Don’t Quota Me!

 http://patrickattard.blogspot.com/2012/11/times-dont-quota-me.html

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121123/blogs/don-t-quota-me.446598
Friday, November 23, 2012, 16:39 by Tanja Cilia

Sunday, 25 November 2012

Tulsi Gabbard Tamayo is an Iraq War veteran, and, incidentally, America’s first Hindu Congresswoman on the Democratic ticket. Her Oath of Office, come January 3, will be the first ever to be administered over the Bhagavad Gita. Her father is Hawaii State Senator Mike Gabbard. Aged 23, she was the state’s first elected official who resigned voluntarily to go to war.

Tammy Baldwin is Wisconsin first openly lesbian Senator, which is ironic, considering that the state gave a 59 per cent yes vote to a 2006 homosexual marriage ban. She is one of four openly homosexual House members of the 112 U.S. Congress, the other three being fellow Democrats Jared Polis of Colorado, Barney Frank of Massachusetts, and David Cicilline of Rhode Island.

Ladda Tammy Duckworth lost both legs and severely damaged her right arm when serving in the U.S. Army as the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the Iraq War, when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the cockpit of her helicopter and exploded. She is the first Thai-American elected to Congress in Illinois’ 8th congressional district, defeating incumbent Joe Walsh.

Mazie Hirono, who has represented Hawaii’s 2nd district in Congress since 2007, was elected to represent Hawaii in the U.S. Senate. She was born in Japan, immigrating to Hawaii with her family as a child. Hirono defeated Republican Linda Lingle 62 per cent to 37 per cent. She was raised in the Jodo Shinshu tradition, and is one of the two Buddhists to be elected to the House of Representatives; Hank Johnson of Georgia is the other one.

These four women ran the race to be the change as well as to make it, and not just because there were not a part of the “angry white male machine.”

I am assuming they did not fill in application forms that said, in part, Positive Discrimination! Female Minority Candidates Wanted: Non-Caucasian, LGBT, Congenital or Acquired Disabilities…

And yet, Duckworth, who would have qualified for the above on two counts, was disparaged by her opponent, Rep. Joe Walsh, as a “…female, wounded veteran…ehhhh. She is nothing more than a handpicked Washington bureaucrat…” Duckworth herself has said of the incident, “I hope this is the worst thing that happens to anyone in the 106th during this deployment. This is not so bad. There is always somebody worse off than you are. I’m just glad it was me and not one of my guys out there.”

I suppose Walsh found other words with which to denigrate those women of the 19 per cent in Congress who do not happen to share his political views; unless he regretted venting his spleen, if only for the way his malevolence backfired. In all, 20 women have seats in the American Senate. But of course, for many, it is nowhere near enough.

In Malta, we don’t really have a pool of foreigners, persons with disabilities, or other representatives of minorities who are ready to sacrifice themselves on the altar of politics as they do in the USA.

Ironically, a woman who decides to compete “with the men” does so on the platform that she is “like all women” and, presumably, therefore, understands our wants and needs. They tell us that it’s time that women being voting for women – rather as if they know what we do, or don’t.

They mention buzzwords such as glass ceilings while daring us to ask them about role reversal and who does the school run in the morning, and chide us for being complacent (i.e. not like them).

We all know that if women had to run Parliament, or at least be there on parity with men, there would be flexi-time, job-sharing, and teleworking as a matter of course. More money would be voted for healthcare, education, and eradication of poverty. Is this a sexist comment?

Alas, the much-vaunted “quotas” and “positive discrimination” will never give us a Rwanda-like legislature, which is 56.3 per cent female, or one akin to that of Andorra, which is 53.6 per cent female, or even like that of Sweden, at 45 per cent female.

A quota is not positive discrimination; it’s crumbs for the dogs, off the table of a rich man. Why should a man who is more competent than a woman be ousted, so false justice may be seen to have been done through an arbitrary system?

We are told to celebrate the differences between men and women, and in the same breath, it is pointed out to us that these differences must be redressed by (presumably) employing women who are less qualified then men, in order to “make up numbers”.

Dozens of papers – some with titles just this side of eccentricity – purport to explain why despite this so-called enlightenment, bias still exists against the distaff side.

We have The Portia Hypothesis, a study by Bentley Coffey (Clemson University, Department of Economics) and Patrick McLaughlin (George Mason University, Mercatus Center), which claims that female lawyers with masculine-sounding first names have better odds of becoming judges than colleagues with feminine names…at least in South Carolina.

We read about symphony orchestras that have adopted “blind” audition procedures where candidates perform behind a screen to conceal their gender. This, parenthetically, has led to more women being assumed.

Viviane Reding, the EU Justice Commissioner, had mooted a “gender quota”, wherein all publicly listed companies are to have at least 40 per cent of their boards composed of women by 2050. She said nothing about shop floors and minor staff. Would Reding be offended if anyone suggested she is where she is, because of a decree like the one she would like to see enacted?

Whatever happened to meritocracy?

Glass Works

http://prayables.com/prayer-blogs/prayables-team-blog/844-glass-works

At the corner of our dining room stood a Murano glass lamp-stand. Its intricate glass flowers and leaves were dull and opaque with dust, and its brass base had long lost its lustre.

My excuse was that the smell of metal polish gets up my nose and gives me a migraine.

It had been a wedding gift to my parents in the early 1950’s; one of those intricate, fragile jigsaw puzzles that need to be taken apart to be cleaned.

I was idly zapping across television channels when a documentary caught my attention. There, centre stage, was a floor lamp exactly like ours. A gaffer was then shown using a blowpipe to inflate a blob of molten glass into a parison (a glass bubble).

The globular shape was then revolved at the end of the pipe while finishing touches were added to it. Very soon it had cooled into one of the many sections rather like large fragile beads of a necklace, that are threaded through the central pole of the lamp.

The leaves and flowers were made differently. Gobbets of semi-molten glass were flattened, elongated, shaped with tong-like shears, and given the characteristic half-twist. Each was placed alongside a model on the workbench and measured for accuracy.

Leaves and flowers must be of a standard size. This makes a lamp that it a work of art and not a raggedy mix-and-match affair. It is also a practical measure, since if they were not of the same size, the leaves and flowers would not sit properly in their sockets. As I watched the whole process, fascinated, I couldn’t help glancing at the forsaken relative of the lamp on the television screen out of the corner of my eye.

Sometimes, our realities and what the media shows as such are two very different things. We may hanker after jewellery, vehicles, furniture, clothes, or other possessions, not realizing that what we hold in our hands – the values of family, life, compassion, and love – are nicer, more important, and more precious than any gilded lilies dangled before our eyes to tempt us. It is so much wiser to want what we have, than to have what we want.

In the corner of our dining room stands a stunning hand-crafted Murano lamp-stand. The transparent, pink-tipped flowers and leaves now glisten with cleanliness and care, and the brass base has regained its burnished patina.

And I’m not worried, my headache will subside.

Prism Reflections

Refractions of light from a prism:
a heterogeneous, multi-faceted rainbow,
splitting the spectrum.
Transparency separating the light
into its component elements.
It’s not the brightest, fastest, or keenest ray
that makes the enchantment happen,
but it strikes the right place at the right time.
Help me be a prism to my companions;
to help them discern what is vital,
but mostly to help them focus on what’s essential.

–Tanja Cilia

It-Tqarbin: Dmir, mhux Drawwa

 

Dari, waqt it-tqarbin, kien ikun hemm abbati ħdejn il-qassis. Dan kien iżomm patena taħt il-geddum ta’ min ikun qed jitqarben, biex jekk l-Ostja taqa’, tiġi fiha.  Meta daħal it-tqarbin fl-idejn, ma baqax l-uża tal-patena, u tneħħiet.

Biss, min jara l-filmati tat-tqarbin f’Lourdes, u f’Fatima, u santwarji oħra, jinduna li ħdejn il-qassis, dejjem ikun hemm xi ħadd wieqaf. Dan jiġri biex jekk ikun hemm xi ħadd li ma jirċevix l-Ostja mill-ewwel, jiġbdulu l-attenzjoni, u fis jitqarben. B’hekk hemm inqas ċans li jsir l-abbuż.

Konna qed nitkellmu dwar dan, u ndunajna li hemm ħafna affarijiet li jiġru waqt it-tqarbin li jkun wisq aħjar li kieku ma jsirux.  Forsi wasal iż-żmien li nibdew nifhmu sew xi tfisser dik is-sentenza li kienu jgħidulna meta konna żgħarr: “Kull darba li nitqarbnu, għandna nġibu ruħna b’devozzjoni daqs li kieku din kienet ser tkun l-uniku tqarbina tal-ħajja tagħna.”

1. Flipflops u xorts  mhux talli ma jnisslux devozzjoni, talli anqas imissek tilbishom għall-knisja. U jekk tkun liebsa sandli jew karkur… tkaxkarx.
2. Ieqaf kanta ftit qabel ma jmissek – mhux sinjal ta’ devozzjoni li tgħajjat f’wiċċ is-saċerdot jew il-Ministru Straordinarju.
3. Int u  nieżel mit-tqarbin, toqgħodx tħares ‘l hawn u ‘l hinn, u inqas u inqas, issellimx li dik u lil dak, qisek l-Onorevoli tar-raħal.
4. Jekk bi ħsiebek ittella’ l-basket jew il-ktieb tal-kant miegħek, għamilhom taħt abtek ftit qabel ma jmissek li titqarben, biex ma tohloqx waqfa.
5. Jekk int iffissata li trid titqarben l-ewwel, jew l-aħħar, għamel hekk bi-dekorum; tersaqx lejn l-artal bil-ġiri jew bil-lajma.
6. Jekk int ikollok bżonn tagħti xi ħaga lil xi ħadd, ara kif tagħmel u u asal il-Knisja ftit qabel, jew ħu paċenzja u stenna’ sa wara li tispiċċa l-Quddiesa – ittellax basktijiet jew pakketti miegħek biex tgħaddihom waqt it-tqarbin.
7. Jekk ma tirdx titqarben mingħand Ministru tat-Tqarbin, mela oqgħod fin-naħa ta’ fejn soltu jqarben is-Sacerdot, biex ma tgħaddix minn-nofs tas-serbut u tgerfex lil kulħadd.
8. Jekk tinduna f’daqqa waħda li għaddiet is-siegħa tas-sawma, u għaldaqstant ser titqarben, xorta m’ghandekx tmur tigri lejn l-artal. Tobżax. Jistennewk. U bilħaqq – m’għandek għalfejn tgħajjat biex tiġbdilhom l-attenzjoni, għax dejjem iħarsu ‘l fuq.
9. L-ilbiesi biċ-ċingi li fuqhom trid tilbes xalla, ser taqa u ma taqax, ilbishom meta tkun ser tmur xi Coffee Morning. Għall-knisja, l-iżjed jekk ser titqarben, arma blaws b’komm ċkejkna.
10. M’hemmx lok li taqbad l-Ostja u trodd is-Salib biha minn  tulek, qabel ma titqarben.
11. Meta tagħmel riverenza quddiem il-qassis, u ta’ warajk ma jkunx ippreparat, ser tkun ta’ xkiel.
12. Mhux suppost li l-Ostja tittieħed fil-post ta’ fejn tkun qed tisma’ l-Quddies qabel ma tittieħed.
13. Sakemm tila’ titqarben, toqgħodx tilgħab b’xagħrek jew biċ-ċrieket.
14. Tagħmilx parlata ma’ ta’ quddiemek jew ta’ warajk; stenna’ sakemm tispicca l-Quddiesa, u l-innu, u toħorġu barra.

Tkun ħaġa sabiħa kieku waqt it-tqarbin kulħadd ikun moħħu hemm, biex ħadd ma jtellef lil ħaddiehor.

Death Watch

(Another memory, and another reminder)

I had written two posts mentioning suicide.

I had hoped never to write another one.

But the recent sorry excuse for reportage – a pathetic hotchpotch of biased comments with concerted, subtle, yet vicious splotches of slut-shaming and vindictive, malicious comments and misinformation following articles, allowed to stand by newspaper editors who ought to know better,  has put paid to that hope.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that some murders and suicides that happen locally get more column space and extensive audio-visual media coverage than others. As a corollary, there is a national discussion by self-styled experts about whys and wherefores.

The media relies on the fact that its audience laps up inaccurate, oversimplified and potentially dangerous, sensationalised reports. I was perturbed at the words and out-of-context sound-bites dug out from statements.

In other sections of the press, we are told that bullying leads to suicide. However, nowhere have I seen it stated that mental manipulation, whether or not it is Gaslighting, may lead to a similar end for the victim. Neither have I seen links to helplines, except once, just in case copycat suicides are in the offing.

I am told that ‘journalists’, whatever that term means these days, have to stuck to fact and not offer opinion – that is the domain of bloggers and / or  opinionated bitches like myself, and, apparently,  the people who regularly trawl the virtual news-sites to leave their insidious,  warped points of view for our delectation.

It is not easy to ‘know everything’ about something that happens. And yet, multifaceted issues are fed to us in drips and drabs, in a seemingly logical manner, in a bid to sway our judgements and mould our conclusions to match the agendas of those who have something to hide.

At this point, I have to ask many, many questions.  If you knew your friend was shoplifting or doing drugs, or riding his motorcycle hell for leather without a crash helmet, would you shop him? Or would you not want to get involved, lest you be tarred with the same brush by ‘ignorant adults’?

If you assume it’s just a phase, or that it is not your business… would you, then, hide the fact that he was having sex with minor?  If you thought he was a megalomaniac, or  sociopath, psychopath, or any other kind of –path, whether or not he had a history of underlying mental illness would you seek help, or would you cover for him because “that is what friends do”, while secretly envying his stud-luck with the girls?

Because of course, there is only one thing worse for a girl than to be called a slut – and that’s to be called a prude. Still, alas, when a man and a child have sex, the man gets high-fives, but the girl loses respectability. Even when he, shudder, shock horror, expresses trepidation that he will be branded a paedophile.

If, on the other hand, someone told you that all of the above could precipitate a death because the person involved fell into an “at-risk category”…would you change your mind?   Or would you shrug and say “shit happens?” ignoring the fact that the warning signs were there all the time?

If you had an acquaintance who always seemed sad, would you approach her? Now let’s take this point farther. If you had a friend who self-harmed because she was lonely, and felt excluded, would you ‘do something about it’, or would you assume she was showing off, or worse, that she was ‘in good hands’ because someone else had her back.  Is it really possible for just one person to have anybody’s back, in these circumstances? Nobody in a position to do so has yet explained that suicide is not an automatic response to feelings of rejection, depression, anxiety, despair, and isolation.

The non-sheep of us have been hauled over the coals for pointing out that you do not fall from a height without breaking a limb or four; that you do not even consider the possibility of a suicide attempt failing; that you do not keep a kid out at night of you know she is listed as missing; that sexts of minors constitute child pornography; that a person’s Facebook wall is not usually removed by anyone except himself… and this cannot be done when you do not have access to it.

I chided a journalist for treating the death of Lisa Marie so flippantly and histrionically, and asked him whether he would have extracted the same quotes from a social site, had she been his little sister. He did not reply.

As part of the research for this article, I clicked a random photograph on “See who’s here” on Ask.fm. Just for the record, there is no need to have an account with the site, to do this. The very first, and only, ‘conversation’ I saw was “il-hara kemm nobodok / mur aqbez / omgzz / suwisajd”.

Is it possible that this kind of activity is ‘fun’? Healthy, and psychologically sound, it certainly is not.

Gossip feeds the voracious appetitive of idle minds; note the hullaballoo about L’Wren and Peaches Geldof, which may not, after all, have been a suicide but due to an extreme diet.

This spawns the disgusting phenomenon of writing schlock – in error-riddled English – to attract audiences.

Too Much Information?

(A memory – and a reminder…)

TV 40 news personality Christine Chubbuck shot herself in a live broadcast this morning on a Channel 40 talk program. She was rushed to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where she remains in critical condition.

The most surreal thing about this July 15, 1974 newscast clip was that it had been written by Chubbuck herself.

The warning signs had all been there; three weeks prior to her demise, she had begun work on a feature programme about suicide. In the course of her research she had discovered the ideal type of bullet, and where to shoot it, courtesy of an officer in the sheriff’s department, which goes contrary to how things are portrayed in CSI-type series.

A definite red flag was flown when she told the night news editor that she had bought the weapon and joshed about using it live. He chided her, but that’s as far as it went. And we all know that when people joke about committing suicide, the chances are that they have been thinking about it.

Meanwhile, the station owner had ostensibly ordained that ‘blood and guts’ were to be the deigning factors of newsworthiness; and one of Chubbuck’s stories was indeed cut to be replaced by coverage of a shoot-out.

On the fateful morning, a videoclip of a shooting at  the Beef and Bottle Restaurant at the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport on U.S. 41 jammed, and Chubbuck attempted to be ad-libbing, as newscasters are wont to do when this sort of incident happens,

In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living colour, you are going to see another first; attempted suicide. The technical director faded to black; the camera operator Jean Reed assumed it was an elaborate wind-up.

On the morning of January 22, 1987, Robert Budd Dwyer, a politician from Pennsylvania who insisted until the end that he had been framed on charges of corruption and bribery, also committed suicide on air. It happened during a televised press conference at his office in Harrisburg, the state capital.

On that day, many schools had been closed because of a heavy snowfall; had this not been so, students who had regular access to news broadcasts during school hours would have seen it happen, just as they saw the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy and the Branch Davidian Siege in Waco, Texas.

All these incidents, and more, have been sued as “teaching materials” in media ethics classes. Indeed, Dwyer’s suicide is cited in a paper about the “ethno-methodological approach to the study of suicide”. In such instances, apparently, not even the most diligent of fingers on the Delay Button would have been able to abort the transmission.

“Severe human error”, however, was cited as the reason why yet another suicide was aired live on Fox News on Friday, September 28.

This happened during coverage of one of those popular (think O. J. Simpson) car chases that are aired live in an effort to skew viewership statistics, and not because they provide useful information.

At one point the suspect opened his vehicle door and leapt out of it, running down a dirt track, and seconds later pulled out a gun. The camera continued rolling, the death was caught live, and Smith,  the Fox News Channel anchor, Shepherd Smith  admitted they had “messed up”.

We all remember the atrocious hounding of Madeline McCann’s parents; how the press couldn’t get enough of “sexy-foxy-Knoxy”; how the press covered Joanna Yeates’ murder; and how some film directors sought to make a quick buck from elements from each story, or portraying separate ones in their celluloid entirety.

And let us not forget that the film Network ends with the narrator stating “This was the story of Howard Beale, the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.”

The local media, which sometimes seems oblivious to events being played out on the world stage – at least, unless they can be perverted to serve ulterior motives – are also  sometimes all too ready to ride roughshod over good taste and people’s sensibilities. This tends to happen because they want to scoop other media… and they do not realise that the person involved in the incident there are covering could have been themselves, or someone they love.

Live television shows us how some card-carrying journalists are at their best when it comes to scooping their peers.  They forget the rules about vulnerable persons; invasions of privacy; and no close-ups. They diligently research the person’s sexual orientation (Pan-sexual Company Director Guilty of Tax Evasion);  his political affiliations (Conservative MP arrested for sexual cimes);  and his family tree (singer Trisha Dawne’s son commits suicide), in no particular order.

They ask awkward questions, not in the hope of winkling out information hitherto undiscovered by those whose job it is to do so, but to entrench themselves as the oriflammes of incisive, investigative reporting. Some even create re-enactments of crime scenes that are pathetic excuses for spoon-feeding the viewing public what they want us to assume is the truth.

Sometimes, not even a five-minute delay would be sufficient to remove footage I find objectionable… we have seen clips that would be more suited to the crime being committed at the start of almost each Columbo episode, or Cold Case flashbacks.

The latest example of this pathetic ‘live coverage’ we have seen is the hunt for April Jones, who went missing after having been seen getting into the van of a man who has since been named.

Would the cameras have stopped rolling had April been found where the searchers were looking for her? I doubt it.

Meanwhile, journalist Kay Burley, fresh from the “cadaver search dog” gaffe, actually transmitted bad news about April to two of the searchers on rolling live news reportage.

Whether this was her usual ham-fisted coverage, or a calculated stratagem for viewers to catch the reaction of the volunteers, is anybody’s guess.

Is this what makes television “good” and “actual”? Most of the people responsible for giving us this tripe would reply… Whatever!  But it’s what the people want.  

Death Watch

(A memory and a reminder)

I had written two posts mentioning suicide.

I had hoped never to write another one.

But the recent sorry excuse for reportage – a pathetic hotchpotch of biased comments with concerted, subtle, yet vicious splotches of slut-shaming and vindictive, malicious comments and misinformation following articles, allowed to stand by newspaper editors who ought to know better,  has put paid to that hope.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that some murders and suicides that happen locally get more column space and extensive audio-visual media coverage than others. As a corollary, there is a national discussion by self-styled experts about whys and wherefores.

The media relies on the fact that its audience laps up inaccurate, oversimplified and potentially dangerous, sensationalised reports. I was perturbed at the words and out-of-context sound-bites dug out from statements.

In other sections of the press, we are told that bullying leads to suicide. However, nowhere have I seen it stated that mental manipulation, whether or not it is Gaslighting, may lead to a similar end for the victim. Neither have I seen links to helplines, except once, just in case copycat suicides are in the offing.

I am told that ‘journalists’, whatever that term means these days, have to stuck to fact and not offer opinion – that is the domain of bloggers and / or  opinionated bitches like myself, and, apparently,  the people who regularly trawl the virtual news-sites to leave their insidious,  warped points of view for our delectation.

It is not easy to ‘know everything’ about something that happens. And yet, multifaceted issues are fed to us in drips and drabs, in a seemingly logical manner, in a bid to sway our judgements and mould our conclusions to match the agendas of those who have something to hide.

At this point, I have to ask many, many questions.  If you knew your friend was shoplifting or doing drugs, or riding his motorcycle hell for leather without a crash helmet, would you shop him? Or would you not want to get involved, lest you be tarred with the same brush by ‘ignorant adults’?

If you assume it’s just a phase, or that it is not your business… would you, then, hide the fact that he was having sex with minor?  If you thought he was a megalomaniac, or  sociopath, psychopath, or any other kind of –path, whether or not he had a history of underlying mental illness would you seek help, or would you cover for him because “that is what friends do”, while secretly envying his stud-luck with the girls?

Because of course, there is only one thing worse for a girl than to be called a slut – and that’s to be called a prude. Still, alas, when a man and a child have sex, the man gets high-fives, but the girl loses respectability. Even when he, shudder, shock horror, expresses trepidation that he will be branded a paedophile.

If, on the other hand, someone told you that all of the above could precipitate a death because the person involved fell into an “at-risk category”…would you change your mind?   Or would you shrug and say “shit happens?” ignoring the fact that the warning signs were there all the time?

If you had an acquaintance who always seemed sad, would you approach her? Now let’s take this point farther. If you had a friend who self-harmed because she was lonely, and felt excluded, would you ‘do something about it’, or would you assume she was showing off, or worse, that she was ‘in good hands’ because someone else had her back.  Is it really possible for just one person to have anybody’s back, in these circumstances? Nobody in a position to do so has yet explained that suicide is not an automatic response to feelings of rejection, depression, anxiety, despair, and isolation.

The non-sheep of us have been hauled over the coals for pointing out that you do not fall from a height without breaking a limb or four; that you do not even consider the possibility of a suicide attempt failing; that you do not keep a kid out at night of you know she is listed as missing; that sexts of minors constitute child pornography; that a person’s Facebook wall is not usually removed by anyone except himself… and this cannot be done when you do not have access to it.

I chided a journalist for treating the death of Lisa Marie so flippantly and histrionically, and asked him whether he would have extracted the same quotes from a social site, had she been his little sister. He did not reply.

As part of the research for this article, I clicked a random photograph on “See who’s here” on Ask.fm. Just for the record, there is no need to have an account with the site, to do this. The very first, and only, ‘conversation’ I saw was “il-hara kemm nobodok / mur aqbez / omgzz / suwisajd”.

Is it possible that this kind of activity is ‘fun’? Healthy, and psychologically sound, it certainly is not.

Gossip feeds the voracious appetitive of idle minds; note the hullaballoo about L’Wren and Peaches Geldof, which may not, after all, have been a suicide but due to an extreme diet.

This spawns the disgusting phenomenon of writing schlock – in error-riddled English – to attract audiences.

Dot-to-Dot

http://prayables.com/prayer-blogs/prayables-team-blog/897-dot-to-dot

…love and understanding…

The miniscule snail, settled snugly between the tightly-packed folds of a humungous cabbage I’d got at the Farmers’ Market, didn’t know what had almost hit him. I had just sliced it in two before scooping out the centre for coleslaw and using the outer leaves as a shell for stuffing and baking, after boiling it.

I gouged out the gobbet of leaves around him, and transferred him to the garden. Throughout this operation, the creature’s antennae alternately undulated and retracted; no doubt he was wondering why his crispy universe was being disrupted.

How could he have comprehended that his refuge had been only millimetres away from oblivion by a newly-honed knife-blade?

But snails, like tortoises, are renowned for being slow and steady – so he might have taken it all in his stride, so to speak.

Sometimes, it is the little things that hold my attention, and the infinitesimal details that leave me fascinated. Pretentiousness leaves me cold.

The flash of a firefly in the night is more interesting than a bonfire; the raspy trickle of sand through my fingers is more appealing than miles of open beach; the droplet of dew hanging on the tip of a leaf is more impressive than bucket-loads of rain; the swirl of colour in a glass as a teabag releases its flavour is more inspiring than the monochrome infusion.

This is the obverse of the coin, what William Blake succinctly described as… To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.

Sometimes, we strive to impress others by brazen actions or grandiose schemes. Expensive gifts, designer clothes, and ostentatious jewellery are props we might use to make us feel better about ourselves because we couldn’t be bothered to delve deep into our inner beings to see our true worth.

Sometimes, something that would be inconsequential to most people takes on gargantuan proportions and needlessly spoils “everything” for the person who experiences it.

The afternoon siesta that’s cut short by a buzzing fly; the tiny stain on the white tablecloth that spoils a celebratory meal; the broken gel nail that stops us from going to our school reunion… Don’t let them spoil the big picture.

Little things mean a lot – both ways. Let’s make the agreeable ones count and ignore, or at least transform, the unpleasant ones.

Time In A Bottle

We noticed a login to your account @manna_nectar_ambrosia from a new device. Was this you?
Well, actually, it was, and it wasn’t. I hate to break it to you, but when you read this, I will be back to where I came from. You know the double statue of Nyuserre? You know Nimrud’s Striding Sphinxes? You know The Sanxing [Fu, Lu, and Shou]? You know the opal statue of Lakshmi and Ganesha copulating, unearthed last year in Australia?
Well, so do I – I actually crafted them myself. So, you see since in my universe we have the decimal system, not imperial measurements, I had to come back to create my fifth opus, the one to beat them all!
So, ladies and laddies, here you are: The Leonine Seraphim, at the entrance of Shin-au-av in Death Valley in the Mojave Desert. You are seeing them now, because I arranged for a temporal shift, to keep them hidden until I was spaceborne and well out of your spatial light cone.
In order to do this, I had to send my clone to access my e-mail account from my go-to base office in Malta, which everybody knows is what remains of Atlantis. I needed to hack into the records of the Thorjan Empire, so that I could make the statues enough like those that were destroyed in The Great Flood, to confound archaeologists. Then, I had to co-ordinate the tectonic plates to cause the tsunami that would sweep away the sand from where I had hidden the statues.
Lo and behold! All the world’s media was taken aback that such an opus had lain, well, stood actually, hidden for all these years. They can’t identify the stone, they can’t hydrocarbon-date it, and they can’t place the style.
My job is done.

Dreams

 

I think in haiku
and dream in Technicolor;
free-flights of fancy!

 
in the path of life
some dreams are better than truth…
for no one hurts you.

 
letters left unsent
promises left unspoken
dreams left unfulfilled

 
mirror on the wall
reflecting hopes, thoughts and dreams
all unrealised

 
my life is a dream
intangible images
that evade my grasp

 
reality’s dreams
geese and fish in their own worlds
in a splash, they meet

 
riding on the draught
catching the glint of sunlight –
memories and dreams

 
sea water tastes sweet
in dreams that can’t be explained;
mere wish fulfilment?

 
seaside of my dreams
ozone smell invigorates
when will I return?

 
silk-stranded cobwebs
catch our love and hold our dreams
embroidering time

 
sleep, so elusive,
when it happens, full of dreams
that become nightmares

 
sun sets on my dreams
my hopes are drowned in sorrow
life is so unfair

 
that chapter is closed
peanut shells and broken dreams –
can’t tell them apart!

 
though still half awake,
dreamland fills my head with thoughts;
castles in the air!

 
tiger, imprisoned
caged and pacing to and fro
dreaming of freedom

 
undercurrent tow
steel-grey waters drown my dreams
sucked in their vortex

 
when I close my eyes
I dream of bright tomorrows
that will never be

 
whispers in my dreams
murky shadows in the dark
creating nightmares

 
writing is my life
I think, I breathe, I dream words;
then I set them down