FREEDOM

Theme Thursday, Booking Through Thursday & ABC Wednesday
With Thursday Thirteen news & more prompts below
Try my Paranormal Flash now!

BLOGGER BARD

Welcome to my weekly magazine post. Watch
it grow thru the week. You can opt to read
the essay, current affairs, themed mini mag
with fiction & poetry, or just read the lot.
Plenty for everyone here. Do call again.

MESSAGE IN A …

Bottles can contain many life-changing substances from medicine to
booze. Hence, they can have good or bad effects on us. The English
language uses ‘bottle’ in many ways. To lose one’s bottle is a lack of
courage; to bottle things up is to worry; a bottleneck means you’re
going nowhere soon; a bottle-washer is the bottom of the heap.
‘Bottle’ is a metaphor for so many human traits, and container for
much of the best and worse of us. And like a bottle we can stand up
straight or shatter so easily. There’s so much of us in the message in
a bottle.

READ MELD

Where does reading a book take you? Nowhere.
At least, not physically. Reading is to transport
the mind into the mind of another – the writer.
What the writer has achieved is a subjective
account of place, story or idea. Yet words are
insufficient as a medium. For completion another
subjective view is required from the reader. And
the two together transform the words into
thought, and if successful, action, thus
transforming the world.

FREEDOM

True freedom cannot exist – we always need rules to guide how our
freedom and excellence is expressed. For instance, you have the
freedom to excel in, say, football or as a violinist, but it can only be
expressed within the confines of a team or orchestra. What we think
of as freedom is actually a balance between freedom and unfreedom.
Lose the balance and we have totalitarianism or anarchy, the latter
still ending up as licence for the strong to dominate the weak.
Individuality can be counter to freedom. It makes you answer only to
the culture to which you belong, which is inevitably guided by the
powers-that-be. Important to this process at the moment is the
degrading of family. Traditionally, family is the defensive line between
the person and the powers, so ‘individuals’ do the job of the powers
for them. Such power in society forms naturally. Indeed, it often feels
like a conspiracy is going on. This is not the case – but the powers
need such scares so as to make detractors seem crazy. Of course,
you seem to have freedom, but totalitarianism isn’t total. As long as
you toe the line of the ideology they leave you alone. Hence you can
be anything you want to be as long as you have a mortgage, fat
pension plan, love shopping, wear designer clothes, buy a new car
every year and holiday often.

Eye On the World
Essays on everything from science
to religion, politics to crime

BRIT NEWS: Think tank says
working week should be cut to 21
hrs to boost economy & improve society.
I think many workers would disagree.

WORLD NEWS: Obama expresses ‘strong support’
for Tibetan way of life. China doesn’t like it. China needs
to decide: in the world or not?

BRIT NEWS: Lib Dems start to tout terms for a ‘pact’ in a hung
Parliament. This nightmare could keep a Labour govt in power.

HEALTH NEWS: Middle-aged are to be targeted to lose weight. Just
remember, it’s natural to put on a stone ot two at that age. It’s inevitable.

BRIT NEWS: Many celebrities & tycoons caught up in tax
avoidance investigation. Makes a change from
demonising so-called benefit cheats.

WORLD NEWS: Hit squad that killed Hamas commander
used cloned British passports. Has Mossad caused
diplomatic blunder? Is it that easy?

BRIT NEWS: Survey suggest 1 in 4 employers
planning redundancies. After the
Recession the real pain hits.
There’s a long road
to recovery.

RATTLER’S TALE

A Voyage of the Imagination

One Single Impression
ReadWritePoem – Friday Flash 55
Heads or Tails – Three Word Wednesday
Sunday Scribblings

RUNNING

Engine running, getting us there,
Camera running – at Telly we stare,
Project running, keeping us primed,
Clocks are running, taking our time,
Everyone running from Bob to Tom,
What is it we’re all running from?

THE AFFAIR

Fiction: He’s having an affair – I know he is. Here I am looking on and
knowing his wife doesn’t know about it. And as for the other woman?
A real psycho. Oh boy, this could be trouble and I’ve got to tell you,
I’m worried! Well, I’m going to have to stop them – leave clues –
somehow put an end to this before it gets … Well, it could be bad for
me – very bad. I’m a bunny and no one’s boiling me.

I DON’T BELIEVE

I don’t believe a single thing,
To me only the facts can sing,
This I place with hypothesis clever,
Thinking it out is then my endeavour,
So I don’t believe scientist or priest;
I believe I don’t believe, at least

FLASH 55 – A METAPHOR

Fiction: I’m just a metaphor. Everything I do is to someone else’s
script. It’s as if I’m just a character in a story. Or at least, that’s how
I feel. Damn this life! Nothing is my own, even though I’m told it is. I
was happy before we invented the individual and I thought I wasn’t.

THE RUMOUR

The rumour started innocently,
Inevitably progressed malignantly,
People reacted perniciously,
Many died ultimately;
It became a truth indubitably,
And as always we behaved stupidly

POWER MAD

I got the power, you want some more?
Such meagre payment – there’s the door;
I can generate easily enough,
Don’t want to pay? Tough;
I got the plug – can pull it; you’ll freeze,
You’ll pay what I want! Yeah! I’m a tease

BIG DREAMS

Got a big dream, always have,
Nothing can make you so very sad,
‘Cos dreams that big just can’t be done,
Life’s impossible, absolutely no fun,
Unless you limit them by little dreams,
Go step by step, and then you’ll beam

BRIT NEWS: Children from poor
homes are a year behind in language
skills by age 5. Is this to do with intelligence
or a sense of failure?

GREEN NEWS: UN report says many Multi-Nats would lose
30% profit if forced to be green. Rubbish! They just don’t want
to adapt.

BRIT NEWS: Inflation rises to 3.6%, wage freeze imminent & Barclay’s
Bank make over £12billion profit! And they think Brits will stay calm.

HEALTH NEWS: UK regulator says councils will struggle to cope with
care of ageing population. So will we all, but we’ll manage it.

BRIT NEWS: Less than a third of juries understand a
judge’s directions. Then it’s up to the judge to
speak more clearly and make sense!

CELEB NEWS: So Tiger Woods publicly apologises.
I’m uncomfortable with such shows. It’s to
do with career; and what’s it got to
do with us?

© Anthony North, February 2010

Try my Pictures of Life, a novel