Stargazere

A Blog of a Worm exercising its Right of Travel hiding out in the Blue Ridge Mountains

[vaibhavsharmaphotography]

#Chess #Life #blackandwhite #b&w

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The FACTS about TRUTH

There is a subtle difference between facts and TRUTH. While facts require evidence as proof that a given fact is more than simply an opinion or one option to explain a phenomenon, TRUTH is different. TRUTH exists, period. TRUTH need not one known supporting fact; TRUTH does not require a single believer in order to exist. TRUTH is! To be sure, I utilize evidence to lead me to facts and those facts can change my mind about what I think or see as being TRUE, or those facts can validate what I already hold to be TRUE. Facts do not create nor can facts change what is TRUE. Facts only explain or articulate TRUTH. Understanding this relationship between facts and TRUTH, we can and I must see that all that is required for most groups or organizations or governments to hide the TRUTH is to withhold the facts. All of the above is said so that I might assert this: The most profound TRUTHs of my time and all times past are discovered by observing who is engaged in withholding facts and then investigating why they are doing so. Knowing human nature there are few and predictable reasons why influential people withhold facts to hide the TRUTH: 1) to gain wealth and assets by creating advantage from an omission of fact, 2) to avoid damage to reputation, 3) to maintain stability of the marketplace, 4) to increase their level of influence, 5) to avoid investigation or loss of power, These motivations are not evil; these motivations are universal to all humans. So, what are the TRUTHs? What is the TRUTH? Stay tuned.

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Why Protect - with my death- Freedom of Speech?

I will (a foreshadowing not an exclamation) die to protect the freedom to speak no matter what you say, even “fire”.

The freedom of expression and speech is not so vital to humanity’s survival because of the freedom of the speaker(s) screaming in vile, vitriolic opposition to others’ screams…freedom of speech MUST be died for to protect the LISTENERS’ exposure to all of the opinions of the universe.

How else am I supposed to learn the whole truth? From a book? Lmao!

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Exploring my dark side

I am but an immortal soul thrown down into the abyss of dark addiction -- the addiction to life: breathing and thinking -- for which there is only one cure. And once recovered destined am I to relapse into life again, forever tormented and enslaved by my fellow addicts inhabiting a doomed planet.

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Author

Ensuring the simultaneous ability to breath by creating space and distance and to suffocate by severing ties takes practice in the arts of targeted self-honesty, contemptuous people-watching and biting articulation. Mastering these skills creates the arena of loneliness where battles of literary impact can be waged on a minuscule sliver of a hopeless civilization of a daft species who will reward the author with self-doubt, screeching banality and the theft of any sense of purpose. Once the aforementioned combination is achieved, the writer is only then free to exist in the narrow hallway between conscious and subconscious rumination; an existence which rarely results in a generation-altering opus and can never truly or permanently change anything. So, I have decided to become a writer.

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Being Responsible for, each of us, Ourselves

One of the traits of our humanness, to elevate in our minds the leaders of our history to some idealic human character, exacerbates unreasonably our own, yours and my, sense of humility which dangerously prompts you and me to hold our tongue or, worse yet, try to invoke some quotation thinking people hearing will hear better because someone “better than me” said what I am thinking. You are as flawed, no more or less, as every other figure and that’s a good, no great, thing!

Speak! And when you speak do it with your own words.

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The Widowmaker by stargazere

  Stars.  Not as many as there should be on a crisp night in November.  The clouds cannot seem to make up their mind to come, go or swallow the sky.  The cleanness of the air in November in the hills makes one forget and remember in perfect emptiness and stark clarity.  The golden glow of the tiny fire, the waiting heat in the wire handle of the boiling pot, the rustle of the propylene skin of the tent are the preferred companions.  No people here tonight.  Thank the gods.  The only unwelcome visitor thus far has been the aches and pains that age makes persistent.  Remedied only by constant shifting from sitting to lounging to lying flat on the ground, on one’s back and then on the side.  Now the joint’s voices are familiar and while not welcome are an inevitable part of life, especially on November nights.

  The crackling of the fire is warmly hypnotic, sucking in the air and converting kindling and oxygen into a scent and sensation like no other on earth.  A perfect scene for a gentle rumination.  Thoughts of things past and hopes futured.  A sound around so peaceful and a thought sequence so repeated that one can actually hear the end of life creeping into the soul of the man.

  A twig breaks.  A bush rustles.  No crickets, no tree frogs, no nothing joins the November choir.  Only the sound of air moving across centuries old tree trunks and their this-year’s blanket of leaves, all crispy and fallen to the ground.   And then everything explodes.  The only warning: the fluttering of wings in rapid fear to gain the safety of flight and then it was the snapping crack piercing into the silence that was startling most of all.  An audio change so drastic and sudden to paralyze the mind and reflexes and induce delay that costs one’s life without luck.  The groaning started light instantly became louder to a deafening vibrating peak until the sound of wood shards snapping and fluttering out into the air draws the attention to a single direction and the body not just the head turns, stupidly, into the danger.  The eyes cannot fully process the scene and the bitter taste harbingers the body’s reaction to flee the timber falling so fast.  The swaying of the nearly horizontal tree trunk is real or a result of the mind’s denial of what is coming toward the skull.  And a leap out of the way.

  The slender branches touch the ground first and fast.  Leaves are fluttering in the air finally coming loose from their dried dead stems.  The wrenching sound of the core of the tree snapping loose from its center still vibrating the skin of the eardrum and hanging in the wind like an echo.  Only feet away from the man the tree is destined to rest but not far enough away to avoid smacking the face with the sideways limbs and branches, scrapping the skin off the shoulders through the shirt, bending the body over, forcing the eyelids to protect their cargo and forcing the hands over the head to protect that most vital of human faculties.  The air displaced by the landing tree and the sound of the displacement sweep through the senses across the skin and face, ears and hair penetrating the clothes covering the back and chest, arms and legs.  Only the feet remain oblivious to the sensations though ready to do their appointed duty.   The scent of the air changes to a musty odor of rotten flesh of tree bark.  Is death wearing a musky cologne or is luck the king of November?  To live more or to die tonight under the assault of a random fact of nature?  Through eyes squinted shut and ears muffled by open palms, the mind asks all the right questions.

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Being Awake by stargazere

Being awake, what does being awake mean? People in great numbers will eventually start asking this question?

You will be able to tell if the person facing you is awake or not by two characteristics that must both be observed: 1) On any given topic/subject/issue that person has an opinion that they are not afraid to express, 2) That same person when faced with an opposing opinion does not become defensive but instead truly listens for understanding.

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Understanding Humanity by stargazere

One, nothing any one man does right or does wrong will affect anything or anyone in the universe beyond today, this day.

Two, when it comes to humans, the larger the group of people there are in a village or town or country the more simple the thing is that keeps that group contented and subdued.

Three, the only skill easier than breathing is to distract a crowd.

Four, the people, not the person, will always choose the absence of fear over the hope for happiness.

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Self Awareness

Self awareness, being awake, is a constant, ever-growing and flowing work of art. Art that can kill you.

Be careful.

I look back on all the things I did to wake up and then to try to stay awake and I laugh at myself and cry for those who were watching. Then I imagine what they will see in the next 30 years.

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[babyanimalposts]

Click for black & white quotes/GIFS

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Dead Set Against Abortion (a short story by stargazere)

“Jolene had an abortion yesterday”, Jane told Sue.

“Get out!  Does the father know…who is the father?”

“I don’t think she even knows.”

Sue was and always has been dead set against abortion.  Its murder of a human being plain and simple, and God hates it.  How could Jolene be so evil?  Evil!  Sue whispered in her mind a little prayer for Jolene.  “Father God please show her the way to your righteousness and the path of your grace.”

Jane didn’t mention it today and never would that she also had an abortion during college.  All on the hush hush.  Her boyfriend at the time convinced her that neither of them was ready to give up their options for the future and Jane reluctantly agreed. 

She agonized and fretted all the days and nights right up until the procedure and was ashamed to be so relieved when they put her under the anesthesia.  Her boyfriend waited in the lobby and when all was done and the baby was dead and she was back in her street clothes she could not shake the emotional burden of the choice she had let her boyfriend talk her into making.  She resented him immediately.  She let him hug her and hold her hand and she ate the rocky road ice cream he bought for her on the way back to campus, but he never called her after that day and she resented him. 

She wished he would have let her have more time.  She wished she would have said “No.”  But Jane was never good at saying, “No”, even when faced with a decision of life or death apparently.  She thought to herself that no one could understand that feeling of loss, of guilt and resentment.  She wondered if Jolene would. 

“I should text Jolene and see if she’s okay”, she thought to herself.

But she never did.

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Stupid Americans? Say it isn't so!

In recent days Americans are being told to be upset because a government consultant has been speaking honestly about what it took to get the Affordable Care Act to pass muster through the anti-government activists and through Congress.  He implies that the language of the bill was worded such that it would fool Americans who are too stupid to notice.

The fact is and I have said it in this blog many times, Americans, including me, have chosen to be ignorant and sometimes down right stupid when it comes to being informed, unwilling when it comes to asking the hard questions of ourselves, our families and our government and down right negligent as it pertains to knowing that our God-given rights to freedom can only be taken away by our giving our consent.

Well said Mr. Jonathan Gruber.

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First Meditation from Rene Descartes

Some years ago I noticed how many false things I had accepted as true in my childhood, and how doubtful were the things that I subsequently built on them and therefore that, once in a lifetime, everything should be completely overturned and I should begin again from the most basic foundations if I ever wished to establish anything firm and durable in the sciences. But that task seemed enormous, and I wanted to reach such a mature age that no other appropriate age for learning would follow. Thus I waited so long that, from now on, I could be blamed if I wasted in further deliberation whatever time remains for me to begin the project. Therefore today I appropriately cleared my mind of all cares and arranged for myself some time free from interruption. I am alone and, at long last, I will devote myself seriously and freely to this general overturning of my beliefs.

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The Reality of Keeping the People under Control

We all know the propensity for people, including me and including you, to exaggerate or at the least respond emotionally to a crisis.  This very human trait is the real purpose for government propaganda: to avoid wide ranging emotional response from the population.  The state and federal governments do "allow" us our emotional tirades so that we can let off our political steam but considerable effort is made to ensure these tirades are limited to a narrow list of topics/subject matter.

Abortion rights vis a vis Roe vs Wade

Elections - Dem vs Rep

National debates led by the television and print media on topics such as English as the National Language, flag burning, police violence, government overreach, lack of government transparency, torture of muslim terrorists, celebrity misbehavior, budget deficits, the Dept of Education

Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press

Freedom to own and carry a gun

People and Sex

These are the only debates tolerated by the media and by the government.  All other topics are only allowed very locally at the bar or in private homes and, for a while longer, on the internet.  No media outlet or political campaign or politician will venture outside of the approved topics because if they do, 1) they will lose their funding and 2) they are smart enough to know that serious debates on real topics will destabilize the union, the economy, the support of local and state law enforcement and anarchy will likely result.

And they, the powers that be, are correct.  Our powers know that 97% of all people in the world will choose stability over liberties, money over freedom and entertainment over free speech.  The remaining 3%, they can just be shot, or discredited or befall an accident or just be allowed to go insane.

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The Trouble for People in a Democratic Society

The most difficult duty of a man or woman or child who loves the liberty of democracy is not to speak up and stand up for what they believe, although this also is a duty without being met and mastered democracy is useless; the most difficult duty is to open our mind to hear the people and their meaning with whom we disagree.

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