Category: Uncategorized

I–V–vi–IV

I walk with you through the valley
Walk with me one step more.
I saved you once, my daddy,
Don't make living into a dark chore.

Believe in my songs and future
Believe in my fortune and gift.
Don't throw me away with the soothers
Don't hate me or cause a rift.

I want to see my future
I want the good things of this world.
I have always been a straight shooter
And you an ever shining pearl.

I don't want great fame
Or money or vice.
I don't want my name
To be flashing with lights.

But, God gave me a talent
That you said not to burry.
So, don't think I'm a rapscallion 
For not wanting to worry

About my work which I have made.
This work I am called to, see;
Come what will or what may.

Karma Doesn’t Exist

Karma is just the social opinion
Others have of you.
It is unforgiving,
Unjust, biased
Without mercy toward completely innocent people---
It justifies a serial killer and makes him feel no shame.
It constantly breaks and destroys an innocent man.
Do untouchables do untouchable things?
Did Genghis Kahn suffer anything?
What about the other countless dictators
And Mass Murderers in Asia and Africa?
Did Stalin receive Karma?
Did Mao? People still love him to this day.
He starved, slaughtered and imprisoned almost five-hundred million people.
Yet, his Karma is so good,
For half the world sings his praise.

Karma is a cur.
Because it has no justice
And no mercy.
It's as much a backward fable as the Koran.

Fahrenheit 451

Upon reading the novel, it dawned on me that Ray had felt that way in 1960. He'd seen it. And, I, in 2022, feel that way. It is the alienation of any genius---that is the ethos of the book.
Yet, the insidious thing about Fahrenheit 451 is that the dystopian doesn't actually censor books. It's far worse than that. It censors creativity. It censors openness. It censors genius of any kind.
That's the thing about it. I feel that way right now, but it is rather the social awkwardness of being what I am. If that were made illegal, and it were a crime to think, a crime to be open, a crime to be different, that's the insidious nature of Fahrenheit 451. Not just the burning of books---which is bad---but the outright denial of one's right to think, act, believe, experience. 

There are certain people with High IQs, and most scientists and scholars are among them, who having the elephant memory they do, cannot piece together information to create new ideas. There are such individuals with extremely high IQs which are incapable of creativity.
Then, there are people like me, who have a high IQ, but have extreme openness, extreme creativity, extreme existential intelligence. Who, would certainly be the figure Fahrenheit 451's society censored.

I feel that encroaching sense that it may be coming soon. But, I do not wish it, to. But, there are two kinds of geniuses. Mathematical, and Linguistic. Mathematical geniuses have the ability to do arithmetic. They have the ability to edit books meticulously, for no punctuation or grammatical errors. They remember like an elephant rote rules, formula, traditions,---and they are very intelligent people. Ask them anything about protocol or a certain duty they will be able to tell you down to the exact letter. That's probably why I didn't do well in Boy Scouts.
Yet, creative geniuses---being that we are so rare actually---have another ability. That ability to piece together thoughts, and weave them, and express them. To make new from raw materials. To rediscover ancient philosophies and traditions.

It may just be the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Yet, when I look at a fireman, I see Ray Bradbury's creature. I see Guy Montag. I saw in the woods a fireman, one who worked for a fire company, and the soulless determination, the thoughtless trample through the woods without even looking at the bluebells in full bloom to his left---rather, he was determined to accomplish some arcane goal.

Christ is very strange, as a godlike figure, in that He inverts the traditional values we assume when we think of conservatism. Unemployment, aimless wandering, long diatribes and discussions, parables,---Christ lived as a man of words, and He told us to live the same. Because, obviously, determination and desire to reach a goal thwarts the wisdom. Of rubbing dandelions on your cheek, of opening your mouth and catching the rain, of stopping to smell the flowers. These are utterly human things, and by seeking to accomplish a goal, by mindlessly driving ahead for the attainment of a reward or occupation, one does not appreciate the things they see. They, like Mildred, get ensconced in a play about nothing.

And the problem is so many people are like thus. So many people, instead of being creative, are not able to be creative. There are intelligent people who cannot be creative. There are intelligent people, conversely, who cannot do simple arithmetic. Like myself. Though maths were my better subject in school---I hated reading---it still didn't change the fact that I was better off as a philosopher than a mathematician. I never learned math past algebra, and I never got into Quadratic Formulas or exponents until College. Literally, I never saw a quadratic equation until my second year at college. Yet, I was proficient enough at the basic rudimentaries of math that I could get a 100% on my first Math Test without a calculator. My grades actually declined the more I required a calculator. But that doesn't stop the fact that I am inconsistent at math.

What use is there for a philosopher? Namely, that is the question Fahrenheit 451 asks. What use is there for contradictory wisdoms from numerous books? What reason does a man like me, falsely state that all summer leaves begin as flowers? Perhaps to take notice to it. As, most leaves look like flowers---if not outright are flowers---in their beginning stage, while unfolding from the bud. Yet, some haughty scholar, will do like they do with Aristotle some years down the line. "All trees do not flower."  One of their more tender students will chuckle at the insidious misrepresentation of my thoughts, and then think "You miss the essence of a flower." If you can look at the oak bud when it's first unfolding, and see it has a consistency much unlike any leaf I'd ever seen. Or, that the ant has four legs. Of course, we like to think of insects as having six legs---when, indeed, their first two legs are protracted to use as arms when the insect is stationary. How many other such observations have we  mistakenly discredited in the past? And what wisdom does the past have for the future?
Fahrenheit 451 is the outlawing of thought, the censoring of aberrations, the dictum that only the present knows best, the belief that all things must be literal. And with that, we lose our sense of who we are. And really, what Fahrenheit 451's society outlaws, is humanity itself.
Let it never come to that.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451, with Afterward and Coda. Del Rey Books, 1996. Text.

A Wise Story

There was a wise man
Who took thirty silver coins
And laid ten at a brothel,
Ten at a bar,
And ten at a temple.

At the brothel,
One of the whores saw the coins
And thought it might be someone's
Life savings, thus, she held it,
And when the man returned,
She said, "Is this yours?"
The man replied,
"Yes!" stunned that someone of such ill repute
Would hold onto his ten shillings.

At the bar, the same thing occurred,
Where a man, seeing the money on the floor,
Took the money and hid it in his pocket.
There, the man came back
And was handed the ten shillings.
He was even more perplexed.

Then, at the temple,
One of the zealots in ecstasies of delusions,
Saw the coins on the ground
And thought it an answered prayer.
They took it, and put one in the offering plate,
And kept the other nine
To purchase their family's needs.
The man, coming to the church,
So thrilled about the other two in his experiment,
Thought for sure his money would be returned.
It was not.

Though this story is not true,
We ought retain our faith regardless.
For, in Jesus' day, was it not Tax Collectors and Sinners,
Prostitutes and Vagabonds he dined with?
Do not let your wisdom cloud your judgment.
Anything is possible in this world
By chance and circumstance.
Rather, hold onto your faith, regardless of others.

2.0

I read Dale Carnegie to learn how to love others.
Not how to exploit them for my gain.
I needn't self help, because I do not wish
To go anywhere. I do not wish to improve upon my worldly status.
I do not wish to earn millions of dollars.
I wish, and it will happen,
For my work to earn me a living.
Do I know whether it will happen?
No.
Do I have faith that it will happen?
No.
Do I believe that it will happen?
No.
But, God is just. It doesn't matter what I believe.
If I worked, there will be payment.
If I crafted, and did so with skill,
He will cause me to find an audience.
Does my will have any effect on whether I manifest my destiny?
No.

The Law of Attraction is Black Magic.
It is the Mystery Occult.
It is the thing I hate most in life.
For, there are billions of uneducated people
Who have no hope of ever attaining even a tenth of what I have.
Not through all their effort,
Not through all their work,
Not through all their motivation and belief.
Yet, I, being gifted with intelligence,
Being gifted with time to hone my skill,
Being gifted to build up a repertoire of work
Can some day help them improve upon their lives.
And that good intention is my only magical incantation.
Built from the Proverb,
"He who devotes his work to the LORD, shall be established."
What devotion is there to the LORD?
To give, and to unburden the captives.

That is my Law of Attraction.
That if I improve my character---
Not learning how to pleasure the woman,
Learning how to charm the woman,
Learning how to trick her, and twirl her, and use psychological shadows---
And learn how to love the woman,
I shall find her for my heart is prepared for her love.
If I prepare myself for a lover,
I prepare myself for loves.
If I prepare myself to love others,
I prepare myself to love no matter if I find love or not.
For, homelessness after having created masterpieces like mine...
If I need to be homeless, then so be it.
For, I deserve my portion for working.
Even a slave gets fed so he can continue to work---
Yet, I am not, nor was I ever a slave.
I am a free man.
And as a free man, I ought to be unhindered
To eat and enjoy the bounty of my labor
Which is to find wisdom under the sun.
Should I give my wisdom to another,
That makes me his slave.
And I live in a land where such a thing is illegal.

FMNR

Let us call it
To Greensale.

Pronounced "Green-Sale."

Derived from the word in Nigerian for "Desert".
asale.

Conjugated

Greensaling Pronounced (Greensailing)
Greensald Prounounced (Greensawld)
Greensals Prounounced (Greensawls)

Meaning for atypical conjugations are to make it as natural as breathing for farmers to restore forests anywhere. It cannot be any more English, therefore, any more a part of our natural language.

Columbine

If we could have remained as lighthearted
As I did that day---
In my classroom I turned Columbine into a comedy.
For, I knew it was just human nature...
I knew that it was not so serious.

Yet, the news pushed the story
Traumatizing everyone in the nation.
Like they did with 9/11
Like they did with Covid...

School shootings were not so serious to me.
Neither are serial killings.
Neither are rapes, or robberies
Or any of the other random acts of violence.

Humanity errs, and it is true that
Men have done cruel things from the beginning.
Would I be afraid of Turks ramming babies with bayonets
If I lived in England? 
On the frontiers of any society,
There is mischief.
In schools, there is mischief,.

The whole of it is quite simple, really.
If we had a whole catalog of the sins
Committed by man on his brother
We'd have a list of evil that would be inexhaustible.

Therefore, evil happens in this world.
It is as true to human nature as good is.
There have always been evils;
Spreading the news of it does not fix the problem.
It only spreads the vanity of fear in wavering hearts.

"I lost my teesh," I said,
Pretending to be an old man.
The old man was shot;
The only one old enough to remember.
So with him, it seemed humor died
And America began the path to becoming afraid.

For, didn't even Jesus remark on the tower falling
Or Herod mingling the blood of victims with the sacrifice?
His words are not to let yourselves be shocked by it
And not to let it rule over your joy.

Nigh the Fall

Nigh the fall of every Civilization
The babes are seen as food.
The men and women begin to lust after themselves.
The society begins to obscure gender.
The culture no longer understands love, but becomes vicious.
Property begins to dissipate.
Men are not appalled at murder.
Nor are they appalled at rape.
Children become vessels for expiring lustly desire.
Divorce begins to appear en masse.
Virginity is no longer prized, but is considered base.
Adultery increases, and women and men do not stay faithful.
Your fellow citizen begins to spy upon you.
Men will report on men to authorities for naught.
They will oppress the poor and the stranger.
They have no communal days of rest.
They forsake their traditions and holidays.
They muse of rebellion.

This is a short list, but what is observed by me
When I study the patterns of civilization.

Native Americans,
Japanese,
Chinese,
Europeans,
Russians, 
Aztecs,
Tribes in Africa,
Persians,
Babylonians,
Egyptians,
Arabians,
Incans
Canaanites
Jews---
The pattern exists across all human cultures I've studied.
If men begin to behave more like animals than men

And are not conquered,
Or starve themselves,
Or enslave themselves by corrupt governments 
Or create dark ages,---
They live at the frontiers as brigands and can enjoy none of the benefits of peace.