by Unknown
Without flowing wine
How to enjoy lovely
Cherry blossoms?
Category Archives: Poetry
You’re only vulnerable, everywhere
Today John Stewart exposed the soft underbelly of CNN’s “Target USA” all-day program.
I’d quote the best lines here, but that would spoil the fun…
Watching Stewart is like seeing the best of the best stories of the day, but for news. Take, for example, his coverage of the “Bush reads The Stranger” story. What’s next, Bush reading poetry? There’s something deeply ironic about Bush reading up on “anti-dogma” philosophy, beyond the fact that the story of The Stranger is strangely appropriate to describe Bush’s agenda. Some have also pointed out that Bush Administration looked to Camus in his Feb 2005 “New Era in Transatlantic Unity” speech. Note the State Department’s byline: “Bush says Israeli-Palestinian settlement ‘within reach'” and the fact that Bush mentioned the path to a peaceful Lebanon in that speech. Perhaps he felt like he needed to go back and re-read Camus since things did not work out quite as expected.
Speaking of irony, Bill Moyers once suggested that the difference between journalism and poetry is freedom. Guess which one he thought was more grounded:
In discussing less politically charged subjects, Nye asked Moyers for his thoughts on poetry, since he and his wife, Judith, produce public readings every year. Moyers said poetry is the greatest outlet for the sensual, religious, erotic, intellectual and spiritual experiences in life, and that, although he has only written one poem in the course of his life, he greatly appreciates the art.
“Poetry is like going to church,� he said. “It is like finding a voice that says, ‘This, too, shall pass.’�
Moyers said his profession did not offer the same creative freedom that poetry could.
“As a journalist, you are not quite as much at liberty as the poet because you are supposed to be tethered to verification,� he said. “We’re supposed to offer evidence, and we’re supposed to have deep respect for the facts. You don’t speculate in public domain. The best journalists are cautious in that respect.�
However, Stewart clearly shows through his brilliant comedy that journalists on Fox and CNN are paid handsomely to speculate in the public domain. Meanwhile, poets seem more often to be the ones who wrangle with the facts of life (i.e. slam contests or even blogs). Thus it seems almost probable that a national poet would provide the public more sincere verification and tangible evidence than many of the national news reporters.
Oh, and for even more fun with security and the news, Stephen Colbert has some great tips on how to protect your identity.
The massacre of the Cathars
The Wikipedia has a fair amount of information on the Cathars that seems fairly well written. I noted in particular a description of habits and beliefs that upset the Catholic organization:
The slaying of life was abhorrent to the Cathars, just as was the senseless copulation that produced enslavement in matter. Consequently, abstention from all animal food except fish was enjoined of the Perfecti. (The Perfecti apparently avoided eating anything considered to be a by-product of sexual reproduction, including cheese, eggs, milk and butter.) War and capital punishment were also absolutely condemned, an abnormality in the medieval age.
Such teachings, both theological and practical, brought upon the Cathars firm condemnation from the religious authorities whose social order they threatened.
It is amazing to take a careful look at life under Count of Toulouse Raymond VI as he was the ruler in an area with a fairly civilized and yet secular and prospering community. Other sites paint a compelling portrait:
Chivalry and poetry, art and literature, and business and commerce thrived, the land was at peace, the people prospered; Jew, Cathar, Waldensian, and Catholic lived and worked side by side in an area free of religious persecution and dominated by religious tolerance. People were judged on their own merits, not by the religious beliefs to which they subscribed. Secular offices were distributed on the basis of merit, not religion, and powerful offices in the state were open to Jew, Cathar, Waldensian, and Catholic alike.
This was the time and place of the Troubadour poets, influenced by the Sufi poets to the south as well as the Kabbalists. They sang and spoke of the idealized female and unattainable love, and recognized women as spiritually equal; perhaps even as divine. In fact, women even could become a Perfecti!
Things went south (pun not intended) from increasing pressure from the Pope who became outraged at the Cathars prosperity. He demanded they submit to the Catholic establishment’s authority and he sent representatives to negotiate their surrender. Sadly, one of the representatives was murdered while visiting Raymond. This led to excommunication of Raymond and eventually a Papal decree that the land and wealth of the region was fair game to Catholics who wanted to take it by force for themselves. From the Wikipedia again:
The crusader army came under the command, both spiritual and military, of the papal legate Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux. In the first significant engagement of the war, the town of Béziers was taken on 22 July 1209. Arnaud, the Cistercian abbot-commander is said to have been asked how to tell Cathar from Catholic. His reply, recorded by a fellow Cistercian, was “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eis.” — “Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His ownâ€?. The doors of the church of St Mary Magdalene were broken down and the occupants slaughtered. 7,000 people died there including women and children. Elsewhere in the town many more thousands were mutilated and killed. Prisoners were blinded, dragged behind horses, and used for target practice. The town was razed. Arnaud, the abbot-commander, wrote to his master, the Pope: “Today your Holiness, twenty thousand citizens were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex.â€? The population of Béziers was then probably no more than 15,000 but with local refugees seeking shelter within the city walls, the number claimed, 20,000, is possible.
Raymond had anticipated the invasion to a degree and apparently tried to negotiate, but his efforts failed to stop the crusaders from taking Béziers. The town apparently had only a few hundred Cathars, but the decision to stand together meant the whole population was massacred. This crusade continued for more than twenty years. Raymond tried also to comply with the demands of the Pope and crusaders over time to achieve their forgiveness, such as turning-over his seven best strongholds and his mercenaries or removing all Jews from positions of power, but the Catholic authority simply tortured him with his own desire and acquiesence. Eventually, against some resistance, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were sent by the Pope to “convert” or kill the people of Languedoc, and the poetic and peaceful Cathars were completely destroyed.
Visions of Cody and On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
The mad road, lonely, leading around the bend into the openings of space towards the horizon Wasatch snows promised us in the vision of the West, spine heights at the world’s end, coast of blue Pacific starry night—nobone halfbanana moons sloping in the tangled night sky, the torments of great formations in mist, the huddled invisible insect in the car racing onwards, illuminate.—The raw cut, the drag, the butte, the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass—orangebutted west lands of Arcadia, forlorn sands of the isolate earth, dewy exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and the gopher the level of the world, low and flat: the charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route. [1]
My moments in Denver were coming to an end, I could feel it when I walked her home, on the way back I stretched out on the grass of an old church with a bunch of hobos, and their talk made me want to get back on that road. Every now and then one would get up and hit a passer-by for a dime. They talked of harvests moving north. It was warm and soft. I wanted to go and get Rita again and tell her a lot more things, and really make love to her this time, and calm her fears about men. Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious. I heard the Denver and Rio Grande locomotive howling off to the mountains. I wanted to pursue my star further. [2]
[1] Voice of Cody, page 319
[2] On the Road, part 1:chapter 10