The Revolution Turns 29

Your deeds are famous, so stay resolute, my lord, defend your life now with the whole of your strength. I shall stand by you.
~ Wiglaf to Beowulf before joining to fight the dragon.

Happy Birthday my brotha from anotha motha.

A Perfect Storm

like this bathroom stall
the door to the poor
leads straight to the sewer
when the system works
the smell is contained
and once in a while
they paint the tile
to cover the writing on the wall

but when katrina sailed
the system failed
and the sewage swelled
washing away the conglomerate facade
and with the janitors gone
it did not take long
for the manufactured song
to fall to the writing on the wall

Get Busy!

"He not busy being born is busy dying."
~Bob Dylan in the film No Direction Home (thank you PBS)

Well the birthday trip is over
I asked to be reborn and was
I know who I want to be
by what feels good
and I'm ready to start being me.

Birthday Wish

A regrouping of values
an awereness of the senses
hearing the music
reading the writing
and sending the soul to the walls
spread it on mine and yours
from the back of the eyeballs
to the skin of the drums
to the walls of the drum
that beats just for fun

Do NOT Read this Book...

... if your work does not stir your soul. You may do something "irresponsible".

No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is,
if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity
and desire to travel by that time. This spending of the best part of
one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the
least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to
make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the
life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.

~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Work Worth Living

It seems like every time I get in the elevator now, I get a special message with another reason why corporate life is not for me. Yesterday, on my first ride up, two older women got in and were talking about how sleep deprived they were. And if you look around the large corporation I work for, you’ll see that almost everyone is sleep deprived. Zombies. We hear much talk these days about our dependence on oil, but I shutter to think what would happen if there was a disruption to coffee supply lines. It would cripple my company, I am sure.

The cause is rooted in several soils. I suspect that most of us spend our evenings trying to forget our day. Days of multi-tasking, problem-solving, and politicking put us in a state where it is near impossible to direct our thoughts to something other than work. Though everyone has their favorite distractions, I suspect TV, alcohol, and drugs (prescribed and otherwise) are the most popular. In fact, in the conversation the two women were having, one mentioned a TV show she had watched about the effects of sleep deprivation. I wondered if she was watching the TV show late at night.

My point is not to pass judgment on these two women, for I am as guilty of wasting my time at night as anyone. It just makes me wonder what we are missing out on in life as individuals and as a society if we spend most of our waking hours doing work we do not like in order to support a life in which we are too drained to actually live it, let alone enjoy it.

Which brings me back to the importance of finding work worth living. By “work worth living,” I mean supporting oneself financially by doing something that one would enjoy even if they were not getting paid. Each and every one of us has but a limited amount of time. And if our time is limited and we must earn money, we should all be so lucky to find work that pays us to have a good time.

Hey You...

Why don't we catch up? Silly, really, not to.

Scientists Discover God's Eyeball

Damn! He really is watching!!!