The means to an End

On the whole asylum seeker, refugee, prison camp humanity, compassion, situation...

This will be brief, just wanting to lay it down somewhere.

Having read Saul Alinsky's book 'Rules for Radicals' I was struck by two significant ideas:

1.

There is a statement at the beginning of the book before the contents devoted to Lucifer (the Devil)

 "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins—or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer" 

2.

Though the book discusses the topic of 'means and ends' the author does not attempt to moderate the reader's choices in method of achieving their goal.  (A scary thought if you consider what this could result in)

 

Some people say he must have been a satanist or evil or something. I took the statement as a warning that the methods he is suggesting must be tempered by a person who knows the nature of evil and their own capacity to commit it. He gives freedom to choose and leaves the responsibility for the course of action with the reader. (here it is and, you've been warned)

As I read this book I continually asked myself, what would I be prepared to do, what would I not do? What are the consequences? What would I gain?


The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr supplied an answer.

Recently a friend gave me an old copy of 'The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.' It was sitting on my shelf for a couple of months when my wife decided to read it. When she was done, she wanted to read some pages which had resonated with her, out loud so I could get a sense of just how profound a thinker Dr King was.

One line from that reading put into perfect unison a lot of the things I'd been feeling and thinking when confronted with the rationalizations put forward by politicians and armchair experts regarding Australia's bizarre and cruel treatment of asylum seekers. For me it cut to the core of the moral discussion about 'what must be done'.

Here it is:

"Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is preexistent in the means" 

(Martin Luther King Jr. 'The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr' Edited by Clayborne Carson. p.20)


"... the end is preexistent in the means"

A Dog's act!

Can't sleep!

Haunted by the image of an old woman I once met.

I met her in a jail (they called it an alternative place of detention). The man I was there to see needed help, he was explaining to me that he thought he could manage his wheelchair with flat tyres but he desperately needed a new wheel, the broken spokes on this one were cutting into his hands and the wheel was warped and becoming impossible to turn.

I looked across the room and met the eyes of a frail elderly woman, she was nursing a doll, which another visitor had brought in to comfort her. She had suffered so much and was missing contact with children, maybe she'd lost a grandchild... maybe she just longed to hold a child, to feel it's youth and promise... to hope. Before my visit ended I watched the guard prise the doll from the old woman's hands and give it back to the visitor. "You can't leave that here! You'll have to take it to property or take it home". The old lady was crying... The doll was a gift, suggested by a psychologist to help her with her grief. In this place no good deed may go unpunished or kindness without ridicule. 

I stopped visiting soon after that, others keep going, maybe they're stronger than me? They manage to go week after week and sit with the forgotten souls who have been imprisoned by our protectors. The  Department who issues it's agents with black uniforms. The barest mention of it's name would guarantee a lifetime of metadata retention of any would be whistle-blowing blogger. The visitors and detainees wait their chance to sit in a tiny prison visitor room, in a mosquito pit 40 km out of town, surrounded by razor-wire, under the watchful eye of poorly trained keepers. Men, women, children, elderly and damaged, wounded by wars and conflict and hate in their own land. They survived many dangers to get here, where they thought they'd be safe and now they languish in a heartless country, tortured and tormented by bullies with uniforms and badges and chips on their shoulder! Managed for their own good.

I couldn't go any longer, yes I had family commitments which made visiting difficult, yes the changes to visiting hours and the lack of available space in the centre had an impact, but these were not the main reason. I stopped going because I couldn't bear to sit with people whose lives I had seen deteriorating to the point of psychological ruin and tell them I was doing all I could to help them, knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do to make anything right at all! I stopped visiting because I was ashamed.

Image from ABC Online (Link HERE)

I thought I'd nearly forgotten the experience of seeing the old woman, until I read this article on the ABC website... Then I knew, I'd never forget! I remember her face, I remember her tears, I remember her need to care and to hold something precious.... a child. She showed me her baby as she sung to it and she held it out for me to touch and to kiss, her eyes beamed. This was not a living child but it held the place of one she was missing, she clung to it, and she stroked it and she rocked and sung to it with such love that felt sure it had life! And they snatched it from her arms. And they broke her heart, again. 
That is what I know about Australia's immigration prisons! That was just one glimpse, one half hour visit, the brutality and indifference goes on night and day, indefinitely and without exception until they all go mad! This is the hell our country has created and our citizens endorse. 

As I sit with one or two others holding up a banner which reads 'Kids Don't Belong in Detention' I see the disgust in people's eyes and wonder if they have any idea who they are hating. Sometimes I feel angry and tempted to fight the tough guys who snarl vicious comments as they pass by... 
"Fuck-em... Send em all over there", I've heard that too many times. Sometimes I have to hold my tongue, sometimes I smile and pray silently to the God who knows this shit well... Sometimes I attempt to speak to them and fail. So many thoughts and fears pass through me. The ugliness.... The horror of who we are!

I remember that old lady. Maybe the lady in this article... maybe another. It's hard to know when people are moved about arbitrarily.
They may soon take this lady away, in the dead of night, along with 266 others. All human beings, all who ask only the most basic of rights and the dignity to conduct their lives as nature and God intended for any living thing. 

They do not want to go to a place that will harm them, I do not want my country to send them. Surely we would all obey the most fundamental commandment, the instinct for survival and self preservation? 'Life's longing for itself' brought them to our shores and we would stamp out that precious jewel! We deny and curse the very spirit that sustains them, we can't understand why our efforts don't break them. Can anybody see the crimes we've committed?

Who will be the ones to escort them to the bus? Who will put them on the plane? Who will drug and shackle these brave Men, women and children?

What award do we present to such individuals?

Waist line expansion

About a guy who settled...

 

I ate the salted caramel cheesecake, set free the belching groaning despair of aching.

Shut off the rattling in my guts of unfulfilled desire, frustration and boredom.

I laid back in the satisfied saturation of confectionery bliss.

The temporary high delivered by a single slice, delicious flavours, sugar and fat.

Stoned

More! It’s never enough!

Youth fleeting, gut extended, tooth rot, knees knock and buckle when crossed, fire kindled, regrets mingled, in the company of chances not taken, now lost.

Hope’s drive sated by the spoon or the fork. Something better can get back in it’s box. Cheese cake is gone and the spirit is beaten. Sleep it off!

Wake!

On this day we live!

Dibbling dabbler

The dilettante...

I.... am a dabler
without the drive to dibble
In the field my seeds lay barren
on the page my words are drivel!

Suffer the swine

The upstairs bedroom in a village homestay right next to the temple. So pretty so quiet, watch the women weaving bamboo for the temple, young girls practising the elaborate dance they'll perform the next day.

Sun sets in pastel, incense burning, gamalan filling the gaps between forest and houses and hills and people, dogs wander lazily through narrow gangs, old men gather with prized cocks released from dome cages out the back.

It was some time before dawn... actually hours before dawn. I heard the pigs screaming. 

Before the ceremony they must kill the pigs! It has to be done this way, timing is crucial, it's for the ceremony. They kill the pigs right there, behind the temple, below the place I slept.

When you stay in the village you forfeit some of the immunity to street life, the big hotels will shelter you from all that if you prefer, most do. The illusion of an unaffected paradise is lost when you depart from the sanctioned hotel rout. When your ass hits the ground you smell the earth, frangipani baths are not included. Sacrifices must be made, rice cut, crops planted, tools sharpened, wood gathered, pigs killed. 

They kill the pigs. Too slowly for my naive Bule senses. I hear pig screams for hours, calling out for help... I anguish over their suffering... Please just make it quick! So much blood! They butcher the meat right there as the final crimson drops are collected in a tub, nothing wasted! Flesh is bathed in flames the way it's always been. 

Blessed offerings, prepared on site in small portions as prescribed. Presented on silver, bamboo with rice and fruit, elaborate and glorious constructions, not for human consumption. Held high on the heads of immaculate women, beauty beyond my reckoning. Girls and boys transformed through dance and costume and tradition become heralds of the Gods moving to ancient tones...

The offering is carried in the highest reverence and grace to the inner chambers of the temple, devotees and offerings blessed with holy water by aged priests of Brahma, clad in white and singular in their devotion. All is laid out as the tempo increases, energy spiking as though the journey through village and field has brought the congregation to a mountain top and God will once again appear, none doubt the presence of greatness. 

There they sit, low and respectful, a bounty laid before them, all the wealth of their toil and labour, a gift for the universally benevolent and powerful, the giver and the taker. All presented, the people, their offerings, their ritual. Given up to the lord of the Temple, scales of justice. The great balancing, deity of order and peace, death and life... if you are true. All can be seen, all are known, nowhere to hide. All is touched by the holy water, all accepted.

The procession is long, the pigs screamed for a night, the people not indifferent to the suffering. They remember their frailty. They give up their greed, killing it with the blade that slowly releases the animal from this world and so is revealed and released their own sin, offered back to one who will redistribute the fat and give them their share. Peace, Enough.

TOOTH

TOOTH
(consideration for a new year)

A tooth for a tooth, or a ticket for the bus,
The clock ticks, as it meters time
Potential by fractions is lost to indecision
Jim Morison said...
Well that's not the point
20 years today, since a precious reprieve...
I have lived... I Live! Something must always die
The second 'law' of thermodynamics is not always implied but inertia demands a  cost
Loss is not negotiable, death inevitable, debts - ultimately - payable

Life change must claim a fee a token, or ticket... Yesterday I gave a tooth
Skillfully Wrenched from my aching jaw, in three pieces.
On this auspicious anniversary, and end to an end and a tooth only to pay
Lightning doesn't always strike no matter what you pray
Was the price higher than I thought?
An old champion, my hero, tripped along the way before he'd reached his final goal

In our original glory, was there ever anything so precious as a good set of teeth?
I concede this bad tooth a toll
I trade another crevice a space in my jaw for, one more chapter in patched up shoes 
Thoughts skip to friends who never made it, They departed with all their mouths in tact,
Their future was set they couldn't change it, life's sweet breath squandered and wasted
Let the tooth burn! As fuel for this change in direction
Leave the ashes to the wind

When fate looks in this mouth full of empty spaces, It will find there within
Enough teeth remain to chew and bite and grin
Till my last jagged peg and I've breath left to shout
The marrow will be sucked before I am out!