Birdchat

 Yesterday
outside,

  about 80 birds,

  loudly chattering 

inside the

 tallest 

cedar tree, suddenly descend as one, onto the front lawn  
and   frantically   begin   picking  at the  grass.  Then, in a 
millisecond
 fly   off   in  a
 single dark swirl
  directly over to the
 telephone wires where
 they    abruptly  go     silent.  
A minute or so later, as if on cue,
 they  head back en masse to the cedar tree
and resume their  loud, shrill cacophony, before
 bursting out of the leaves in a single blast at bullet-
speed, and disappear.from view. All that's left, a gentle
 breeze and eerie  silence --  the calm before the storm.

Here are          for the

 53 of              second

them               chat
when                fest
 they                  in
  got                  the
     the                 cedar
    call                 tree

_____________________________________________________ 

Nature's metaphor for how I've felt all week, reading about Ukraine, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Ferguson, ISIS/ISIL, Ebola, bombings, beheadings, surveillance and war. Under a darkening sky,  watching in fear, everyone nervously chattering, or numbed into speechlessness, huddling together (like those birds in the cedar), or scattered, directionless, waiting, wondering how to weather  the storm we all sense may be coming.

Summer Morning's Harvest

awynfoto2014

Photo taken outside in the back yard this morning after putting the tomatoes on the bench and noticing the play of yellow/ red, the insistent little "rudi's" poking through the lattice, and the smallest tomatoes seemingly collectively turned to greet them.  I imagined them . . . conversing.   Only later did it occur to me how different are their lifecycles.  The tomatoes have to be planted anew  year after year after year, while the rudbeckias,echinacia, strawberries, raspberries, lemon balm, lavender, chives, mint and parsley all just automatically arrive and claim their usual spaces.  Some, like the raspberries, insist on 'traveling'.  A few even migrated into the tomato patch this year.  The strawberries, I see, are moving as well, beyond their designated borders.  Encroachables on the march.  And don't let's even talk about the mint!  My perennials continually surprise me. 

Next Door

On the old woman's clothesline:

Doll Baby

it will never grow up,

or not need her -

or leave, or ever

disappoint

truthbegon

opinionart

Trench Art

 "The Best Time of Day"

A postcard from the Trench Art Exhibit

"Dear Irma, the mail has been delivered. Good cigars. A letter.

 But in the newspaper there is nothing about peace?! 

1000 greetings, your Otto."

December 26, 1915

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War, Postcards from the Trenches: Germans and Americans Visualize the Great War centers on the art created by German and American soldiers on opposite sides of No Man's Land.    Hand-painted trench postcards, sketches, ink drawings, and graphic works made by soldiers in the midst of the conflict, juxtaposed with mass-produced postcards and government propaganda, movingly illuminate the personal landscapes and bitter truths of the Great War.

In Washington, D.C. - Aug. 19 - Sept. 27, 2014
In Houston, TX - Oct. 23, 2014 - Feb. 14, 2015

When Knowings Visit

awynart

Even those wired to feel perpetual astonishment,

awed by life despite its darkest overwhelmings,

could face a time when wonder ceases -

and at that moment wonder

if it matters.  And if so,

what then? 
    And if not, 

        what then?

In either case, an astonishing conversation might take place

within
of what one can live without, or in spite of,
or without which life's not "Life",
as Life waits listening at the side,
its bag of gifts and horrors, 
never-to-be's, unimagined possibles,
opening and closing
opening and closing
opening and closing..

Such wonderings arrive,

on reading how others have met and dealt with
the cloudy grey of life's tossed mix
of the ever-meshing Dark and Light,
'mid one's own 'knowings'. 

100 Years and our wars

[Harry Patch died in 2009 at the age of 111.]

 "No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives, let alone thousands."

~ ~ Harry Patch, former soldier

100 years after the "Great War"
and all those other wars that followed
. . . and continue,
some will turn off the lights tonight and light a candle and
pause for a moment of silence,
say officials televized visiting the graves of the 'fallen'
or giving speeches to honor the soldiers who fought.

What of those others, though,  who did not fight or serve,
those millions of citizens whose lives were also taken?
Mothers, babies, old folks, children, nurses, grocers, teachers, farmers,  bricklayers,
clerks and cooks and artists and scientists and students?
Nine million soldiers died in the fighting, 6 million civilians died from disease or starvation
and 1 million more as a direct result of military operations.[1]

"One million died as a direct result of military operations."
The military has a name for this latter group. "Collateral Damage."
Collateral means 'additional but subordinate; secondary; supplementary'.
Collateral Damage is damage to things that are incidental to the intended target.
Things like . . . people.
The intended target at Hiroshima was Hiroshima, the city.
A single bomb instantly destroyed the entire city.  And most of the incidental people therein.
The intended target in Gaza this past week has been schools, a hospital and buildings
full of refugees whose homes had been bombed, in this latest 'little' ongoing regional war.

Big wars and little wars, declared or clandestine, defensive or punitive, death is death.
We 'war' against crime, and drugs, and poverty - there are always, it seems, the need to
"fight a war on". 

In a dream I imagined an international  public memorial commemorating the
brave and the fallen due to war--any war--where instead of famous officials and military images
media-blasted to remind us of our war history (uniforms, medals, rifles, tanks, troops, battle scenes, trenches, etc.), where the focus is War--I imagined instead a sea of ordinary people, each holding a photo of a loved one lost to war, or the after-affects of war, assembling to remember not war and death (the how and where) but the life of the person war took, the focus on why.  Why war?  Why did we have to go to war?  Was there no other option?

The military rewards those who are exceptionally brave in war by giving them medals of honor.
What reward of honor to the mother caught in a war who meets a bullet head-on, rather than let it reach her child?  To the mortally  wounded brother who'd insisted that his sister be saved first.

In my dream there was no distinction among the dead - of who'd fought with a rifle
and who'd died as part of the group referred to by military strategists as "collateral damage". 
You don't have to have been there to be a victim of war. Ask the dead soldier's widow and children, the slaughtered parents' orphaned child, the nurses who take care of the returning war wounded.
Life, for them, goes on, but not without having gotten war's scars.  You just can't always see them.

Only when the second massive global war came along a few decades later
did The Great War ("the war to end all wars") start being called "World War I".
World War II showed that even "the most devastating war the world has ever known"
could not convince humans to end all wars.  Au contraire. 

The next world war won't be fought with soldiers on a battlefield. (The AI progammers haven't yet figured out how to get the future  robo-grunts to think like humans.)  Battles will be waged in a control room. Someone will just push a button and Poof!  the world as we know it will disappear, thanks to our evolution from crude canons and muskets to swift, precise nukes.


Imagine . . . a world without "war".
Our Militaries would become obsolete.
There would be no need to amass more sophisticated and more ingeniously concocted lethal weapons to keep up with other players in the race for better national defense. Departments of Defense could become Departments of Peace.

In my dreams.

___________________
*
An interesting observation - while commemorations commence on this 100-year anniversary,
reminding ourselves of the horrors of war, the focus should be on how to not let this ever happen again, right?
Without realizing it, I'd relegated Peace to being a fantasy.  That was . . . sobering.

I further note that in the above piece I've referred to war 23 times; to death or dying, 13 times; to the military, 6 times, and twice each to targets and bombs.   And only once, to peace.    (The part about lighting a candle, in a moment of silent reflection - is only performed for one minute, out of respect for each nation's warriors, rather than as an urgent call for peace.   Perhaps because in so many parts of the world, peace just can't take hold yet.)  I wonder, on the 200th anniversary of The Great War, if we will have finally figured out that war is not the answer.  If we make it to that time, as a civilization, that is.   I prefer to remain optimistic.  I don't know the answer (if war isn't 'the answer'), as to the exact  "how".   But maybe we'll get there "yet".  If not in my lifetime, another's.