Bittersweet the harvest comes

Naked light in naked night before naked sight

unseen.

Nude the skin that is brushed by air and then kissed by moisture

that is sweat like unto a dew,

and invisible as a dream in morning.

But felt a weight that bends our minds,

in arcs as the grass formed suspensions by spiders.

This morning meadow of my fancy,

I stare down between the long valleys of my body,

and at the tender curls of my thicket,

and at the hands now eased from all tension,

released by the quivering that remains

shaking in my spine and in my breath.

The eruption now subsided,

a lushness restored to netherlands,

and a richness to the scent that hangs about my bed.

Bittersweet thought the fruits may be,

and distant is the harvest,

it was brought by thoughts of you,

always you.

Only you.

The summer to seed

The cry of jays in an empty field screech and echo in my ears;

Turning soon the caw of crows, that pick the broken stalks,

and turn the stones to search for movement in the sand.

The summer morning teems with motion and with life,

in all the smallest places, and across the waves of the golden grass.

The spring is gone, the spring is gone, the day is burning fast.

To seed the clover is, to fruit the trees, to dust the once fattened ponds.

Stalks among the reeds a tall heron, who spears and pierces,

only to take great flight when even frogs have fled the sun.

Horace, I know that some how once you walked a way like this,

burnt your ship behind you, and in exile from the might shine,

of once then Rome.

Could you, if you could, guide my hand, and give me some advice,

to sooth the pains of those I know, who, having given,

now empty whispers receive?

The berries are still bitter, the plums and apples still green.

Not yet the richness of sweet harvest. 

Perhaps not this, nor any year.

(The person this is for knows who he is. :P )

Some thoughts on arguing the law

When you argue the law it helps to cite, read the cases, back assertions with references if there is no case law, and to read the relevant statutes. I had an argument with @justinmclachlan, who is, as far as I can tell, a truly terribly bad lawyer. First he cites nothing, then he doesn't read cases, then he doesn't read the legislative history, then he cites no references. I can just imagine what would happen to that as a legal brief.

Then, having committed all of these sins of argument, he goes off. Well I can do that too, and it doesn't even take law school to learn how to do that.

One of the real problems with the law right now, is that we, as a collective we, want to do many things which are simply unconscionable and stupid. The law can be twisted to allow it, but at that point it allows many other stupid things as well. People put on blinders to this, and happily chug along doing some stupid things, while pretending that the other stupid things can't happen. Except, they can, and do happen.

Let me take an example. We, as a collective we, want to ban "child pornography." However, the way the laws are worded, in that kind of sweeping, written by a bad prosecutor in the middle of the night kind of way, allows teenagers for being charged as sex offenders for "sexting." Everyone was shocked, except, well those who had read the law itself, which plainly does in fact allow it.

Let me take another example: Australia's proposed plan to censor the internet down to the level of what a 45 year old terrified mom thinks a 15 year old should be allowed to see. It is plainly stupid, and against any form of self-government as the term is understood. It is also legal in the sense that the laws as written provide for it. 

And another one: the Defense of Marriage Act. It is plainly against Article IV 1, which provides that states shall provide full faith and credit to each other's instruments. Except same sex marriage, that doesn't count. 

Or torture. There are enough examples there, but the one that is current is the decision not to prosecute. In a country where teenagers are prosecuted for sending semi-naked pictures to each other by cellphone camera, there is no logic of danger to society that has torture not prosecuted. Except the logic that their are interests that are above the law in some strange way, or that there is a parallel law based on some concepts that aren't ever actually ennumerated, subject to a vote as such, or written down any place. A rule of not even  people, but prejudices.

When we pass laws that are contrary to our most solemn promises to ourselves, and we have been doing that a great deal, it undermines the whole of the structure. Out there, in the fringes of thought, are people who would knock down the entire structure, because they do not understand it, or they understand that they are always on the outside of this special zone of law.

Dictatorship and the Web

On the same day that the US objects to Chinese filtering, Australia announces a draconian censorship of computer games, limiting all content to that deemed suitable by the government for 15 year olds.

This is just unacceptable, what is going on with people, have they simply lost their minds?

@justinmclachlan is a total loser

I've learned not to have an argument over twitter I guess, because twitter seems to have a species of idiot male who think that they can shout you down 140 characters at a time. @justinmclachlan is the second I've run across. Cites nothing, gets everything wrong, and when he does just shifts to the next completely wrong argument. Some times an argument needs to be ground out. Total losers like justinmclachlan are convincing me that twitter, while fun, is also the province of people who are completely assured of their own rightness about everything, and yet, strangely, can never come up with a single fact on their side.

I think this must be indicative of something larger, but what it is doesn't seem clear. That there are people with a very high estimation of their own abilities that they can't produce evidence of, well, I'm in the art world, and that's sort of most of the drifting population of would be artists. But that these people seem to be running the world right now makes me wonder what is supposed to get fixed, when the people who are being given the biggest megaphones are the people without any sort of intellectual ability, and who are merely nasty bullies. How do they become important? 

I wish I were the sort of person who could draw some blah blah blah patriarchy or other facile explanation, but that sort of retreat from facing things left me somewhere down the road. 

There is a grace to understanding, and to research. To reading words and having them soak into your eyes. To feeling the currents of the text, as they become part of your blood. It seems we do not practice this anymore.

Instead, we live in a time of bullies, of a few who have some special permission. I do not know where they get it from, but I know that they are all the same, whether they are demanding sex, or some other form of personal worship that they feel, for reasons I do not understand, is due to them

In a land when someone with a thousand twitter followers is exempt from every shred of intellectual honesty, the way @justinmclachlan is, there's no room for art or ideas.

It was, if I recall, Nabokov, who longed to write, because there, art and beauty are normal. I need a taste of that right now, and it is there to which the bright light of thought and the many twists of creation, are the only visa needed to enter.

Yifu's Comet

yes, this is horribly simple, but I thought it would make a nice touch at sl6b.