Carlos Castanada ( 25/12/25 -27/4/98) - To Seek Freedom

' To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve, to lift off, to be like a flame of a candle, which, in spite  of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to more than what it is, a mere candle.'

Samer Issawi is dying

Samer Issawi, aged 33 has been on hunger strike now for 246 days.
He is being detained without trial, indefinitely, under a policy known as administrative detention.
His strike is not for his own personal freedom, but is a collective one, for every brother, husband ,sister, mother, child who has seen their trees torn down,lands confiscated, homes demolished. Samer Issawi's freedom is Palestines freedom.

His heartbeat is down to 28 beats per minute, his heart could stop at any moment. He is suffering from breathing problems, constant dizziness and severe pains in the abdomen,still hungry for freedom.The media continues to be deadly silent about his predicament that is why we have to scream.

I stand in solidarity with Samer Issawi.

(earlier post)
http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/free-samer-issawi.html

for up to date information
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Free-Samer-Issawi-Campaign/194111744067340

China Achebe ( 16/11/36 -21/3/13) R.I.P

Nigerian author China Achube was the author of 'Things Fall Apart' which was published in 1958. The book chronicled the life of thr Okonkwo and the complications that arise when white missionaries arrive in his village. The clash between colonialisation and traditional culture  still makes the book relevent in today's globalised world. He was also a poet, professor, critic, humanist and friend of Palestine. He described himself as a storyteller. R.I.P

Interview on CNN African Voices

'The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceful with his religion, but we were amused by his foolishness and allowed him to satay. Now he has one our brother and our clan can no longer act like one. He had put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.'

-  China Achebe ( from his book, ' Things fall apart.')

Cecil Beaton ( 14/1/04 - 18/1/80) - Be Daring, Be Different.

'BE DARING

BE DIFFERNT

BE IMPRACTICAL

BE ANYTHING THAT

WILL ASSERT INTEGRITY

OF PURPOSE AND

IMAGINATIVE VISION

AGAINST THE PLAY-IT SAFERS,

THE CREATURES OF THE COMMONPLACE,

THE SLAVES OF THE ORDINARY.'

'

Percy Byshe Shelley (4/8/1792 -8/7/22) - In defence of Poetry

Today to mark World Poetry Day day an extract from Shelley's celebrated  essay written in 1821 but published posththumously in 1870, from Essays, letters from Abroad, Translated and fragments.

' Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated  with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond expression: so that even in the desire and regret they leave, therte cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organisation, but they can colour all they combine with the evanescent hues of this eternal world; a world, a trait in the  representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide - abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of the things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.
  Poetry turns all things to loveliness, ; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familaiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.
  All things exist as they are percieved; at least in relation to the precipient. ' The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' But poetry defeats the curse which blinds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtains, or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally createss for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we percieve, and to imagine, that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reitiration. It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso: Non merita noms di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.'

For full essay:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237844

Budget Day 2013

Today, George Osborne is expected to unveil a further £2.5 bn in cuts but their programme of austerity is simply not working. It will be undoubtedly the same root, he will tell us their is no alternative, to his slash and burn approach to economics, but to all who can see, the Tory's austerity measures are not working, and the bankers are still sitting pretty and laughing.
Where was the opposition yesterday, when they abandoned support for the poorest by allowing Ian Duncan Smith's retrospect workare legislation to pass into law virtually unimpeded. The mind boggles!!

well at least Spring has arrived.

Tony Blair is a psychopath says Arundhati Roy - and Obama's no better

Writer and activist Arundhati Roy, interviewed on Democracy Now  on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, 19 March 2013. She also says Barak Obama is no different from Bush or Blair.
Fresh evidence has been revealed about how M.I.6 and the C.I.A were told through secret channels by Saddam Husseins foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had not active weapons of mass destruction. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/18/panorama-iraq-fresh-wmd-claims despite this Bush and Blair led us into nothing more than organised mass murder.Their support for this unjust invasion has long been seen as morally indefensible. They are nothing more than war criminals.
Long since the removal of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi people have experienced violence and political disputes. All they long for now is peace and security.