Friday 31 December 2010

And Then There Was...

Through the shadows I wander,
wander, wonder and divide.
Through the mist, down the track,
for greater needs, or much less,
divide me here and tell me where.
Where must I go to find a place,
a place without the mist.
I wander wondering, divided by self,
shadows to the right and too the left,
shadows of too much light
seated in the mist tonight.




Down it comes, without a doubt,
the lit sky has no right,
no moon but all bright from the fright,
the fright that is not a light nor a sight,
but tight,
tight, yes tight,
the mist holds tight and laps up to me,
rain drops from leaves, and a cold wet mist,
a mist with no sight, just a 'light',
where it has no right- the mist licks,
smells and hides.
No place to hide but in the mist,
a mist that cannot hide but divide.





Wednesday 22 December 2010

Loyalty: The Price We Pray For

Following on from a comment I made on Facebook, the question of what loyalty is and where it lies has come in to mind. No one has questioned my loyalty thankfully, but in the process of replying I found many a problem to identify with, thus I felt the urge to write them all down here.

Prologue:

I was having a problem with uploading photos, and was using the Hotmail SkyDrive- otherwise I would have had to send lots of emails- but finding it all too awkward to give the receiver access for they don't have Hotmail. So I got grumpy and said we should have a universal device or web-based system for all these social websites we use so that whatever network we are on they can all work together: Facebook, Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress, Bebo, and Myspace to name just a few of the social websites out there. The problem is it would make a monopoly or destroy competition completely. However, life would be more simple if there were universal items and standards. What's wrong with increasing the ISO regulations to include web sites.

The question then was what can I do if I am loyal to the most true one (having written on Facebook my problem) I don't like Facebook or much of the social network system, I enjoy Blogger for it's simplicity and unique discussion focus that my readers I know and don't know, get to enjoy (at their peril!) my 'unharnessed' complicated mind and thoughts, whilst also being able to soak in their own voices.

And so in replying with the item below, I had my dilemma about Loyalty, where do we stand with each other:

Quoting Shakespeare on Loyalty: Cassius: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings". Why should we be held ransom to a monopoly in one hand and non-universal options in the other. I don't use Fb as much as Blogger. What justifies loyalty? My loyalty lies with everyone. The truth will set you free, or a universal option will. After all is Fb true & truly loyal?

Main:
BBC Pictures March 2010
Man's best friend. Loyalty comes at a Price.

What I'm trying to get at is you can either have a monopoly or competition, it's almost like Capitalism versus Communism in the most stretched of thoughts, with potential for George Orwells 1984 to play a part too. But also, you don't need truth for loyalty you just need belief, and that carries you.

Friends, family, work colleagues. Money, love, relationships, our own personal gains and wants, the want to help others, help yourself. What does Loyalty really mean to people? Where does loyalty stop? Is it contractual, is it a bond made before you become friends, is it how friendly you are, you're expression in different groups.

And in the quote I shoot myself in the foot, if my loyalty lies with everyone, have I just said I'm loyal to no one at the same time? What does this say about me, when in all fairness I work as hard as possible to please everyone. For I can't be loyal to everyone as I know the difference between right and wrong. Loyalty therefore if caught on the negative side of life, the criminal side, may make you loyal, but it's a bad thing, a bad judgement. Loyalty therefore can be a bad thing.

Or is it? Loyalty can be good, if you are loyal to you're volunteering sessions, charity groups you support, and you are contractually bound to be loyal in the best possible way to the people you work for. Loyalty is a form of power held over us whilst we think we are of equal measure.

By definition Loyalty is
  • The State or Quality of being Loyal
  • A feeling or attitude of devoted attachment and affection
  • A feeling of Allegiance

Is this the very reason why society does not work properly? No one cares and looks to better there own groups and leaves the ones at the bottom of the chain to rot? We are always looking to develop and expand- the whole issue is because we want to grow we don't want to sustain what we have. After a while, what we have is not good enough and a new thing catches our eye. Or am I over simplyfying our wanton urges of materials and money?

Loyalty and Trust works together? Right or Wrong?
An apt way of looking at it
In the words of M: He'd be a pretty cold bastard if he didn't want revenge for the death of someone he loved. If you were James Bond, where would you're loyalties lie then, King and Country and forget everyone else?

Taken slightly out of context but the point is we all have feelings and motivation for something however small it is. If someone is not loyal to you, you're likely to be upset. Marriage is about Trust and life long "contractual" loyalty to them, because "you love them and you only have eyes for them" etc, for my few years of undertsanding of what love is all about.

If we lived in a world where we only wanted to sustain what we have, had a harmonious equality of life from economic to social well being, what would it be like and how loyal would we all be?

Epilogue:
Wouldn't it just be better to remove social networking and instead rely on our fundamental knowledge of telephones, email, post and face to face contact. Social networking is slowly corrupting us whilst changing the way we operate in society. Everyone is wary of there public voice on a personal page. We no longer can be relaxed, it is a form of National ID for anyone to see, and once again, its another surveilance technique used to watch our everymove. So much for personal time and freedom. "Welcome to the Machine", a living status quo of George Orwells prediction. Democracy? No, Controlled Freedom. Loyalty to none and only one.

Cassius: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings".
Loyalty to the higher powers, trust and loyalty, control and freedom, monopoly and competition, easy access and hardship all working together.

Trusted Loyalty, Controlled Freedom, Manipulated and monopolised competition, easy access for complicated and harder problems to work round. Loyalty: The Price we Pay for not fixing the obvious problems and profiteering on the weak.

Wednesday 8 December 2010

Homing Beacon / Ancestrial Journeys

If I could find the full clip on YouTube I would show it to you because it means so much more with the pictures and gaelic music, but the words say enough in their own right. With the continuing theme I have shown in pictures and writing from October onwards, Sting has summed up a glowing of many attributes in his recent DVD: Sting A Winters Night, Live at Durham Cathedral (2009).

Talking on long winters, fire places and stories, of belief and taking us back to our origins in living in older times, centuries gone. Sting has provided a good conclusion as we angle closer to the longest night and the beginning of Winter. So, transcribing, quoting directly from his DVD (I wish the clip was out their) see what you can make of this:

I'm delighted to be here in Durham Cathedral...and I'm equally delighted to be back here in my home land, back to the north, I come here far too seldom, this is very much a home coming for me. And it's fitting that I would come home in the season of the winter, because winter seems to have this almost gravitational pull back towards one's roots, like a homing instinct where if we can, we tend to gravitate towards somewhere warm, cosy, somewhere safe: the fire side, the hearth, a candle, a family home and a church.
And were here in this most beautiful of English Cathedrals to Celebrate the Season of Winter, the season of cold frosts, long dark nights, but also of stories and spirits and ghosts in the chimney.
All the songs you'll here tonight are concerned with the theme of winter. Their from a variety of sources and historical periods, some as old as the Cathedral itself. Their are folk songs, sacred songs, secular songs, classical songs and a few of my own.
Winter for me, is the season of imagination, is the season of reflection where you're asked to face the ghosts of the past, and in facing them, you must treat them calmly and civilly...before the snows melt...and the cycles of the seasons...can begin once more.



Friday 3 December 2010

Snow

You have to imagine it as white sand. In this case, the sand is on everything not just the beach.

The first thing you have to know about snow...is that...it gets everywhere.
When it comes in, it does not provide shelter,
it falls in two ways: gently as the snow flake we imagine,
or wipped up by the wind and driven through blasting your face cold with sharp pellets of sleet.

Snow soft and gentile, filled with air, turns to ice only when it's trampled on,
the air squashed out hard and fast leaving nothing but the water to freeze to the ground,
It's gentle nature lost on the ground, above still falling as conceptually drawn,
artists capturing kids playing in gardens stacked feet high in soft fluffy snow.
Trees, no longer shivering, standing like statues with arms covered in that white powder,
fire places alight and clear smoke whisping away from chimney pots.

Snow taken granted for is not your best friend,
its capacity to remove your sense of danger is all too easy.
It's soft, fun and coersive nature to be played forges a bond of human imagination,
your sense of perspective, whether depth, height or distance removed for all is one colour.
This soft fluffy snow you must know, it can captivate you more than you will know,
the perfect place, the perfect material, places unidentifiable and so completely new
all due to this perfectly fine sprinkling of snow.

The first thing you have to know about snow...is that...it is everywhere...


Wednesday 1 December 2010

The Empire of Climate


The Empire of Climate: How the climate affects us. The physical and psychological changes to the human race by the weather.

Eminent geographer Professor David Livingstone wants us to see that climate is more than just the weather outside our window - it's an empire that has shaped our lives throughout history .


I'm continuing on the theme of how we used to live in the past. For anyone living in the UK or ROI may find an awkward connection to both now there is snow 3ft high across much of the country.

Global warming, Climate change, Enhanced Climate Change, Natural Quaternary Process, whatever you want to call it. Surely, we are seeing an affect of human industrialisation. Although you could argue this is a repeat of the volcanic issues of 1782/83 too, which left Europe without warmth and reduced harvests. We did have that Icelandic Volcano erupt earlier in the year, the fall out maybe more prolonged than first thought, who knows.

We spend a lot of time looking at the weather, but looking is not seeing, hearing is not listening. We should be nicer to our home, it won't last forever.

--
P.s. For updates, it should be noted that the climate is having extreme shifts between the seasons. Therefore because it has been warmer than normal, we are due to get colder than normal. Just one of the many theories.
Debatable questions: Due to the Artic melting and Canadian Ice Sheet melting, from excess heat. Now the cooling begins as the ocean currents slow down with fresh water inputs from these sources and therefore removing our Gulf Stream warmth, leaving us very much colder.

With a lot less of the Artic ice cube existing does this mean that Northern Europe will have the cold weather move in more frequently as Artic 'land' doesn't take the sting out of the weather for us? Is this an anomaly or a long term effect? Discuss.