Stray Thoughts

Can’t remember the year, sometime between 2004 and 2008, I think.

[A poem written many years ago, more relevant every year]

Tired, Isolated Romans

 

They fell, finally, those old Romans,

Surrounded by hostile foreigners who were

Prodded by envy and long memories and

Appetite and contemptuous hatred of

What these people had become.

 

Even their enemies remembered

When these Romans, as the old Republic,

Had been respected as well as feared; had brought

Law as well as order; had spread new possibilities

As well as never-ending disruption.

 

The simple republican virtues, forgotten

Or dismissed as myths of a simpler time,

Had left those Romans free within the law,

Tending their small farms and businesses,

Supporting small armies with small taxes.

 

Time and empire produced only order without law,

A system perfected beyond hope of change,

A few men owning everything and everyone.

What was to the benefit of few found few to defend it,

And only fools, at last, to die for it.

 

Of course, no possible analogy implied.

 

 

A good long time ago now — more than ten years — i was spending my days communicating with Joseph Smallwood, a “past life” who lived in America in the 19th century. This excerpt from my book Chasing Smallwood, which is a compilation of those sessions, may be of interest on this Presidents’ Day.

[Monday, December 26, 2005] 9 a.m. Well Joseph – James? – I know it is vastly easier for me to bring through values and attitudes and opinions than fact. So, what would you like to talk about?

Mr. Lincoln.

I can’t say that you folks appreciate Mr. Lincoln the way you ought to. There ain’t any use in putting him on a pedestal as if he weren’t just like you. He wasn’t, but he was. He was a man. The kind of man that don’t come twice in a thousand years. Perfectly placed, perfectly suited, perfectly willing – yet he didn’t get all full of himself, so he served without diversion.

Now, you take Napoleon by comparison. Ability in many lines – a genius, really. He was used by destiny to bring the middle ages to an end, and he more or less did that. (He died just a year before I was born, like Hitler and you.)

But the man didn’t have any moral dimension to him. He knew he was being used, but he couldn’t help himself from falling into old patterns, feathering his nest, marrying into kings, just spitting on the people who supported him and relied on him to look out for them. He did – when it didn’t cost him nothing.

Continue reading “Remembering” Mr. Lincoln on presidents’ day

Nobody who was of a certain age on February 20, 1962 will ever forget John Glenn’s three orbits around the earth.

In flight

Relaxing after being picked up

Homecoming parade

JFK’s tribute

Carl Gustav Jung, 1875-1961

For a couple of years, i was studying pottery, and the things I produced still please me despite their inadequacies. If you have ever used a coffee mug made by hand and compared it to one made by machine, you know there really is a difference in energy. regardless of the potter’s skill or lack of skill, the hand-made item will have its own energy in a way the machine-made item will not.

This is not a political statement! Where would we be without so many machine-made objects to make our lives more convenient? Nonetheless, here I am speaking specifically of energy.