Listening To The Sphinx

Came across a very neat painting the other day, 'Listening To The Sphinx' by Elihu Vedder. It was said years ago the sand was piled high enough around the Sphinx of Giza that people could approach the mouth and listen for 'whispered answers' to their question, just as it is shown in the painting. What kind of questions would you ask a sphinx, what answers would you receive?

Star Wars Death Star Repair Manual

Today I saw something kinda funny. You know those Haynes repair manuals for cars and trucks etc?
There was one for the Death Star and one for the Millennium Falcon. It's not like inside they are strictly like real Haynes books though. There are some blueprint diagrams yes, but also just Star Wars pix and trivia and articles and such.  Ha..

Long Drought

 

Shyit it's been quite awhile since I posted in here. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, I've been 'busy' like everyone else. That's one big reason. Did you ever wonder why everybody these days is so busy? It's partly easy surface answers like more choices in society, more complexity, more material production, more technology and so forth. I have a theory for the deep down level though that a big reason many are so busy is that they can't stand stillness because it will make them face all the atrocities committed. Atrocities?? What atrocities?

Crimes against ourselves, our fellow men and women, our planet and all of nature. If it's not a definable crime under some criminal code (ie so and so mugged someone the other day) then there are definitely large scale crimes still happening that we have not outlawed (ie clearcutting a forest or stealing the land bases of the indigenous to exploit them and their resources). Just by EXISTING in this society we are all thieves, murderers, rapists- if not in the literal sense at least in the poetic sense.

Or is it really so poetic? Is raping a rainforest ok but a female jogger not? I say they're both bad. We all have many sins to answer for. Why do we not face this darkness we create? A few reasons at least. When everyone else is living a certain way we are culturally inculcated to think if we live that way too it should be 'normal' or 'ok'. Another thing is the distance effect. If you are on some nice golf course or in flower gardens with fountains sipping a fruit smoothie, you are harming no one in your enjoyed idyllic moment. Right? If you yank someone's head back and slit their throat, that is more concretely definable harm to our culture, and if you are not psychopathic or used to killing or something along those lines you would be horrified to do such a deed. Yet the golf course and flower gardens were all paved with blood of innocents (and to be fair not so innocents). So because we are shielded from ground zero so to speak it's easier to keep on doing what we do.The cup you drink from, the canvas golf bag, all these material things are fucking up the planet from the processes that create and transport them. It takes advantage of other people too, like sweatshop workers or poor foreign farmers for instance. The land you stand on is not only stolen but being misused and abused. Then in turn we misuse and abuse ourselves and each other. The least we could do after stealing land is look after it.

 Even for the most selfish preservation instinct standards we are being stupid because we are poisoning ourselves and destroying all we should hold dear.  We may pause and reflect on how wrong things may seem (as I am right now) but just not know where to start and feel helpless to do anything. We might be like zoo animals that became so used to domestication that we would easily die in the wild, so we do not go towards a sustainable lifestyle living off the land. It is all very likely past the tipping point.  And some of us just plainly are ignorant or don't give a fuck. On that note, maybe I should go back to making silly fun posts again after that sober moment, and maybe hope the next sober moment comes soon and I can somehow glean revelation for what the hell to do next in this big bad world. Maybe I should worry more about real droughts than my drought of blog posting...