The Writers Guild, aka Writers Club of the Lake Region surrounding Fergus Falls is embarking on a brave journey, a collaborate writing project, a writer murial, perhaps a book that can be published at some stage. I have been involved in this project to provide a site on the internet where these writers can go and collaborate.
Yes, brave new world and an exciting one at that.

Is there anyone that believes that we are not living in a time of "the Great Confusion" ? Chinese proverb has it that chaos is an opportunity provider....I tend to agree, and I tend to believe that I am pretty much ignorant, to a larger extent, of all that surrounds me and goes on, around me.
That leaves me pretty open for impression I suppose. An empty vessel, to be filled.

The visual arts , or in general the visual combined with music has always fascinated me. The dawn of musical videos, great film music that most of us only hear once..., what a deal. How they all move my emotions, and how easily I am willing to go with what is displayed and played to me. Happiness, sadness, melancholy, contemplation, thoughts of who am I, where am I going ?, am I in the right place, am I doing the right thing, am I wasting my time with this, whatever that is, I am doing ??
It is truly a wonder how these impressions, visually and musically makes my mind and emotions move.
After a good decennial commitment of escaping most of reality, the way I was born to see it, I was somehow catapulted into (back into) reality as it were. The certainty that I would die an early death, by my own making was something I held for very possible, as a matter of fact, I could not see how else things would end for me.
Throughout my years I had found life to be most dangerous, hurtful, confusing, bloody, unjust and a lost place to be. Dodging from one place to another, I thought for a while I could outrun my confusion and fear, and end up somewhere, serene and peaceful.
I was wrong, and at the very end, I found myself looking down into dark waters, and the option of an early end seemed like a likely one, a possible one, an end I could "live" with.

Then, suddenly, something started to take hold. Call it a new found bravery, maybe the fear of the end was greater than the fear of a new beginning ? I am not sure, nor do I really know what started to happen to me, I am not even sure I know exactly when it started. But I was turning, slowly mind you. I seemed to start accepting my fate, my place so to say, my perhaps destiny if there is such a thing. Being utterly worn our from fear and dreading another tomorrow, I said, literally out loud "Ok, F it !, if I am going to live conflicted, and, if I am not gonna understand what the hell is going on around me most of the time, so f.. be it !., And if there is a tomorrow, well, it will be here tomorrow ! I am here now, I am alive now, and now is a mirage anyways...so utterly conflicted it will be then...
That was the start......

The Congress, especially with regard to matters related to national security policy, has thrust power and authority to the executive branch. We have created an imperial presidency. The Congress no longer is able to articulate a vision of what is the common good. The Congress exists primarily to ensure the reelection of members of Congress.
Andrew Bacevic

This quote from Andrew Bacevic is meant as a follow up to what I posted yesterday. There is a definite urgency amongst an ever growing and vocal group of US citizens to begin the cumbersome and disciplined climb back to restoring US national integrity.

We are a nation of consumers now, no more the producers US was known to be previously. We have a yearly trade deficit of 800 million US dollars with China, we do not balance our books at the end of a fiscal year, and we have come to believe that we have an inexhaustible line of credit. Hence, it does not matter to us if we consume even more from year to year, be it oil, electronics or frying pans made in Asia. We do not have to pay for it, let the next generation deal with our debt.

As senator Bird stated in relation to the US unprovoced invasion of Iraq:
Eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.

We are living in a time of deceit, and with it comes chaos, confusion and eventually national upheaval. Time to grow up, time to look over the fence and to mend relations, time to become the nation that so elegantly is described in the US constitution. That is the dream we have agreed upon, that is our common goal and hopes. Not this.

After watching the praised US idiom of freedom and its constitution take some serious hits particularly in the last few years, I felt this picture would be appropriate.

I suspect few people knows about how fragile our freedom is and how endangered it has become as of late.

I encourage you to read Andrew J. Bacevich's book "The limits of Power" to inform yourself of a few inconvenient truths about US of A and where we are heading due to our belief in more is our right, more is better, and that we are the apostles of democracy in the world.
Here you can watch what Andrew has to say about the material in his book
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08152008/watch.html

Remember when it rained......

When I was down and oh my soul so weary
when trouble came, my heart so heavy
then I was still, waited here in silence until you came and sat a while with me.....

A Clan's men

Me and poet, musician, wit, polemicist—Bill Holm, definitely belong to the same tribe, no doubt. I met and listened to him this Sunday morning reading from his new book "Windows of Brimnes", and thought to myself how lucky I am to have a man like him in my literary back yard just a few miles south of Lost Lake where I now live. We chatted, looked each other over like long lost tribes men, and my spirit stood next to a man I have long wanted to meet.

Bill Holm, Robert Bly, Ingemar Bergman and Lars Olaf Ingmar Persson, Torsten Liden, Olof Palme and Thor Heyerdahl are and where men, that I hold enormous, everlasting respect and admiration for.
I needed them to show me both the good way, and the undesired dangerous trail. The trail I still needed to explore on occasions as a young naive man, the trail that lead me down into the ashes of a broken future, put upon me by well meaning and loving parents. I admit, I crawled around in those ashes for quiet a while looking for any speck of hope in a seemingly impenetrable darkness of anger, pain, self-absorption and hopeless despair.
At what point that distant flickering light broke the dungeoning darkness I cannot say. Little by little, and day by day I started to breathe fresh open air, the grey skies above me started to take on a blue hue again, the love of life was once again instilled in my heart, and as I looked around I found myself back to where I started, at the time when I got lost.

My window, does not face the open endless Northern Atlantic ocean as in Bill Holm's book "Windows of Brimnes". My window looks out over East Lost Lake. A smaller lake in the mid west corner of Minnesota. A state I found myself glad to leave behind in 1993 , when I passed through here on my bicycle, lightly packed with tent and sleeping bag, daring rain and hail for 9 days straight. And those Minnesot'n county roads, cracked and manhandled by the previous winters permafrost....never again will I come back here, I told myself with assured conviction.....and so, here I am back in Minnesota, living on Lost Lake. A suitable home for me, it seems, looking out over a frozen and silent lake, feeling the stillness stirring. Now, knowing hopefully better than ever the danger of professing my absolute convictions, knowing nothing is forever, nothing stays the same and that love for all creatures in nature, blended with forgiveness, humility and gratitude is hard earned, requiring daily practice and undivided mindful attention.

Bill talked about god this morning, and related a story from 1929, where Einstein was asked in a telegram by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein responded by telegram: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings".
That sounded like something I could relate to remembering how many times I have cried out in despair for my childhood God, maybe a new God, any "dang" God to deliver me out of a never ending darkness....only to find that I myself had to start crawling toward some light - imagined or real, eventually finding many helping hands dragging me the last part of the way out of lostness , out into homeness. Loving, friendly and compassionate hands that had been there all along, waiting patiently, with no misgivings......orderly harmony, yes indeed.

My name is Jon-Anders Persson, son of Lars Olaf Ingmar Persson. I live on Lost Lake, West Lost Lake, and I am often lost and mystified, but free in spirit.
Who is Baruch de Spinoza that Einstein referred to??.., that is for tomorrow or maybe later this week..maybe?!! Did I say Baruch de Spinoza or Barak de Spinoza ? Barak..Baruch...could Baruch and Barak be the same name I wonder ??

Me the Viking

Florance , my mother-in-law, aka the Evil-One, aka Mother-Superior, took this picture of me while we visited Kringen, Sons of Norway Lodge in Fargo, North Dakota.
I feel that this is the image I most like about myself. The quintessential Viking rouge - ruthless, compassionate, self-mutilating, wife-loving, dedicated, stubborn, mystified and an incurable horn-d...(..romantic), holding my helmet in a steady and self-assured grip, sitting at the end of the table in my Norden Lodge.
It is a dream of course, but a good dream, quiet a vivid dream at times, and I am convinced had I lived (maybe I did..) during that time, I would without a doubt have sailed to distant shores, to plunder, have sex with women I did not know, drinking mjöd until I puked and past out, eventually returning to my seahorse and be gone the next morning....ahh, what a life it must have been and what a dream it is :-)