A Wide Assortment

Global coverage of stuff
By Alex Ness
December 18, 2023

I was told that for all the benefits I get from writing columns, that I should write it no matter what else I am enduring. The truth is, beyond friendships that form, which I appreciate, or the review products, which are sparse and often harder for my old eyes to read, I get only the self satisfaction of doing a work that helps my various creative communities. I wasn't sure what to write, and then said, screw it, I want to write, and write is what I will do.

CLICK ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE

THE WORLD AT WORK

It might not matter to people, any one even, but the world is facing growing challenges, and in so many ways, we haven't the compassion left to care. But we live in a world the poor could be fed, but are not. 1/3 of all food harvested/caught produced/prepared is lost to spoilage and bad delivery systems. We live in a world where electric cars are believed to save the world from carbon based fuels and pollution, but the means of harvesting the lithium requires near slavery, and children are used as the cheapest form of labor. We could do better but for some reason, we do not. The rain forests are dying, not because of logging exactly, but because by removing 10% of a stand of trees the system of trees suffer. It isn't necessarily well known, but trees feed other trees. That is, in a world where we assume humans and select rather human contact based animals are thought to demonstrate care for their young and elderly, and those trees in poor health, and other biological systems care for, and heal those in their gathering, by using less for themselves and more for those who are weak. We've lost species that might not be of concern for the human food chain directly, but form the basis for the food chain of creatures and beings that live outside of our view, but help the beings we rely upon survive.

Even humans cause a similar destruction and weakening of the system. Humans are ALL part of a system, and we all have issues. I mentioned on a private audience facebook post, that I'd  been diagnosed with cancer, and a second post as having early onset dementia by two doctors, I received messages at my email address from a known stalker calling me fat and wishing me dead from colon cancer. He then wrote again, saying I hear you've been diagnosed as an imbecile now. I hope you die soon so that the tax payers such as myself won't have to pay for your time in the nut house. Holding grudges of such intensity feeds into toxic minds. I don't have dementia as it turns out (but I do have cancer) but even if I did, I've know more kind people with mental deficiencies than those who are toxic and evil. We must raise up those needing love, and leave aside the toxic who pray for harm on others. We can't focus upon the dark hearted, they will never understand, we are all on a vessel together, and we have no way to survive, if we do not work together.

There are people who assume if you are not perfect you have no right to complain about anything. This is false too. People make mistakes, and I fail often, I am deeply flawed, but speaking the truth requires nothing but a voice. We cannot let the hypercritical ugly humans who hate themselves as well as all others become our voice. We cannot surrender to the deep cynicism of those who hate themselves so much that all others seem even worse. But the truth is, we have a right to speak, but ask yourself, to what end are you asking? Are you building others up? Or are you tearing people down?

I saw a brief video of person who began a project across America where he would for a day work the hours migrant laborers in the agricultural industry would work, and he would count the number of products he harvested, and then use math to compute how much money the product they are used for would cost, if the laborers were paid a fair wage for their back breaking labor. The most horrible case was the 12 dollars for 24 ounces of orange juice he was responsible in the day of labor, had the real cost been used. If I were to be addicted to anything in this world, it would be the company of cats, having books, and drinking orange juice. The idea of 12 dollars for OJ would make me a very sad man.

I've seen and heard people say they never profited from or benefited from white privilege. Well I'd say it isn't always direct, and it isn't always an intentional thing. Sometimes you inherit a system that benefits you. Sometimes you are the one who is screwed in the deal. My adoptive mom lived such that she averaged 4 hours of sleep each night due to her home labors for her family, and 4 hours a day at as a church secretary. I guarantee she got paid less than a dollar per hour when all was said and done. Am I being defensive? Not in the least, I am saying I witnessed someone doing far more than I see others doing, and doing it for others and who lived by her German roots ethics of labor being your wages for heaven. A term the Nazis turned into a vulgarity, Arbeit Macht Frei meaning, Labor will set you free, was how she lived. Neither white folks today, young, middle aged or elderly live by such a code now. And perhaps that is good, it certainly led to the health issues my mother died with. In Japan the refusal to leave work or work hours beyond the measure of the clock has led to generations of salary men dying or being burned out and unable to work by their early 50s.

For a point of perspective, my mom died at 85 but didn't get to enjoy the post work life she had worked so hard to find. She had Alzheimer's and it robbed her of her present, and it eventually stole every moment of her past. When you think of how the past generations worked so hard to build a world for their children and grandchildren, remember, many never lived passed a certain age, and many of those lost their memories to Alzheimer's and dementia. That is, my mom surrendered her happiness, her energy, her entire existence so that we, my family, might be better off. All she asked in return were beautiful memories. And she didn't actually get to have them. She lost everything. Did others have it worse? In any situation, I promise you, someone has it worse than you. Try for once to let others live by their goals and dreams, keep your hypercritical assumptions to your self, and use that upon your self. Not everyone gets to live a happy ending, let alone a happy life.

We all waste, most of us complain, and we labor far too little for the rewards we now expect to receive. It isn't because we deserve it, it is because the world we inherited from our ancestors was one where systems evolved, some to help, some to hurt, and most to move things along easily.

A photograph of a laborer by award winning photographer Lewis Hine. (Public domain)

You might think I'm saying life is bad, but I am not. You might be thinking I'm saying, everyone ends up screwed by life but I am not. I am simply saying, life is not easy, and instead of judging others, perhaps consider the difficulties others face, that maybe you do not. Try to forgive, or at least give credit to others, rather than assume you know it all, and that you are the only one with a hard life.

THE 1970s ME, COMICS & THE WORLD

People who grew up in the 1970s know something people who followed and who came before them didn't. Due to the unrest, the perfect life, 2 children, married parents 2 story house and white picket fence didn't usually or even often exists.  Life was watching as inflation grew, but wages stalled. The remnant wars of empire and post WW2 had driven the world's arms market to new highs, and human poverty and pain to new loses. Washington DC saw a president forced to resign, Pennsylvania watch as a nuclear plant approached meltdown, new kinds of mass killings arose, and an heiress to a publishing firm joined a group of terrorists who were Marxist and threatened violence. Kids were still kids, but the drugs offered, the new kinds of thrill seeking meant whatever looked normal from the outside, probably, and almost certainly, was not. Kent State saw national guardsmen shoot protesters demanding peace, demanding the end of overseas wars.  Chile elected a Socialist, who when Washington DC said go for it, was murdered and a right wing dictator took over.  By no means were the 1970s a golden era for human civilization. But the comics I read were great.

THE POET LIST

I'd originally written this three times. Blogspot burped and it disappeared twice. Forgive me if my joyful exuberance has flattened a bit. It isn't that poets I love aren't worth the time. It is modern conveniences sometimes that are not. The list is written with no order of preference, and of course there are people missing from it who I love. Edmund Spenser and the Faerie Queene created a work that was an allegory, an homage, a straight for work, and one that captured all things English. I love it, and I love too Alfred Lord Tennyson, but neither wrote outside of that narrow area of King Arthur, so I left them off my list. I also left off my list Yukio Mishima who didn't write much poetry but what he wrote was great. Mostly he made the perfect comment about poetry, "'Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.'" But this list is for all the works considered.

(I do think that Ezra Pound writes perfect poetry, and acted in ways I could see myself doing. He went from blaming bankers for funding and thereby encouraging the two world wars, to going further into a rabbit hole and blamed the Jewishness of the bankers for being part of the problem. He spent10 years in a prison mental hospital, only renouncing his views later. I might not go as far to make people listen to my points by using purposely vile or racist words and ideas but I do understand when feeling that you have truth that is being ignored, that you try to somehow otherwise attract their attention.)

The Pyre burning the body of Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Funeral of a Poet" by Louis Edouard Fournier, 1889

I don't think my list is unusual, there are few outliers in the list, many are famous or at least appreciated for their works. The truth is I do like works not because somehow someone liked them, but fort their truth. I tend, in fact, to dislike some poets, who'll go unnamed here, who gained fame for the misery of their lives and the efforts they went to, to memorialize their struggle. Sometimes that works, but just as all love poems all the time is a worm that bores into one's brain, the same goes for the 'oh I am breaking' works, like many of those I write... ironic, huh? Truthfully, I try to avoid either but it doesn't always work that way.

My list is split between the genders, nationality follows name.

Ezra Pound (US)
e.e. cummings (US)
William Carlos Williams (US/Puerto Rico)
Arthur Rimbaud (French)
Ovid (Rome)
Homer (Greek)
Archilochus (Greek)
Lord Byron (English)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (English)
Matsuo Basho (Japanese)

Lin Zhao (China)
Sei Shōnagon (Japan)
Lady Mirasaki  (Japanese)
Marianne Moore (US)
Emily Dickinson (US)
Anne Sexton (US)
Sappho (Greek)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (English)
Christina Rossetti (English)
Rupi Kaur (India)

A BEAUTIFUL ENDING

ANTIQUITY

It is thought by many, that Woolly Mammoths and other great beasts of the past, now extinct, have been gone so long that we can't imagine the amount of time. But it is little known, while Egyptians were building pyramids and megaliths, the Mammoths still existed upon Wrangel Island, found in the Arctic circle. Well that doesn't change the fact that Pharaoh King Tut is still dead, as are the Mammoths, but it does beggar the question, of what else has happened that we are so deeply flawed in our perceptions?  I was told by someone that the Egyptians had never forgotten their beloved King Tut. Ok, perhaps not. But they had lost his tomb. Beyond that, the Sphinx and great Pyramids of the Giza plateau weren't perceived until the previous century for the magnificence that they were. There are many reasons for this, and I am not saying Egyptians of those times were anything but bright and wise, modern and wonderful. But they had lost many megaliths and artifacts through the years, mostly to the encroaching sands of the Sahara. I think my point is, that we shouldn't assume anything except Mammoths existed not as long ago, and Tut's tomb was buried.

The wonderful ancient past is a puzzle, one we've yet to solve.

The seal to Tut's tomb, left untouched for 3300 years

Woolly Mammoth's left uncovered by a thaw, dead for 4000 years

The sands covered the Sphinx and who knows what for centuries

Wrangel Island from Satellite photograph, above the Arctic circle

CONTACTING ME FOR REVIEWS OR OTHERWISE

I can be found on Social Media or through email Alexanderness63@gmail.com.

I accept hard copies, so when you inquire at any of these places, I'll follow through by telling you my street address.If you send hard copies for review I'll try to always review them, but if you prefer to send pdf or ebooks to my email, I review these at my discretion. (I don't share my pdf/ebooks, so you can avoid worry that I'd dispense them for free to others.)

My Creative Blogs:

5k poem blog         AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com

Published works   AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com/2007/01/My-Work.html

Social Media:
Bluesky
X/Twitter

All images are copyright © their respective owners, use is simply as fair use and no ownership rights asserted.