The New Middle East

What does Ms. Secretary of State Rice imply by the New Middle East?

She descends on Rome from her private plane, a smiling Nubian Goddess clad in white robes, the no-cease-fire envoy of the USA. She announces that she has no desire to return in a few weeks or months to the same old thing, with a frozen gaze she delivers Washington’s warning for those who will not like the New Middle East: “We will prevail, and they will not”

Ok…
But who writes her lines? Does that not sounds suspiciously like G W Bush the 1st 1991 post Gulf-War “New World Order?”

Israel in the Middle

The existence of Israel in the Middle East is a supreme example of history repeating itself. In its Biblical Era its presence fermented violent emotions and the rise of endless confrontations with the original inhabitants of the land and with its neighbours, In the 21st century nothing much has changed except that God seems to be silent and less involved. Perhaps he abdicated in favour of the USA.

Oh Israel...

Israel, your reaction agaist Lebanon resembles Zidane’s headbutt at the World Cup. As conflicts continue in the Middle East I view you with increasing distrust and diminishing respect.

Ever since Theodor Herzl’s conception of “the Jewish State”(1986) you were maneuvered into existence, deliberately choosing to place yourself between the fire and the frying pan of the Arab world where with over 4000 years of historical hostilities your “Right to Exist” will forever be disputed.

Doubtfully will a universal “Right to Exist” be secured by military force. Persistent belligerence, aggressiveness, colonial dominance, moral and physical dispossession of existing tenants has, and will backfire.

Hizbollah, may be neutralized for awhile but not forever. It, Hamas or other “terrorist organizations” will rise in opposition… a never ending cycle never ending in peaceful co-existence. Like in the old days, fighting Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Philistines…

Take a break, this is the 21st century! With poverty, famine, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, disease, crime and all the other woes of humanity, with the exception of merchants of weapons who needs wanton damage, destruction and disruption when and where we all crave for a bit of peaceful sunshine?

An Atheist's View

What went wrong? Maybe there was never anything right with the human race, certainly the biblical claim that a god named Jehovah created mankind in his own image makes Jehovah a lot less than perfect, even if the rotten disposition of Adam and Eve’s descendants was caused by the incitement to disobedience by a serpent named Satan.

If Jehovah is THE - supreme – SUPREMEST CREATOR -- the FIRST CAUSE - - the eternal before and after – the always has been, always will be THE ONE and ONLY maker, nothing therefore exists, existed, can exist or will exist without this primary matrix, resulting in that this one indivisible force or essence, being all and everything, both positive and negative, also manifest itself as good AND evil --- as observable in the human race -- a touch of good and a hell of a lot of evil…

The Search For God

The concept of the divine has been my obsession, yet I never believed in Gods. Growing up a Roman Catholic I was amused but not devout. In church I did not pray, just looked at the paintings in the ceiling. Spiritual was the odour of burning incense, holy the light that filtered through stained-glass windows, I abhorred confession and was embarrassed by communion.

Biblical stories I could not separate from myths or fairy tales, Jove and Jehova held equal status, clad in her white gown and blue mantle the Madonna could have been Cinderella… both Christ and Sisyphus were chastised for helping out the other fellow.

Because I did not feel, I neither feared nor loved the biblical boss. One day I walked for God with pebbles in my shoes, I experienced physical pain but nothing more… so I sat on the pebble ground under a chestnut tree, rays of sunshine flickered through the leaves, in the distance floated fluffy clouds … I flashed on a bloody Roman arena, early Christians and African lions facing each other... right there and then I knew religion was not for me, I just didn’t have it…

Off the Road

Yes, I have been out, away, gone... Hitchiking 0n the road to nowhere. Searching, seeking but not finding, barely looking where I was going, anyway I could'nt see... or hear, and cannot tell where I have been because I don't know where or what it was. It was dark, I know that... Dark and foggy... black and white...

Suddenly she came out of the mist... Mrs. Hoffman gave me a lift and disappeared... I am back, but am I really here?

Earthquake

©2006 – Dallas Mariner

How long is an earthquake? Is it ten – twenty - sixty seconds? When the earth beneath your feet is dancing the dance of death, how long are ten – twenty – sixty seconds?

Is each second a thousand seconds, does time stand still, can you hear the infernal roar, or is it in a flash of icy silence that earth’s quaking viscera twists your brittling back bone?

At that unforeseen, unpredicted, unsuspected moment, when the fiendish fury strikes, are you eating – sleeping – making love? Meditating? Praying to the Lord?

Earth shakes, howls, pauses, ---- its over---- you think ---------- And then before you know it, the fury strikes again, tripled the second time around.

Walls came crushing down, trapped, wounded, breathing dust beneath the rubble you wait, in hope, in fear, ---- you hear distant shouts--- screams

And the agony of a loved-one dying beside your feet.

Da Vinci ... more...

©2006-Dallas Mariner

What's the fuss, what’s the fuss, The Da Vinci Code revival, Take the myths away and what’s left is what? Jesus’ father was an astronaut?

A heavenly baby from an earthly-virgin-channel comes, And from the planet Kripton we have Superman.

And so what’s new and where do we go from here, The Olympian Gods of old, fathered many a birth, Take His Royal Rascal, King Zeus, Transmuted into an angelic swan, Leda he seduced.

From the newly discovered Gospel of Judas, rises a willing Jesus, Eager to fulfill in death, the prophesy - his mission - Messiah!

Trinitarian son of Heaven, one third God, One third Holy Spirit, and what’s left is human.

With such attributes endowed, what’s the problem? To make His way to France and simultaneously ascend to heaven?

Knowing death in any case, is only a temporary state, Rebirth, Resurrection, Reincarnation, Or waking from Joseph of Arimathea’s anesthetic potion.

And so what’s the fuss? Father begets a son, and son begets his own, generations follow in the eccentric bloodline for kings and queens to claim their Right divine.

It would seem it all evolved as planned, except Some maintain the real Messiah is still to come, Others deem Jesus will come again. More each day believe celestial astronauts are here, disguised, but well,

Either way they should not tarry to make their presence known. And be they neither kings nor gods, Greedy and ignorant, rulers and religion made one living hell of this earthly paradise!

Let there be females among these interplanetary diplomats, No meek virgins please, But philosophical amazons to matrix our future earth-kin!



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Buddha's Diamond Sutra

Of the transitory nature of existence, think this fleeting world as nothing more than a star at dawn, a bubble in the stream, a flash of lightening in a summer’s cloud, the mere flicker of a lamp, a phantom and a dream.

The Sting

One year ago or ten, twenty or thirty years ago, who cares… but it was a day in May when Chuck died, and every year in May I think of Chuck recalling the six months I spent as a guest in Casa Camicina, his beautiful house in Puerto Vallarta.

We were climbing in single file up over rocks and boulders towards the waterfall, we could not have been very far from it because we heard the splashing and gurgling sound of water and from time to time the strange call of exotic birds, otherwise the forest was silent. That was precisely what we were looking for, an afternoon of peace and quiet, a skinny-dip in the solitary waterfall, away from the playa, the crowded tourist beach, the beach-vendors with their colorful array of serapes and sombreros, the endless game of gin-rummy we played and the double Margarita Cocktails that filled the many Happy-Hours…

We kept pace though the trail we were following gradually narrowed and then disappeared, swallowed by the increasing density of foliage. I was following Darryle who walked five or six meters behind Tio Mateo and Celestina… Even when bush-walking Darryle was a gentleman, extending his hand, clearing the path, pushing branches out the way to make my passage easier. Hidden in the thick tangle of leaves and branches was a wasp hive whose inhabitants, clearly vexed by our noisy intrusion, buzzed out of the hive in frenzied fury. Five or six real and a hundred phantom wasps suddenly assaulted my hair and neck, the metallic clacking of their wings next to my ears pierced my brain and as quick as the strike of a match, uncontrollable panic possessed me. I did not want to run from the wasps, I desperately wanted the wasps to get away from me. I recall my arms lashing above my head in frantic attempts to get the insects to leave my physical territory, and they did. But only after inflicting revenge for our ill mannered invasion. In three different locations of my head and neck they left their sting, and as a party balloon deflates when punctured, I felt my energy flow out of my body, I became urgently aware of simultaneously being on the edge of an abyss and wanting to faint, with the fainting feeling a bliding light exploded in my head as if someone had turned on flood lights before my lid-less eyes. “Excuse me” I said to myself, “lie down here on these boulders because you are going to be sick”… Only I wasn’t sick, nor was I afraid, though I was floating on rocks as fluffy as clouds I was aware of goose-bumps on my skin, of wasps’ stings on my head and neck… and of an endless echo in my head, the song I heard that morning while walking past Playa Los Muertos: “…Y volver, volver, volver… a tus brazos otra vez… estare a tu donde estes… Quiero volver… volver… volver…”

“Adelita, Adelita, can you hear me?” Adelita hablame, Adelita dime algo… Adelita…”

The scent of lemons reached my nostrils. I focused my eyes, pink clouds were traveling across the sky, Celestina face... yes, she was looking down at me, cradling my head on her lap and rubbing lemon on the lumps that had grown where the wasps had left their sting. Chuck was there too, strange… he was not supposed to be there, he was not with us when we started out on the climb to the waterfall. Chuck was a doctor, had someone summoned him?

“…Y volver, volver, volver… a tul brazos otra vez… Quiero volver… volver…”

How bizarre, now I am still alive, often wishing to die, and Chuck is dead. Died in May, a few months later. I suspected it was not an accident. Well… it had been an accident, but a deliberate one. Chuck had a long standing death-wish, a big one. I knew it because Chuck knew mine. He told me once or twice: “All you ever need to concern yourself with is sex and death”. He never said love. I though he should have said love, and told him so, but he replied he meant to say sex, not love. And maybe he could have said suicide instead of death…