Tag Archives: reality

Mid-life stasis

This is no
Mid-life crisis,
No crisis at all.

Instead, I feel
Empty
And calm,
No longer rolled tight
In a ball
Of stress, and strife,
Fighting for breath,
Yearning for more
Life.

And now
Is the stasis,
No more status quo
Of chasing, and running
With nowhere to go
But round, once more
Mad rush to the floor.

Still,
All is still
And quiet, inside
The voices of urgency
Crying loud, like seagull-screech
Deep in chest, they have left
Empty nest, neither squawking birds,
Nor baby chicks crying for food,
No up and down roller coaster,
Just slight shift in mood.

I go up, and down,
And back again,
Always the same,
Dearest of friends,
Round to call,
Yet not the same,
For underneath it all
Is something calm, leaves coating the ground
Multi-coloured nature’s blanket, unraked,
Unneeded, unnoticed, unheeded, but all of that’s
Just noise, background hum,
Sliced through by the tinnitus,
Sound of silence, constant
And when all’s said and done,
Cliche after cliche marching two-by-two,
This one is truer than that one,
My eyes are clearer than yours,
Money pouring from pockets opens doors
That don’t really matter.

Will I ever hear the little pitter-patter
Of un-padded feet?
Is that the aim of life,
Or something else entirely,
Something achingly deep,
Soulfully wide,
Scarringly bright,
That we carefully hide,
As if
To share
That one deep dark truth within,
Would be the greatest of fears realised,
Life’s ultimate sin,
Against ourselves,
Throbbing ache deep in gut,
Or just above,
As if the hole of lonely acceptance
No longer misses the love,
But instead resides – monkey-like –
In chest,
Never to be warmed by soft-armed vest,
The hug of a loved one
Momentary relief
Loves empty crater
Memory of happiness
Slightest of balms
For later, but now all we have
Is the roundabout thought,
The feeling of loss
That itself means nought,
Great empty divide
Basin invisible in the dark,
The playground from hell,
Broken reality,
Healing heart.

When…

When…Did I stop looking up,
To take in the sky, and realise
How great it is, just to be alive?
Why…

Is it ok for freedom of hate speech,
Yet any words spoken against hate
Are suspect and attacked?
How…

Have we come so far,
Only to fall backwards willingly,
As if we have only grown infantile?
Where…

Has all this hateful ugly shit
Come from?

a partial solution…

We don’t need to ‘ban’ guns. We just need to punish those who carry handguns by automatically applying federal law to anyone caught committing a crime while carrying a deadly weapon. What this means in reality is that anyone caught committing a crime (no matter how big or small) whilst carrying a gun (even if they did not use it in the crime) will automatically go to jail for 10 years. This was trialed in three states over two decades ago.

The outcome? Gun homicide fell by 30% in the first year. They even anonymously interviewed a cocaine dealer from the area, who was quoted in saying that all of the cocaine dealers he knew stopped carrying weapons because 10 years in jail was too costly… if they were caught with cocaine they could get up to 3 years in jail. But if they were caught with cocaine and a gun, they automatically got 10 years. With this one dealer earning over $200k a year selling drugs, 10 years in jail is a loss of $2 million which is just not sound business logic. Hence why he and other dealers stopped carrying. Hence why the gun homicides by criminals was cut so drastically so quickly. How was this kicked off?

By a slight change in state law making all people caught committing crimes while carrying a deadly weapon automatically tried in federal court instead of state court, and guaranteeing them 10 years in jail. Billboards were posted all around the areas, publicising the new application of existing laws. (I wrote a paper on this in Uni.)

So yes, there is a real solution (tried and tested) with a simple application of EXISTING federal gun laws which would focus the government’s anti-gun legislation on criminals, not your law-abiding gun owners (win-win). We could do it now.

Why does the NRA not want this? Because all the NRA cares about is selling guns to anyone and everyone. They care about making money not helping people or protecting homes. They are the face of big business.

If the ‘law-abiding’ gun owners of the US want to continue to exercise their right to bear arms, they should support real-world solutions and force the NRA to back the implementation of tighter federal law punishments for all criminals who commit crimes carrying deadly weapons. It is proven to work.

The world is not black and white (guns for everyone or guns for no one). The world is GREY. (Rules applied to punish criminals, lower gun homicides, and improve our way of life.) … I would like to point out that even if we did implement this law and cut gun homicides by 30% nationally in the first year (which would be great) we wouldn’t actually solve the problem of the massacres in the schools – the majority of which were committed by the children of people who legally own guns (‘law-abiding gun owners’).

That is obviously an issue to resolve in another manner. (Not sure how to solve that problem without limiting / minimising gun ownership across the board.)

you

 
Complete me!
Cries my heart-song.

Make me soul-
Deep happy, hums
The depths
Of my being.

Always are there
When I need you,
Know what to say,
Caress the stresses,
Smooth the wrinkles,
Keeping toil-wrought
Demons at bay.

Break all my pretensions, into
Digestable pieces, rake back
Sand-coated crunch-tastic woolly
Thinking, freeing me
To be me, each
And every day.

Intrigue me,
Intoxicatingly true.

Complete me,
Just being you.

Living with Lyme Disease – 30 years and counting…

(The recording above is the radio program “Lyme Disease Controversy Comes to the Capitol“, broadcast on New Hampshire Public Radio by Elaine Grant on Monday, February 01, 2010.)

I have Lyme Disease. I caught it when I was around five years old.

Ixodes scapularis (aka 'Deer Tick')
Ixodes scapularis (aka

You get it from the ‘deer tick’ (aka the ‘baby tick). Fundamentally, Lyme disease is a bacterial infection.

Where did this all begin? Well, let me tell you…
I was about five years old (my memory of precisely when is obviously not perfect). I held no fear of ticks or insects, having grown up barefoot and wild in the forests and swamps around Chappequa, New York. As most young children are, I was impervious to any fear of nature, insects or animals.

Ticks do not crawl across the skin like many other parasites, nor do they hop around as 6 legged jumping beans like fleas (yech!). They find a nice, sometimes shaded, piece of skin (mine was behind my ear) and begin to make a home for themselves.

Continue reading Living with Lyme Disease – 30 years and counting…