Six of One . . .

. . . and Change 

Linked

Apple Watch and iPhone talk  
Exchanging pinging pulses.
But are you still in charge?
You're mere connective tissue
Now.  And tote them both around.
Your spiffy Fitbit, too.
Devices now control us.
Who among us cares?

JAD, 2021
Improvising

Bach wrote music
On the nose
While jazz keeps
Skipping beats.
When bending notes
And splicing chords,
It never sounds
The same.

JAD, 2021
High-Coo U

Malice awaiting
In torrents of light;
Innocence rounding the bend.

Writing preferring
Relationship;
Photography sleeping around.

Deities leveled,
Bewildered by heart;
Angels enamored of flesh.

Wisdom immune to 
Idolatry;
Believers obsessed with their god.

Martyrdom conscious
Of purges to come;
Militants prone to deceit.

Petulance masking 
Incompetence;
Redundancy paring its fat.

Missions unscripted
Predestined to fail;
Missives that stick to the point.

Meaning entangled
In metaphor;
Uncertainty badgering chance.

Sentences strangled
By bloated detail;
Poems reworded that last.

Consciousness shedding
Its camouflage;
Intelligence mastering form.

JAD, 2021

Unless you’re a prodigy, by the time you’re an icon, you’re also a relic.

For many, jazz is best listened to when half-listened to.  I’m lucky I can fully make sense of it.

The Internet kept us from absorbing in depth the crux of each other’s truth.  We’re more easily controlled when atomized.

Paris’s minority housing — its banlieues — orbit around it like space junk.

Some are too humble when young, but more become humble too late.

Eastern Europe’s enduring pathology is still anathema to the West.

The Left can’t abolish inequity.  Yet, its hubris remains unlimited.

As blacks take-over the megaphone — a reverse takeover — whites still treat them as projects.

Social justice spawns self-aggrandizement.

When is it cutting-edge music; when, merely stoned musicians?

One Vanderbilt

A.

It turns to silver
The quicksilver sky 
When you're walking uptown 
On Madison.

B.

And, yes, it possesses 
Sharp wit.

A.

The kind you expect
In one-liners.

B.

But what of those towers
In London, old sport,
Those eloquent stanzas
Of form?

A.

Enjoy them when next
You are there.

JAD, 2021
Half & Half

Toenail polish rainbows,
Summer's sandaled feet.
Hard, cracked heels beneath each step
Where Arabs daren't peak.
Golden-streeted August joy,
Of late though obsolete --
Sanitized and sterilized --
Competes with goading pain.

JAD, 2021
The Rules

Struck, still stricken --
Yet, strivers no less --
We strut through each stratum
Then simmer stock still.
Does anyone play this game
Honestly?

We've been there and done it,
But claim that it's new,
Yet, then when we haven't
Insist it's old news.
Has anyone studied
The rules?

JAD, 2021

Rupert Spira on Consciousness and Time

Rupert Spira — The Nature of Consciousness and Time

The best explanation of consciousness and time I’ve heard.  And, believe me, I’ve heard dozens.

Spira’s most telling comments as per my notes taken during my first viewing:

  • We are localized expressions of consciousness.  Matter doesn’t contain consciousness.  Consciousness is primary.  It’s the ESSENTIAL part of our nature.  (TUDOR PLACE:  In my REM SERIES poems, I’ve played with this idea, suggesting that since we create imagery in REM sleep that isn’t the result of outside stimuli, we’re in effect microcosmic co-creators of REALITY and as actively involved in this process as other cosmic forces, thus far identified or not.) 
  • Time is the distance between a point in the past and a later point, be it present or future.
  • Time is NOW at all times and inextricably tied to consciousness.
  • Only the present EXISTS as NOW is stationary in that we have no actual experience of the past or the future.
  • TIME IS WHAT CONSCIOUSNESS FEELS LIKE WHEN REFRACTED THROUGH THOUGHT.
  • SPACE IS WHAT CONSCIOUSNESS LOOKS LIKE WHEN REFRACTED THROUGH PERCEPTION.
  • Time and space are not fundamental to reality.
  • We experience reality through the faculty of thinking.
  • THERE IS ONE FUNDAMENTAL REALITY.  (TUDOR PLACE:  Spinoza asserted this as well as every yogi since the dawn of time.)
  • A sense of separateness LEGITIMATES CONFLICT.
  • The materialist paradigm of separation leads to unhappiness and conflict.
  • PRAYER IS A RETURN TO THE EMPTY SANCTUARY OF THE HEART.  (TUDOR PLACE:  This is the same idea that I’ve expressed poetically via the “claim” that “ALL TABERNACLES ARE EMPTY.”  And that the essence of being is to be found in emptiness — a complete absence of discernible form.
  • Meditation works similarly to prayer.
  • AWARENESS IS THE SAME FOR EVERYONE in that it both reveals and expresses our naked uncolored being.
  • Infinite self-awareness transcends conflict and = PEACE, i.e. a sense of being one with what the universe is.
  • SHARED RECOGNITION OF BEING IS LOVE.

IN SUM, HEIGHTENED CONSCIOUSNESS IS ONE’S BEING AWARE OF BEING AWARE OF ONESELF.

The US Ignores War Game Defeats . . .

 . . . and Simply Plows Ahead.

Can They Learn? Another US War Game Defeat

The US/NATO war game tally sheet:

  • US vs. North Vietnam — Loss
  • US vs. Iran — Loss
  • US/NATO vs. Afghanistan — Loss
  • US/Taiwan vs. China — Loss
  • NATO/Poland vs. Russia — Loss

So why does the US continue fighting wars such as these when two of them have now ACTUALLY BEEN LOST?

$$$$$$.

Right, it’s a racket.

Arms makers and military contractors GET RICH as the American taxpayer is the world’s greatest paymaster.  Of course, payment is in thin-air, inflated US Dollars, but then denial is the linchpin of this entire game.

As long as you’re making money, there’s no problem losing or yielding significant geopolitical advantage?

NONSENSE.

Re-Visualizing the Globe

Check out the actual size of countries once the Mercator Projection, a tool developed for nautical navigation, is removed.  Damn, look at northern hemispheric land masses SHRINK.  Russia, Canada, Greenland, US.

One wonders in viewing these altered maps, if one hasn’t been on drugs for years or perhaps is unwittingly on them now.

This is so fundamentally MIND-BLOWING as to be almost cause for alarm.  I wonder what other VISUAL DISTORTIONS we’re unaware of.