day 451.

 

 thanks for the succulent gift, olive, but to be honest, it's not to my taste, so here, i give it back to you, with love, doug

 i speak for the cat, yes, and what about it. listen to her brain say, why do you people hafta keep waking me up? always fidgeting and thinking and talking about stuff. i'm tryna sleep here! 

 maybe it's better to not analyze presidents, for one's mental and spiritual health, i mean. how much good can a president of a bloody empire do, anyway? maybe it's better to think about cats and anarchy and daydream. maybe daydream nation is the album for today.

 Carter had a decency most politicians lack, but his moral crusades, which came once he was out of power, seem like a form of penance. His record as president is bloody and dismal, although not as bloody and dismal as the presidents who followed. That’s the best we can say of him.

Chris Hedges

 israhell does not need artificial intelligence to target and kill people. it does not need intelligence at all. everyone is a target. it kills everyone.

 while obama builds his real estate empire here in his land grab homeland, in gaza there is only desolation and despair.

 unsubscribed from disney. we used to piggyback on bro's account, then we did a month for the beatles '64 which was meh and unsubscribed before seeing disney on the boycott list for donating 2 mil to the zionist genocide. well disney the man was a nazi, so it goes.

 dogs are pretty teachable. cats are highly teachable but they will do what they want to do. you can't say no to a cat. you can say please but only if it pleases them. the kid olive woke us at 3:30. during the night she continued to play with the snake plant resulting in the ultimate destruction of the snake plant as we watch helplessly. we thought she was perfect at first but as it happens she is a perfect rascal. she came into the bedroom after her second breakfast carrying something and she offered me this digit of succulence she thought i might enjoy. she's a generous rascal i acknowledge. 

 j.c. died. all the prez's serve the war machine, but j.c. at least built some houses for some fortunate members of humanity, unlike j.b. who just bombs people and steals their land.

 we gonna watch civil war tonight. it might be good, it might suck. 

it sucked. stupid, incomprehensible waste. that's hollywood america for ya. why would i imagine it might be good? stupid.

 Neoliberal reality is no different from any other informing reality in any time that favors power and wealth over the masses of the vulnerable.

Arrested Grief: America's Moral Problem?

Kim C. Domenico

Counterpunch

listening to the wind rise and subside

listening to the sirens come near and pass by

listening to the dog

listening to the silence of the dog

listening to the dog

soft gaze at the flower in the carpet

soft gaze at the flower clock

there is no flower clock

soft gaze at the flower in the carpet

love the carpet

listening to the people under the floor

listening to the belly

thinking of the potatoes waiting 

not waiting

in the fullness 

there's no time 

nothing to dissolve

digest

mind

breath

wind, siren, flower, dog, people, potato, belly 

 if i must die is a national best-seller. obama's tower in the rain looks like an ungainly mausoleum. i could imagine it as the central plaza in a necropolis. the neoliberal necropolis.

 T-rump wants to abolish the irs? where's the money for the military industrial complex gonna come from — the rich?  Ha ha. Doofus. 

 the kid olive is breaking down trudy's old snake plant and gnawing the dangling succulent and the fuzzy little cactus, throwing pots and crystals, and creating a fun-filled world of happy chaos. she's a delightful anarkit. we banish her periodically to the bedroom for naps. 

 What if this aborted grieving process is the way to restore the imagination of the heart, and with it, the truth of all-connected, now so endangered?

Kim C. Domenico

Arrested Grief: Liberal America's Moral Problem?

Counterpunch

i feel distinctly ambivalent about the movie hundreds of beavers. in it the goofy trapper has to kill hundreds of beavers to win the fur trader's daughter's hand in marriage. mike laments there was nothing about the evil decimation on the beaver population and the resulting decimation of habitat. i did think there was something about the evil of the trappers, but it was such an endless phantasmagoria, and i may have inserted that.

the decimation of the beavers is like the decimation of the bison. killing beaver to get girl is pretty sick alright. it probably doesn't bode well for long term relationship.

it's funny, i talk about the decimation of the trees and the park and nature sanctuary by the obamachron across the street, and the beavers meanwhile are eating the trees.

it's disturbing to see modified nature trying to be natural. while

across the street obama landscapes with styrofoam.

what do i know, i'm just a city boy, living in a building across from an oligarch draining the wetland and building on it, lording over a "nature sanctuary" with the beaver intrepidly attempting to do what beavers are meant to do alongside the artifice of human hubris.

maybe the beavers will go eat obama's trees. then they will surely be displaced, or repurposed as pelts.

 the absence of grief is far worse than grieving. 

 our yards and neighborhoods are now critical habitat.

nature needs our help.

 

 It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.

Pirkei Avot, 2/21

 often i feel lost in this world. it was worse when i was younger. the world is terrifying. i'm going back to the last rune i drew. it was the spiritual warrior, but reversed, though actually i drew it sideways, but there is no sideways reading. it says "matters of trust and confidence are at issue here, and with them the authenticity of your way of being in the world." maybe any rune you choose is going to resonate. this one is a hard one.

 how do you quell the anxiety? be patient! nothing is permanent. even anxiety. patience is not just the ability to wait, it's the way you behave while you wait.

 the third paramita is patience, i think. when you're in a tunnel, you have to keep going. i lingered today though, reading messages on the wall. someone else lingered there between the waste and the recycling cans reading the new york times. be patient with yourself, kid, as we are going through hard times.

 the night after the first paramita, generosity, i was ungenerous.

 are we evolving or devolving. before evolution was a concept we were evolving. we can see the fossil record. what will be the fossil record of the age of plastic and mass destruction. can we evolve under the circumstances. we saw the fossil record. we burned the fossil fuel. we made a history of war on the planet, the record will show. who will see it we don't know.

 me and olive still in bed. almost 11. i'll go get some kale, hopefully. i was thinking, when you meditate and you feel yourself straying, you keep returning, though you're still here, you keep returning to where you are. i don't really meditate though, in the traditional sense. 

 so living is an act of memory, trying to remember beyond the present, to remember something good, well, but what about when your memory goes and leaves you here, still living?

 it seems that living is enacting memory. i talked to mom. she talks about a neighbor that moved into the place before mom did, who remembers mom, but not from before in the neighborhood. her memory starts with the place. maybe the mind is kind. maybe it's easier that way. mom remembers the summer place we went to in michigan, and between us we see it in our minds. that place may still exist, or it may be gone. it was twelve cottages on a high dune scape with a long stairway going down to the beach, called daisy's end. daisy was old. older than the place. it was old fifty years ago. the volume on the tv goes way up, roaring commercials, and mom can't turn it off. i really want to live according to a measure that i would call good. i want to work with memory while i have the ability and i want to do small acts of good. something about returning to a familiar place you have been before and remembering where you are. does that make sense?

 

 i read that a hermit year is about to begin, but what does it mean. i don't know. the wheel of fortune year is next. again, i don't know. i look at the lagoon reflecting the trees growing up and growing down and i don't know. 

 olive's been thoughtful today. the whole 2nd paramita she was on the bed. then she came out and looked at the food cabinet, thoughtfully, peacefully, patiently, not clawing. tomorrow's paramita is patience. here i am already anticipating. 

the 2nd paramita, discipline. we've been doing the 6 paramitas since 2021. it's a tradition. it's different each time, yet it's rhizomatic, expanding, returning. i saw a dog on wheels off leash. the other dog with 4 working legs was on leash. the dog on wheels was veering off into the yards excitedly. we all watched the dog on wheels. at first i was set to feel sorry, then i felt excited. the human looked a little glum though. you can think of others. in the first paramita, generosity, it's the secret of happiness, because you know we're all one. all the paramitas come at once, but there are six days, one for each. there's nowhere to go, but the paramitas are a boat everyone gets in to go to the other shore, from the insane country, samsara, to sanity. when you go beyond you may look the same, but everything will be changed.

 listen to your conscience, kids, don't conform, don't listen to the president, resist evil. be kind.

 we can't look away. we must look beyond.

 You know, we are living in such a stupid, stupid era. This is such a stupid time in history. It is not just the genocide. It is not just the sadism, the psychopathy, the indifference, the mercilessness. I think that to a degree we always had that. Israel didn't invent anything. It has reached a very low point in humanity, in human evolution. It is not unique. But i think what is unique to our time is how stupid it is. We don't have any meaningful debate about anything. We just have slogans and algorithms recycling the same things over and over and over and over again and again.

Alon Mizrahi

the second paramita, discipline. 

cats will teach us about discipline. 

how to discipline ourselves.

In the mean time the forts, magazines, and arsenals, which, according to the constitution of the country, were in the keeping of his Majesty, were for the most part, seized by the provincial militia.

QUESTIONS FOR EXAMINATION

To whom was the country granted? When?

When was it settled?

What is said of the constitution?

What is said of the state of this colony?

What was the plan of government?

How was it divided?

What colony was next settled?

By what means did the colony become flourishing?

How long did the proprietary government continue?

First lessons in the history of the United States: compiled

for the use of the junior classes. 

By Mrs. C.M. Thayer, late superintendent of the female department.