‘Long for This World’: The Quest for Immortality"

[diesel dyke]

"The first half of life is orderly, a miracle of “detailed harmonious unfolding” beginning with the embryo. What comes after our reproductive years is “more like the random crumpling of what had been neatly folded origami, or the erosion of stone. The withering of the roses in the bowl is as drunken and disorderly as their blossoming was regular and precise.”

Weiner brings his insightful book to a close with this thought: “The trouble with immortality is endless. The thought of it brings us into contact with problems of time itself — with shapeless problems we have never grasped and may never put into words. Our ability to exist in time may require our being mortal, although we can’t understand that any more than the fish can understand water. What we call the stream of consciousness may depend upon mortality in ways that we can hardly glimpse.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/books ... ese-t.html

[still.trucking]

The Palestinians, Alone
By EFRAIM KARSH
Published: August 1, 2010

From 1948 to 1967, when Egypt and Jordan ruled the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Arab states failed to put these populations on the road to statehood. They also showed little interest in protecting their human rights or even in improving their quality of life — which is part of the reason why 120,000 West Bank Palestinians moved to the East Bank of the Jordan River and about 300,000 others emigrated abroad. “We couldn’t care less if all the refugees die,” an Egyptian diplomat once remarked. “There are enough Arabs around.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opini ... .html?_r=1

[stilltrucking]

The Lunatic’s Manual
By BOB HERBERT

As if there is not enough that has gone tragically wrong in this era of endless warfare, the military is facing an epidemic of suicides. In the year that ended Sept. 30, 2009, 160 active duty soldiers took their own lives — a record for the Army. The Marines set their own tragic record in 2009 with 52 suicides. And this past June, another record was set — 32 military suicides in just one month.

War is a meat grinder for service members and their families. It grinds people up without mercy, killing them and inflicting the worst kinds of wounds imaginable, physical and psychological. The Pentagon is trying to cope with the surge in suicides, but it is holding a bad hand: the desperate shortage of troops has forced military officials to lower the bar for enlistment, thus letting in people whose drug and alcohol abuse or other behavioral problems would previously have kept them out. And the multiple deployments (four, five and six tours in the war zones) have jacked up stress levels to the point where many just can’t take it.



The G.I.’s have fought valiantly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands have died and many, many more have suffered. But the wars have been conducted as if their leaders had been reading from a lunatic’s manual. This is not Germany or Japan or the old Soviet Union that we’re fighting. But after nearly a decade, neither war has been won and there is no prospect of winning.

Trillions of dollars are being squandered. George W. (“Mission Accomplished”) Bush took the unprecedented step of cutting taxes while waging the wars. And Barack Obama has set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan without having any idea how that war might be going when the deadline arrives.

This is warfare as it might have been waged by Laurel & Hardy. Absent the bloodshed, it would be hilarious. I’d give a lot to hear Dwight Eisenhower comment on the way these wars have been conducted.

July was the deadliest month yet for American troops in Afghanistan. Sixty-six were killed, which was six more than the number who died in the previous most deadly month, June. The nation is paying little or no attention to those deaths, which is shameful. The president goes to fund-raisers and yuks it up on “The View.” For most ordinary Americans, the war is nothing more than an afterthought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/opini ... ml?_r=1&hp

[SadLuckDame]

My creepiest thoughts are the lonely ones. It's that one that has haunted me for ten years or so, that really all is illusion and I'm alone.

Firstly, I think on how we're in the womb--alone, there comforted, but just with our thoughts, then I think how we die alone, in the cold body with naught but our thoughts--alone and lastly, I think none of this is as solid as we're to perceive it is, could all just be designed illusion to give us a quest, teach us and then gently let us go-- back to our thoughts. May be just us and our maker, or just us and other souls on other quests on other turtle galaxies, in a search for like souls to join us someday so we're not so lonely as we have been since the womb.

Afternoon rambling.

[diesel dyke]

I was never so alone as at the moment I stopped being an aquatic creature and drew my first breath...
Is that why I have this ocean longing in me. To return to the womb?


Margaret Fell-Fox,
Her last words were, “I am in Peace.”

Thanks for being a kind stranger,
and trying to understand.

[SadLuckDame]

I'm sure the womb might be forever on our mind.
A fantastic night, I know I kept laughing and giggling into the wee hours.

Was she one of the first preacher women, then?

[jimboloco]

margaret married george at pendle hill
her estate she kept after her first husband passed on
it was where the meetings were held
and is now the center of contemplation for quakers in philadelphia

george fox said "do not look at the sins
temptations, confusions,
distractions, corruptions,
but at the Light which discovers them
that makes them manifest
and with the same light
you will feel over them
to feel power to stand against them
and you will find grace
there is the first step of your peace."

i had to bring peace to a family
around a dying woman
to get the doctor to talk to them,
to get a priest to minister to them,
to have to find a way to explain to them why the sudden
downturn
"she was talking with us last night!"
and she was halfway there,
surrounded by them all
and yet they were the ones who felt left alone
wife, mother, daughter she was to them
i nursed her last day
for 12 hours
they were square when i left
she was gone before i went to sleep

now i know the difference between burnout and
depression

i ain't burned out on ya'll
i'd smoke ya if i could
stay lit

[jimboloco]

i am burned out on war
and depressed about it
morons

now we are leaving iraq
we won
only 4000+ dead
only 40000wounded
americans

only hundreds of thousande who died
in iraq since the first set up job
kuwait
we let them go in then wasted them

could this have been done differently?
absolutely

it's a wonder i never committed suicide
after seeing the shit
coming home to a jack-in-a-box suburb

i only hope i can help somebody sometime
i still have a letter to write
to the paper Times of St Pete
and the journalists who wrote
about the kid who died
in Fort Colorado
doped up on psych meds
held by army shrinks to
patch him up or d/c him
as unfit
he died last month
leaving parents to miss him

now they are saying how great bush jr is
the surge worked

surge from an invasion worked
we killed al quaida
now we are leaving
al quaida is still there
and iraq has a new enemy
themselves

[stilltrucking]

Me too
burned out on war



I watched Ran tonight, hell of a movie.
http://www.hulu.com/ran
I swore I would never watch another war movie again after Full Metal Jacket.

But I am glad I watched it.

Speaking of Full Metal Jacket and
Talk about virtual suicides,
Rest in peace Gus.
http://www.gustavhasford.com/Full.htm

[SadLuckDame]

I was watching these interview clips today. Thought you might likes.







And you'll like Marie

[stilltrucking]

Death “the worm at the core” of man’s pretensions." —William James

Angel Headed Hipsters with tombstones in their eyes searching for the Gospel of Go walking in a world that was disappearing under their feet.

It was women that killed him. When they started to yawn at him. It broke his heart.

[SadLuckDame]

You do always seem to worry that, and I do it to by telling you my babble is getting duller by the minute, but don't think you have ever caught me bored, you've scared the freakin' crap out of me, but never made me yawn.
O.k., well that's not entirely true, when it gets heavy on the politics, I do get a little bored, but everyone else likes politics.
I'm more paranoid than you.