Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelet, though, makes me vomit
One of my favourite quotes about the Soviet Union is when Panahit Istrati after visiting Stalin's russia replied to the "You don't make omelet without breaking a few eggs" with :
All right, I can see the broken eggs. Now where's this omelette of yours?
Gratitude is nice but the poems that do change governments and people's lives for the better can't only do gratitude. Anger is needed too. Accountability is important.
Some people treat the oppressive government as weather. Something you don't have any control over and therefore - no responsibility for. Others treat it as their responsibility. And these people are NOT grateful, when injustice is done in their names.
let your sister Scorn not leave you
for the informers executioners cowards—they will win
they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography
and do not forgive truly it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed both poems but remain partial to Brodsky's- probably a matter of taste and preference.
However, your conclusion (or at least the way I interpreted it) that the essence that drove the writing of Herbert's poem was also responsible for Polish political outcomes and Russia's current state seems a bit far-fetched and reductionist. And Brodsky's poem and quotes in the article do not imply a lack of courage/defiance to me. On the contrary, I read his poem to mean that despite being steadfast in your views, have room for gratitude.
It's a simplification, obviously. But I do think there's a cultural factor in how society approaches the government and suffering in general that strongly influences what kind of government keeps developing in that society.
When you talk about politics with Russians - they always talk about it like it's a force of nature. Like the only choice is fatalistic acceptance.
I agree with you on that point. This fatalistic attitude is also often mentioned when discussing how the Indian subcontinent remained colonized for so long. I do not know enough about Polish history to be able to compare their cultural stock to that of the 'East'.
This is exactly how I feel about my programming work in this credentialist United States. I will keep programming, in spite of the haters -- who will stop me?
Oh, I didn't realize that was Maria Konnikova. That makes it hit differently, now.
Gratitude is, indeed, difficult to keep in one's mind and heart as the loveless bastards of this world further their schemes that abuse the Earth and all her peoples. As the willfully ignorant fools denigrate the wise and extoll the life they lead sans compassion. Mining fakeass algorithmic coins as the poor can't pay for heat, as food is hard to come by, and as we cook the world's oceans.
But I know which side I am on. The side of justice has few to defend it as we creep towards this reckoning, this chaos, this utter misery, born of turning away from our best, our virtue, while revelling in the idiocy of our worst vices. On tv, in the movies, in the net's forums, in public and in private, and in the people we elect.
This Garden smells of eggfarts and petro-exhaust, of misery and deprivation, of for-profit prisons and low-income housing, ketamine-jacked apartheiders, sans loving family, not loving their family, but with enough money to help a million people, but instead supports the living devils, the cruel, lying liars, those who refuse the sweet nectar of compassion.
I'm grateful I'll not die like that, without even trying, settling into their last breath with the universe's knowing that they're only settling further down as time marches on, without a saving grace, with a bloated, stinking, albatross of their life's own choices, bearing down upon their soul.
I damn them, too, for having forsaken love, belittling and obscuring the Way, for lying about the truth, for taking what could be stolen, hating those that love, and for perverting justice. I damn them, too, for that is True Justice.
For selfishness, for money, for fucking money, for kicking the poor while we're down. All this while, they ignore the fact that the universe remembers everything, and it is not unjust, unloving, or uncaring.
No, motherfucker, Time Will Tell, I'm gonna take the Mister from out in front of your name, it's high time to take the power back, for the people of the sun, for the hopeless, for the poets, for the innocents jailed, for innocence violated, for the good men stomped out by the cruelty of unfettered capitalism.
No, Joseph Stalin died in his sleep, in his palace, having created an unjust system that beat down poets who wrote about love and gratitude and the truths of life, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. No, Joseph Stalin will meet his Maker, and he shall reap what he has sown, for the universe is just and compassionate and kind, in how it brutalizes the brutalizers, tortures the torturers, but not usually upon this Earth.
It is just, but not always while we live, unless one counts being deprived of peace. No, while we live, we all get to be as shitty as we like, with no karmic lightning bolt magically striking the evil down. No, we must wait, clinging to compassion and kindness and service and the poetry of a life lived for the goodness of the 19 virtues.
No, we must wait and work and hope and pray, and remain grateful for the little frogs, every single bee, the breeze in the bush, every laugh, every nacho and sip of coffee. And every kiss, while we await the terrible changeover at the end of this brutal set.
Thank you Maria, for Brodsky, for your gratitude.
I'm a crap poet, but my poetry is the poetry of the blunt truth, spoken to fools and wise alike, out of love for all.
Who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand?
The vultures just bought these apartments, kicked us out of our apartment for two months this summer to renovate it, so they can raise our rent from $1040 to $1500 a month, with formaldehyde likely in our new wood flooring. They refused my request for the MSDSs. There is no law against this travesty, but I'm grateful, because my family stands firm, against the lying motherfucker who stood before us a earlier this year and lied to our faces and said that our rent wouldn't rise. No, they're not going to defeat my compassion; no, they are defeating themselves with cruel profit without concern for the human costs.
And, so, a white guy in the projects dances to "Squabble Up", while my Trump-loving parents live within seven miles of us, full of COVID and bullshit, going to church but caring not for Jesus' teachings, dipshits that they are. They don't even know their grandkids, blessed, loving, kind teens of a rare ilk in these dark days.
I now know why Jesus said, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." That sword is the Light of Truth, the light of love and honesty and goodness.
No evil can bear the light of truth, those that jail poets and lie about the truth, and contain no love but for their own; they hide from the truth, but there is only truth in this universe, and what was hidden shall be brought into the light.
"There's God's side and the other side." --Katt Williams
"Who the fuck are you?" --The Who
Get yourselves ready, because I see lightning in the distance.
You don't know the verse I'm talking about. He speaks of turning children against their parents, my friend. Why would a teacher of love tell us that? Well, when those parents live their lives in complete opposition to what that man gave his life to teach and exemplify. That's when.
My mother believes that Trump never cheated on his wives. That's a f_cking dipshit, dude.
Stupidity is the result of willful ignorance of the truth. I don't hate anyone or think people should be stoned for adultery or whatever, but the truth is the truth, and we must seek it, find it, and believe it.
She claimed that she loves the Ten Commandments, then votes for the two candidates that purposefully lied about legal-immigrant Ohio-residing Haitians eating people's pets. The 8th or 9th Commandment is "Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Why? Because it's evil to sow mischief and lies in order to "rile up your base". You know who else did that shit in the late 1930s? Yup.
She has left the path of Wisdom and been fooled by selfish, corrupt liars. And it's my father's decades of FoxNews, OANN, and that other one, that has brought them down.
2 Timothy 3 speaks very clearly about whom to have nothing to do with in this world. It's sound advice, even for a non-religious person, but especially -- especially -- when choosing the leaders of the most powerful country on Earth.
I know the verse you're talking about. Jesus is talking about the result of his teachings, about what happens when people follow him. Other people will turn away, hate them, and fight them.
But he also said to love your enemies. Those people who turn away and are at enmity with you? Love them anyway.
And it doesn't sound like you do.
(2 Timothy 3 is talking about people in the church. Jesus is talking about people outside. If you want to say that your parents don't belong in church, fine. If discernment tells you to treat them like unbelievers, fine. But the contempt and bitterness doesn't sound right coming from someone quoting Jesus.)
I do love my enemies, but they have to want to hear the truth. It is their human right to be ignorant and ignore God's Wisdom. And I treat them well, though they so loath the truth that they don't call anymore. They are supporting people who actively work against everything Jesus lived for, and those people are making the world much worse for my children, their effing grandchildren!
And you are not reading 2 Timothy 3 correctly. The first five verses are a set of qualities that the loathsome choose to manifest, and it ends with a Command, "Have nothing to do with such people."
That verse is about people, whether in a church or not. It's about people in "terrible times". And the Command is clear. It also includes -- for those whose minds have been clarified by loving God -- the implicit Command to not support their being a leader.
Was Jesus loving his enemies when he threw the moneychangers out of the Temple? He sure was, my friend. My father called it "tough love", and my love for him will save him from the fate of all cruelly ignorant hypocrites, if only he'd listen to the effing truth.
The fact is that my prayers for them carry no weight in the presense of their willful ignorance. Their free will is respected by God just as much as mine, but I don't believe Jesus will save my sins on the Judgement Day; I choose to repent now and become a better person while I live so that I might bring God's light of loving service to all the people I can reach.
Jesus even says, "That which you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me." The fakeass Christians will learn the meaning of those verses on that Day of Days, but, by then, it will be too late. We are judged for what we do here on Earth, while we live.
Judgement is heaven or hell, reward or punishment. What other outcome can there be?
Knowing Him is to follow God's commands and to love God with all your being and then love your neighbor as yourself. And to seek and find the meaning of "Hallowed be Thy Name", and other mysteries.
Intention is the multiplier for our actions, and that product is what we are judged upon. It's how the well-intentioned act of charity is weighed differently from giving charity in order to tell people, or merely for tax breaks.
Our change comes in degrees, over time with honest self-evaluation and effort, failures with apologies and, eventually, successes, until we see Its Face, and thereafter be "pure in heart", another "servant of all" taking their place as "the greatest among us".
It starts with begging God to take Its Spirit back into Itself while we live, so that our soul may be cleansed and purified of its vices. That is the meaning of the 1st Beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs shall be the Kingdom of God."
Then we have to slog through and overcome our selfishnesses, to the end, as described by the 5th (IIRC) Beatitude, by learning how to choose selfless service to others over selfishness.
Most people believe Jesus will forgive them on the JD, just because they say some words; many Muslims believe the same but with different words, and many Buddhists believe we just keep getting more chances. No. Those are lies of the deceiver of man, who works on our minds and hearts.
We get one chance on this Earth, for good or ill, and everything about our choices is knowable as to whether it harmonizes with God's teachings. It is up to us to seek that truth, humbly and honestly, and without the misguided corruptions brought by generations of telephone, whereby human beings have been led away from the Truth of Love.
Peace be with you. We love you. I am at your service.
Let me suggest everyone here reading Nadhezda Mandelstam’s memoirs, “Hope against hope”, and “Hope abandoned”. A lot to learn about people who “only wanted to make everybody happy” (she includes herself in that group). Amazing.
I'm sure Brodsky is a great poet, but there is also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Independence_of_Ukraine
"In Russia even anarchists are imperialists"
Józef Piłsudski (which also wasn't a great guy, but about Russia he was right)
In the first poem, I read
One of my favourite quotes about the Soviet Union is when Panahit Istrati after visiting Stalin's russia replied to the "You don't make omelet without breaking a few eggs" with : I wonder if it's a reference to this quoteGratitude is nice but the poems that do change governments and people's lives for the better can't only do gratitude. Anger is needed too. Accountability is important.
Some people treat the oppressive government as weather. Something you don't have any control over and therefore - no responsibility for. Others treat it as their responsibility. And these people are NOT grateful, when injustice is done in their names.
Compare https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48501/the-envoy-of-mr...
Guess which country remains totalitarian.Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed both poems but remain partial to Brodsky's- probably a matter of taste and preference.
However, your conclusion (or at least the way I interpreted it) that the essence that drove the writing of Herbert's poem was also responsible for Polish political outcomes and Russia's current state seems a bit far-fetched and reductionist. And Brodsky's poem and quotes in the article do not imply a lack of courage/defiance to me. On the contrary, I read his poem to mean that despite being steadfast in your views, have room for gratitude.
It's a simplification, obviously. But I do think there's a cultural factor in how society approaches the government and suffering in general that strongly influences what kind of government keeps developing in that society.
When you talk about politics with Russians - they always talk about it like it's a force of nature. Like the only choice is fatalistic acceptance.
I agree with you on that point. This fatalistic attitude is also often mentioned when discussing how the Indian subcontinent remained colonized for so long. I do not know enough about Polish history to be able to compare their cultural stock to that of the 'East'.
Thats beautiful..
>Yet until brown clay has been rammed down my larynx,
>only gratitude will be gushing from it.
Bookmarking this one for sure, to return to often.
This is exactly how I feel about my programming work in this credentialist United States. I will keep programming, in spite of the haters -- who will stop me?
Oh, I didn't realize that was Maria Konnikova. That makes it hit differently, now.
Gratitude is, indeed, difficult to keep in one's mind and heart as the loveless bastards of this world further their schemes that abuse the Earth and all her peoples. As the willfully ignorant fools denigrate the wise and extoll the life they lead sans compassion. Mining fakeass algorithmic coins as the poor can't pay for heat, as food is hard to come by, and as we cook the world's oceans.
But I know which side I am on. The side of justice has few to defend it as we creep towards this reckoning, this chaos, this utter misery, born of turning away from our best, our virtue, while revelling in the idiocy of our worst vices. On tv, in the movies, in the net's forums, in public and in private, and in the people we elect.
This Garden smells of eggfarts and petro-exhaust, of misery and deprivation, of for-profit prisons and low-income housing, ketamine-jacked apartheiders, sans loving family, not loving their family, but with enough money to help a million people, but instead supports the living devils, the cruel, lying liars, those who refuse the sweet nectar of compassion.
I'm grateful I'll not die like that, without even trying, settling into their last breath with the universe's knowing that they're only settling further down as time marches on, without a saving grace, with a bloated, stinking, albatross of their life's own choices, bearing down upon their soul.
I damn them, too, for having forsaken love, belittling and obscuring the Way, for lying about the truth, for taking what could be stolen, hating those that love, and for perverting justice. I damn them, too, for that is True Justice.
For selfishness, for money, for fucking money, for kicking the poor while we're down. All this while, they ignore the fact that the universe remembers everything, and it is not unjust, unloving, or uncaring.
No, motherfucker, Time Will Tell, I'm gonna take the Mister from out in front of your name, it's high time to take the power back, for the people of the sun, for the hopeless, for the poets, for the innocents jailed, for innocence violated, for the good men stomped out by the cruelty of unfettered capitalism.
No, Joseph Stalin died in his sleep, in his palace, having created an unjust system that beat down poets who wrote about love and gratitude and the truths of life, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. No, Joseph Stalin will meet his Maker, and he shall reap what he has sown, for the universe is just and compassionate and kind, in how it brutalizes the brutalizers, tortures the torturers, but not usually upon this Earth.
It is just, but not always while we live, unless one counts being deprived of peace. No, while we live, we all get to be as shitty as we like, with no karmic lightning bolt magically striking the evil down. No, we must wait, clinging to compassion and kindness and service and the poetry of a life lived for the goodness of the 19 virtues.
No, we must wait and work and hope and pray, and remain grateful for the little frogs, every single bee, the breeze in the bush, every laugh, every nacho and sip of coffee. And every kiss, while we await the terrible changeover at the end of this brutal set.
Thank you Maria, for Brodsky, for your gratitude.
I'm a crap poet, but my poetry is the poetry of the blunt truth, spoken to fools and wise alike, out of love for all.
Who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand?
Wow, shots fired at low income housing.
The vultures just bought these apartments, kicked us out of our apartment for two months this summer to renovate it, so they can raise our rent from $1040 to $1500 a month, with formaldehyde likely in our new wood flooring. They refused my request for the MSDSs. There is no law against this travesty, but I'm grateful, because my family stands firm, against the lying motherfucker who stood before us a earlier this year and lied to our faces and said that our rent wouldn't rise. No, they're not going to defeat my compassion; no, they are defeating themselves with cruel profit without concern for the human costs.
And, so, a white guy in the projects dances to "Squabble Up", while my Trump-loving parents live within seven miles of us, full of COVID and bullshit, going to church but caring not for Jesus' teachings, dipshits that they are. They don't even know their grandkids, blessed, loving, kind teens of a rare ilk in these dark days.
I now know why Jesus said, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." That sword is the Light of Truth, the light of love and honesty and goodness.
No evil can bear the light of truth, those that jail poets and lie about the truth, and contain no love but for their own; they hide from the truth, but there is only truth in this universe, and what was hidden shall be brought into the light.
"There's God's side and the other side." --Katt Williams
"Who the fuck are you?" --The Who
Get yourselves ready, because I see lightning in the distance.
> while my Trump-loving parents live within seven miles of us, full of COVID and bullshit, going to church but caring not for Jesus' teachings...
OK.
> dipshits that they are.
Um... that doesn't sound like Jesus' teachings either.
You don't know the verse I'm talking about. He speaks of turning children against their parents, my friend. Why would a teacher of love tell us that? Well, when those parents live their lives in complete opposition to what that man gave his life to teach and exemplify. That's when.
My mother believes that Trump never cheated on his wives. That's a f_cking dipshit, dude.
Stupidity is the result of willful ignorance of the truth. I don't hate anyone or think people should be stoned for adultery or whatever, but the truth is the truth, and we must seek it, find it, and believe it.
She claimed that she loves the Ten Commandments, then votes for the two candidates that purposefully lied about legal-immigrant Ohio-residing Haitians eating people's pets. The 8th or 9th Commandment is "Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Why? Because it's evil to sow mischief and lies in order to "rile up your base". You know who else did that shit in the late 1930s? Yup.
She has left the path of Wisdom and been fooled by selfish, corrupt liars. And it's my father's decades of FoxNews, OANN, and that other one, that has brought them down.
2 Timothy 3 speaks very clearly about whom to have nothing to do with in this world. It's sound advice, even for a non-religious person, but especially -- especially -- when choosing the leaders of the most powerful country on Earth.
I know the verse you're talking about. Jesus is talking about the result of his teachings, about what happens when people follow him. Other people will turn away, hate them, and fight them.
But he also said to love your enemies. Those people who turn away and are at enmity with you? Love them anyway.
And it doesn't sound like you do.
(2 Timothy 3 is talking about people in the church. Jesus is talking about people outside. If you want to say that your parents don't belong in church, fine. If discernment tells you to treat them like unbelievers, fine. But the contempt and bitterness doesn't sound right coming from someone quoting Jesus.)
I do love my enemies, but they have to want to hear the truth. It is their human right to be ignorant and ignore God's Wisdom. And I treat them well, though they so loath the truth that they don't call anymore. They are supporting people who actively work against everything Jesus lived for, and those people are making the world much worse for my children, their effing grandchildren!
And you are not reading 2 Timothy 3 correctly. The first five verses are a set of qualities that the loathsome choose to manifest, and it ends with a Command, "Have nothing to do with such people."
That verse is about people, whether in a church or not. It's about people in "terrible times". And the Command is clear. It also includes -- for those whose minds have been clarified by loving God -- the implicit Command to not support their being a leader.
Was Jesus loving his enemies when he threw the moneychangers out of the Temple? He sure was, my friend. My father called it "tough love", and my love for him will save him from the fate of all cruelly ignorant hypocrites, if only he'd listen to the effing truth.
The fact is that my prayers for them carry no weight in the presense of their willful ignorance. Their free will is respected by God just as much as mine, but I don't believe Jesus will save my sins on the Judgement Day; I choose to repent now and become a better person while I live so that I might bring God's light of loving service to all the people I can reach.
Jesus even says, "That which you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me." The fakeass Christians will learn the meaning of those verses on that Day of Days, but, by then, it will be too late. We are judged for what we do here on Earth, while we live.
> The fakeass Christians will learn the meaning of those verses on that Day of Days, but, by then, it will be too late.
Yup.
> We are judged for what we do here on Earth, while we live.
Be very careful with that.
"But we did all this stuff!"
"Depart from me, for I never knew you."
Any real "knowing Him" will change us, and thereby change our actions. But be very careful of depending on the actions.
Yes, there will be a judgment for what we do, but that will be for reward, not for "in or out".
Judgement is heaven or hell, reward or punishment. What other outcome can there be?
Knowing Him is to follow God's commands and to love God with all your being and then love your neighbor as yourself. And to seek and find the meaning of "Hallowed be Thy Name", and other mysteries.
Intention is the multiplier for our actions, and that product is what we are judged upon. It's how the well-intentioned act of charity is weighed differently from giving charity in order to tell people, or merely for tax breaks.
Our change comes in degrees, over time with honest self-evaluation and effort, failures with apologies and, eventually, successes, until we see Its Face, and thereafter be "pure in heart", another "servant of all" taking their place as "the greatest among us".
It starts with begging God to take Its Spirit back into Itself while we live, so that our soul may be cleansed and purified of its vices. That is the meaning of the 1st Beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs shall be the Kingdom of God."
Then we have to slog through and overcome our selfishnesses, to the end, as described by the 5th (IIRC) Beatitude, by learning how to choose selfless service to others over selfishness.
Most people believe Jesus will forgive them on the JD, just because they say some words; many Muslims believe the same but with different words, and many Buddhists believe we just keep getting more chances. No. Those are lies of the deceiver of man, who works on our minds and hearts.
We get one chance on this Earth, for good or ill, and everything about our choices is knowable as to whether it harmonizes with God's teachings. It is up to us to seek that truth, humbly and honestly, and without the misguided corruptions brought by generations of telephone, whereby human beings have been led away from the Truth of Love.
Peace be with you. We love you. I am at your service.
Let me suggest everyone here reading Nadhezda Mandelstam’s memoirs, “Hope against hope”, and “Hope abandoned”. A lot to learn about people who “only wanted to make everybody happy” (she includes herself in that group). Amazing.