I Am Not My Bones.

My skin keeps the rain off,
It keeps the rain off me.
Because I am not my skin.

My arms protect me from the world,
they fend off the devil.
Because I am not my arms.

My legs hold me off the ground,
they take me far and wide.
Because I am not my legs.

My heart pumps my blood,
it pumps blood into me.
Because I am not my heart.

My mind solves problems that face me,
it finds the solutions.
Because I am not my mind.

I am not my skin, muscles, blood and fingers,
I am not my eyes, teeth, tongue and hair,
I am not my bones.

I am none of these things. You can throw them away.
At the end of the day.

But I'll still be there.


Won't I?

Does The Why Matter If The What Is Good?

Governments, organisations, agencies and individuals are motivated by a lot of different things. Sometimes, it's love. Or desire. Or greed. Or pride. Or anger. Or hate. Or guilt. Or sadness. Or fear. Or a mixture of these and many others.

People do things. 

A woman works hard. Without her, no one will feed her children.

Is that love, or fear, or guilt?

A man fights fires for a living. He does this because his daughter dies in a house fire that he accidentally started. 

Is that hate? Or anger? Or love? 

A blind man, a writer, invents a system of reading for blind people, called braille. He wants everyone to be able to read.

Is that desire? Or pride? Or envy? 

A Church incites a holy war. They want the infidel to know their God, and not to see their people become corrupted by this new religion.

Is that hate? Or fear? Or love?

The purpose of doing something for many people is often lost in the emotion of doing so. A politician may want to change the world. She may even do so. But the fact remains: She gets out of bed every morning because she loves the thrill of power. 

Emotion as a motivator is strong. In fact, it really is the only thing that motivates us as creatures. We still do good things. But they can be motivated by the most horrific emotions.

That begs the question: Does it matter what motivates us? Obviously it matters if our emotions impair our judgement and we change from doing goo to bad. But if they do not, and we continue to act for God when the devil drives us, does it really matter?

I don’t think so. I think that all that matters is what we do. Not why we do something.

The idea that bad thoughts could be used as a motive for good might be unsettling for some, but I find it gives me hope. That even the worst of us can look beyond their base nature, and do things not because they feel the need, but because they can see they are right or wrong. And that they can use whatever it is that drives them to do great and wonderful things. 

Faith Comes From The Brain

Is it stupidity to believe that the universe exists the way it does because chemicals react and rocks bounce off rocks, and that light moves very fast? No.

But is it stupidity to believe that the universe exists the way it does because a powerful being imagined those chemicals, those rocks and the idea of light, and in whatever way, made the process occur? No.

Faith is not idiocy. Idiocy is idiocy, and all too often people cover their idiocy with faith. 
Faith is not a disease. It is, in the end, an idea, and an idea as complicated, beautiful and extraordinary as a belief in God will always be misunderstood by far too many people.

We are not liars, we are not con artists, we are not evil or illogical or stupid or mindless sheep.

No more than anyone is. And when people say we are, it breaks my heart.

No it doesn't. The heart is a muscle. What it really does is injure me emotionally through the stimuli entering my brain, chemical reactions occurring and it being reflected in my change of mood, my mood changing in what many would deem a negative and dramatic way.

It would be illogical to think otherwise... right? 

We all believe in something. Ideas are what make humanity beautiful and horrific and everything between.

Notes to self, now also for you.

Note to self: Policemen are made of wax. Or perhaps, they are only in certain places.

Note to self: The man who mistook his wife for a hat.

Note to self: Are the pickled brains of three dead geniuses worth the soul of one unborn child?

Note to self: The desperate actions of desperate people are not the actions of fine, thinking folk. But they could be.

Note to self: A thought thought is a thought remembered.

Note to self: It is highly probable that the things that everyone does I too shall do in time.

Note to self: On the 12th of April 1961 the cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin became the first man in space.

Note to self: Just because you have an idea does not mean it belongs to you, once it leaves your lips.

Note to self: You are not yourself.

Note to self: Over thought and indecisiveness has been greatly injuring. Green is the colour for sadness, and ivy is the memory of it.

The Life That Brings And Sings.

"The brain has its own internal logic to test the structure and consistency of the world."
- Carl Sagan.


Each day we make ourselves anew.
It is only by making similar choices, again, and again.
That we build identity.
From the cast-off rubble of life.

I am not your hate or your cruelty.
I am not your superman, your saviour.
I am not nothing.
But I am something.

A brief flash of light in the dark?
A glimpse into another world?
What would you not trade,
For certainty. Whatever you see that as.

I have certainty. It came to me on a hot, hot day.
And a damn cold soggy night,
And a long silent wait in a clean corridor.
Perhaps even, in a something miraculous.

When you feel fear, fear you felt before,
And you know that the waiting will but make it stronger.
Do you ask for a miracle?

I didn't.

When you are more tired than you have ever been,
when you are hungry and lost and stuck and in pain.
Do you ask for a miracle?

I didn't.

When all the world is falling apart around you,
and you watch as all you love falls and drowns in an uncertain future.
Do you ask for a miracle?

I didn't.

But I'm still here.

No hair, and lots of it.

I was thinking about my hair, and I have a question. Why don't other great apes have hair as long as us? I mean, it's not like orangutans and chimps get regular haircuts, so why don't they all have really long hair? their chosen environments are warm so it would make sense.

Presumably we have some kind of evolutionary advantage associated with our long hair being exclusively on our heads. I conclude that the reason for that would be that our clothes have been keeping the other parts of our bodies warm, and we adapted to that, no longer needing hair where clothes covered us, diminishing its thickness and length. So we must have been wearing clothes as a species for a VERY long time now.

Tom Cat.

I would be happy to know you.

But I grow weary.

Why cannot I concentrate you, the two features I desire.

I miss you. The truth of the world, like a tide slowing moving in, robs me of the lie of you.

I wouldn't care for anything. I would not care for for the world that you alone could make me see.

The night reeks of your scent.

And like a hungry cat that stalks, who slicks his hunger with tiny birds and sad little rodents, I seek you.

The honesty of my depravities are all the truth that I have.