Eros & Thanatos

Guernica, Pablo Picasso (1937)

this is, in my opinion, one of the greatest works of art E-VER! if you don't know the story behind this piece, please please please read the book Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica, and the Materpiece That Changed the World by Russell Martin (2002).

now, maybe Picasso isn't your sort of art. okay, I can accept that. it's an aquired taste. but that aspect doesn't really matter. if you are against indiscriminant bombing of people's homes, if you are appalled by the slaughter of innocent human beings, if you abhor facism, then you owe it to yourself to learn about this piece of art. it was Picasso's reaction to Nazi Germany's brutal distruction of the Spanish town of Gernika (the title is spelled "Guernica" because it was it was created for the Paris World's Fair). I'm not saying that you should like this painting. I'm simply saying that it's one of the most important pieces of anti-war art of the 20th century.

I hope you like it.

peace,

tigger grrl

(p.s. for those not versed in Greek mythology, my title, Eros & Thanatos, refers to "Love and Death")

I miss Bill Hicks!

Bill Hicks. Do ya know who he was? probably not. There is a chapter on him in the book American Rebels (ed. Jack Newfield). It ends with the author wondering what the master of political comedy would have said about all the things that have happened since his death in 1994 (the Clinton-Monica thing, OKC, G.W.) "Dunno. The only certainty is that most Americans still wouldn't know who the hell he is."

Well, friends, please remember that there are many many beautiful brilliant souls out there. Some times we find them inspiring; some times we find them hard against our skin; and sometimes we don't find them at all. Here's a little wisdom from one of my American heroes:

"I'm so sick of arming the world, then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of them. We're like the bullies of the world, y'know. We're like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheepherder's feet.

"Pick it up."

"I don't wanna pick it up, Mister, you'll shoot me."

"Pick up the gun."

"Mister, I don't want no trouble. I just came downtown here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don't even know what gingham is, but she goes through about ten rolls a week of that stuff. I ain't looking for no trouble, Mister."

"Pick up the gun."

(He picks it up. Three shots ring out.)

"You all saw him - he had a gun."

Rent, buy or swipe the DVD "Bill Hicks Live" You won't be disappointed.

Unless you're a right-wing nutjob. In which case, why the hell are you reading my blog? I'm already on The List -- Ashcroft will deport me just as soon as he can. While you're waiting, though...

If you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, then go home and burn all your records, all your tapes, and all your CDs because every one of those artists who have made brilliant music and enhanced your lives? RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrEAL fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high they let Ringo sing a few songs.

ignorance is bliss. (right?)

road weary 1999

In the summer of 1999, I spent three months on the road. I gave up my apartment, give my stuff to friends, and headed out on the closest thing a grrl could get to the railroad cars of days past -- Greyhound. I highly recommend the experience if you need a reality check. Ain't nothin' to distract you when everywhere you're a stranger.

AUGUST 6 10.41 am

Been on this road a month or more --
I'm road weary.
Been sleeping in hostels & Greyhound coaches --
I'm road weary.

The cities are all different,
I always need a map,
yet it's just the same plastic tourist crap --
souveniers of portland, denver d.c., seattle
read "made in canada, or china, or taiwan" on the back.

suffragette city

hey folks -- friday is the 85th anniversary of the voting act for women!

this is a message to all the women & grrls & womyn, and the men & bois, and the pre-op, post-op & non-op trannies, and the anti-label gender-queers, and the men & bois, and progressive white heterosexual men, and anyone else who feels that their personal identity is not already listed -- no matter whether you think voting is great or you feel that voting is pointless, please take a moment to reflect upon the fact that the ability to vote (for the non-white non-property-owning non-males non-WASP among us) is a very recent thing in our nation's laws.

personally, I'm an anarchist, which means -- probably contrary what you've heard from the long-running smear campaign against us -- that I believe personal responsibility is both a responsibility and personal. I don't believe that I should vote and consider the job done. no no no! voting is the absolute LEAST that each of us can do. we should all be out there, walking more & driving less, looking strangers in the eye & smiling, playing on the swingset in the park, laughing, toiling, getting our hands dirty and feeding our souls.

friday is the 85th anniversary of women clawing their way into voting priviledge. thank you, elizabeth cady stanton, lucretia mott, julia ward howe, susan b. anthony, william lloyd garrison, and every woman who was born before 1920 and had no say in how she was "governed".

friday is the 85th anniversary of the suffragette victory. I'll be having dinner with some of my wonderful, thoughtful, beautiful, loving grrl friends and celebrating my responsibility to vote.

peace

Nine days until school begins. Not that I'm counting. I don't have any doubts that I really *want* to be in school again, 17 years after high school. But I'm a bit worried about the amount of work I'm supposed to accomplish. I've been trying to get ahead, at least for my Foundations in Peace & Justice class, because it's the one I'm most interested in and, knowing me, I'll put off all my other classes' assignments to focus on this one. One thing about being 35 years old -- I know what I'm most likely to do in a given situation.

My P&J professor is an amazing and wonderful man - Byron Plumley -- who has walked the talk, serving time for protesting at the School of the Americas, working in the soup kitchen of the Catholic Worker. I had always written off "religious" schools, figuring that they all were as right-wing nutjob as Boston College & Brigham Young Univeristy. So I must acknowledge my dear friend Patrice, a Colorado native, who urged me (actually, I think she made me promise) to look at the program of Regis Univeristy. I made an appointment with an admissions counselor, and then I met Byron through my counter-recruitment work. And I was sold. Apparently the Jesuit tradition is very much about dialogue (not dogma) and direct action (not armchair philosphy), two things that speak deeply to me as a Buddhist-Quaker.

The texts Byron chose for this class are all books I would have bought & read anyway:

Chris Hedges -- War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
Ira Chernus - American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea
CODEPINK - Stop the Next War Now
Pietra Rivoli - The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade

If you want a really good primer on nonviolence thought in the U.S., the Chernus book is a great choice. It takes each leader in the movement chronologically, from the Anabaptists to Thich Nhat Hahn. In the chapter on Gandhi, the great Hindi is quoted:
Just as the sea accepts the water of all rivers within itself, purifies it and gives it back again, so you too, if you make yourselves as the sea, will be able to accept all people. ...

which sounds remarkably like the 8th verse of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching:
The best way to live
is to be like water
For water benefits all things
and goes against none of them
It provides for all people
and even cleanses those places
a man is loathe to go
In this way it is just like Tao ...

it's all about connections. as Thich Nhat Hanh says, There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

off to my Quaker mediatation :~)

walk with the spirits, my friends