, call out. Use fancy old words if you so choose. Declaim.

Baudelaire was unsparing and left so much popcorn on the forest floor it can be hard to discern the trail. But discern we must. Find your way. Write your music and play it.

Happy Holiday.

Image: American Flag by R. A. Miller

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Knife Fighting Advice

Two people find each other in a bar, have words, and are told to take it outside. One has a knife, the other does not.

Political Advice

The need to find a name for everything, especially in the midst of context collapse – government that relies on its own impunity, media beholden to access and corrupted beyond its ability to notice – finds its gloomy audience. The cynicism of artificial everything takes the degradation of beauty as license for further spoils. People who profess faith in a universe governed by a monarchy do not care about the state of democracy. Capitalist buzzards scavenge the carrion so much begins to resemble.

Slow down.

The rush constitutes a critical element in the systemic failures, which while calculated and tangible only accelerate via failures of imagination. The first thing to go, assumed to be light, harmless, perhaps fun but inessential and so left unguarded while the currencies get blast-proof doors and laser alarm matrices. But crushing the capacity for imagination has always been priority. Note the uncomfortable complicity in putting away childish things at our peril.

Consider how little attention has been paid. How much agency remains? Where to start with such a disfigured capacity to imagine? No wonder. Little wonder. Disordered priorities. Go back. Name a recent wonder. A glimpse, a moment handed over to wonder. Everything is there.

The subconscious renders, speaks beyond language, as much older than language, flickers with light, premises lightness, joy, love.

Own the lapses, welcome fears. Correct them. Re-order indicates a new, different hierarchy that understands exact necessity. Smells of earth and wild garden fragrance always near the top.

Oh, and always bring a knife just in case.

Image: Fifth Avenue skyscraper blocking the view of the Empire State Building.

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A Dish best served cold

Well, once you take the lead out, I guess you could use it for serving, or at least a kind of revenge, instead of taking it to the landfill:

“Unless you take apart the dish — which no one ever does — you’re throwing away the circuit board, which means you’re throwing away lead, and that is very bad for the environment,” said Brent Bolton, owner of Dish Disposal in Los Angeles, which removes and recycles satellite dishes.

Lead and other toxic heavy metals from electronic waste like computers and cellphones can pollute the environment, which has prompted 17 states to ban the disposal of e-waste in the household trash.

Yet when a reporter asked customer service representatives at the major providers in Massachusetts, Dish TV and Direct TV, how to properly dispose of an unwanted satellite dish, their advice was to throw it in the garbage. When pressed, a representative for Dish TV did come up with a list of service centers that he said would recycle old dishes, however.

Of course no one ever takes apart the dish, much less recycles them, but I see a potential growth industry. This could be tackling the problem of all the garbage on TV head-on. Talk about your double entendres. Go ahead. Talk about them.