My body ain’t a cage
Or an imprisoning container.
The soul flies as will allows,
And any freedom sacrificed is
A personal failure and responsibility.
Is there more freedom worth wanting?
No.
freedom
Forty nights
Forty nights brought no relief
and the same expectation of waiting
for the someone to walk into what was
once
home.
It was home for one,
and too big to be so,
and that added to the drama of it all.
It had been over three months of
unbearable suffering
unrestrained freedom
and the void,
and nothing changed much,
not at its core.
There was a special hatred
reserved for ex-lovers,
and it could be broken down fairly easily
even to the uninitiated whom could not
fully
understand
the feeling of loss.
It was a mixture of trusting someone entirely,
having absolute confidence in the Good,
and dreaming enough to believe in Santa Claus,
and coming home to shattered dreams
trampled on a dirty floor with
muddy work boots,
figuring out the Good is some abstraction
unattainable to humans
and seeing the one you love
unzipped themselves to reveal
a serial killer
poltergeist
or android.
There was the cheapest
and deepest-cutting
feeling of betrayal and emptiness,
but maybe that wasn't down to you
and maybe that's just
life.
The new old place
The location never changed
but there was a snap change in
My surroundings and how they felt
A switch went off in my head and
Suddenly this was not the place with
Forbidden memories and ghosts.
The red changed hue and saturation
Suddenly becoming red2
And the bland off-white walls that
Were painted in so many memories
And looked like the bones of all
Our skeletons
Suddenly became off-white2.
Not even the bed felt the same
As suddenly it felt as comfortable
As the catcher’s mitt boys always dream of
Sleeping within.
A temple of demons became home again
Overnight.
It was the lack of you,
Your ghost has shut the hell up
And skeletons no longer banged in the closets
Or on the couch
And suddenly I was the master of this domain again.
You fell out of my head
Or somehow
I fell out if the boyish desires
And a new freedom was found in me.
Nobody
And today
I am nobody.
Nothing stirs by my hand
no one moves at my voice,
my freedom is absolute.
One lonely soul sitting
at a too-bright computer screen
poking at keys on a shadowy keyboard
is of little real or imagined consequence,
especially now.
I sit in a dark corner of a
room filled with a lot of
empty
space
and some junk
a laptop
and no personality or soul
reaches back out to me.
Nothing else draws breath or
thinks about the bitterness of these defeats
and the biggest failure one could have prescribed.
Nothing else.
I am nobody.
hulking cyborgs of thought
Once the chains come off, the results are unpredictable. The hulking brute is loosed on the world and given freedom with no eye to caution and with no checks and balances.
The moment the last of the iron cuffs slammed and bounced on the floor, with the distinct noise of metal on concrete that is unforgettably real, is a moment that will change the world. The sheer power of the imagination and the word roars, shaking infants awake.
Every poet turns 50 degress east, bows their head and stares in an attempt to break through the veil and hide in the abyss of their sorrow. Philosophers sit in their smugness and self-importance, a curled grin on the right side of theie mouths, believing the power to be nothing new or unique. They are wrong. They are deceived. The poets can not slip away and the philosophers will learn the hardest lessons.
There is nothing as permanent or satisfying as the proper line of words. Each statement is a shadow of a thoughts and always loses the proper meaning. Each statement becomes a bastard in the head of others, some of whom instantly accept it and others who instantly reject it. For some, the thought poisons them. A slow, creeping poison that punches a fist of rusted steel into your chest but will not rip out your heart. It misses the vitals and leaves you to rot, system going septic, and the fist stays.
A new form of cyborg is born.
bar down potential
and why potential?
Here's a wasted line.
Out of all words it being the most damning
as opposed to it being the most damning of all words
passive aggressive, as if it matters, to meaning transference,
or did it matter for transferring meaning?
Do you follow?
potential is overrated
uncalculable significant guess work and magic in one easy to consume
gift
sometimes not given
or delivered.
No Christmas coming.
There's no stronger way to put the world on one's shoulders as
heavy
titanic
a crushing load that can sink quickly
despite the optimism of hope flowing from
– is it freedom from or freedom to –
and as if that matters,
we're talking potential.
One is free to walk down the aisles or sections
of any city-paved street
provincial or federal park sanctioned
reserve land
or packet of earth otherwise laid claim to
completely free
in the freest of free ways
and to hell with the price of freedom in a bigger picture.
freedom condemns you to try to live up to the potential set out for you
and it's your fault whether you stumble succeed or hit the ball the
fuck
out of the park.
well,
bar down
and to hell with you.
On being genuine, free, and responsible
It's not something that comes with age. It's not something that is relative to maturity. Being genuine is a moral thing.
That being said, there is a certain amount of responsibility in the way you live your life, whether you like it or not. Every decision has a consequence, and no decision you make can be blamed on anyone else.
People have a way of avoiding responsibility, and in doing so, making excuses for their lack of genuineness. "I didn't tell you about ___, because _______." "I didn't ask you to _____, because so-and-so said______." "It;s not my fault, it's your fault, because ______."
Stop it.
You are granted almost complete freedom in your life, you need to learn how to be responsible for that freedom. Sure, living in a society restrains certain freedoms. If you don't like the social constraints, leave your society. Back to reality:
You are free, therefore you must accept the responsibility of your life. Lying was not brought on by someone else. You chose to lie, you deal with the consequences. You choose to cheat on your partner, you wear the guilt of it. If you choose to hurt a loved one, You must carry the weight of that betrayal.
I've encountered many forms of this in the past month or so specifically. This has mainly been in cross-gender friendships I'm involved in, which should not come as a surprise, considering they can often be complex situations.
It can be as simple as a clever lie to parry a curious question I asked (which, evidently, was not so clever). It can be as big as inventing a reason to not hang out. It can be as complicated as mixing fact and fiction to describe a disagreeable recent-past event as "for the best," when in reality, that's not the way the person was truly feeling.
All of these are lies, and there is a serious problem when it comes to misdirection and dishonesty in our day-to-day interactions. Lies compound themselves, and begin breeding more lies. Lies also grow from small, controllable fact-fiction hybrids, into untamed beasts of deceit.
"So what's is your point, Andy?" Well, it's simple: We need to start treating one another better, and living our lives in a more honest and responsible way. We need to practice being open with our communication, and realizing the consequences that our actions have on the people around us.
I understand the counter-arguments. "Not everyone is going to do this." So what? It's better to live your life in a moral, and respectable manner, and your influence may spread beyond yourself and encourage this healthy way of living amongst your friends and family. "If I'm always honest, and the other person isn't, I'll just get hurt." If you're dealing with a snake like that, you're going to get hurt anyways. There's no reason to act like an abusive idiot, just because someone has abused you.
In conclusion, I hope to see more people behaving responsible. If you make a mistake, confess it to the people who are affected. Make amends with them. Error is a human trait, as is forgiveness. Practice both, and we'll all be happier for it.
G20 protests: what journalism means for democracy
Recently, I found myself discussing the media coverage of the G20 protest with Hobb. We both found the media coverage to be shameful, and often useless. Not ALL media coverage, but a great majority of it. There was very little discussion of the Black Bloc, aside from stereotypical, recycled words. Read this article about the group by the Toronto Star entitled "Behind the Black Bloc." The article fails to really dive into anything remotely “behind” the group. What exactly is the Black Bloc? The author doesn’t know.
The author refers to the Black Bloc as a group, “many members of the Black Bloc;” and even as a tactic, “They embraced the Black Bloc tactic.” I understand it’s difficult to define, but pick a reference. The title seems to suggest the author understands it as both. Regardless, let’s get into the article more.
I’d like to share a few quotes with you that I found disturbing: “A Communist group set off a flare, distracting the crowd and police alike — and the mob took off across Queen.” The author later concludes the article by quoting a woman, “Violence just brings more violence,” a woman said into a megaphone as an anarchist set fire to a police cruiser. “What you guys are doing, it’s breaking my heart.” In case you missed it, the Black Bloc is both anarchist and communist at the same time. The author is apparently a little behind on his understanding of politics.
I don't mean to unfairly target the Toronto Star. Their newsroom did a decent job IN COMPARISON with many of the other big newspapers in the country. That assertion is not good enough, however. The CBC did a better job than the TorStar (I can hear the hard-Right grumbling about leftists and communists already, praying for the start of Sun TV), but even it was average at best.
It will take the determination of a solid researcher to dig up the true meaning of the G20 protests in historical and cultural context. It saddens me how badly context is missing in today's media. I read mentions of how crucial the G20 protests (and arrests) were, but it was among mostly obscure media sources. Not altogether surprising, as these obscure sources are some of the only ones practicing real journalism [i.e. journalism as a public duty to protect democracy].
Hobb pointed out a couple of important facts regarding the G20 protests. It was the largest mass arrest in Canada’s History (over 1000 arrested). One foreign journalist commented the detention centre was worse than those kept by Palestinian authorities. There were several instances of “cops gone wild” as he puts it (keep in mind he teaches Crime and Punishment). The extortionist cost of $1 billion dollars for security at the event. How often did you hear these facts reported by the media?
Where’s the investigate journalism? How many cops infiltrated the Black Bloc? I’ve spoken with people who knew some personally, and they were arrested multiple times by the uniformed police. How much damage was done by the Black Bloc and other individuals during the protests? Where were the police during the violent part of some of the protest? Who’s being held responsible for the police inventing a new law to arrest anyone within 5 metres of the fence? Who is being, or has been punished for this undemocratic discretion? Were there any human rights violations from police officers? Was any injured while they were in custody? Talk to a few lawyers (not just the solo one I heard on the news, who comes off as a conspiracy theorist from the quotes I heard), find out if the people arrested have a case.
Journalism has a responsibility to the public to be their watch-dog against authority and the “powers that be.” I keep coming back to a quote by Thomas Jefferson: "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." The freedom of the press is being challenged by financial constraints, and a lack of trust from the public. The integrity of journalism has been steadily eroding for some time, and it’s leading to a decrease in trust of journalists. Journalists must restore the peoples’ trust in their work, or else democracy will go out the window. I will write at length about the erosion of trust in a later post.
Andy Veilleux 