Sunday, January 17, 2021
Via LGBTQ Nation // Republicans dodge metal detectors & tote guns in the capitol. Harvey Milk’s assassin did the same.
On a November morning in 1978, former San Francisco supervisor Dan White snuck past metal detectors at San Francisco City Hall and assassinated his colleagues, mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk.
That historical violence might give one an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu in the present, upon hearing that Republican lawmakers want to bring guns into the U.S. Capitol — which is why it’s an important time to look back at what happened in San Francisco in 1978, to see if there are any lessons for today. What happens when powerful bigots don’t get their way, and don’t think they’ll ever have to face consequences for their actions?
Via White Crane Institute // Noteworthy - ALLEN GINSBERG
The poet ALLEN GINSBERG wrote his intensely personal anti-war, love-hate poem "America" on this date. He later published it in his collection "Howl" it is one of the first poems to deal openly and honestly with homosexuality. America is a largely political work, with much of the poem consisting of various accusations against the United States, its government, and its citizens.
Ginsberg uses sarcasm to accuse America of attempting to divert responsibility for the Cold War ("America you don't want to go to war/ it's them bad Russians / Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. / And them Russians"), and makes numerous references to both leftist and anarchist political movements and figures (including Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Boys and the Wobblies). Ginsberg's dissatisfaction, however, is tinged with optimism and hope, as exemplified by phrases like "When will you end the human war?" (as opposed to "why don't you...?").
The poem's ending is also highly optimistic, a promise to put his "queer shoulder to the wheel," although the original draft ended on a bleaker note: "Dark America! toward whom I close my eyes for prophecy, / and bend my speaking heart! / Betrayed! Betrayed!"
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Allen Ginsberg's
AMERICA
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers
it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835
Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Via Daily Dharma: The Power of Radical Equanimity
Sitting in radical equanimity, we let all of life be just what it is and our resistance drops away.
—Jundo Cohen, “The Power of Radical Equanimity”
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - January 17, 2021 💌
In spiritual evolution, you don’t destroy the ego, you merely shift from identifying with it to using it as a functional unit. You still need it to function so that when I’m talking to you, I realize there’s a “you” and a “me.”
- Ram Dass -
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Develop a Sense of Closeness with All Beings
It
is not sufficient merely to see that sentient beings are suffering. You
must also develop a sense of closeness with them, a sense that they are
dear.
—Jeffrey Hopkins, “Everyone as a Friend”
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Friday, January 15, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Sit in the Unconditioned Spaces
Coming
into contact—if only for a moment—with the unconditioned, with life as
it is without all our fears and preferences—isn’t this what meditation
is really about?
—Noelle Oxenhandler, “Go Bang Your Head Against the Wall”
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