Sadness Twice

Two pieces of tragic stupidity this week. A teacher in London fills a car up with 13 people including mothers, infants and children as a stunt.

And, the Supreme Court outlaws the death penalty for a person convicted of the rape of a child.

These two acts, by supposedly rational, thinking adults, have the same roots as the actions of those we cast as mankind's lowest: the assumption that children don't matter. In my line of work, I see some of this every day, from supposedly normal adults from all walks of society, and I'm sick of it.

Ayn Rand wrote an essay once, called the Comprachicos, in which she compares the intellectual abuse of children by America's education system to the physical abuse of children by a group of subhuman people.

Although I think Rand was mistaken in her view of the nagual , she was on target thirty years ago with the hatred of life that results in outrageous actions against the child.

"Train your children up in the way they should go, and they shall not stray from it." That works in reverse, too. The very people that we put our trust in to make society a better place for our children are disregarding the effect of their actions on the very young who cannot speak for themselves.

Well, we could go on about philosophical and spiritual reasons why this happens, but I leave the Supreme Court of the United States, the ACLU, and the so-called teacher in London with this thought: What will you do when it happens to your child?

klempare

klempare - puzzled; at a loss.

Ven sel bachmoorten jidyah mel Borges, corrflink mer peklivaat. Per klempare sel cronicker Tlon.

Glimmace

Definition of glimmace:

A sensory experience that starts out as carrying one emotional impact but ends with the opposite impact. The effect of a glimmace is usually accidental and unintended. The taste of a sugar coated pill is one example.

A photograph of a beautiful woman that on second glance seems strained and harsh and ugly is another.

We tend to associate glimmaces with visual stimuli, such as abstract art, but examples exist in all of the senses.

The definition could be carried to verbal or literal ironies, but by keeping the focus on a sensate nature, the word succeeds in connoting a fleeting, unexpected change. Some optical illusions are borderline glimmaces, but creating a glimmace is never as strong as discovering one by accident. In some cases, poetry can succeed in creating a very sensual yet word-created glimmace.

Fast forward to 1995

Or 1986. Days of the Houston Tenneco Marathon. Running to the mall and back on Saturday mornings. There was no poetry, only thirty word essays.

There was no 9-11, we were still thinking about John Lennon getting shot. 2001 was a year in the future, and the Y2K problem wasn't even a gleam in anyone's eye.

Time, as a problem, won't go away. It keeps moving, fluidly.

And the numbers are still in my head.

Hears a piece from much later, to be found in an upcoming book of poetry, Notes From Everywhere.

My backyard considers me
An intruder
An alien

Strange and shuddering

On its infinitesimal world of lumpy earth, a part
Of the whole world.

What if each of us was buried in our backyard? Would the land behave?