happy new year, benny. thanks for walking me.

 Olive took down 11 snakes from Trudy's snake plant. I missed some good pictures because R. said get her out of there. But she kept returning, like a kinetic meditation. 11 is my number, not that that was in her mind, but in Mind.

 consciousness is quite accommodating. it's like empty sky, this space in which things occur, it's like a living daydream that is completely convincing. 

 olive joined us for the 6th paramita, transcendent wisdom. i will amend the previous post where i said she was bored and went to sleep. she was present, and brought her calm energy.

 

Truth stands on the gallows
Liеs sit on the throne
Something in thе shadows
Communicates by code
The unthinkable is now thinkable
The poison, it's drinkable
So get with the program, get in sync
You'd better self-censor for wrongthink

The The 

Cognitive Dissident

 word of the day, augury.

this puppy is from south carolina, an orphan of the storm. welcome cutie. thus ends the old and begins the new year, a culmination of sorts, beginning in i don't know and commencing in nervous wonder.

 i think for new years we're gonna watch the joker and the joker: folie á deux, though i thought about perfect days. 

 not to be all gloomy and doomy, i know we must remember the long view, even if we'll all be gone, but on the last day of the year 2024 i wonder,  can we continue to live in this hateful chaos much longer? will the earth fall under the occupation of one vast insane amerisraeli genocidal nuclear terror state before the ultimate collapse? 

 olive's snake plant meditation. when we sat for the 4th paramita zoom today olive leapt over the back of the couch and joined us. she looked at the screen and went to sleep. 

 

so that's what meditation is, presence. i always thought it was discipline.
in japanese it's komorebi, in english it's daydream. i did it as a kid.
the fellow in perfect days does it looking at light shining through the trees.
i did it looking out the window of the soporific classroom at the birds
in the playground and the slow trains going by. now i get it. i can do it too,
it just takes practice when you get older and your mind gets too full of cares.

 dreaming awake. how i dreamed in the dull 2nd or 3rd grade classroom in decatur, the teacher called it daydream, the teacher of the 4th paramita today called it meditation, and said kids do it naturally, without thinking, and we have to clear our heads to do it later, with diligence, though sometimes i do it like a kid still, or like a dog.

 the culmination of a long career in the democratization of hate is genocide.

his legacy is genocide. the world is watching.


the palestinians are the jews of the israelis.
-primo levi

 

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.