The supreme irony of democracy is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. Yet it is worth fighting for.

~ Zë

* Welcome to Cloudland
A place unlike anything you’ve seen:
Pleasant, fuzzy, with a cheerful kegler —
And lots of happy people
And good weather.

In Cloudland there aren’t
Any politicians or beggars:
It’s a pleasant fuzzy place, with a zealous adder —
And lots of happy people
And good weather.

I lived in Cloudland all my life
And reflected on how lucky I was:
Living in a pleasant fuzzy place, with a cheery angler —
And lots of happy people
And good weather.

We never fought a war;
We never hurt a thing:
For Cloudland’s a pleasant fuzzy place, with a poor banker —
And lots of happy people
And good weather.

Until one day a man arrived
With mean spirit and cracked heart:
He settled in Cloudland — a pleasant fuzzy place, with a wise Berber —
And lots of happy people
And good weather.

Oh, he tried to change Cloudland
With bribes and fake promises:
To be unpleasant, un-fuzzy, with a tyrant masher —
And lots of sad people
And bad weather.

But In Cloudland there aren’t
Any politicians or beggars:
It’s a pleasant fuzzy place, with a zealous adder —
And lots of happy people
And good weather.

===============

* Maybe it’s because we’re in the midst of a nasty election year. Maybe it’s because so many souls have been lost to madness. Maybe because we’re so polarized, we’ve forgotten that we’re one nation. Maybe it’s because the Constitution continues to battle religion. Or maybe it’s because so many lawmakers who took an oath to defend our principles are slaves to money, influence and greed. Or maybe the road is closed.

===============

* We all belong:
Tear down the walls—
Fight hate—
Look in my eyes
And you’d see your fate.
~ me

===============

* (My recent conversation with God, wherever she might be)

Hello!

I’ve been alone with you
Inside my mind
And in my dreams I’ve believed in you
A thousand times
I sometimes think you
Sleep outside my door—
Hello!
Is it me you’re looking for?
You’ve been silent for so long
Since you’ve left me hurt and crying
You’re not what I expected
Yet my arms are open wide
’cause your angels look so lost
They don’t know just what to do
And I want to ask you so much:
Where are you?

I long to see the sunlight in my faith
And tell you time and time again
How I used to care
Sometimes I feel my heart will overflow–
Hello!
I’ve just got to let you know
’cause I wonder where you are
And I wonder what you do
Are you somewhere feeling lonely?
Or is someone loving you?
Tell me how to win your heart
For I haven’t got a clue
But let me start by asking: Where are you?

Hello!
Is it me you’re looking for?
’cause I wonder where you are
And I wonder what you do
Are you somewhere feeling lonely?
Or is someone loving you?
Tell me how to win your heart
For I haven’t got a clue
But let me start by asking: Where are you?

(Without permission from Lionel Richie & the Commodores)

===============

* It’s Memorial Day weekend in the U.S.: time for BBQs, adventures at the cabin or the beach, movies or nature hikes. But may I persuade you to take a moment to also think about the soldiers who died, and those who came back broken? This is not about patriotism; quite the opposite, for I am certain that none of the soldiers — men, women, horses, dogs — worldwide, went to war because they wanted to fight. They followed orders; orders that were often misguided. Orders that placated political endeavors and big egos. You see, taking a moment is more about hope and solitude.

General Sherman said that war is hell, yet it continues to be a frequent destination for so many soldiers. We seem to ignore the past and guide our children to repeat our poor choices. Perhaps this elections year is an opportunity to think a bit deeper about democratic values and our future.

I hope most soldiers who died didn’t die in vain, but none can come back to tell us. We who are alive must decide if bloody paths would bring us closer to peace.

Of course, Hitler had to be fought, as well as today’s terrorists and madmen. Defending lives, indeed our planet, won’t be done without casualties. But our purpose for living needs to be understood, not compromised.

Take a moment.

===============

* I’ve got the looks
You sing the ballad
Together we make a great salad.

I’m adorable
and you’re too
Together we make a great stew.

Poetry is my schtick
So join me please
Together we make a great squeeze.

===============

* There once was a hippie
Who thought his future was zippy.
So he took a journey through white dunes—
With pockets-filled prunes
For you see: his life was quite yippee.

But then a war snatched him wholly:
A hell-filled stormy-Stromboli!
He grew a pair of horns—
His wounds bled through muddy uniforms
For you see: battles will only leave you lonely. #peace ☮️

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* Due to my diligent work in the field of %$#@, the government of ɐıdoʇn has granted me the (rather ambiguous) title of ‘prince.’
Not realizing the enormous work a prince in ɐıdoʇn is required to perform, I practically fell off my horse when I learned that I had to entertain some peasants at the local coffee shop. I’m bruised but my lucky hat is unharmed.
(Well wishers: you may send your formal adoration to princeZ@ɐıdoʇn.gov)

===============

* Here’s the thing: Guns were made to kill. Period. There’s no grey area here. You hold this darn thing in your hand for one purpose, and one purpose only: To kill. I wouldn’t want anyone to have to live with the consequences of such an action. It’s a nightmare.

===============

* We are born with human instincts for compassion,
But then we grow older and hesitate.
And judge.
So we pause.
And then we find it’s too late:
For the sun has set on compassion.

===============

* Outside the bus window, the cotton field fades away. The glorious morning skips my cloudy heart, for my mind is occupied with anger. Life isn’t a fair game, I think. I’m leaving home angry at my country and with God and guns.

Being paralyzed by fear and nightmares, while escaping through a keyhole the size of my pride, I find only darkness—yet it is the only environment in which I feel safe.

Food has no taste. The air is odorless. Faces are flat. Earth is muddy. Every step I take is gooey and filled with guilt; long and ugly guilt, the kind you can’t brush off, for it’s permanently marked on your soul.

She was only a child. I still feel the cold machine-gun in my hands, firing that fatal shot. I feel my heart frizzing and my spirit escaping into the windless night. I remember standing vacant. I remember the sharp pain from a bullet that pierced my leg, and a strong hand pulling me down, with a scolding voice: “Do you want to get killed?”

I don’t want to remember that night, or feel anything. I just want that girl to be able to smell flowers and breathe the fresh air that comes after the rain. I want her parents to see her growing up. And I want to stop saying that I’m sorry because it feels so hollow.

I don’t understand wars. I don’t understand life, either. But I do know that the two of them cannot coexist.

~Z

===============

* Atheism is my favorite religion. (Coffee is close second.)
Z

===============

* I see guns of rancor, red bullets, too,
I see them kill the hopes I knew
And I think to myself
How screw up is this world.

I see skies of gray, and clouds of white,
The bright cursed day, the dark scary night
And I think to myself
How screw up is this world.

The colors of the rainbow, so alarming in the sky,
Are also on the faces of people going by.
I see foes shaking heads, sayin’, “What’s up with you?”
They’re really sayin’, “I hate you.”

I hear babies cryin’. I watch them grow.
They’ll learn more malice than I’ll ever know
And I think to myself
How screw up is this world.

Yes, I think to myself
How screw up is our world.

~Z (Without permission from Bob Thiele, George David Weiss and Louis Armstrong)

===============

* Once there was a way to give back land
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will bomb your house bye-bye

Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Missiles awake you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will bomb your house bye-bye

Once there was a way to make peace
Once there was a way to embrace hope
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will bomb your house bye-bye

You never give me your country
You only give me your funny paper
and in the middle of negotiations
you break down

I’ll never give you my country
I’ll only give you my situation
and in the middle of investigation
I break down

Out of ideas, hopes all spent
See no future, pay no rent
All shelters gone, nowhere to go
Many homes got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Smoke risin’ slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that awful feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that awful feeling
Nowhere to go

Boy, you gotta carry that weight
Carry that weight a long time
Boy, you gotta carry that weight
Carry that weight a long time

~Z
(without permission from the Fab Four)

===============

* This shirt was modeled by J. Caesar
In a large Roman amphitheater.
Then, for many years since,
It was given to a prince
Who insisted he looked much-like Caesar.

So, yeah, I wore this darn cloth
From morning ’till floss
And pretended I was Caesar.
But now I am told It is way too old
And it doesn’t belong on a geezer.

~ Z

===============

* Hello god, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because our world is freely spinning
Thousands died while you were sleeping
And the vision that you planted in my brain
Still remains
For you kept your silence

In venom smoke I see no hope
Little love where hatred lopes
It covers lands and hearts in harmony
People gathered to embrace tyrannies
Yet your angels fly in circles of despair
And no one cares
For you kept your silence

And in the nightly news I saw
Ten thousands people, maybe more
Chanting myth poised with frantic bliss
Waving signs with white-knuckled fists
On behalf of you and the prophets they never share
So no one dares
For you kept your silence

“Fools,” said I, “You do not know
Hatred much-like cancer grows
It burns our wounds and dims the glare
Take my words that it’s never “fair”
But my words beat on vacant hearts
With false desire
And echo in the wells of your silence

And people ask why should we pray
You never answer, it’s what they say
My prayer flashed out its warnings
In the words that it was forming
And your angels said the words of the prophets
Are written on crumbling walls
And hollowed halls
And they die in your silence

~Z
(without permission from S & G)

===============

* How long will it take to figure this out:
That a sword is sharpened on both of its sides?
Never to embrace, or shake hands —
It’s made to slash hopes and veins.
That to give up a sword takes courage and strength
For it’s much easier to sharpen it
Than for peace to make sense.

~Z

===============

* In Germany, France and Italy there have been anti-Semitic protests and violence (including burning synagogues) over the conflict in Gaza. “Kill the Jews!” some signs read. It appears most of the protesters were Muslims. Or whomever.
You want to kill a Jew? The line is long, just take a number and wait patiently for your turn. And while you’re waiting let me run some numbers for you:

Pakistan: 1971 war (between India and Pakistan) — 3 million Muslims dead.
Sudan: 1983 war (between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army) — 2 million Muslims dead.
Iraq: 1988 war (The Iran–Iraq War) — 800,000 Muslims dead.
Algeria: 1991 war — 150,000 Muslims dead.
Somalia: 1991-present (The Somali Civil War) — 500,000 Muslims dead.
Tunisia, Jordan, Oman, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Morocco: 2011 Arab Spring — uncounted Muslims dead.
Syria: 2011-present (The Syrian Civil War) — 250,000 Muslims dead, and climbing…
Iraq: today, July 23, 2014 — Suicide car bombs kills 21 in Baghdad.

None of the above casualties were caused by Israel. Fact is, as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is murdering his nation, the world is doing hardly anything to stop the genocide. The airwaves are relatively quiet and the slogans are missing from European capitals.

The Gaza war is horrifying, and civilian casualties will continue to mount. All the ordinary rules of warfare are upended in Gaza. Everything about this conflict is asymmetrical. But what demonstrators ignore is that winning the PR war is the best Hamas can hope to achieve, and that their weapon of choice seems to be the cannon fodder of their own people for if you can’t beat Israel’s Iron Dome, then deploy sacrificial children as human shields (there are now reports that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are transporting themselves throughout Gaza in ambulances packed with children).
Make no mistake about the rhetoric coming from Hamas, this organization refuses peace-talks, does not recognize Israel’s rights (its charter, issued on August 18, 1988, calls for a struggle against the Jews and the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel), and it has built hundreds of tunnels leading to Israel to murder innocent people. Hamas has failed to understand that it cannot push Israelis into the sea, forcing them to swim back to Auschwitz. Hamas and its proxy-demonstrators fail to understand that some of the Israeli soldiers they’re fighting in Gaza are Muslims serving in the Israeli Defense Forces; Muslims who are fighting for Israel’s right to exist.

To be clear, Israel cannot relate to Palestinian violence as a phenomenon that occurs in a vacuum. Israelis and Palestinians need to rediscover the road to peace by renewing the talks with Mahmoud Abbas. They must find a Two-State solution (two people live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect) to this conflict: It’s their only hope to minimize the death toll.

But to the demonstrators may I suggest that no war is moral. So either demonstrate against all wars or just take a number.

~Z

===============

* (From my novel)

The door was unlocked.
She entered his room slowly, grimacing at the dim light coming
From the narrow windows that highlighted the bare walls.
He took everything but the old chair with three legs: If she had only stopped him
In time — to explain.

She sat in the old chair but it didn’t tumble. Now she understood why he left it
Behind, for the fourth missing leg was to replace his love that she couldn’t return,
And to invite a new friendship that she would find one day pleasing enough.

It rained the next day. Huge raindrops knocked powerfully on the windows in
Harmony with her tears. And each tear met another one, falling onto the cold,
Wooden floor like a river of sorrow.
She saw his face in the foggy window; a pink angel carried him, gently, upward.

Z

===============

* I was teaching students about emotions, but I don’t know what to do with mine. I’m on a cliff; soaring above it, barely. How do I feel: Happy? Sad? crumbly?
I then remembered reading Emily Dickinson’s poem in high school, and I understood my feelings better:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Z

===============

* Yep, it’s the darn cold weather. Last night it was a heatwave @ -5 Fahrenheit (-15 Celsius) and it snowed. How can it snow when it is so cold ~ I don’t get it. And I don’t get why birds, with a pea-size brains, are smart enough to fly south in the winter and I’m still here, freezing my peas (s’cuse my French).

Z

===============

* Es ist eine andere verschneiten Tag im Land der Kälte. Güte, ist es Zeit für den Frühling zu kommen.
Z

===============

* I read in Newsweek Sharon Begley’s article “Can You Build a Better Brain?” Here’s a quote:
Neuroscience supports the cognitive benefits of stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin, too, at least in some people for some tasks. Both drugs (as well as caffeine) raise the brain levels of dopamine, the juice that produces motivation and the feeling of reward. On balance, finds psychologist Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania, studies show that both drugs enhance the recall of memorized words as well as working memory (the brain’s scratchpad, which plays a key role in fluid intelligence).

There you go. For someone who drinks 2-3 cappuccinos a day, triple-shot, I should remember the combination to my lock @ the gym. But no, I had to swim with a used swimsuit, twice my size, that the kind attendent gave me.

Z

===============

* Just got my new iPad. How does it look (yep, I’m writing this post with it)? I know, who needs a new gizmo? With me it’s an obsession, not a need. Gotta have the latest giz. Gotta. And I love it. Not as much as i love my kids, but I do. The gods of technology have delivered a beautiful giz: bright, light, easy-to-use/write, functional… You get the idea. Cheerios.
Z (written in 2010)

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* As much as I like my daily cappuccinos (very dry and with skim milk, pawleeze), I like scones with my coffee just as much. I am known to walk away from coffee shops that don’t serve scones, not before muttering something sconey.

On family trips I drag my family (nowadays with a sleek GPS app on my phone) to coffee shops, from Sanibel Island to Seattle.

Here’s a snappy history of scones: They, presumably, originated in Scotland. Some say the name scone is contributed to the Stone (scone) of Destiny, or to the Gaelic “sgonn,” or perhaps to the Dutch “schoonbrot,” or even the German “sconbrot.” A Scottish poet in 1515 made the first known printed reference to scones. The original scones were made of oats, griddle-baked over an open fire.

Do you like scones? What’s your favorite?

Z (written in 2010)

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* I like quotes.
They are clever if you’ll forgive the pun. And they make me smile coyly.

Here are some of mine:

Sure, it’s fun rocking the boat ~ if you are a good swimmer.

Can dick cheney?

Is there life after death? I hope not, for I need to rest for a while.

Friendship resembles an onion, as you peel off a layer you find another one. Tears are optional.

Z

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* There’s much about advice for writers nowadays. How to write well, how to approach writing, how to pick your nose while writing (this advice is mine). As though, if I followed all the advice I will become a better writer. Or a successful one. Or whatever.

Jeesh.

I write what I write because I write what I write.
Advice is fine, in the general sense of it, perhaps. But much like reading, which is subjective, writing is too: not manipulated by a common acceptable path; free-spirited.

Z

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* (aka Frank).
I can’t remember where I found him (my apologies to his creator), but I thought he’s a cool dude-goat, with bright eyes and shiny nose.
During this high-octane season, reindeer get the promotion. And so be it. But Frank deserves to be noticed.
Hey Frank!
Z (this was my first blog’s entry on December 23, 2010