Leonard Cohen

'I'm standing on a ledge
and your fine spider Webb
is fastening my ankles to a stone'

From So Long Mary Anne,
Leonard Cohen

What is Love then?

I want to rush home after work because of it. I want to wake happy because I share it. I want to love back as much as I am loved.

I feel half alive.

I thought it might become clearer but it hasn't at all. I am in a horrible place.

Our son has just learnt the meaning of 'no'. This is wonderful. It is amazing how fast he learns. He is a beautiful little boy and i love him with all my heart.

You just went home.
Bye bye.
Even though i was alone anyway
in this room
I feel lonlier now
than i did before your little orange face turned grey.

x

Very sleepy.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr
vrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
gururururururur
says the busbusbusbusbusbus
mmmmmmmmmmm
nap please

no widening M1

The widening of the M1 motorway (already started) is a short sighted thing. Apart from the obvious contradiction to the government's green rhetoric, it has been shown that increasing motorway capacity is only a short-term solution because the traffic build up to fill the new space (will find some evidence for this) - and so in the end you have the same problem.

Imagine a reliable, clean, cheap, safe rail service: frequent trains that are on time, that have spaces for bikes and places for families (so that babies can be changed and fed - i know from personal experience how hard it is to take a small baby on a midland mainline train) - and imagine linked bus services. Imagine trams that cross cities (again that you can take bikes on). Imagine cycle lanes that you can follow everywhere! I don't see why this is impossoble. If the government is spending so many millions on widening the M1 : http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2073611,00.html
how can they not justify spending the same on environmentally friendly means of travel?

Climate Camp

The following comment was made about people taking non-violent direct action at the Climate camp happening at the moment near Heathrow. I not only disagree with the essence of the comment (as I do with the comment that this one was responding to earlier in the discussion postings), but also with the aggressive and unnecessary insults that this person uses (e.g. useless, stuck up bastards). The level of anger in this comment and others like this (and there are lots) I think betrays something deeper than annoyance at people who peacefully demonstrate. It makes such little sense to build one’s argument on insulting, poorly founded criticism like this. I wish that the energy put into such comment could be put instead into doing something to help change the current situation.

Here is the comment, from

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/377895.html?c=on#c178580

10.08.2007 11:33
'ACAB', Well failiure maybe somethoing to do with all those useless stuckup 'middle class' bastards, some of whom must be working for the state ( tho they don''t have to as they do bring bourgous values to activism ). they claim non hierarchies etc. but seem to want to control everything ( and muck it up) , and some even claim to be anarchists which is patently nonsense- more like media whores and NGO wannabies who don't like doing labour. Don't be their stepping stones - uselss cunts. there pacifism is because they want the staus quo - and I certainly wouldn't want those 'activists' running any revolution - it certainly wouldn't benefit me, my family or any other poor people. Do your own thing and ignore those pratts from Dissent or whatever they are calling themselves now etc. - you know who...
hippos

I also resent the opinion that people who campaign using non-violent direct action are lazy or useless. The activists I know are all very hard working people who stand up for what they believe in a respectful, peaceful, and well-informed way. Where does the impression of laziness come from?

Johann Hari writes in this week’s Independent

‘….”These unemployed layabouts” and “stupid hippies” (copyright Talksport Radio) must be the most scientifically qualified protestors in history, with every other person seemingly a science graduate.
I recognise an undercover journalist from a right-wing newspaper and he says “This is terrible! I’ve been sent to find stories about drug addicted layabouts and they’re all nice people with PhD’s”’

J. Hari. The Independent, 18th August 207. p. 2

The article also comments upon the Police’s use of Anti-terror laws against the protestors. This is terrifying to me. I don’t understand how people can hate peaceful activists so vehemently with no comment upon this government’s tactics which are threatening our freedoms bit by bit.

That's all.

[The] words, rising up, form a thick cloud over the city, which every so often must be thoroughly cleansed of too much language. Men and women in balloons fly up from the main square and, armed with mops, and scrubbing brushes, do battle with the canopy of words trapped under the sun.

The words resist erasure. The oldest and most stubborn form a thick crust of chattering rage. Cleaners have been bitten by words still quarrelling, and in one famous lawsuit a woman whose mop had been eaten and whose hand was badly mauled by a visous row sought to bring the original antagonists to court. The men responsible made their defense on the grounds that the words no longer belonged to them.
(p.17)

That night two lovers whispering underthe lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the words tumbled over him in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves.
(p.19)

FromJeanette Winterson (1989) Sexing the Cherry. Bloomsbury.

If you want to become whole,
first let yourself become broken.
If you want to become straight,
first let yourself become twisted.
If you want to become full,
first let yourself become empty.
If you want to become new,
first let yourself become old.
Those whose desires are few gets them,
those whose desires are great go astray.

Tao Te Ching translation by McDonald, 1996

sad

I re-read them
all the loving things
I found some wisdom and hope in them
and a lot of feeling happy too
and now i feel cross that they still exist
taunting child-ghosts that don't know the pain they cause
I want to go back.
Sad.

oli

Now Oli has started to crawl, he has discovered he can get to things that he wants. He gets extremely cross when he realises he is not allowed to have them! And I laugh a bit because his upsettedness is so over-the-top when all he can't do is grab the guitar or something. And then I thought - perhaps it really is worth all that misery - ever since he was born he has believed that he is the master of everything - he secretly controls everything - he can make milk appear and make someone pick him up - but now something is going very wrong. I gave the instruction to the guitar to stay where it was so i could pull it over - but low - it moved before i got there.

What a terrible blow - a terrible thing to learn i cannot always have what i want and other people have wills that are different to mine.

I will try to be more sympathetic.

I am still grieving about the same thing.

Life of Brian

How can I have got to 31 and never seen the Monty Python films? I thought Life of Brian was hilarious, and I don't often laugh out loud at things. I particularly liked the stoning scene, and the holding up of the shoes - ha ha.

And it made me remember the website tom showed me http://www.godhatesfigs.com/index2.html
because of the ridiculous things people suddenly decide to believe in and all the rules that have to be followed.

That's it