WARNING: This post is graphic in nature. I have long debated whether to post it or not. It features Paul McCartney speaking on the nightmare of slaughter houses and showing how animals are horrifically mistreated. But if we subject animals to these horrors by creating a market for meat than the very least we can do is suffer the discomfort of watching a video showing how our meat comes to our tables. Paul McCartney got me well on my way to being totally vegetarian which seems to be in the offing as I think more and more of any kind of meat as flesh of innocents.
Patterns of the microcosm
echoed in the macrocosm
vibrating thoughts
no meditation
lots of frustration
can’t calm down
do the Hong Sau
Yogananda method
the only hope
in this mind
doing 120 mph
in a 35 mph zone
time soon for sleep
frogs singing
a pre-dawn high
drained at noon
rapid cycling
twilight now
back to racing
raving
raging mind
need gentility
humility
quietude
to feel awe
to ponder
hit “Pause”
love in the afternoon
a natural anti-
depressant
sent sight soaring
in space
seeing patterns
everywhere
echoing symphonically
in noisy ears
the hum of quiet
seems too loud
flashing lights
status migrainous
with all over
crawling feeling
“not-theres”
stop I say
stop I pray
stop the way
the world spins
hurling in space
the race
the pace
exhaustion
please
take this body
in your arms
work your charms
on this alarm-
ing state
with alacrity
the paucity
of peace
needs mending
Oh evening
send hope
for ending
these frantic antics
quell the panic
break the day
and bring on
the dawn
of dreams
All that you see on this video is true. This is just the tip of the iceberg. My brother worked on many racetracks, including Belmont, and he told us stories that were heartbreaking. He finally got out of the race track business because he loved horses but could not abide the cruelty of how horses were treated. The video explains…
(As yet another killer, this time on the campus of Santa Barbara, California, is identified as possibly having Asperger’s syndrome, I, as a Bipolar Aspie, offer this poem written to my Aspie husband for May 14, 2014, on the occasion of our 25th wedding anniversary, to show that not all people with Asperger’s reach for a gun and are violent.)
The documentary, “The Ghost in Our Machine,” follows photographer, Jo-Anne McArthur as she takes pictures to show animal abuse on factory farms and how animals are helped by sanctuaries like Farm Sanctuary. It is a disturbing film but an extremely important one. We must rethink how we contribute to the cruelty inflicted upon dogs, cats, foxes, minks and farm animals. Please watch the trailer below. Jo-Anne McArthur has a book of her photographs and writings called, “We Animals.”
About three minutes into “Dallas Buyers Club” I just knew I was going to love it. Well, I more than loved it. I absolutely adored it and watched it twice. Why? Apart from being a highly meaningful piece of art with political overtones with which I concur, here was a film about the cowboy in my life. My brother.
*
No, my brother didn’t die of AIDS or HIV. He was not a drug addict and he was as straight as they come. I was the one with the homosexual experiences in my family. My brother didn’t even die of cirrhosis of the liver, though God knows he drank enough. No, my brother died of lung cancer at age 57.
*
Let me back up and give a synopsis of the film from Wikipedia for those of you who are not familiar with it: ‘”Dallas Buyers Club” is a 2013 American biographical drama film, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack. Matthew McConaughey stars as the real-life AIDS patient Ron Woodroof, who smuggled unapproved pharmaceutical drugs into Texas when he found them effective at improving his symptoms, distributing them to fellow sufferers by establishing the “Dallas Buyers Club” while facing opposition from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”
*
Like Woodroof, Tony was a hard drinking, hard-living, tough-as-nails cowboy who worked on thoroughbred horse farms for awhile as a groom. He got into trouble from time to time but he was blessed with a good, big heart. And, unlike Ron he lived long enough to turn his life around and live an exemplary life I cannot begin to touch. He married, settled down, became a wheelchair artisan and adopted three kids. He wound up doing volunteer work, too, therapeutic riding with handicapped kids. Things Ron might have done had he had the chance. Ron has a line in the film where he talks about wanting a family. But he died too young.
*
So did Tony. His cowboy life in Michigan was cut short when he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer at age 54. He was given 4 months to live. Dead set on fighting and aiming to win, he had chemo and radiation. I sent him doo-rags when his hair fell out. I did Reiki on him. And he did his God-damnedest to stay alive. All for his kids. He dropped down to 90 pounds, walked and looked like a dark-skinned, Latino Ron Woodroof at his most emaciated. It was heartbreaking to see this once rugged, handsome cowboy wearing long sleeves in the middle of a blistering summer so as not to scare people with his stick-insect arms.
*
Damn, the movie had guts! Power, too, in spades. Just like Ron Woodroof and his beautiful transvestite partner in business, Rayon. Just like my brother, and just like so many fighting for their lives. Ron outlived the 30 day sentence the doctors gave him when he was first diagnosed HIV, and he lived some seven more years. Tony lived three years after the initial prediction of four months. Chemo was hell for one week out of the month followed by three relatively good weeks. Relative is the word here. Tony told me time and again he was doing all this for the kids.
*
The Rons, the Rayons and the Tonys of the world– they are the unknown, unsung heroes of daily life. Ron Woodroof became famous thanks to the producers, writers, actors and all who made this movie jump from the page to the screen to brilliant, vibrant life. I thank them for telling the stories of Ron and Rayon. Stories that needed desperately to be told. Ron Woodroof made good in his own hustling way. So did my brother.
*
It was great seeing Tony again, even if only in metaphor. I cried plenty from the get-go and again the second time around, but even aside from my brother, would have anyhow. The characters, the movie was THAT poignant, counterpointed by humor, too. What a fantastic whirlwind of a life was portrayed in this outstanding, almost phantasmagorical film.
Though I write about meditation, spirituality, animal rights, mental illness and nature on this blog, I would be remiss in not sharing my passion for Indian dance and Bollywood movies. Bollywood movies, like Western movies, are vessels of escapism, but Bollywood movies add morality, family values and frequently, religion, into the mix. The dance and music is uplifting and, yes, sensual, without resorting to the blatant obscenity of Western films.
In this excerpt from the film, “Khalnayak,” Madhuri Dixit and Sanjay Dutt star. Madhuri is the diva of Indian dance and, in fact, I am taking free online lessons with her just for the fun of it. And fun it is. Madhuri makes no bones about using one’s feminine wiles to beguile. If interested the lessons are available at http://dancewithmadhuri.com. Sanjay Dutt is the handsome, irresistibly vulnerable heartthrob of the Indian screen and he dances as well. Most Bollywood stars not only act but dance, too.
In this scene, Madhuri Dixit plays an undercover cop acting as a dancer to allure and apprehend the soft-hearted criminal, Sanjay Dutt. They have great chemistry and the dancing is definitely an earthly pleasure, a blatant manifestation of Maya, to which I am attached. But I think I must follow to see where it leads. Experiencing writer’s block and artist’s block at the moment, perhaps dance is good for my soul. Critics might say my interest arises from a Bipolar mania or an Asperger’s obsession. Perhaps. I don’t know. I am certainly not manic at the moment. All I know is that the allure of this form of Maya is powerful, and to deny its existence may lead to the necessity of pursuing this manifestation of it in another life. Paramahansa Yogananda says that all life is Maya, a picture show. Perhaps by indulging in Bollywood films, I may get a new perspective on so-called “reality” and see it as Yogananda did, as a film show of the earthly passions, a dream from which we will awaken one day.
In this month of darkness, in this the darkest month, the light of the human spirit shines forth in so many– in so many ways. As the days grow shorter, houses and trees are decorated, and snow falls. In the hushed silence of the nights, lights shine in windows, and whisper in the darkness. For this season of giving brings the festivals of lights: Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and in the Fall, Diwali. Each tradition incorporates light in its ceremonies and decorations.
A neighbor-friend of mine who lives down the road, a donkey in his stable, reminds me of the story of another manger two thousand years ago. And seeing him snug in his stable with snow on the ground gives the illusion that all is right in the world. But all is not well. Far, far too many know no peace in any season. Far, far too many live in poverty. Far, far too many suffer the effects of the new mammoth storms.
We who live closer to the land are so blessed to share our lives with animals. These creatures are constant reminders of humility and simplicity in this rapid, complex, multi-tasking world. We drive around on a December night and see houses covered in lights with illuminated trees, houses warmed by fires, and imagine them filled with laughter and conversation and love. We are blessed to have so much, when so many have so little. Blessed to be able to celebrate our religious beliefs as we wish, when others cannot. Yet even in the worst of conditions the strength of the human spirit is indomitable.
In December’s darkness we light lights. In truth, we are beings of light. A light glows within each one of us. And, at the most basic level, we are beings of light for we are made of stardust. Perhaps that is why the stars hold such majesty for us—stars compose our bodies within, and, without, our skies sing with stars the hymns of the Heavens.
Einstein said: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe”– a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest– a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” We are all cut from the same cloth and our inner light is one.
And in this holiday season we behold the night sky as shepherds did two thousand years ago on the birth of the holy infant, in a stable. That night a star lit the whole sky to guide the shepherds. And, in 165 BCE, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was re-dedicated and with the miracle of the ritual oil, the light burned for eight nights.
On these deep, long, silent nights as we light our houses, our candles, our Menorahs, our trees, let us look inside ourselves and find the glow that unites us and will guide us to the Everlasting Light.
"Exploring the Spiritual Cosmos in the Digital Universe," "Harmony Beyond Boundaries in the Digital Realm," "Your Gateway to Infinite Wisdom in the Digital Universe," "Connecting Consciousness Across the Virtual Cosmos," "Discover Divinity in the Digital Universe," "Where the Spirit Meets the Digital Frontier," "Empowering Inner Growth Through the Digital Universe," "Digital Universe, Infinite Spiritual Possibilities," "Awakening Souls Across the Digital Horizon," "Navigating Spiritual Journeys in a Boundless Digital Universe."
Christian Writings, Testimonies, Prayers and Inspiration, Poetry, Faith, Family, Trust, Religion, Christian, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Being Crazy For Christ, Published Author, Chrisitan Books, Growing, Believe, Leo The Lion, David The Darvin Fox, Hope, Dreams, Christian, worship, Fantasy, Adventure,
MOONSIDE 
You must be logged in to post a comment.