Song of woe

We call on the Lord Musum in our distress, and he answers us. Hail with thunder and lightening rains down upon us. Save us, Lord Musum, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues. What will he do to this throng of wayward swindlers, and what more besides to their deceitful tongues? He will punish them with a god's humour, scourges thick with allegories. Woe to me that I dwell in the land of Manitou, that I live under a bridge in Winterpeg! Too long have we lived among those who hate peace. We are for peace; but when we speak, they are for war. Save us all, Lord Musum.

This throng of courtiers, prying our good wife from the joys of obscurity, into the wars of biblical interpretations, rejoicing in the wrath of the god of gods, they have absconded with her into the depths of biblical studies in a room far removed from the comings and goings of the common sinners within her care home. Took us the better part of an hour to track her down, it did. There she sat, sandwiched into a self-righteous throng of devotees of who knows what mixture of evangelicals. We sneaked in and seated ourselves silently in the corner and chuckled in smugness when our wife gave us a big wink and nodded towards her plate of cookies and milk. She knew what she was up to after all, our concern unfounded. As the closing prayer ended with “God bless us all,” we could not help ourselves but to add quietly “And the martians too.” Our dear wife spilt her milk.

Dementia has it's perks it would seem, and humour is not lost upon it. Our Lord Musum we thank you as you seat your splendor before the screens in the magnificent halls of the Ziggurat, thwarting the wayward swindlers with your remote. Cookies and milk are no match for the fallacies of the sanctimonious, short term memory loss not withstanding. Into the halls they disseminate, the absconded, filled with cookies and milk, tummies full of love, dissertations on the good book lost in the synapses of minds with a much more direct link to mother nature and the reality of self-gratification. Our Lord Musum, they thank you with lewd song and dance as you feed them lavishly, your rapturous proselytes, may their sentience sweeten your acrimony, your scourges thick with allegories.

But woe is us, who must leave the halls of the care home, and return to our bridge by the lanes and pathways beleaguered by hoards of swindlers who without milk and cookies impose themselves on our lostness to vindicate themselves from the depths of hell with their good intentions. Guide us, our Lord Musum, with your remote, that we may return innocent of salvation to our safe haven under our bridge near to the ramparts of your Ziggurat. Save us, Lord Musum, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues. Punish them with a god's humour. We honour you unceasingly, Lord Musum, our King!

Under our bridge

Communication is this process of bettering one's otherness with one's chivalry. It would be quite useless if oneself and one's otherness both perceived everything the same. It is useful when attempting to warn the otherness of potential calamity such as “There's a wasp on your earlobe,” or attempting some humour such as “We should tighten our Canadian borders to keep those shoddy made in the USA products off our shelves.” Now it behooves us as to what exactly it is we are communicating to our dear wife who is luxuriating in a swanky care home in freedom from philosophical concerns when we tell her about our life living in the comforts found under our bridge.

Yes we live under a bridge, on the River Red, the Lord Musum presiding, with our cow named Bessy and our two cats named Moses and Blacky, the two names she remembers not remembering ours. We sit in front of our air conditioner to keep cool on the hot days, which she thinks is plain ridiculous but makes her chuckle, and our flat screen tv has no picture because the cable company won't take 'under the bridge' as a reliable address. We scrub our clothes on the rocks by the river and hang them to dry on lines tied to the pillars.

We tell her this tale because we do not wish to remind her of the comforts of Deathrock Apartments, and the shooting and gang warfare which is a nightly affair and might instill a nostalgia from her memories, this sonance being such a lulling experience much like a mile long freight train with four whistling locomotives which puts oneself to sleep at night when one lives near the tracks under the bridge. It makes us ponder though, why do we have to make up a fantasy life at all? Could we not just discuss the weather and watch the ants hard at work on the sidewalk? But no, we must live under a bridge.

It seems a product of lethargy, utter boredom at the thought of sitting there together, contemplating the great universe with twisted tangled memories, popping childhood friends into the rompings of adult misadventures. Better to make up a new life, free from reminiscence so she can tell the workers “This is my husband, he lives under a bridge.” Gets us looks of anxious unease and a helping of tuna sandwich and purple juice at snack time. Not sure if they vacuum for bugs after we leave, but the muddy footprints have all but disappeared by the next day, our wife being more keen on this than we are.

Communication would seem therefor to behold itself as something more than imparting transient information. It's the vibes that matter, so to speak, the tears and the laughter, the joy of meeting and the anguish of parting. The Lord Musum must be proud of us. In his benevolent generosity we have not had a flood this year, on the River Red, and our bridge is high and dry. We'll take it as a sign from the Ziggurat, rising from mighty ramparts on the River Red above our bridge. We will take comfort in his revelations as he lights up our flat screen tv every evening allowing us to ravish in his princely divine powers. Oh Lord Musum we await your chivalry.

Old white geezer

The Bilderberg conference is discussing our existence this week. In light of new scientific evidence that when the proverbial tree falls in the forest it does not fall at all unless someone hears it, the big bang did not occur because there was no one to hear it. The flip side to this amazing new evidence is that our minds actually create the universe we live in, a rather subjective thing it is, and our wildest fantasies about it's construct are actually the parameters of it's construct. Of course the Bilderbergers are doing their utmost to ensure the ideals of the trickle down economy will be embedded forever in our imaginary DNA till our imaginary hell freezes over.

That police force one helicopter flying over Winnipeg every night makes me cringe. The police knock at my door and give me a hard time when they're looking for someone else. Yes, I live in Winnipeg's west end. I have to beg the caretakers of our Deathrock Apartments to turn on the heat when we have a cold spell in spring or fall and I have to be very diplomatic because they can make life miserable if you give them any friction. I'm on CPP pension and by the time I pay for my wife's nursing home I don't have much choice about where to live. Walmart type places is where I shop when the dumpsters are bare even though I despise their practises. We increasingly live in a society where pressure motivated by ideology is used to force us to fall in line so the slightly advantaged can strut their stuff.

This ideology somehow sidesteps the fact that we have the resources and people power on this earth to create a sustainable infrastructure and to feed and house everyone. It's just that this thing we call money, that undefinable entity by which the market places a value on everything, gets in the way. We can no longer blame aristocracy because it's these utopian, anticommunist credos which are saving the world. Meanwhile they are desecrating our mother earth. And aristocracy now claims it's the poor victim of the market place forcing upon them all this wealth and they're doing us a good turn by keeping the pyramid rising.

Our governments are held hostage by a banking system which claims to channel currencies for the good of humanity. The rules are established for the survival of big corporations. For the whole system not to default we must have growth, and this growth means people must purchase commodities which are not essential to their survival or happiness. This growth is not sustainable when it uses up earth's resources, we cannot eat our cake and have it too. A model for sustainability will be either forced upon us, or we can opt to develop it before dire consequences force it upon us or extinguish us all.

Some call it the degrowth movement. It is questionable whether our capitalist or socialist systems or stews thereof can bring about this change. It would seem to need an almost spiritual fervour in which the corporations and other criminals would lay down their swords and police force one would not need to roam the skies. Material things would become valued things to use with humility, to share and take care of. It is our elected officials who have the most power to investigate these pursuits, and to forge different models. Not one of us seven billion has all the answers, but we can try.

Our dreams about this world can become a reality. It does take time. Not all will be convinced today, some still believe the earth is flat. Our minds actually do create the world we live in, our state of sanity. Human consciousness is a force to be reckoned with. In all it's disparity it carries us along like the the mighty galactic winds, blowing us to galaxies far beyond our present dreams. We can make our present habitat, our wee solar system, a remarkable place in the star dust of the gods.