My Children

What can I say?

 A little child shall lead them.

What the hell does that mean? Don't google it. You'll get all sorts of hits from all sorts of weirdos. Especially bible reading/translating/interpreting weirdos.

It means, to us, 'a little child shall lead us', doesn't it? That's the colloquial meaning of it. That's what it means to us, the dudes in the pub, the factory, stuck in the home with the kids, stuck  in the job, stuck anywhere in our lives just wondering about it all...

We hear this phrase and we don't have any special scholarship in bible studies or any other such crap. We just think of a little child leading. Us.

Because we know we lead the children.

But. But. I learn from my life with my children that they lead me.

They control my live. That's a given.  A given that's without dispute and yet at the same time largely ignored, unrecognised, uncatered for.

Children, your children, are game changers. They will chance your life. You are dead. Your life is dead. Now begins something else again.

That's a fact.

So in that sense they 'lead' inasmuch as they control. Influence so heavily.

But I find more.

They demonstrate my humanity to me.

My animality - you can see that, right? My 'animality', the human animal, they demonstrate that because they're born as just that: a human 'animal'.

And that shades into psychology, too. And all the other 'ologies'.

They show me who I am. At core. In essence. Who I was before I was conditioned, controlled, educated, influenced, directed...

So in that sense they 'lead'. And that's a more direct sense, isn't it?

But there's something else. And I better cut to the chase because I'm running out of energy.

They lead in love. They are so beautiful. They are so beautiful. They live in a world of beauty and they are a world of beauty. And happiness.

And they say to us, all the time: 'why not stay with the happiness and the beauty and the love?'

That's what they're saying.

All the time.

And we're so blind to it.

Because we're so hurt.

So covered in scar tissue.

From our decades of violence and hatred and callous indifference...

Our devotion to mammon. Our unquestioned devotion. That's the point.

Our devotion to our masters.  Our unquestioned devotion. That's the point.

We cannot explain this dereliction to our children. We cannot explain our self imposed servitude, slavery, ignorance, madness, despair, futility, desperation to our children.....  we can't explain it to ourselves... we can't even admit it, see it, recognise it...  yet we do try to explain it to our children. Explain it and justify it. With a straight face. Solemnly. As wisdom from on high.

We do.

I have looked on the face of god and it was as me, but as a child, smiling and full of love, without knowledge of evil, without dissatisfaction or desire for preference.  I looked on the face of god and I was nothing. Nothing.

After all these years.

Bit of a laugh, eh?

You Can't Write Anywhere - And Can't Not Write..

 There's nowhere you can write, is there?

 Life now is endless devouring.

 So much on offer all the time.

Like my kids eating sugar all the time.  In one day they will have more sugar than we'd have had in a month when I was a kid.  I'm not measuring quantities as a nutritionist.  I'm just talking about the extra 'sweet things' that kids get now that we didn't.

Ice cream was a treat.  The family couldn't afford it. We didn't have it at home. There was none in the fridge. In my early years there was no fridge.  During the course of ordinary life we didn't get any, didn't see any - there were no fridge/freezer/displays in every place  you went - and didn't ask for any.

And you can throw weekends into that, too.

Holidays.  A treat.  You'd ask for and get an ice cream. Parties. Birthdays. Xmas.

You can put chocolate in that category, too. Exactly.

We had boiled lollies. We called them that.  Elsewhere they're called other things but in the western world, I think, they're always the same thing: boiled flavoured, coloured, sugar.  We had that.  When we had 'a treat'. When we had pocket money to spend.

Far, far from the normal course.

But now?  My children tonight ate a bowl of chocolate (two squares of a block of milk chocolate), icecream (two tablespoons) and jelly (gelatine, the americans got some other name for it, 'jelly' to them is 'jam' to the British. I forget their name.  Made with gelatine.  And water. And flavour. And sugar. ).

Three things that were reserved for Xmas, Easter, Birthdays and Special occasions.  For them: everyday. A nothing.

Well now there's a new treat. That we can revel in. That I think many of us do revel in. And many of us don't, because we don't know.

But it is the internet. The Internet. The Web.

The Miracle.

The Paradigm shift.

Anything we want to know we can press a button and find  out.

And aren't we going for it..    It's alive. The Web. It's alive.  It's seething. It's boiling. It's bubbling.

And that's only on the top. That's what we see. That's what our facile, frantic 'commentators' can see when they've no time to see any more, any further, any deeper.

In the depths there's millions (or billions?) busy educating themselves on the net. Pursuing their own interests. Following their noses. Or following their instincts. Following their proclivities. Following their destinies.

Searching, seeking, learning, knowing.

Creating knowledge: compiling assessments, statistics, data, correspondences, coincidences, relationships, significancies....

It's going on. It's a welter.

Almost a suffocating welter.  We almost drown in it.

Don't know if we're drowning in confused anguish or fainting in an ecstasy of enlightenment.

Need to speak.  Utter. Say something.

But we can't can we?

Because if you once start telling the truth there's no end to it.

And you'll reveal your whole life.

Which means revealing the people in your life.

And your interactions with them...

What is said, what is thought, what is intended, what is hoped...

The whole bag.

It can't be done, can it?

But something has to be done.

To break the wall of silence.