It's that time of the year, the clocks have gone back, the evenings are getting darker, and menacing ghoulish Tories still stalk the land causing division and chaos and so much discontentment.
Today marks Halloween, however I prefer its true name Samhein the literal translation being‘summer’s end. It is the Gateway to
winter, a time when the veils between the realms of the living and the
afterlife were said to be especially thin, marking a time for reflection
to honor the worlds of the seen and unseen. There are several explanations for its
origin, one being the Roman festival of the dead 'Parentalia', but
another origin, not necessarily exclusive from the Roman one, is from
the ancient Celtic old day of Samhein (sa-wain) and most of the
traditions that we celebrate on Halloween have its origins in
Celtic/Gaelic Culture.
Samhein, which means November in Irish, and Calan gaef in Welsh was the end of summer and the
harvest season in the Celtic calender. It was the last great feast held
outdoors before the cold months to come. The last night of October also
marked the ancient Celts New Years Eve. Marking the end of the summer
and the beginning of Winter.
The Celts believed that on Samhein, the veil between the living and the
dead was dropped for one day, and the spirits of the living could
intermingle with the spirits of the dead.The ancient Celts divided their
year into two seasons: the light and the dark,
at Beltane on 1st May and Samhain on November 1. Many believe that
Samhain was the
more important festival, marking the beginning of a new cycle / new
year,and the most magical time of this festival was November Eve, the
night of
31st October, better known today as Halloween..
In the country year, Samhain marked the first day of winter, when the
herders led the cattle and sheep down from their summer pastures to the
shelter of the stables, .in order to determine how many animals could be adequately fed through
the winter. Those not able to be cared for were butchered, which would
help to feed the family during the dark days ahead. It is partially due
to this practice that Samhain is sometimes referred to as the ‘blood
harvest.’
With the rise of Christianity, Samhain was changed to Hallowmas, or All
Saints’ Day, to celebrate the saints in heaven, and so the night before
became popularly known as Halloween. The 2nd November became All Souls
Day, when prayers were to be offered to the souls of the departed.
Throughout the centuries, pagan and Christian beliefs and celebrations
have intertwined
Over the years we have ended up with the modern commercialised,
corporate version that is now known as halloween far from its original
roots when children dress up in Ghoulish costumes and go out trick and
treating in what was developed in America in the late 19th and early
20th century replacing what in reality is such a sacred day The old ways
are still with us despite the grip of large corporations, the real
reason and respect for this occasion has never been lost. Samhein and its
energy has never fully died out and still burns bright. Samhain fires
have continued to light up the countryside down the ages., In some
areas, ashes from these bonfires were sprinkled on surrounding fields.
The day is also about remembrance and contemplation. Our ancestors,
the blessed dead, are more accessible, more approachable during the time
of the dying of the land. A day to commune with the dead and a
celebration of the eternal cycle of reincarnation to honor our
ancestors and remember our deceased loved ones.
Whether you believe in spirits or not isn't important. What we are remembering is our own mortality. By honoring the dead we are paying attention to the fact that we are alive and life is rare and precious.
The Election campaign of our lifetime is just
beginning. No witchcraft or magic, no tricks, just people working
together for a better future for all in our lovely beautiful country.This General Election is about down- to-earth, bread and butter issues facing a country blighted by a decade of Tory austerity and misrule.
Lets take this once in a lifetime opportunity to rebuild our society, like our parents and grandparents did after WW2. Labour can rebuild our society to mend our divisions and try and take on the vested interests holding people back.
In the meantime I offer you some bright blessings .
Bright Blessings
Though darkness treads this day of ours
today is one of celebrating light,
time to remember the paths of ancestors
forever casting their eternal beams,
goddesses returning, resurrecting feeling
whispering enchantment, releasing power,
as the veil of life gets thinner and dimmer
time to welcome old spirits that walk among us,
that enable us to dance and sing again
beyond this realm allows us to be blessed,
as leaves turn golden, and fall to nourish the land
under trees branches we can all nobly stand,
mother earth reaching out offering protection
absorbing our longings, accepting our wrongs,
in the vortex of time, keeps on shining bright
guiding us as we follow ancient paths of wisdom,
slipping through time, surrounded by love
allowing truth and justice to be the natural law.
( when the barrier between the worlds is whisper-thin and when magic, old
magic, sings its heady and sweet song to anyone who cares to hear it.
~Carolyn MacCullough, Once a Witch)
It's finally happened, after weeks of acrimony in the House of Commons, Britain's members of parliament have backed a general election which will take place on Thursday, December 12.in a rare parliamentary success for Mr Johnson after a string of defeats,
his short bill calling for a 12 December election was approved 438 to
20 in the House of Commons. An
attempt by the LibDems to bring the election forward to 9 December was
defeated 315-295.
The bill still needs approval in the Lords, but this is expected to be without problem.
Britain will hold its first December election for almost 100 years since 1923, when Stanley Baldwin's Conservative Party lost 86 seats and their Parliamentary majority.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson won approval from parliament for an early
ballot aimed at breaking the Brexit deadlock. The result on the election means Johnson finally has within his grasp
the election he has been pushing for since September after three
previous attempts - the most recent on Monday - failed.
The decision means that Parliament will be dissolved next week and all political parties will then enter into the customary six-week General Election campaign culminating in the public vote on December 12th.
With this parliament in a position of complete stalemate, the only way
forward is for the public to elect a new one. Of course, having an
election and running campaigns just before Christmas is far from ideal
but the alternative would be the continuation of a zombie parliament,another election I believe is in line with the needs of the people, who are not being served by democracy at all at this present moment in time,
The upcoming election will bound to be dominated by debate over the UK's delayed departure from the EU but in a country blighted by almost a decade of Tory government and in which over four million children are hungry and in poverty, we have to concentrate on what the Tories and Lib Dems have done since 2010 -
the NHS carve up, the bedroom tax, the appalling Windrush scandal, destruction of our public services. as well as their bungled Brexit vote, and their even worse Brexit handling, the
Universal Credit fiasco, endless and brutal austerity;
they have torn the country to pieces, thousands homeless on our streets, many have died, 120,000 austerity deaths, 14 million in poverty, food banks growing. Hopelessness, it has spread like a cancerous epidemic into every postcode in the UK. Even in the shires. The Tories have brought our communities to their knees. Britain isn't eating.It simply cannot go on like this!
159,388 during this election will rely on food hand outs to eat. 65,662 of our hungry this election are children who wont even get a vote. Alone the hungry have no power to change their future. Only you can. https://www.trusselltrust.org/news-and-blog/latest-stats/end-year-stats/#1460968204929-05f75d1d-0ae6 131,00 Children will wake up on Christmas Day homeless. They get no say in their future' They are entirely at the mercy of what you decide for their future. You are the master of their destiny.As the Tories actions continue to be marked by incompetence and farce, which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has previously pointed out "threatens our economy,
businesses, jobs and communities." and the Tories continue to cause so much irreplaceable
harm to our country, we have to remind ourselves that Britain doesn't have to be like this. We can be a confident,
compassionate, forward looking and open society, with a properly funded
and protected NHS, a high standard of schools for all and not just the
wealthy few, a fair tax system that ensures giant
corporations pay their dues, a welfare system built on dignity and not
wanton cruelty. It's time for the Tories to go for the greater good of all. What greater Christmas could we have than this.
But if the Tories do manage to retain their grip on power, then God help us, I think we will truly be fucked, so in the meantime we must do all we can to prevent this from happening. The fight of our lives is on ,for our futures and our children's futures we must do all we can to stop Johnson
and the Tories cementing their right-wing grip on the country any
further.We have reached a tipping point in this country, a time when the line between right and wrong, justice ad injustice has never been so starkly drawn. We must now all pick a side, choose right over wrong.Tories out for Christmas.
Sean Taylor is an acclaimed London based singer songwriter, who is not afraid to use his voice to address contemporary issues of our age and is one of thousands of artists who refuses to use their art to art-wash Israel's regime of apartheid and occupation. His work deserves a place in popular culture. It’s
relevant, resonant and makes you feel both empathy and sympathy for
real-life events as they are unfolding around us.
This is his haunting new single which is dedicated to the brothers and sisters of Palestine Currently Israel is intensifying its decades-old
regime of oppression against Palestinians, especially its theft of
Palestinian land and resources to build more illegal settlements and
apartheid walls. UN investigators have concluded
that Israeli occupation forces’ intentional targeting of journalists,
medics, children and disabled people with sniper fire in Gaza “may
constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity”. Moreover, Israel’s
12-year-old siege of Gaza has reduced it into an “unliveable” territory, according to the UN. Israel’s military occupation counts per-capita calories allowed into Gaza to keep the two million Palestinians there on the verge of starvation. From the rivers to the sea Palestine will be free
Karl Marx who was born on the 5 May in Trier, Germany was a jourtnalist, revolutionary socialist, philoosopher and econmist who explained how the capitalist system goes hand in hand with aggressive competition and innovation, and why this leads to poverty, crisis and eventually revolution . These insights apply as much to the 21st century as the 19th.
The current crisis of global capitalism is unprecedented, given its magnitude, its global reach, the extent of ecological degradation and social deterioration, and the scale of the means of its violence. We truly face a crisis of humanity. The stakes have never been higher; our very survival is at risk.
Consequently a renewed interest
in Kark Marx is evident. An increasing concentration of wealth and growing
poverty is making his analysis relevant once again – especially to a
generation raised on austerity and facing worse life prospects than
their parents had.'''
No longer a spectre, Marx .was also a voracious reader who loved the works of Shakespeare and
could quote entire plays by the Bard—just as his children could—and
generally took an interest in everything. “Art,” he said, “is always and
everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal
movement of its time.” No idea or philosophy or culture was foreign to
him, and there was nothing that didn’t keen his interest.
Karl also enjoyed playing parlor games like Confessions, which is now probably better known as the set of questions
devised by Marcel Proust. In April 1865, Marx was staying with
relatives when he as asked by his daughters to answer a set of
confessions. Marx’s responses were written in English and several of them are clearly in
the gay spirit of the occasion. For example: Your favorite dish? Fish
(because it rhymes with dish); your favorite flower? Daphne (a kind of
laurel-sor Laura). Others, however, are just as clearly serious.They were discovered by Friedrich Engels while going through his papers and
reflect the true character of the man and give an interesting insight into the mind of this great political and economic philosopher, journalist and writer.
Your favourite virtue: Simplicity Your favourite virtue in man: Strength Your favourite virtue in woman: Weakness Your chief characteristic: Singleness of purpose Your idea of happiness: To fight Your idea of misery: To submit The vice you excuse most: Gullibility The vice you detest most: Servility Your aversion:Martin Tupper [popular Victorian author] Your favourite occupation: Glancing at
Netchen [“Netchen, or Nannette, was Antoinette Philips, aged 28 at the
time, Marx’s cousin and a member of the Dutch section of the
International”] Your favourite poet: Aeschylus, Shakespeare Your favourite prose-writer:Diderot Your hero: Spartacus, Kepler Your heroine:Gretchen Your favourite flower: Daphne Your favourite dish: Fish Your favourite colour: Red Your maxim:Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me] Your favourite motto:De omnibus dubitandum [Doubt everything]
Marxs intellectual infuence still so strong , his ideas and thinking have become fundamentals of modern economics and sociology. His legacy is pervaisive complex and often polarizing. Long after his death in 1883, his grave remains a pilgrimage site for followers from around the world, attracting thousands of people each year, and his ideas still play an important role in shaping political and cultura discourses in the UK and abroad and remains .ne of the most influential figures in world history.
Beyond the shambles of our age
That leaves many with tears of rage
Natures glory still a wonder to behold
Far more precious than silver and gold
The virgin forests glowing with purity
Secrets dense with mystical mystery
Containing richness to heal the world
The sap of ancient treasure unfurled
Untarnished by man's destructive hand
Sanctifying balms as sun rises across the land
Infinite energies can be garnished
To stop humanity delivering carnage
Among soft green climes, sounds of comfort
Permutations symbiotically magically exert
Rainwater percolating the fertile soil
Dispensing a downfall, sating it's thirst
Quenching the earth and replenishing rivers
Releasing a deluge of fortuitous sustenance.
My Seditious Heart, is an ucompromising collection of essays that collects the work of a two decade period when Arhndhati Roy devoted herself to the political essay as a way of opening up space for justice, rights and freedoms in an increasingly hostile environment. Taken together, these essays trace her twenty year journey from the Booker Prize winning The God of Small Things to the extraordinary The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: a journey marked by compassion, clarity and courage." Radical and readable, they speak always in defence of the collective, of the individual and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military and government elites." said the publisher in a statement.
When taken together these essays trace Roy's journey from her first book to her last "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness"- a journey marked by compassion, clarity and courage, it added.
Since her debut novel she has concentrated her writing on political issues.A vocal, visible, and courageous activist, who often takes on unpopular, underwritten causes and is unafraid to challenge the ruling elite. She has campaigned against
the Indian nuclear weapons program, in
response to India's testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan,
Roy wrote The End of Imagination, a powerful critique of the Indian government's nuclear policies. It was published in her collection The Cost of Living,
in which she also crusaded against India's massive hydroelectric dam
projects in the central and western states of Maharashtra, Madhya
Pradesh and Gujarat. She also spoke out against the barbarity of her government’s
repression of the Kashmiri and Naxalite insurgencies, and the
environmental and human costs of India’s hydroelectric dam projects, and also opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Born in northeast India, Roy was the daughter of a tea plantation
manager and a women’s rights activist. When aged two, her parents
divorced and Roy’s mother took her young children back to her hometown
of Kerala, in south India. At 16, she left the south for Delhi where she
lived in a small tin-roofed hut and sold empty beer bottles.
Her first novel published in 1997.told the devastating story of twins Rahel and Estha and in doing so,
examined India’s caste system, its history and social mores. It explored
the ways in which the ‘Untouchable’ caste is derogated and ostracised
from society, and the consequences of breaching the caste’s longstanding
codes. The narrative deftly illustrated how the personal is indeed
political.
Her political campaigning has caused clashes with the state on a number
of occasions. In 2002, she served a “symbolic imprisonment” of one day
due to her opposition to the contentious Narmada dam project, the
largest river development scheme in India which was set to potentially
displace 1.5 million people at great environmental cost. In 2010, she
faced threat of arrest, and charges of sedition, after she remarked that
Kashmir, a disputed territory, was not an integral part of India. In
2015, she received a contempt notice from the Bombay High Court on
writing an article in support of Professor Saibaba, a severely disabled
academic at Delhi University, imprisoned for ‘anti-national activities’.
Among her prestigious awards, she is the recipient of the Lannan
Foundation’s Cultural Freedom Award (2002), the Sydney Peace Prize
(2004) for her
work in social campaigns and advocacy of non-violence and the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing (2011). In
2003 she was awarded special recognition as a Woman of Peace at the
Global Exchange Human Rights Awards in San Francisco. In June 2005 she
took part in the World Tribunal on Iraq. In January 2006 she was
awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for her collection of essays, 'The
Algebra of Infinite Justice', but declined to accept it. Roy came out with her second work of fiction "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" in 2017 after a hiatus of 20 years. She lives in Delhi, India
In constant conversation with the themes and setting of her novels, the essays in this collection form a near-unbroken memoir of Arundhati Roy's journey as both a writer and citizen of both India and the world, from 'End of Imagination' which begins the book to "My Sedititious Heart', with which it ends. She presents interlocking network of ideas, attitudes and
ideologies that emerge from the contemporary social and the political
world andsteps into "the very heart of insurrections" raging against
globalization, privatization, and neoliberal capitalism in India and
around the world, and the abuses of power that pit economic profit over human lives. She asks her readers to emulate the rebels whose
resistance she chronicles to;
"find the courage to dream. To reclaim
romance. The romance of believing in justice, in freedom, and in
dignity. For everybody," she writes. "We have to make common cause, and
to do this we need to understand how this big old machine works—who it
works for and who it works against. Who pays, who profits."
These essays, are united by Roy's unflinching
assessment of the violence and inequality around her, and her search for
alternatives to the world we've inherited. Roy reminds us that silence and inaction are choices. Trying to crawl out of the moral "crevasse" of the world as it exists is also a choice These studies are trenchant, still relevant and frequently alarming.
Roy reveals some hard truths about modern India and makes powerful
analytical forays into American and British foreign policy, aid,
imperialism and attitudes.Roy's essays about the environmental and human costs of late-capitalist
development read as dispatches from a recent past that will also be our
future. Climate change threatens to displace
more than 140 million people by 2050—another example of the "fascist
math" Roy describes operating during the construction of the Sardar
Sarovar Dam. The project's planners dispassionately recommended
displacing millions to dangerous urban slums where they had no means of
sustaining themselves and might well perish. The danger of "fascist
math," Roy argues, is that it "strangles stories ... [and] bludgeons
detail." It blunts our ability to empathize with those who bear the
brunt of environmental injustice—a category that will soon encompass
many more of us.
Roy writes in her foreword that “Not one iota of my anger has
diminished” since the time of writing these essays. Yet they do not come
across as angry, instead, their impact comes from their precision,
research and damningly clear reportage. Roy refuses to accept the inevitability of development, of
globalization, of fascism, of sacrifice by the poorest people for "the
greater common good." Instead, she argues:
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay
seige on it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our
art, our music our literature, our stubborness, our joy, our brilliance,
our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories.
Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to
believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we
refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of
history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this:We be many, and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." From the shadows of our grotesque world ,on quiet days, we too can hear another world breathing. I thank Arundhati Roy for her rebellious political conscience, and for delivering
weighty truths and her willingness to discuss the difficult and those that have been previously silenced, and continuing to speak truth to power and for reminding us that our world is still worth fighting for. Her voice is vital, we need many more writers like her, and quite frankly the urgency of her message is simply impossible to ignore.
Today I once again mark the tragic day when on Friday 21 October 1966, a terrible disaster struck the close-knit and thriving coal mining
village of Aberfan in the South Wales Valleys, a tragedy which still stuns those of a certain age, and which has lessons still very relevant to new generations.
For decades
leading up to 1966 excavated mining debris from the National Coal
Board's Merthyr Vale Colliery had been deposited on the side of Mynydd
Merthyr, directly above Aberfan in the South Wales valleys.
At approximately 9.14am on the last day before
half-term at the Pantglas schools below, after several days of heavy rain, liquified waste poured down the coal tip, sliding down the mountain slide into the mining village of Aberfan, This black
tidal wave would engulf everything in its path in this catastrophic
tragedy. It would smother a farm, around twenty houses, demolish
Pantglas Junior School and severely damage the Secondary School. It is a mercy that lessons in the secondary school did not start
until 9:30, meaning that many of those children were still walking
towards the building at the time of the landslide.
The
eye-witnesses report that when the landslide stopped there was complete
silence: for example a local hairdresser who witnessed the landslide
reported that “In that silence you couldn’t hear a bird or a child”
Immediately desperate parents rushed to the scene, many digging through the
rubble with their bare hands, trying to rescue the buried children.
Police from Merthyr Tydfil arrived on the site, volunteers rushed to the
village including miners from local collieries and other pits across
South Wales. Conditions remained treacherous with a large amount of
water and mud still flowing down the slope. Some children were pulled
out alive in the first hour, but no survivors were found after 11 am.
Emergency services workers and volunteers continued their rescue efforts
but it was nearly a week before all the bodies were recovered.
The
final death toll was 144, including 116 children between the ages of 7
and 10. It was a whole week before all the bodies were recovered. Most of the victims were interred at Bryntaf Cemetery in Aberfan
in a funeral held on 27 October 1966, attended by more than 2,000
people.
The shock that was felt went beyond South Wales too. The television coverage allowed a collective witnessing
of the disaster and turned it into a national tragedy. Parents, children, mining
communities, Welsh exiles, people who had been evacuated to the area during the Second
World War – so many people across Britain and worldwide felt a deep personal empathy
and sympathy with those who suffered in the disaster. The surviving 50,000 letters of
condolence sent to the village are a testament to that sympathy.The writings show of the warmth of the nation and its
people.
This horror was made even more poignant as
news emerged of previous warnings and previous slides that had been
brushed aside. The National Coal Board (NCB) had been repeatedly been
warned to move the slag heaps to a safer location, because the loose rock and mining spoil had been piled over a layer of
porous sandstone that contained many underground springs. Local
authorities had already raised concerns about the tip pointing out that
it posed a risk to the village primary school. The NCB's area management
did not adequately act upon these concerns.
Did the NCB have the decency to
acknowledge their
blame, to bow their head in shame, like hell no, but we were to learn
sadly far too late that the NCB was ostensibly a capitalist organisation
more concerned with profit than lives. The Rt. Hon. Lord Robens of Woldingham, a former trade unionist and
Labour politician whom the Macmillan government had appointed chairman
of the National Coal Board, arrived 36 hours later, having first gone to
Guildford to be installed as chancellor of Surrey University. He
announced that the cause of the disaster was an unknown spring
underneath the tip. This was immediately challenged by villagers who had
known it all their lives.
Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who had reached
Aberfan 24 hours before Robens, ordered an inquiry under the Tribunals
of Inquiry Act 1921, headed by a judge assisted by an engineer and a
planning lawyer.
The subsequent tribunal placed blame for the disaster
upon the National Coal Board stating in its damning conclusion: 'The Aberfan
disaster is a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by men charged
with tasks for which they were totally unfitted'.
Nevertheless, the top management of the NCB tried to give the impression
at the inquiry that they had 'no more blameworthy connection than the
Gas Board'. The NCB wasted up to 76 days of inquiry time by refusing to
admit the liability that they had privately accepted before the inquiry
had started. The tribunal called this 'nothing short of audacious'. This
may be the strongest language ever used in a tribunal report about a UK
public body.
The chairman of the National Coal Board (NCB) at the time was Alfred
Lord Robens. When he eventually arrived in Aberfan on the evening of
the day after the disaster, he told a TV reporter that the slide had
been due to 'natural unknown springs' beneath the tip and that nothing
could have been done to prevent the slide. This was not true, the
springs had been known about and were marked on maps of the area. Yet
the NCB had continued to tip on top of these springs. The potential
danger posed by the tip to Pantglas school had also been previously
acknowledged. There had also been previous incidents of tip instability
in South Wales that would have given clear information on the very real
dangers posed.
Lord Robens also claimed that it was too expensive to remove the
tips, with an estimated cost of £3 million pounds. In response, the
community of Aberfan formed a Tip Removal Committee to actively seek out
contractors for estimates to remove the tips. Eventually the tips were
removed by the NCB, but using £150,000 that Lord Robens appropriated
from the disaster fund. Understandably, this caused long-term
resentment in the community. In 1997, this sum (but without interest)
was repaid to the fund by the UK government.
The Aberfan inquiry of 1967 stated: ‘Our strong and unanimous conclusion is that the Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented’.Blame for the disaster rests upon the National Coal
Board. The legal liabilities of the National Coal Board to pay
compensation for the personal injury fatal or otherwise) and damage
to property is incontestable and uncontested."
A section of the report condemned the behaviour of Lord
Robens:"For the National Coal Board, through its counsel, thus to invite the
Tribunal to ignore the evidence given by its Chairman was, at one and
the same time, both remarkable and, in the circumstances,
understandable. Nevertheless, the invitation is one which we think it
right to accept."
A few weeks later, Lord Robens offered to resign. The
minister, Richard Marsh, refused to accept his resignation. The Commons
debated the disaster in October 1967. The debate was painful and
inconclusive. But at least Aberfan made the dangers of ignoring workplace risks and the
catastrophic effects on both occupational and public health and safety
all too obvious.
The Wilson government found the NCB guilty, but the price they placed on
each small head was just £500. Worldwide, people
were less insensitive, donations poured in daily and a trust fund was
set up, that attracted donations of
£1,750,000 (equivalent to about £30 million today), with money being
received in the form of more than 90,000 contributions from over 40
countries. This fund distributed the money in a number of ways,
including direct payments to the bereaved, the construction of a
memorial, repairs to houses, respite breaks for villagers and the
construction of a community centre. However, the fund itself attracted
considerable controversy. First, when the fund was created it did not
include any representatives from Aberfan itself; and another insult ensued. The bereaved families were not
thought to be competent enough to distribute the funds. The
grieving families were outraged. The villagers took it upon themselves
to form a Parents and Residents' Association, and their solicitors
eventually persuaded bureaucrats to include five representatives from
Aberfan. The ten officials who were not from Aberfan accepted highly
paid salaries from the fund.
The Government of the day was also extremely insensitive to the victims families, and people would have to wait for years for compensation. It was also to the eternal shame of Lord George Thomas of Tonypandy that he did not do more to support the people of Aberfan, and it was the shame of the establishment that funds raised for the disaster were used to move the slag heaps from the school. Thomas many believed was more interested in toadying up to Royalty than supporting the people of the valleys. Perhaps what moved Welsh Labour to take some action were the fear of other voices speaking out. Plaid Cymru MP, Gwynfor Evans elected in 1966 suggested that had the slag heap had fell on Eton or a school in the Home Counties more would have been done.
The security of Labour’s hold on south Wales and the governments shameful marginalisation of the village’s needs after the disaster meant he was probably quite right. Indeed, the disaster played a key role in convincing some in Wales that both the nationalised coal industry and Labour governance were no longer operating in the interests of the working-class communities they were supposed to represent.
Aberfan at least added to a growing sense that the risks the
public were exposed to by industry had to be controlled. This feeling
eventually led to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act (HSWA) 1974
which aims to protect both workers and non-workers from the risks of
workplace activities.
Indeed, the HSWA notably requires that employers must safeguard
people not in their employment. This includes members of the public,
contractors, patients, customers, visitors and students. This may be
seen as Aberfan’s legacy. Unbelievably, the committee which effectively led to the creation of the HSWA was chaired by none other than Lord Robens! Earlier legislation such as the Factories Acts focused on
specific industries or workplaces. This meant over 5 million workers had
no Health & Safety protection – as well as the generally ignored
public. The law was then more concerned with making sure machinery was
safe!
One key feature of the 1972 Robens Committee Report that is echoed in
today’s Health & Safety is the principle of consultation. So whilst we can be comforted by the fact that legislation is more
demanding and the safety of people is put first, history tells us that
we must never be complacent, take the example of Hillsborough for instance. .
Today though we remember the people of Aberfan, their collective loss, a
community that is still profoundly affected by this disaster and injustice, having paid the dirty price of coal, one in
three survivors still suffering from Post traumatic stress, over 50
years after this
tragic event took place. The community of the Welsh town was deeply traumatised – the
psychological and emotional effects rippled from one generation to the
next, people felt guilty that they were left alive,
they did not feel like survivors, cases of children not being allowed
to play in the street, in case it upset other parents.
What happened at Aberfan on 21 October 1966 left an indelible mark on the valleys of south
Wales. Even today, the name Aberfan evokes sadness and contemplation. Most British people
born before 1960 remember what they were doing when they heard the tragic news.
The community suffered a second devastating blow with the
closure of Merthyr Vale Colliery, Aberfan’s main employer, in 1989
The sores and wounds of this tragedy are now forever engrained in the
memories and feelings of the people of Wales because of the whole
collective loss of a generation that was wiped out.There are thousands upon thousands of Welsh people with personal or
family connections to the coal industry, and for them the disaster is
not simply something that happened in another time and another place. It
is part of their own family history.
So today again we
try not to forget the children and adults who died, this human
tragedy, that many say could easily have been prevented.
The disaster also summed up the relationship Welsh society
has with its coal mining heritage. At one level, there is an immense
popular pride in the work miners undertook and the sacrifices they
endured. There is also a recognition that it was coal that made modern
Wales. Without it, communities such as Aberfan would not have existed at
all. Indeed, the knowledge that it was their labour that created the
waste above the village added guilt to the grief felt by some bereaved
fathers.
Aberfan is now known today as one of one of Wales worst mining
disasters in it's history,but brought back memories of the pit disasters of Senghennydd (1913 -
439 killed) https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/10/senghennyd-mining-disaster-lest-we.htmland Gresford (1934 - 263 killed) https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/09/gresford-colliery-disaster.html
and the numerous less-known accidents that
killed and maimed individual miners. Such fatalities continued to occur in the wake of
1947 but miners accepted the dangers inherent in their occupation. Aberfan however was
different. This time it was their children that were killed, and by implication, a part of
the future was lost, because of mans greed. It is important to note that no employee of the NCB was ever disciplined for the breaches that caused the disaster.
Now pupils in Carmarthenshire will hold a minutes silence every year on 21 October after councillors recently passed a motion. The chairman of Aberfan Memorial Charity said it was of "great comfort".
David
Davies added: "The bereaved, the injured, the survivors and the wider
community have always been touched that our fellow citizens in Wales,
the UK and indeed around the world have not forgotten what happened in
Aberfan.
"That wider empathy swept into our community like a huge wave of loving support most recently in 2016 and the 50th anniversary."
He added the annual silence "is a huge and ongoing source of great comfort to all concerned".
Here is an evocative poem written at the time by local poet Ron Cook.
Where Was God - Ron Cook
Where was God that fateful day
At the place called Aberfan.
When the world stood still and the mountain
Moved through the folly of mortal man.
In the morning hush so cold and stark
And grey skys overhead.
When the mountain moved its awesome mass
To leave generations of dead.
Where was God the people cried
Their features grim and bleak.
Somewhere on their knees in prayer
And many could not speak.
The silence so still like something unreal
Hung on the morning air.
And people muttered in whisper tones
Oh God this isn’t fair.
The utter waste of childhood dreams
Of hope and aspirations.
A bitter lesson to be learnt for future generations
But where was God the people cried.
The reason none could say
For when the mountain moved its awesome mass.
God looked the other way.
Alcohol and drugs of variable degrees
Soaking, intoxicating every fibre of skin
Penetrating cycles, in sickness and health
Carried in the mind and deep within
Easing pain, but can be ineffectual
But strong enough can be a safety pin.
Love, however more resilient in nature
It truly is such a beautiful thing
As days grow dark and grey
Feel it's infinite touch, reel it in.
Vapors of necessity, soothing time
Allows our minds and bodies sing
You can't fake love, destroy its nature
Whiskey for a time buys oblivion
Takes its victim as a mortal slave
Love's simple pleasures, keep on giving
Even while dark forces, unfurl their shit
Amours fragrance safer than heroin
May we be touched by its sweet warmth
Gives not takes, always forgiving.
Human rights defender Jordi Cuixart and 8 Catalan political leaders have been sentenced to a total of
100 years in prison for sedition, a crime they did not commit. Cuixart will have to serve a term of 9 years in prison for having exercised
fundamental rights like freedom of expression or the
right to demonstrate. And the Catalan political leaders will have to
serve from 9 to 13 years in prison for having organised a
referendum on self-determination in October 2017 in defiance of the Spanish state, in which more than two million people voted for independence that was dominated by brutal repression by the central state. At the time there was a sudden upsurge of self-organisation in defense of the right to vote, with the result being that the pro-independence
political parties in the Catalan parliament unilaterally declaring independence from Spain. In response, the Spanish government invoked
Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution which effectively suspended the
region’s autonomy.
The desire for Catalan separatism, has been viewed with suspicion by some on the left, seeing it as a bourgeois, nationalist, divisive phenomenon, though is generally sympathetic to the right of self-determination.It is a very complicated issue but there has been a growing clamour in the past decade for independence from those Catalans who believe their wealthy region, has a moral, cultural and political right to self- determination, and that has long put more into Spain economically than it has received in return. Calls for independence grew as Spain endured a painful and protracted economic crisis.
The fact remains whether you support the Catalan call for independence or not is largely irrelevent they should at least be given the choice and their right to vote on the matter. and should be supported as they reach their own decisions and destiny.
The representative of the Catalonian government to the EU, Meritxell
Serret, demanded on Tuesday (15 October) that other political actors,
including the European institutions, now intervene to pave the way for a
political dialogue between Spain and Catalonia.
However, the EU commission said on Monday that it fully respects the
Spanish Constitutional order, "including decisions of the Spanish
judiciary".
"Our position has not changed: this is and remains an internal matter for Spain," said a commission spokeswoman.
However, Irish MEP Matt Carthy (from leftwing GUE/NGL group) rejected
that argument and tweeted that the ruling of the Spanish court is "a fundamental betrayal of human rights and democracy".
Many other MEPs stood up for the imprisoned leaders from Catalonia,
pledging to bring this debate to the European Parliament (EP).
Scottish MEP Sheila Ritchie (from the liberal Renew group) said on Twitter that "the Spanish government has not handled this issue well".
"I will ask the Spanish government to engage in constructive dialogue to map out a way for Catalonia," she added.
Her compatriot MEP Alyn Smith, president of the European Federal
Alliance (EFA) group described the sentences in a statement as "a
travesty of justice which will only serve to worsen already difficult
relations between Catalonia and Spain".
Some MEPs also supported the possibility of an amnesty for the jailed Catalan politicians.
The leader of the Spanish leftist party Unidas Podemos, Pablo
Iglesias, also suggested a pardon of the sentence - a governmental
decision used rarely in recent Spanish history.
However, Spain's interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, ruled out either pardons and amnesties. While Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez insisted on Monday on full
compliance of the sentence with no special privileges - in line with
other unionist parties like the liberals Ciudadanos, the People's Party
(PP) and the far-right Vox.
The judgment has been widely condemned in Catalonia. “The Catalan government
rejects this verdict as unjust and anti-democratic, for being a legal
case against pro-independence ideology and Catalonia’s right to
self-determination,” said the region’s president, Quim Torra.
Carles Puigdemont, the exiled former president of Catalonia who remains a
fugitive from Spanish authorities,who fled to Belgium to avoid prosecution. described the verdict on twitter as an
“atrocity”, " now more than ever... it is time to react like never before... for the future of our sons and daughters. For democracy. For Europe. For Catalonia."
Jordi Sànchez, former Catalan National Assembly president, also
stated that preventative imprisonment of the kind he had suffered “is an
enormous injustice, not only for me and for the other pro-independence
prisoners but in general around Spain."
Jordi Cuixart argued that those who hoped the
trial who put an end to the aspirations of the Catalan independence
leader would fail, saying: "If police violence couldn't stop thousands
of people voting in the referendum, how can anyone think that a
sentence will stop Catalans fighting for their right to
self-determination?"
"Self-determination is transcendental,” said Joseph Rull, the former
Catalan environment minister. “There will always be more people after
us. There are not enough prisons to lock up our desire for freedom."
After and heavy-handed tactics and brutal aggression by the Spanish
police saw innocent people hurt in the streets of Barcelona on October
1, 2017, Barca decided to play their league game at home to Las Palmas
behind closed doors that day as a protest and the Catalan club released a
statement on Monday in support of the jailed leaders.
"FC Barcelona, as one of the leading entities in Catalonia, and
in accordance with its historical record, for the defence of freedom of
expression and the right to decide, today, after the condemnatory ruling
issued by the Supreme Court in relation to the open process against the
Catalan civic and political leaders, states that:
"In the same way that the preventive prison sentence didn't help
to resolve the conflict, neither will the prison sentence given today,
because prison is not the solution. The resolution of the conflict in
Catalonia must come exclusively from political dialogue," it said.
"Now more than ever, the club asks all political leaders to lead a
process of dialogue and negotiation to resolve this conflict, which
should also allow for the release of convicted civic and political
leaders," the statement continued.
"FC Barcelona also expresses all its support and solidarity to the families of those who are deprived of their freedom."
Several players also used their platform to back the jailed
leaders. "Proud to be part of this Club," defender Gerard Pique wrote in
a tweet which quoted Barca's statement. "All my support and
solidarity," Sergi Roberto tweeted, while Xavi posted on Instagram with a
list of the imprisoned politicians and the word "shame" – in Catalan,
Spanish and English.
Barca's fans unfurled a banner at Camp Nou ahead of their Champions League group game at home to Inter Milan at the beginning of the month which read: "Only dictatorships jail peaceful political leaders."
A banner raised at Camp Nou ahead of Barcelona's Champions League clash against Inter MilanPhoto: Getty Images
The Catalans' next match at home is the Clasico clash versus Real
Madrid on October 26, for which another demonstration from fans is
expected.
This sentence has created a highly worrying precedent for democracy in Europe,
as it places in question several basic rights, as pointed out by the UN
and Amnesty International. Today human rights are being violated in
Spain; tomorrow it could
happen in your country. All these political prisoners should be released now. Amnesty avoids using the term “political prisoner” as there is no accepted definition in international law. However, over 1,000 legal experts have signed a manifesto arguing that the Catalan leaders in jail are effectively that.
After the court announced its verdict in the morning, pro-independence
demonstrators gathered in Barcelona and other towns and cities
throughout the day. It has helped revive the national question in Catalonia,, stoking anger and mass mobilisations. Protesters blocked a number of road and rail links
across the region and dozens of flights from Barcelona were cancelled in
the evening as thousands of demonstrators converged on the city’s
airport, many of them clashing with police there.The unrest is expected to continue in the coming days.
In their resistance to the Spanish authorities, Catalans are drawing on a
long tradition. Today’s political prisoners, whether accurately
labelled or not, are the latest in a long line who have fought against
the perceived injustices of the Spanish state. Foremost among these is
Lluis Companys, the president of the generalitat who was arrested for
declaring the Catalan republic on October 6 1934 and was executed by
firing squad on October 15 1940. In 1936, General Francisco Franco began (with the help of Germany) his
coup d'état and the Spanish civil war that provoked the suppression of
the Catalan nation and its language for many years. The historic parallel is not lost on
the Catalan people.
Catalonia is the largest non-state European nation. The Catalans are
aware and proud of having a history of more than a thousand years. The
splendid Catalan literature and culture is an essential part of Europe.
The Catalan language is the mother tongue of millions of Europeans, but supporters of independence argue that their language and culture is not being sufficiently respected by the Spanish central government and they worry that if something is not done their culture will be absorbed.,and many Catalans do not want to live in a centralised Spanish state under a monarchy for whom they have little affection.
The right to free, peaceful and democratic self-determination of nations
is above the legal limits of a state that wants to impose its legal
system on millions of people which feel treated as second-class citizens
because they are catalans.. It is a shameful indictment of any democracy that men and woman in a democracy
can be tried, convicted and imprisoned for exercising the right to vote, as is the lack of condemnation by other European governments.
There are some who support the idea of independence without a state. It's not a majority position, but I consider it a valid one, all radical , alternative, social and political options are welcome, in the meantime though solidarity with the Catalan political prisoners.The yellow ribbon is the symbol for solidarity with Catalonia’s political prisoners and you will find it scrawled on pavements and hanging from balconies throughout the region in Spain’s north-east corner.This shutdown of democracy should not be accepted and will be resisted by further mass mobilisations of workers and youth. Nobody should stay silent with this unacceptable verdict. Here is a link to two petitions you could sign to help end this injustice..
Ours is an interesting world
Containing much confusion
Threads of indifference
Oh to return to the future
Be repelled by unkindness
Essence overcoming injustice
Rained minds, reeled from pain.
October 14th marks the birthday of unconventional American poet Edward Estlin Cummings, popularly known as e.e. cummings, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1894.His father, Edward, was a professor
at Harvard University and later the nationally known minister of Old
South Church in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, Rebecca, who loved to
spend time with her children, played games with Cummings and his sister,
Elizabeth. It was Cummings's mother who introduced him to the
joys of writing.
Cummings began writing
poetry at the age of 8, developing a signature style of using grammar
and syntax to give his work a distinct physical and oral shape which
broke with poetic conventions of the time. Cummings was educated at Cambridge
High and Latin School, and from 1911 to 1916 he attended Harvard. Cummings became an aesthete, he began
dress unconventionally, and dedicated himself to painting and literature.At Harvard, he roomed
with John Dos Passos; befriended Lincoln Kirstein; read Latin, Greek,
and French; earned two degrees; discovered alcohol, sex, fast cars, and
burlesque at the Old Howard Theater; and raged against the school’s
conservative, exclusionary upper-class rule.
When the United States entered the war in 1917, Cummings made the
decision to avoid the draft and volunteered to serve with the
Norton-Harjes Ambulance Service in France. He was excited by the
prospect of adventure and felt this service would best match his
pacifist nature and intellectual upbringing. Perhaps because of his experimental artistic personality or his
political beliefs, Cummings did not seem to fit in well with his unit
and tension began to develop. Cummings freely spoke of his distaste
for the other men in the unit, and wrote numerous letters of complaint
to his family back in the US. French authorities censored the letters
of both Brown and Cummings and they soon found themselves under the
heavy scrutiny of authorities. After being interrogated and refusing
to turn his back on Brown, Cummings was detained and eventually interred
in a French Prison Camp
at La Ferté-Macéfor three months.Later, he found out he had been accused
of treason, but the charges were never proven.
He was glad to escape the regimentation of army life for the artists'
playground of Greenwich Village, which he would call his home for the rest of his life, Never enamored of the moneyed class or celebrity or
authority, here he threw himself into writing,
painting, and sexual adventure. (Cummings would run through two
marriages and many love affairs before settling down with the former
model Marion Morehouse, his companion for the last 30 years of his
life.)
His first major literary success came with the publication of his prose memoir, The Enormous Room (1922), an account of his imprisonment in France. This was followed by
collections of verse, Tulips and Chimneys (1923),
which contrasted the evils of war to the 'sweet spontaneous
earth', and XLI Poems (1925).
In his poems Cummings often expressed his rebellious attitude
towards politics, and conformity,He was sardonic about organized religion, but maintained an almost
transcendentalizing faith in human beings. He championed individuals
against the power of the state, as with "i sing of Olaf glad and big,"
and as a result was drawn to the radical Left early on, even translating
Louis Aragon's poem "Red Front" from the French, but a visit to the
Soviet Union turned him against communism, Eimi (1933), his
experimental diary recounting his Soviet experience. By temperament, he was in
some ways more an anarchist ( ironically with somewhat politically conservative leanings) but a certain irreverance remained fundamentally central to his character.
There is the the question of Cummings’s anti-Semitism, which his biographer Susan Cheever
contrasts with Ezra Pound’s more virulent prejudice, and while nothing
is excused away, quite the contrary ,Cheever argues that in Cummings’s
case it speak more to a prevailing disgust with the world rather than a
disgust centered on one group in it:
Cummings was an
equal opportunity hater. He hated Hitler and he hated the Jews. He hated
Roosevelt and he hated Stalin, he especially hated Stalin. He hated
the critical establishment and he didn’t like the new restaurants on
Tenth Street. He made fun of other poets who had once been his friends.
He had a somber side that craved privacy
and what he called an "after breakfast" side that enjoyed running with
the crowd. He never ran after the crowd. He could spend days isolated
with his work, yet he loved travel. In the twenties Cummings made
several trips to Europe and there met with Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Ford
Maddox Ford, Archibald MacLeish, and others. During visits to France,
Spain, Tunisia, Mexico, Russia and Italy he enjoyed visiting the
museums, attending concerts, viewing stage shows, or just watching the
passing parade.
his body of work includes almost 3,000 poems, two autobiographical
novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and
paintings, and was the recipient of many literary awards, Cummings was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship, 1950; he
received a Guggenheim fellowship, 1951-52; and he was the Charles Eliot
Norton Lecturer at Harvard, 1953. as well as earning an
honorary professorial seat at Harvard.
Throughout his career he
paid a great deal of attention to the visual appearance of the poem on
the page, probably due to his painters eye. But Cummings is perhaps best known for his unorthodox usage of both capitalisation, punctuation and typography. “Grammatical anarchism” was his way of
protesting the conformity of mass society. He varied text alignments, spaced lines irregularly, and used
nontraditional capitalization to emphasize particular words and phrases.
In many instances his distinct typography mimicked the energy or tone
of his subject matter. He also revised grammatical and linguistic rules to suit his own
purposes and experimented with poetic form and language to create a
distinct personal style.He frequently used colloquial language and material from burlesque and the circus and ignored conventional punctuation and syntax
in favor of a dynamic use of language, even inventing his own words by
combining common words to create new meanings.
Yet despite the
nontraditional form of his poems, Cummings gained widespread popularity. His style may have been avant-garde, but his themes were more traditional: love, childhood, nature, his moods were alternately satirical and
tough or tender and whimsical, combining powerful appreciations of the individual soul.
Edward Estlin Cummings died on Sep. 3, 1962 of a brain hemorrhage His literary style marked him as one of the most
revolutionary and innovative poets of the twentieth century.Cummings will be remembered as one of the more lasting poets America has produced. An extraordinary poet who simply rebelled in the act of noticing. An artist who never cowered from being his unconventional self, in the words of his most incisive biographer he "despised fear, and his life was lived in defiance of all who ruled by it"
His body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two
autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as
numerous drawings and paintings.
The following is a selection of some of my favourite poems by him.
i sing of Olaf glad and big
i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or
his wellbelovéd colonel (trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but-though an host of overjoyed
noncoms (first knocking on the head
him) do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments-
Olaf (being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds, without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"
straightaway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)
but-though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skillfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat-
Olaf (upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"
our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died
Christ (of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too
preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in)
carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
Humanity I Love you
Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you
Seeker of Truth
seeker of truth
follow no path
all paths lead where
truth is here
you said is
you said Is
there anything which
is dead or alive more beautiful
than my body,to have in your fingers
(trembling ever so little)?
Looking into
your eyes Nothing,i said,except the
air of spring smelling of never and forever.
....and through the lattice which moved as
if a hand is touched by a
hand(which
moved as though
fingers touch a girl's
breast,
lightly)
Do you believe in always,the wind
said to the rain
I am too busy with
my flowers to believe,the rain answered
the mind is its own beautiful prisoner
the mind is its own beautiful prisoner.
Mine looked long at the sticky moon
opening in dusk her new wings
then decently hanged himself, one afternoon.
The last thing he saw was you
naked amid unnaked things,
your flesh, a succinct wandlike animal,
a little strolling with the futile purr
of blood;your sex squeaked like a billiard-cue
chalking itself, as not to make an error,
with twists spontaneously methodical.
He suddenly tasted worms windows and roses
he laughed, and closed his eyes as a girl closes
her left hand upon a mirror.
i have loved let us see if that is all - e.e cummings
i have loved, let us see if that’s all.
Bit into you as teeth, in the stone
of a musical fruit. My lips pleasantly groan
on your taste. Jumped the quick wall
of your smile into stupid gardens
if this were not enough (not really enough
pulled one before one the vague tough
exquisite flowers, whom hardens
richly, darkness. On the whole
possibly have i loved….you)
sheath before sheath
stripped to the Odour. (and here’s what WhoEver will know
Had you as bite teeth;
i stood with you as a foal
stands but as the trees, lay, which grow
o sweet spontaneous - e.e.cummings
o sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty . how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
since feeling is first
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
– the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
Further Reading
e.e. cummings : A life by Susan Cheever, Pantheon 2014
e.e. Cummings: The Complete Poems, 1904-62 edited by George James Firmage
Liveright,, 2013
John Giorno, legendary American poet, LGBTQ+ activist, visual artist, and originator of Spoken Word and performance poetry, has died at the age of 82. Giorno’s death was confirmed on October 12 in an Instagram post from his friend musician Lee Ranaldo, who posted photos on Saturday in
memory of the artist. He wrote, "Sad to note the passing today of dear
friend John Giorno, such a sweet, beatific person.
Born on December 4, 1936 in New York, NY, Giorno studied at Columbia
University before briefly working as a stockbroker. When John Giorno was 14 he experienced what he called “a blissful
feeling” towards poetry, which in life is what you are supposed to
follow when you have these positive feelings, he said. Going down the
poetic path John Giorno met Andy Warhol and the whole pop art scene in
1962
during an opening at Stable Gallery in New York. The two became close
friends and occasional lovers, and Giorno was the star of Warhols movie Sleep (1963).
In the film, which lasts for five hours, Giorno is depicted sleeping nude for the entire length of the movie.Shortly after the filming, Giorno and Warhal ended up parting their ways.They rarely saw each other until 1987 (the year Warhol died) when they had a few encounters.
A Still from Sleep (1963)
After leaving Warhol, Giorno went on to become very influential in the underground arts scene of New York, and became known as a leader in the development of poetry as a
performance and entertainment medium. He did this through his own
performances and also with his non=profit Giorna Poetry Systems, which he founded in 1965, an artists' collective and
record label that aimed to relay poetry to a wider audience using
innovative means of communication which subsequently led to
Dial-A-Poem which he created in 1968 that extended poetry into the medium of
mass communication, in which he sought to extend the
frontiers of poetry and to free it from its elitist repertoire. The service allowed members of the public to call a number to call a number
(+1 641-793-8122 ) — which is still active now — and hear a live
recording of a poem from poets like Frank O'Hara, David Henderson, John
Ashberry, Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Anne Waldman and the likes of Brion Gysin and more. Giorno said that the idea of “Dial-a-Poem”
came from a conversation he had with his friend, the great William S Burroughs, after a a call with him in the late 60s, Among the dialable texts were poems by Allen Ginsberg, but also
parts from Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries or William S Burroughs' novel
Naked Lunch, read by Frank Zappa. Among the texts was also an extract of
a speech delivered by Bobby Seale, one of the founders of the Black
Panther Party, and the poem Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima,
which included a practical instruction of how to build a Molotov
cocktail. As well as speeches and
texts on civil rights and opposing the Vietnam War, Giorno
Poetry Systems released over forty LPs and CDs of poets working with performance and music, numerous cassettes, poetry videos and film.
Though too young to be part of the first wave of Beat poets, Giorno was a
close friend and collaborator of William S Burroughs from the late 1960s
onwards. He was with Burroughs the night Burroughs died in 1997. Giorno’s early poems explored the use of found images,
appropriated language, collage, and was introduced to sound poetry by Brion Gysin. When composing his own poetry, Giorno imagined an audience in front of him.
"Spoken word " he wrote. " using breath and heat, pitch and volume, and
the melodies inherent in the language, risking technology and music,
and a deep connection with the audience, is the fulfillment of a poem.
It's the entertainment industry ( you got to sweeten the deal) -
transmitting an awareness of ordinary mind."
Giorno was a pioneer in shaking poetry free from the page, performing
his work with verve and gusto, rather than just reading it aloud
politely.Taking on issues of sexuality, death, psychedelic drugs, and his life in
New York, Giorno’s text-based work and poetry often employs
appropriation and performance to evoke memories and feelings of
transcendence. His books included The American book of the Dead (1964),Balling Bhudda (1970), Cancer in My Left Ball (1973), and You Got to Burn to Shine: Selected Poetry and Prose (1993).
His recorded albums and CDs numbered Biting off the Tongueof a Corpse (1975) and ( A Diamond Hidden in the Mouth of a Corpse ( 1985).
A pervading macabre sense of humour underlied his work and a strong
outsider Queer sensibility.His confontational work and his energy has been an influence on
other performance poets since and rock bands have been quenched and
influenced by his ideas.It was also William S Burroughs with whom Giorno toured through the United
States in the 70s and 80s. Together, they entered the stages of
rock-clubs and presented their texts as performances. Giorno was to develop an amplified, confrontational performance poetry that was highly influential on what became the Poetry Slam scene. "Poems are instruments of wisdom. It awakens something in one’s mind.”
he once said and when he performed, people had an enormous emotional response, which
Giorno felt was because his words allow them to see themselves. :
He had also been a long time practitioner of
the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Bhuddism. In 1971, inspired by a post-LSD conversation with Allen Ginsberg, Giorno
traveled to India to study Buddhism. There, he met HH Dudjom Rinpoche,
the supreme leader of the progressive Nyingma school of Tibetan
Buddhism, and became a devoted student.
Strongly shaped by his political engagement. For example, he protested sgainst the Vietnam War and provided
money from the Giorno Poetry Systems for lawyers or bail-outs for
political activists.In 1984, under the impression of the AIDS crisis,
Giorno founded the AIDS treatment project: He visited infected people in
the hospital, handed out cash, but also took time for intensive
dialogues. Starting with small amounts of money, the project soon
expanded and, to this day, provides large amounts of money for the daily
needs of people living with AIDS. In his poem "AIDS monologue", written
in 1992, Giorno subsumes the spirit of the project in just one line: to
treat a complete stranger as a lover or close friend.The Paris Reviewquotes
Giorno saying, "My intention is to treat a complete stranger as a lover
or a close friend; in the same spirit as in the golden age of
promiscuity, we made fabulous love with beautiful strangers, and
celebrated life with glorious substances. 'God please fuck my mind for
good!' Now that their life is ravaged with AIDS, we offer love from the
same root, in the form of boundless compassion."
In 2015 he was the subject of a major retrospective ‘I Love John
Giorno’ byhis husband, the acclaimed Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone at
Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and in various venues throughout Manhattan in
2017, in celebration of the poet’s 80th birthday. Giorno’s work was
included in the collections of prominent venues worldwide. At the time of his death, Giorno had been exhibiting
new work at the Sperone Westwater gallery in New York City. The
exhibition, titled “Do the Undone,” is due to be exhibited until October
26. The press release for the show refers to Giorno living and working out of his studio in the Bowery in Lower Manhattan for over 50 years.
His contributions are significant to many culturally defining moments:
the Beat generation, Pop Art, Punk, the Pictures Generation, and the
hip-hop era. Giorno's work was innovative and provocative in all respects. Friends, colleagues, and admirers have taken to social media to express their grief and to pay tribute to John Giorno, a rare a poet of spontaneity and vitality, who on all accounts had an astonishing presence and a warm humanity, that saw in his time and brilliant life him at the crossroads between
poetry, visual arts, music and performance, directing his work
toward a broad public, redefining the capabilities of poetry and
linguistic form, releasing words of great imagination, labors of love and passion, utilising intensely rhythmic and philosophical poetry.
It was some of these qualities that led the former singer for R.E.M Michael Stipe. to cast Giorno in We All Go Back to Where We Belong,
a film he made for the band’s 2011 song of the same title. Shot in the
spirit of Warhol’s screen tests — black-and-white, portrait-style — the
film captures Giorno in close-up, a blank stare on his face, until the
end, when he erupts in laughter.
REM - We All Go Back To Where We Belong , John, 2011
Here is a video from 2014 where he looked back at his first meetings with poetry, his great
influences, the importance of performing without a book, and where
poetry is headed in the future, and I will end with a few of his amazing poems. A truly remarkable individual, and iconoclast of our times.“Poetry
never dies. You can’t kill poetry.” Rest in Power, beautiful spirit John
Giorno.
' You Gotta Burn To Shine.'
John Giorno Interview : Poets are Mirrors of the Mind
Life is a Killer
Everyone says
What they do
is right
and money is
a good
thing
it can be
wonderful.
Road
drinking
driving
around
drinking beer,
they need me
more than
I need them,
where are you guys from,
stumbling off
into the night
thinking
about it
stumbling off into the night
thinking about it.
When I was
15 years old
I knew everything
there was
to know,
and now that I'm old,
it was true.
I got dragged
along on
this one
by my foot,
if I wasn't so
tired
I would have
a good
time
If I Wasn't so tired
I'd have a good time
If I wasn't so tired I'd have
a good time.
Tossing
and turning,
cause there's
a nest
of wasps
coursing
through your
bloodstream
cause there's a nest of wasps
coursing through your bloodstream.
If you think
about it
how could
it have come
to this
if you think about it
how could it have come to this,
it's coming
down the road
the red
lights,
and it's
there
and it's there
and it's there
and it's there.
Try your
best
and think
you're good,
that's what
I want
being inside you
that's what i want
being inside you
that's what I want being besides you,
endless
thresholds,
and you hope
you're doing
it right.
How are you
feeling good
how are you
feeling
good
how are
you feeling
good
how are you feeling
good
how are you feeling good,
you need
national
attention.
Cause essentially
all you
ever accomplshed
was snort
some smack
and sit
on a zafu
watching
your breath.
How the hell
did I end
up doing
this
how the hell did
I end up doing this
for a job?
I can't say
I don't need
anybody
cause I need
the Bhuddas,
and there's nothing
I can say
about them.
Everyone is at
a complete
disadvantage,
you're being taken
to dinner
at La Coter Basque
and you're eating
9 lives
liver,
and drinking
wine,
the women
they are taking
prisoners.
I'm not going
nowhere, I ripped up
my suitcases
I ripped up my suitcases.
Crank me
up
and keep me
open
crank me up
and keep me open
and keep me open
crank me up and keep me open,
nothing
recedes
like success.
Whatever
happens
it will seem
the way
it seems
now,
it doesn't matter
what you
feel,
how perfectly
correct
or amazing
the clarity,
everything
you think
is deluded
everything you think
is deluded
everything you think is deluded,
life
is a killer.
Just Say No to Family Values
On a day when
you're walking
down the street
and you see
a hearse
with a coffin,
followed by
a flower car
and limos,
you know the day
is auspicious,
your plans are going to be
successful;
but on a day when
you see a bride and groom
and wedding party,
watch out,
be careful,
it might be a bad sign.
Just say no
to family values,
and don't quit
your day job.
Drugs
are sacred
substances,
and some drugs
are very sacred substances,
please praise them
for somewhat liberating
the mind.
Tobacco
is a sacred substance
to some,
and even though you've
stopped smoking,
show a little respect.
Alcohol
is totally great,
let us celebrate
the glorious qualities
of booze,
and I had
a good time
being with you.
Just
do it,
just don't
not do it,
just do it.
Christian
fundamentalists,
and fundamentalists
in general,
are viruses,
and they're killing us,
multiplying
and mutating,
and they destroying us,
now, you know,
you got to give
strong medicine
to combat
a virus.
Who's buying?
good acid,
I'm flying,
slipping
and sliding,
slurping
and slamming,
I'm sinking,
dipping
and dripping,
and squirting
inside you;
never
fast forward
a come shot;
milk, milk,
lemonade,
round the corner
where the chocolate's made;
I love to see
your face
when you're suffering.
Do it
with anybody
you want,
whatever
you want,
for as long as you want,
any place,
any place,
when it's possible,
and try to be
safe;
in a situation where
you must abandon
yourself
completely
beyond all concepts.
Twat throat
and cigarette dew,
that floor
would ruin
a sponge mop,
she's the queen
of great bliss;
light
in your heart,
flowing up
a crystal channel
into your eyes
and out
hooking
the world
with compassion.
Just
say
no
to family
values.
We don't have to say No
to family values,
cause we never
think about them;
just
do it,
just make
love and compassion
Thanks 4 Nothing
I want to give my thanks to everyone for everything,
and as a token of my appreciation,
I want to offer back to you all my good and bad habits
as magnificent priceless jewels,
wish-fulfilling gems satisfying everything you need and want,
thank you, thank you, thank you,
thanks.
May every drug I ever took
come back and get you high,
may every glass of vodka and wine I've drunk
come back and make you feel really good,
numbing your nerve ends
allowing the natural clarity of your mind to flow free,
may all the suicides be songs of aspiration,
thanks that bad news is always true,
may all the chocolate I ever eaten
come back rushing through your bloodstream
and make you feel happy,
thanks for allowing me to be a poet
a noble effort, doomed, but the only choice.
I want to thank you for your kindness and praise,
thanks for celebrating me,
thanks for the resounding applause,
I want to thank you for taking everything for yourself
and giving nothing back,
you were always only self-serving,
thanks for exploiting my big ego
and making me a star for your own benefit,
thanks that you never paid me,
thanks for all the sleaze,
thanks for being mean and rude
and smiling at my face,
I am happy that you robbed me,
I am happy that you lied
I am happy that you helped me,
thanks, grazie, merci beaucoup.
May you smoke a joint with William,
and spend intimate time with his mind,
more profound than any book he wrote,
I give enormous thanks to all my lovers,
beautiful men with brilliant minds,
great artists,
Bob, Jasper, Ugo,
may they come here now
and make love to you,
and may my many other lovers
of totally great sex,
countless lovers
of boundless fabulous sex
countless lovers of boundless fabulous sex
countless lovers of boundless
fabulous sex
in the golden age
of promiscuity
may they all come here now,
and make love to you,
if you want,
may each of them
hold each of you in their arms
balling
to your hearts
delight.
balling to your hearts
delight
balling to
your hearts delight
balling to your hearts delight.
May all the people who are dead
Allen, Brion, Lita, Jack,
and I do not miss any of you
I don't miss any of them,
no nostalgia,
it was wonderful we loved each other
but I don't want any of them back,
now, if any of you
are attracted to any of them,
may they come back from the dead,
and do whatever is your pleasure,
may they multiply,
and be the slaves
of whomever wants them,
fulfilling your every wish and desire,
(but you won't want them as masters,
as they're demons),
may Andy come here
fall in love with you
and make each of you a superstar,
everyone can have
Andy.
everyone can
have Andy.
everyone can have Andy,
everyone can have an Andy.
Huge hugs to the friends who betrayed me,
every friend became an enemy,
sooner or later,
I am delighted you are vacuum cleaners
sucking everything into your dirt bags,
you are none other than a reflection of my mind.
Thanks for the depression problem
and feeling like suicide
everyday of my life,
and now that I'm seventy,
I am happily almost there.
Twenty billion years ago,
in the primordial wisdom soup
beyond comprehension and indescribable,
something without substance moved slightly,
and became something imperceptible,
moved again and became something invisible,
moved again and produced a particle and particles,
moved again and became a quark,
again and became quarks,
moved again and again and became protons and neutrons,
and the twelve dimensions of space,
tiny fire balls of primordial energy
bits tossed back and forth
in a game of catch between particles,
transmitting electromagnetic light
and going fast, 40 million times a second,
where the pebble hits the water,
that is where the trouble began,
something without substance became something with substance,
why did it happen?
because something substance less
had a feeling of missing out on something,
not
getting it
was not getting it
not getting it,
not getting it,
imperceptibly not having something
when there was nothing to have,
clinging to a notion of reality;
from the primordially endless potential,
to modern day reality,
twenty billion years later,
has produced me,
gave birth to me and my stupid grasping mind,
made me and you and my grasping mind.
May Rinpoche and all the great Tibetan teachers who loved me,
come back and love you more,
hold you in their wisdom hearts,
bathe you in all-pervasive compassion,
give you pith instructions,
and may you with the diligence of Olympic athletes
do meditation practice,
and may you with direct confidence
realize the true nature of mind.
America, thanks for the neglect,
I did it without you,
let us celebrate poetic justice,
you and I never were,
never tried to do anything,
and never succeeded,
I want to thank you for introducing me to
the face of the naked mind,
thanx 4 nothing.
The Death of William Burroughs
William died on August 2, 1997, Saturday at 6:01 in the
afternoon from complications from a massive heart attack
he'd had the day before. He was 83 years old. I was with
William Burroughs when he died, and it was one of the best
times I ever had with him.
Doing Tibetan Nyingma Buddhist meditation practices, I
absorbed William's consiousness into my heart. It seemed as
a bright white light, blinding but muted, empty. I was the
vehicle, his consciousness passing through me. A gentle
shooting star came in my heart and up the central channel,
and out the top of my head to a pure field of great clarity
and bliss. It was very powerful - William Burroughs resting
in great equanimity, and the vast empty expanse of
primordial wisdom mind.
I was staying in William's house, doing my meditation
practices for him, trying to maintain good conditions and
dissolve any obstacles that might be arising for him at that
very moment in the bardo. I was confident that William had
a high degree of realization, but he was not a completely
enlightened being. Lazy, alcoholic, junkie William. I didn't
not allow doubt to arise in my mind, even for an instant,
because it would allow doubt to arise in William's mind.
Now, I had to do it for him.
What went into William Burroughs 'coffin
with his dead body:
About ten in the morning on Tuesday, August 6, 1997,
James Grauerholz and Ira Silverberg came to William's
house to pick out the clothes for the funeral director to put
on William's corpse. His clothes were in a closet in my
room. And we picked the things to go into William's coffin
and grave, accompanying him on his journey in the
underworld.
His most favorite gun, a 38 special snub-nose, fully loaded
with five shots. He called it, 'The Snubby.' The gun was my
idea. 'This is very important!' William always said you can
never be too well armed in any situation. Of his more than
80 world-class guns, it was his favorite. He often wore it on
his belt during the day, and slept with it, fully loaded, on
his right side, under the bed sheet, every night for fifteen
years.
Grey fedora. He always wore a hat when he went out. We
wanted his consciousness to feel perfectly at ease, dead.
His favorite cane, a sword cane made of hickory with a
light rosewood finish.
Sport jacket, black with a dark green tint. We rummaged
through the closet and it was the best of his shabby clothes,
and smelling sweet of him.
Blue jeans, the least worn ones were the only ones clean.
Red bandana. He always kept one in his back pocket.
Jockey underwear and socks.
Black shoes. The ones he wore when he performed. I
thought the old brown ones, that he wore all the time,
because they were comfortable. James Grauerholz insisted,
'There's an old CIA slang that says getting a new
assignment is getting new shoes.'
White shirt. We had bought it in a men's shop in Beverly
Hills in 1981 on The Red Night Tour. It was his best shirt,
all the others were a bit ragged, and even though it had
become tight, he'd lost a lot of weight, and we thought it
would fit. James said," Don't they slit it down the back
anyway."
Necktie, blue, hand painted by William.
Moroccan vest, green velvet with gold brocade trim, given
him by Brion Gysin, twenty-five years before.
In his lapel button hole, the rosette of the French
government's Commandeur des Arts et Lettres, and the
rosette of the American Academy of Arts and Letters,
honors which William very much appreciated.
A gold coin in his pants pocket. A gold 19th Century Indian
head five dollar piece, symbolizing all wealth. William
would have enough money to buy his way in the
underworld.
His eyeglasses in his outside breast pocket.
A ball point pen, the kind he always used. 'He was a
writer!', and sometimes wrote long hand.
A joint of really good grass.
Heroin. Before the funeral service, Grant Hart slipped a
small white paper packet into William's pocket. 'Nobody's
going to bust him.' said Grant. William, bejeweled with all
his adornments, was traveling in the underworld.
I kissed him. An early LP album of us together, 1975, was
called Biting Off The Tongue Of A Corpse. I kissed him on
the lips, but I didn't do it... and I should have.
Everything gets lighter
Life is lots of presents,
and every single day you get
a big bunch of gifts
under a sparkling pine tree
hung with countless balls of colored lights;
piles of presents wrapped in fancy paper,
the red box with the green ribbon,
and the green box with the red ribbon,
and the blue one with silver,
and the white one with gold.
It's not
what happens,
it's how you
handle it.
You are in a water bubble human body,
on a private jet
in seemingly a god world,
a glass of champagne,
and a certain luminosity
and emptiness,
skin of air,
a flat sea of white clouds below
and the vast dome of blue sky above,
and your mind is an iron nail in-between.
It's not
what happens,
it's how you
handle it.
Dead cat bounce,
catch
the falling knife,
after endless shadow boxing
in your sleep,
fighting in your dreams
and knocking yourself out,
you realize everything is empty,
and appears as miraculous display,
all are in nature
the play of emptiness and clarity.
