288 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
288 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
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Underground eXperts United
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Presents...
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[ Five Poems ] [ By Eric Chaet ]
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____________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________
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Five Poems
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by Eric Chaet
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(1) Briefly Passing Thru Chicago
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(2) Confidence
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(3) Dinosaurs & People
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(4) I Was Already On My Way Gone Out of This Life
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(5) What is Light?
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(1) BRIEFLY PASSING THRU CHICAGO
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Wing dips, & the little window is suddenly filled
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with a million houses, yards, trees, streets--
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& Brenda & I hurry from A-11, in search of C-17--
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standard carpet, plastic chairs, sound-absorbent ceiling tiles--
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&, thru floor-to-ceiling panes of glass, strips of grass & concrete--
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what a job! a world transformed!--
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& brontosaurus-sized planes rolling among baggage cars, & conveyors,
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& idling in mute lines, like tadpoles or larvae
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waiting for some occult molecular signal
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to break from embryosis into sound & flight & whatever purpose is theirs.
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Squeaky-clean shops selling books, news, food, drinks, clothes--
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we're a zoo--hurrying, or trying to absorb time--from everywhere on Earth--
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turbans, blue jeans, suits, Hasidic Jew, blondes--
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man with back-pack & magazine, his cap says "Norwegian Star"--
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2 girls talking soft Japanese, giggling,
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guy replacing garbage container's full plastic bag is wearing violet beret--
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mom holding boy up to drink water from fountain,
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rows of chairs, here & there someone reading or watching TV set above--
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"Fed drops Discount Rate, Dow up 400, Yahoo lets 14% its employees go...."
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Our number called, Brenda & I board the plane,
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taking bags of potato chips & bottled water from cart, showing our tickets.
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"Unexpected turbulence may occur any time, Unattended bags may be searched."
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Beyond being able to pay the price,
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you must know & carefully fit in among rigid rules,
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to gain membership among the jet engines & steel wings.
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Young dark man, short hair, clean shave, sharp-creased suit,
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sprawled back, completely confident & at ease, soles of his polished shoes
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flat against steel wall ahead of him--surprised I'm grinning at him--
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our eyes meet--just as, with commanding voice, he asks his suited companion,
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"Did Larry say anything else?" "He said the price...."
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We accelerate past Air Canada & Korean Cargo buildings,
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& we're up over ten thousand railroad box-cars, factories, parking lots,
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houses, driveways, highways, trucks & autos, networks of poles & cables,
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sky-scrapers in a line along the shore of the green-blue lake,
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which so shockingly shows absolutely no inclination to rush anywhere.
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Below us, a small plane, the shadow of a small cloud, & gradually,
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you can no longer see by color where some places are shallower than others,
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&, gradually, we are absorbed by clouds of great capacity, & sleep.
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April, August 2001
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(2) CONFIDENCE
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Because I am confident now, of who I am,
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I am punished less frequently,
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by people who can't imagine
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that I am who I behave as tho I am.
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Such people--almost everyone to some extent--
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some especially consistently & ferociously--
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think I should behave as almost everyone else does.
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But I have expended great energy
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& sacrificed years of access to resources
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I not only wanted, but needed
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to fulfill myself beyond bare survival--
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resisting behaving as almost everyone else does--
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it's no longer a matter of what I am going to do, some time.
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I am less frequently punished because
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I put myself in a position to be treated so less frequently--
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(or to be treated appropriately, & then what miracles
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the one who responds appropriately & I could pull off!--)
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& because, now, when people attempt to punish me
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I am more capable of being somewhere more profitable
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instantaneously
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or (because I know from what it's cost
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that I am not deluding myself about who I am)
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I am confident enough to say
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that it is they who are misbehaving--
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that they must use their imagination & reason
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& deal with what is before them--
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not mere averages, assumptions, inclination to dominate--
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or shut up.
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Because I am confident, it works.
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Unfortunately, if I were equally confident of what is not so,
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that would work, too--I think--in fact,
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it seems that people whose words & efforts are most supported
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are not those whose words are truest & whose efforts
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are most worthwhile & efficiently executed--
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only those who, usually as a result of early advantage,
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& for lack of imagination & reason--
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are most confident of themselves--
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who proceed from averages, assumptions, & inclination to dominate--
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deluded--but well-funded, popular, glib.
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(3) DINOSAURS & PEOPLE
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Overhead, dinosaurs, ravenous & loud (soon fossils) -
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fanatics give permission to equivalent fanatics -
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each claiming all righteousness,
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demanding everyone (finally!) comply & unite
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under their reptile command.
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The radio is full of insightful ideas competing commanders
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(who, all their lives, practice not listening:
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the path to power over others requires fierce focus) -
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dismissed, before they were ever put into words.
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Still, wholesome food must be found or raised,
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& transformed, & delivered;
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infants & elders, & the sick, injured, & confused
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must still be tended to;
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& someone must resist the degradation of soil, waters, air -
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& the many injustices, large & small!
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& answer the rare, sincere inquiries of those who seek
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to understand, to become wise, & truly useful
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in the midst of gray habits & hypocrisy,
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& institutions running on inertia, over cliffs.
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Yes, more people - some innocent or good - will die -
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& it might be you, or me - the dinosaurs roar, furious.
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Meanwhile, your participation - in extraordinary deeds
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that make the situation better than otherwise -
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are needed - during fall & winter -
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as they are needed during spring & summer -
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& in deeds that will out-live dinosaurs.
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(4) I WAS ALREADY ON MY WAY GONE OUT OF THIS LIFE
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I was already on my way gone out of this life
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when I began to see what I had been part of.
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The first freeze had already come, & I was just noticing
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the vine that reached out from beneath the lush carpet of grass
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by the side of the road on which I walk & balance myself.
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My youth was already a memory when I began to understand
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to whom I'd been attracted, & why.
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My parents were dead when I started to wonder
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what I would have done in their circumstances--
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what I would have done to get money,
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how I would have maintained the house & health of the children,
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when & how I would have compromised or insisted--
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& to realize how differently than that they had behaved,
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&, therefore, who they must have been.
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It was only as I began to understand the grip of dogmatism on others
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that I began to see how desperately I clung to unrealistic views,
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how much my plans were based on hoping for miracles that couldn't be.
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I spent my boyhood among cars, buildings, wires, pipes, & streets,
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wrought up by conversations of people who felt trapped by circumstances--
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& much of my manhood trying for a breath & a clear view of blue sky--
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& almost all of my life just trying to escape from the straightjacket
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of current politics, rationalization, & pressure to behave conventionally--
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proud of being part of a greater history of struggle for justice.
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But that greater history turned out to be just a tiny fragment, too--
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a thousand years or maybe two or three or even six--
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encapsulated in a bubble merged from smaller bubbles,
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from events in Babylon, Egypt, Jerusalem, Athens, & Rome,
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London, Calcutta, Quebec, Boston, New York, Washington,
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The Gold Coast, Carolina, Florida, Fallen Timbers, Wounded Knee, Tulsa,
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Bavaria & Berlin, Moscow, Mississippi, Hanoi, Baghdad, Beijing,
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Johannesburg, Bogata, Rwanda, Bosnia, Congo, Angola, & Peshawar.
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I was desperate to burst the narrow family consensus range--
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to enter America, widest of all ranges,
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tho it had its wickedness & violence--
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to take my chances & do what I could to make my way & have my influence--
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unaware that to be less than a person in the universe--
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bones & blood & nerves & skin & eyes & brain & hands & heart & muscle--
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one human among humans, among all the species & all the organisms,
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the stones & soil, rivers & seas, breezes & clouds & storms--
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on a spinning planet dancing with a moon, spiraling around a star
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going somewhere as surely as you or I or the geese or acorns--
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that health & completion of oneself is the center
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from which righteousness has to burst joyful like a song among songs--
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was to be insufficiently robust, & therefore prey
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to plants, animals, & fragments of plants & animals prowling for food,
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& to careless habits, obsessions, compulsions--my own & others--
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that would devour me before I became aware of what was happening to me.
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My consolations are the thought of the moments & days to come--
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& of the times in the past when I was able to overcome my laziness & fear
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&, within my limitations, managed to do more than was expected of me
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to do what I thought I should be doing with my life,
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to the best of my fragmentary, developing understanding,
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tho there no reward was offered or given,
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& there was often fierce, subtle, long-term penalty;
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& this moment & day of realization, excitement, clarity!
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(5) WHAT IS LIGHT?
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What is light, life, gravity--what are electrons?
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How does my mind choose its thoughts, or move my eyes or arm?
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How am I, sometimes, restored to love or health or calm or confidence?
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When experts in the use of this or that awkward machinery
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enhance their wealth & stature among more diffident neighbors
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by synthesizing & pouring forth chemicals whose effects on fish & people
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they have no way even of approximating--
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who will die & who will live, & how, along & in the rivers, lakes, & seas?
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When the complex living coded genes in living nuclei of busy, living cells
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are shuffled, force-marched, & square-danced by those who know the narrow
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tech
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& the soil & seeds & air put into fashionable clothes, & sent to business
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school--
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who will start & end wars, forest fires, famines, & plagues?
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Will anyone be able to find & nourish the hard-won sprouts of wisdom &
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justice
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in the chaotic midst of politically-connected contractors' employees laying
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cables & building generators,
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& the corruption, anxious rationalization, exaggeration & lying for
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advantage,
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& the use of greater might to take what you want from whatever hasn't been
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ruined?--
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instead of cooperating to make the most
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of the root & branch of the sapling,
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of the child's laughing discovery,
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of the vegetables & fruits, & the flowers
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(of even the flowers of "weeds" that delight &, so, strengthen our hearts),
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of the insects & birds, the worms & other exquisite & diligent transformers
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of what is left of what was living until yesterday, last week, or last
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fall--
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into what can live--somehow!--again.
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What is light, life, gravity--what are electrons?
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How does my mind choose its thoughts, or move my eyes or arm?
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How am I, sometimes, restored to love or health or calm or confidence?
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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uXu #606 Underground eXperts United 2002 uXu #606
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The uXu FAQ - http://www.uXu.org/faq.htm
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