Speech (continuing)

 Due drastic nature of the Scale against the favor of the popular nation, the Nation’s favor, and the future of this Nation, this letter is my call that even the most treasured of intellect and intuition be held in the highest regard and respect find those too by these qualities, so that the Real Big News about what we are as a Nation, but now too, what enemies have imagined themselves to be, not as a nation, not as a people, not even as a group.  Not as a nation could they perceive us, for not from the same have they come, erroneous had our findings likely been.  They know nought of what we are, what we stand for, what we have lived through in the centuries since we had landed and the times through which we have settled.  Through the centuries of solitude surrounded by what but Raw Nature they know of not, they had no idea.  In all these times through even poverty had our strife been, believing only we have been right and true to ourselves and all those before, it is our Birthright, this is the belief upon our values that have held ourselves each in place and time with one another, with our values true and bright, as by every American.

The emerging conflicts and the coming conflicts are not one and the same: that one and the other could both find no name, no explanation, no understanding, for they had bore no declaration, no information, nor even name to announce nor explain. From whence, how whither, why now, how so. What understanding is there is none, for they had come urged upon the flimsiness of missing information and corrupted government, so now as they approach, we had to sadly declare to ourselves by a whisper that no understanding could be possible for what struggle we own, that this is as the deed again for our birthright.

Across that void that is the oceans, the emergent Conflict had begun a century ago though in a fantasia, a tragic song, foreign, of the pain of decades and lasting more than two centuries amassing then and then what go, but that this spelled itself to be full, yet then but of nothing that every American could recognize as American: fiction had remained foreign to all of those, they had viewed our literature media as expressions of ignorance and greed, whereupon we reflected and were reminded blankly that it was only of intelligence, strength, and courage, this from our media from our birth and culture did grant us Free Speech. These depictions of and for ourselves lost to the struggle and competition in lands where fighting persisted and people falling (like beasts).  To enter the world called America, a land of these of Us, who in Everyday do challenge ourselves and are challenged, to rise, to lift, to heights where the Grandeur of Heroes and Citizens all these times before did stand, just so to uphold What This Nation Is, before those who will by their memory Recall, and before those who were who did detest.

Against what but seeming waves to signal departures from our values elsewhere discovered away from our homeland, for that call that appears from nowhere, by nobody, away from lands and peoples appearing and disappearing from Nowhere, and then some feeling of shame of what we had yet to know, what had been chosen Here at home, that here to dwell, that here we shall stay and make home, so that declared nowhere these sentiments were not brought, but had been brewing by the shallows of the darks, between smoke stacks, and behind alleys which could no longer reach eyes… So erroneous did our findings make us wonder who we are today in this year at this age in what place, on a planet.  

It is by what we ourselves only know, for it is from where we had come we did come together, and knowing what we do know is what we had come to know through centuries, through solitude, through Raw Nature, then through poverty itself did we strife upon having little but those moments of memory, values, and beliefs that the dream to manifest our destiny realize. These years have come to no error, as we have come to that understanding, so so much could be reached and so so much could find resolution, and this little to love, and finally even one then to peace in our circle each.

But through the decades two and almost three, in all these years did we Resist Peacefully, yet what ends were found but the sadness of losses of our deeper profoundly integral selves, of those we loved and continue to love, and that bare naked life itself, it was me myself.  In what did the enemy find in our shows of deep peace, compassion, and friendship, in the years in which Endurance and Strength by the Dream and Belief, by our values, our uncles, our senators, our presidents, in their words and our actions, weakness.

Weakness how? But assuming.  That no means were we ignorant of yesterday, that misunderstanding had had been.  So to spare the Sunday suit and dress for attendance, it was possible.  Asserting, no.  That for activity of and relating to dominance we had delimited to our civil courts of attendance, it was them who were ignorant.  That work of mind and physical labor upon tradition built sophistication that no other could claim by a copy of style or content, that was amiss then too.

When now. What how. How could we ever rest again, after all these decades of peaceful resistance, tilled and culled from the blood and sweat of our Newer yet Utopian Society where every avenue of compromise and resolution did try, was sought laboriously then through every single dimension we know.

Poised before our times is the historical moment so prominent in the history tomorrow told, were this Nation, this People, and then now of the scale actually spoken of, the very celestial body of the planet Earth, of which none but us of the Allies do know, whose existence remains unbeknownst to those outside our nation and our Allies - to survive.  This here now time is the Time in which the Decision will have been made.  Between the speeches of leaves whispering is the whimper of mounting clouds speaking of unspeakable danger but from whence, yet for the indefinite encounter with what exists as a pond’s image - that which is the foreign, the power there over there which we had thought, erroneously, were like us.

Bound by centuries of commitment,

To Freedom and achieved Knowledge, in the

Citizen’s life in a Democracy, in the

full light of responsibility that holds Each of Us

True to the Nation,  and Further.

To be autonomous as human beings responsible to life’s True values, to

hold steadfast to the Truth of our being

Human, who should One Day be Free as our Fathers have become, to wrest away those tendencies of youth identifying in us in our early immaturity as like that which were lesser;     this we know in the look in our brothers’ eyes, in the touch of our sister’s hand, in our mother’s worry and our fathers’ foil.

But who have come? What reduced itself to a perpetuating question of habit. What had been missed in that the ugly and inhuman ought to be pushed aside by sheer distaste.  What made pain - and what dared to translate to precious metal the legal currency in tender of legal coinage to be shipped away from these lands.  That such was of little news is of our own responsibility to bear.  Then not but simple joke sadly told: all we have we have made for the secured future for our People, and all tomorrows yet belonging to our children and grandchildren.  Were then to be written in pieces and fragments what is unimaginable and what could be created by citizen and community and all these of us by each and every who have abided by the laws and customs of Our Nation.  This Nation did find itself in the making: born of centuries of toil and creative imagination, who came only after the trials by those we loved and who loved us, then only then, to find a new world never before as possible!

The Order of the world is the harmony of the Cosmos withdrawn with something added and nothing canceled.  What for unknown remains the mystery of the elusive, like sails falling below the horizon we on the shore refuse to drop below the nobility of human nature.  That our companies of men under the leadership of kings did find the premise driving into the probable for the affected world guarded by law for engagement to battle was that birth to which all countries believing in the state of peace across worlds all over this blue green Planet could each by strife reach that once impossible Dream of rightful nation amongst all nations and worlds. This new world is discovered real by the records of blood and ink where no violence by illegal invasion could stand for time called millenia.

That ‘enemy’ did no longer exist except in smaller localized cases of emergency and exception is that Seal of Trust instated for active Reason for hopeful co-existence.  To never again find something in ourselves that is lesser to override the sanity for centuries cultivated, nor quiver over being small and terrified of what monument in stone and brck had been raised by strongs of tens of thousands, so to not be submitted by nonshows urges to destroy what is more than just myself - this is the inheritance our people in America shall recall to our hearts and actions, but not whimper and be silenced by that which we once called “evil”.   What is Invasion, to our utopia.  How many, and how much destroyed - these questions are those first moments when the mind does rise to the occasion to Reflect before the obscure terrors could find themsleves rooted in our own soils  to invade by night we in our childhood could not imagine.

If our utopia was born in the imagination for our own lives to be rich, with material and honor, and peace be founded in these was before, the question still lingers.  Perhaps too urgently by frank admission of Intelligence, whereupon in our being human do we discover the strength to not only resist and die, but then rather to mind over and know, not only of that which the enemy wills to be mighty, but that this time in history, this blood mine to shed, by that this nation by toil wrought in minutes stretched to centuries should be salvaged for immediate and complete recovery as by that activity to prepare for that case where DIPLOMATICCONVERSATION asking for civil action to withdraw should fail or succeed by what means could be recommended.  From our Utopia not so easily rising, but for all our friends and our beings before, should find courage to stand and fight, should that day come.  None shall fall forgotten such as to follow the moment our friends and ourselves each standing together, and know what was known to those before

Ann (Ati)

August 19, 2023.

Speech 2

That Prepared We Shall Go

1. Reviewing these public opinions amongst these of ours who opine rather than ride those waves in these recent decades, passing as though through a mere moment, when greatness in heroism became reduced to an other which raised in us not much but a few signals amidst the works we must continue to engage with one another, we come to realize what costs have been to our determinations.  What price has to be paid for acting before knowledge, before verifying and checking those old records of history, when we have yet again, or for the first time here, made a situation that as though from those who regarded respect with not at all.  Away from the glorious years when we in our own lands have bore the relief and celebration of relegating the raising of stakes to a time more secure.  It is in our adolescence in the ages of civilization that we have assumed that golden times shall last from youth to age, and rather be the fruits of the labor we lend to the world we would have built. So then it was that the years of sun and shine did transition into years when uncertainty presents itself, now seemingly grounding us to our utmost tolerance, yet to our absolute it has yet to so.

2. Quite the resolute and happy return into the lesser affairs, which did become the reality's cornerstones in each our lives, such as job, family, friends, goods of commerce, and services of our neighborhoods, such that the values which had founded us within the heights of our greater heroes in history did dampen and become grey.  Away from the lean resolution of doing much with what we have, we did in others' eyes become rich to our own.  Between the definitions of day and night lie a routine that did bore, however without those moments of sunlight and rain, without those of smile and yearning, upon the rhythms of the wonderful lives which finally came of those protests and labors before, we found such like slumber others regarded us less.  Yet, the truth of raising our hope to that of the American Dream is to find that, yes, we are still situated within the world we have built, not yet for sure those years next year will bring.  That not fully knowing the future was known to be not more than how most did know, perhaps in the years of wars before not but talk but actions in face of challenges each never did see.

3. How favorable we are to each other as neighbor and friend should calm our anger in these moments when stress and uncertainty started to reign.  

4. The contentment in yesteryears could not hold against what yet could come tomorrow - but what is beyond this what we Americans had known in the past century, that some events did unfold had alarmed us not enough.  The slow propagation of the news has distressed a few, but the telephone has awaited the utility to reach those we know, to find the news to what but draw the communities together.  Strength came from within but too upon that we together shall strive, so silently, again and again, to discover what plateau of stability so this land could hold so strong, that no intrusion could overcome the state of law.

5. We did not remember yesterday that what we rarely name as like this which is ours, the modern, it did get uptaken into an other's country.  Now is no time to leave the matter to the characters on television, but reach for the resolve so intrinsic, and call the facts as they stand, in how they did and did not conform to our society's peace.  Our age has been this long, but only a momentous raising by another's presumption.  We must stand now to find our strong, as city, region, and nations together.  

6. For without that regard for the differences proven in history, our surprise at visiting a foreign land had drawn alarm.  While place for conversation remains The New World's hope, as no force could be found without a general, no general without reason, so senseless fighting could not be known beforehand by past experience, then this mode of action against oncoming threat could yet accomplish some. Perhaps delay, or dialog, or discovery of differences amidst that rare common principle, for peace itself was yearned for by us by so long as eons.  Peace could yet find us home.

7. Exception could not be written off as a field in which petty gains should lose that which we have held, but not without reason should we proceed. If inform what enemy we must of the law, these meanings of law that hold inter-nation for eight decades now still require the discernment of where the moment is understanding could lie.  To exit those biggest threats should be all our fare of the day, for knowing of conflicts we all nations do; yet, what conflicts emerged tomorrow did not yet happen yesterday, so in the present now, those minutes and this motion must reach goal.  We in America do reach out, to seek to know what was thought by other nations, and where options lay.  And again, no terror should hold us paralyzed, for throughout history, civilization did triumph everytime.  Our friendship not yet faded, but the time of nations should bring us alliance.  Standing guard and moving forward in rounding down chaos not bounded by the courts and law - these should be justified by the best behavior.  However not less is that standing guard requires our readiness to act, to defend our country and our loved ones could yet find idea amongst us all.

8. The invitation for the adjoining as together found acceptance by some since middle last century, however structure in order providing for all never did promise itself as a guarantee and so disappointed ones ask us what price is peace.  But that peace itself is the price's own gain, more and infinitely greater the brotherhood of men, that together by the highest moral and greatest strength should endure what unknown yet today next year could bring.  That friendship could not exists as blood bond between such as nations finds truth that no city was built in a day.  To defend our architecture in all societies' make is the secret to how to stay the war so that no ejection from the course by reason, however smaller than the world itself.

9. Fast we must move today, to leave behind the pettier mundanities, of such and such a difference, or this or that transactional loss, so that we together as Americans, and friends, as a people shall stand, against what but what poor future that was some past that was never, and not even since the times when we had live in caves, would we force the planet and all its people to suffer by ignoring what we should not know.  Knowledge of destruction rarely raised, but to overcome, in each our own lands, we must find our basis in ethical respect, however recognize that where destruction were not just, to act from our own volition by view of our organizings, so that each our own place we could defend, and above the few misunderstandings detour from disaster. 

10. In the civil world in each our lands, we should find that all must continue, however that discovery yet known, of what could motion here, and what changed there, towards the objective that while national diplomacy amongst other nations could, meanwhile this here we ourselves must find our common ground and reach the stable, so next year we are ready to fight for peace.

11. The appreciation for the differences of the foreign must now find scope so that we bring ourselves to the present for that tomorrow come, should it be a year or five years, or last week, within each our own purview that which held for all times this nation, America, has stood, the call is here made to find the links of coordinated communication where we can be sure that when he or she with rationality speak, we should call one another to attention, and prepare our own, to associate and not to exit our vicinities where each by each can together stand.  It is this land here, where these values, rights, and privileges contracted from a raw land on which society lodges, where what conflict should dock and advance the account be found, after and before or as while our defenses hold.  For deaths of those we love could not be forgotten, however, what really did transpire had done so for so many decades, yet still so many did escape from attention here to defend family and friends, who are all those known to us, by so many years.

12. In respect we shall find account of what beings have come, and perhaps in time we will come to know, just from what sphere of being that not against us they were, yet conflict did drive them forward as they themselves in gains drove themselves forward, and forget the price of peace.  No strange thing that incidental conflicts could emerge, from some difference fights did always break.  The true account is owed to us by ourselves, not by a organization solely nor by one person in position by government, but by all of us later we must find, but in today when some line had shivered between fragmented signals, we must be in this moment in history regard that which we wish not to know when we were lounging in the delight of being only our own.  That horizon we on this land behold together, so that we could together behold what risks are above our heads, and believe that rules of engagement should rule us, so that the ruling by common law could find who is just, and who could fit to be our allies.  On the horizon is something that yet now is held in haze: peace is our ultimate objective.  Peace is the objective for the dream is to build a nation in respect, love, and works.  The future should hold, longstanding!

13. There is something to believe in for there is something to fight for.  Who will join and who will order, so that falsehoods could not recruit, and so that engagement is undertaken with respect for self and nation.  We shall not be lost to insanity or sorrow, from knowing in abiding to the laws and by all attempts could hold our conscience.  

14. The call today is to find those lines, and know when now and who then had drawn us close to conflict and whether each is just.  The worry today is that in some time that fronts would form which must be stayed, whether through diplomacy and converation or proportion and measure is not yet known as per that no enemy existed understanding actually of what forwarded if horrific, but rather than inertia and momentum of unjust talk and gross misunderstandings have led some wandering towards disruption.  It is peace in which order is established: order is found when wars are stayed, that tomorrows are more few could misunderstand.  In respect even at war we must elevate ourselves - it is the thought of peace we all now house, and by this time it is the moment to find preparation for emergency.

15. From the thought of order, and order we have known by our livelihoods, and from the thought of peace, which in all tomorrows founded, from order and peace we in America must will the fortune of the New World now in our hands.

Ann Lee

July 15, 2023. 14:55 MT.

 By citizenship we earlier thought of a ship. On a ship everybody takes part and works where suddenly or gradually the importance of doing that work arises. There are those on the crew, who have preset duties and assignments, like a job, and there are those who are passengers. Yet, on a boat, which sails over open seas where the depths of what carries the boat is immense and incomprehensible, below a sky that stretches upwards and outwards forever, on a boat, everybody is a sailor.  To sail as sailors on a ship is to realize that nobody is to be left behind and everybody is vested in the safe journey. The roles and gigs come and sooner or later each individual realizes their own might and responsibility.

Citizenship is that way.  It is a nation within which one is a citizen.  Together, citizens realize the nation which travels through unknown and uncertain terrains.  Not always is the climate amiable, and the sea calm, yet it is of common realization that it is a company, a company of men and women and children too.  How should this nation, this ark, sail through these seas.  Sometimes, the sea is turbulent, and yet, the company must stay together, not by some single call that rings hollow, but by that each by each knows what they are, what they must do, and with whom the company is kept.

The moment to be and to act, but also to not throw, such is always the present moment.  The present moment is the moment in which the truth of who each is is realized. There is no other moment more important than that of the now.  Yet where there is a moment to look into the future, that temporal equivalent of the horizon at sea, one must.  Where there is a moment to look around to those fellows beside us, also striving for the safe passage, one must, for then fellowship is possible.  And where possible to look back and know in our hearts we have made it so far, we must as well, for how else to know what we have done, where we have erred, where we have triumphed, myself and ourselves, then.

The sovereignty of nation is a truth that principles our ordering of nations one alongside each other.  It is that idea that protects each people of each nation, that makes each nation a refuge and sanctuary, despite all the differences between peoples in different places.  It is in this principle in which is found the the possibility of the resolution of differences, in being together beside one another, nation and nation, across the world.

Today, we must learn to keep our company together and strong and healthy. Though problems seem to be various and multiple, each can be dealt with each by each, with the care and resolve to face them with the bravery and rationality which we all have. Matters which are beyond our knowledge should not face our confrontation whereby errors could be much, but we are so many, and we shall guess that our own will continue our works in accordance with what is right, what has been established, and what is known.

On the boat, we dare not make foolish attempts, but nevertheless, as learning we do, we will as a crew and as a company hold on to courage with the thought that our love for one another will let duty and service be realized as we believe in that such as citizenship.

Speech 1

To this moment upon the great currents that through these recent years have generated waves upon waves so drastic they have been, what cause have we as Americans to rise above? These times see anew these fresh things so novel at first yet so scary then in those moments when we cannot accept that we have not known it all.  To recall the times before we with error assume that those who came before had not borne the violence of what threatened their pure existence, but did survive to speak little again of it.  We note that the past was not wrought with less than our blood and toil, yet we are carried by our dream to ideate before the memory of history and speak little of how laboriously the work was done over so many minutes and hours and days.  Where we have been nobody could know, for what lies ahead needs us to recall the strength and endurance of all those who came before, we should know for ourselves again and again that here we shall know ourselves. In this mirror we can be who we have always been before, in our great grand father and his wife, in all those whose reality we do in our own times by our own blood and toil we shall know again. 

Conflict does not escape us today. It is not one problem, but with the momenta of thousands or even tens of thousands of each and every problem that rolls through the landscapes which we recognize to be that of our own. So then today the works remain to last for times longer than we could stand, but fear not for all these times before were faced with troubles nobody had known nor seen before.  For the few who stand tall who must for all those who cannot lead, know that the nature of conflict is simple.  It is simply that we must believe in what we have been throughout the centuries reaching for freedom we became brave and strong. Our minds are not feeble but stronger than we each could know.  Those who stand tall must believe that they will always have the strength to lead, and for those times when they cannot, they must prepare those who will.

Affecting us all are the turning of eddies and tides presenting themselves as oh so benign but yet so many are they we cannot but work together.  What effective measures were there yesterday or a century ago, before these times that have seen things those days did not meet?  The affection we shared with each other could still be in our tomorrows, and we must remember all the children not yet born, and let our dream for them carry us as the memory of past lends us strength.  Near the end we are not in this instant.  Nor in any instant that we shall reach the goal, like the horizon it is far away.  Near this next moment we are, but we cannot assume and act on presumption that no action were possible nor that all actions were possible.  Who are there and what have they done for the good of works for those whom we are?  Present are manifold in disguise that were merely thoughts yesterday, but in our democracy we have raised them, all that which will make continuation our future for America.

Let what matters guide us.  So many questions seem to plague us but only a few are relevant if we should light the steps ahead and make the trail, however small which should converge into a larger path.  When we begin to recognize each other, and through arduous efforts discover what is right, what is in accordance with ethics, with the dream of the American Dream, we should have raised ourselves a little.  Never before did we think falsely that we do not know our society, its structures, its principles, its governance, our roles, our history.  And never before did we imagine falsely that we could not work together.  In the idea of order we have dwelled, and made, enacted and won.  Perhaps these times before the new challenge that breathes on us with its noxious breath we should still be with all that we have created upon the notion that a nation, freshly born, could be built.

Was then a thought we of America becomes a civilization and what then now?  We are neither from whither nor whence, but of this here we have become.  And we are good.  The nation began seemingly so simply, yet what genius did arise on those moments that surprised the world.  For that civilization did not raise itself on a single day, so too all it will stand for will encounter the moments of doubt, the challenges of whim, the thought of beyond.  So too we shall when it is not presenting us with the fight of survival think and consider deeply the worth of other civilizations.  The spirit is higher when it knows better that it is not alone, striving for what is possible beside the others that strive for the same if different.  All life on earth shall be missed were those threats that threaten were.  So today society has for itself a common goal - to save our planet, and so we must abide.  It is not the whatever that should be, but the search for those others who are beside us, in the gaze towards the best despite that we are here amongst differences, that we shall rescue that social existence that shall save the earth.

If so triumph be sought, then we will have made another step in the book of history.  Nobody knew before finding through the impossible that the impossible could be bridged, that the pass were possible, but we did know after.  Through the trials in which we erred and lost, we discover that what had held us true before will still be in front of us on the path so long and so long, and so hard and so hard, already forgotten in the future we must reach.  

Braved through the immensity of oceans our forefathers did come, carrying the dream of who we are, as a people we triumphed in that journey and that knowledge was passed down from parent to child, over the centuries we still do know, what impossible we did pass through, to reach this land to toil through the days and months the hot and the cold to make for ourselves the food and the house.

Whatever before did face us, we were not overtaken by fear and doubt, but encountered both with steadiness and doubly reason.  For what we did know before was that we must strive, and then no ocean is impassable, and then no wind too much for the boat shall not turn.  Issued in everything everywhere around us in this land are the most and the extraordinary very historical.  This here and this thing we have wrought by our own American Dream.  The pavement we have paved, the schools we have raised, the citizenry we can see in our brothers' and sisters' eyes.

For the world this nation was built.  In hope that we should achieve the freedom realized yet true to the ethical grounds that held our predecessor nations in Europe and elsewhere.  We brought only the best to this nation, in hope to achieve even greater for the pride of those before will be carried on our sleeves and our breasts.  We do know that milestones were celebrated by those who lent us all the support a parent to a child, and that trust that we shall endure and recall, that good is in those worlds we now only visit by luggages of things bearing good news.  Present are problems surrounding us here, and them there, and many people everywhere.  We will be all that we can be, we will do our best, and tomorrow shall come imbued with each knowledge we did earn along the way, so so many events when recorded will bring us a wistful smile, recalling in our hearts in silence that we too like the Americans before are Americans.

Ann Lee

March 17, 2023

 Whether identity is owned of course had been a subject of interest lately. More and more we see famous people appearing in many faces, in magazines, in newspapers, on the web.  Of what could be said about this?  It sometimes hark back to the earliest intention.  Where it is shared by the originator, willingly, willfully, there is something shared between those who share an identity.  It is like work held in common, for the understanding is to be had that the identity is being created and made together.

Lately, increasingly, the concerns have been raised, not so much in public media that minds so much and so much, but amongst people who discovered themselves in conflict.  It appears that most cases of identity appropriation do not begin in trust and common interest. Perhaps more significantly, it does not have the outcome of shared work.

We cannot look at this type of actualities as one that should be dealt with with vengeance.  Yet, where it becomes known as a crime, in the particulars of an incidence, we should still examine what had been made in that which we would so early call theft.

There is such a thing as a common future.  It may require us to look very far away, into the future, and ask us to forcefully imagine that future in common, which is ours together.  This is a reality in the event of conflict we have yet to understand completely.  In a fight, perhaps a friendship and trust could be discovered. Something is known through that rare interactive quality.  While oftentimes we must seek collaboration, too in these times of conflict, we must seek cooperation in any interaction.

Yesterday, life seemed so good.  It was so easy, and everything was so conducive to leisure and rest.  Of course, it is a good memory.  It was good, and it could be that way again.  So this is a period where something known by those before is becoming known to us young generations.  If we imagined that history is as clean as its books, and no blood ever shed on our soils, we are not innocent but ignorant.

To imagine tomorrow, we must learn to hold close that dream that has been what kept us together all these centuries.  We must hold it close like a secret that we should tell a lover when they are sleeping.  We must know in the trust we build with each other, we need not talk about it incessantly, or even at all.  There are sometimes contradictions in what we do and say over time, but where together we know the goal, we must not be Scrooch that will not part with a biscuit or a drink.  We must grow bold, in our venture, to make a great leap into the future.

 Of all societal goods, all of which bear fruit periodically with great works and are celebrated, perhaps the one most recognized in the nation we have built is one that had taken the most idealistic efforts all through the times of our civilization. To recall, we say, we are our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, our great great grandparents, and all our ancestors whose blood and toil in the fight for this societal good they did cover and withdraw from our memory. Letters and revolutions, doctrines of principles and revelation of circumstances and conditions, the perpetual support of all the women who stood beside in support and assembled in silence upon their own memories and ways, it is the creation which still continues today of the civic that encloses carefully the civilian sphere. 

The civilian sphere upheld by the civic is no ordinary thing, object, or commodity. It is no machine, no automata, no miraculous object given by predestination. The history of how it has been raised should be examined, even if the entire neo-Babylonian library will not hold within itself but a fraction of what truly happened.  Although each of us has accustomed ourselves well within this sphere, we from within oftentimes do not have an overview of this complicated reality though we must muster the rationality to recognize because we with each of our history and our common history exist within this architecture.

Our intuition shall guide us to discover in our unconscious memory accumulated over centuries and centuries the strength that shall guide us in our tracks and our efforts.  We are this number strong, and we are this nation strong. Yes it is true. We may not be of the number of all those before us combined, but certainly, in our soul and spirit we carry them as they carry us, over the impossible pass into the future we have been making. The civic includes not only this elected government, that municipal department, this police branch, that fire department, this school, that hospital. The civic exists because it is a reality we partake in creating. Its repository has in it all the skills and knowledge we as individuals have accumulated, and all the missions and protocols we as organizations have pushed for and participated in.

It is known now today that we have stepped into a scenario as a nation for which preparations were not made properly. This is no failure, but simply a new circumstance that requires our response.  This now must be taken on in stride.  Doubt is the first creep that challenges us as human beings.  To give in is to relegate the memories of our predecessors.  We are not so feeble a people.  I argue here for the strengthening of the civic by the efforts of the civilian sphere.  We are no innocents to standing up and putting up a fight.  This is presumed.  The civilian sphere is not made of complex structures.  It is held up by organizations like hospitals and police stations that operate by simple principles.  It is upheld by a democratic people whose constitution is of citizens with repertoires of skills and knowledge.  Never was it made by greed and ambition.  

Where we must keep our principality running, we must subscribe to more than offered, and believe that we are capable of adding to the sum that stands and pushes for the outcome.  Literature is no single stroke of genius, but the culmination of societal consciousness, elevated by a person of unusual intellect, and so much literature there is.  It is proof we have come this far.  We are proof we have come this far.  We must seek order to create order.  It is no abstract thing, order.  We organize our households and our companies, as we organize protective forces and government.  We have ordered here this, so we will organize ourselves to order now this.

Let us not forget those who ceded to us, not out of defeat, but of memory of success and patriotism.  Who has accomplished that which we have not, we must ask ourselves.  We must reach out and seek that which eludes us, in those who are not too proud to help us, in those who offer in silence that which we need. No next objective could be given in this comment here, for that you must discover by yourself and in your community.  Means too must be discovered and utilized along the way.  Recognize those who contributed, and carry those who are injured.  The civilian sphere must remain standing - this is the reason for this post.

 In times of great dangers, we are not without hope. What sail did rise even though the winds were turbulent was never lost to the wisps of time, but retained deep underneath the superficial and pleasant, the old and the tattered. When winds turn was known already held within that which is held by each hand yet in common they have prevailed. Whither this way and that way was the ship that tipped and toiled, the crew could not think of anything else but to hold together that fragile thing which holds all their bodies and minds above the immeasurable opacity that surrounded them to infinity.

Truth never did sympathize with the wicked but was hard and strong who will not yield to any but the gentlest intention. Mobs never did threaten Truth for Truth stands proud against the turmoils thrown from every which way. If Truth were merely mortal, our kind never would have stood a chance, but Truth looks at us now from the unknown pedestal in the sky, kindly and respectfully, and demands nothing.

Our forefathers seem to us silent, but behind us they stand. They perceive us, and understand our timidity and weaknesses, and smile. They wonder, when will we recall them so they may lend us their strength. They are not statues, certainly no beautiful sculpture lost in the attic, but their spirits ask us, why don't you stand tall and lend yourself to action when your country like us stand silently behind you.

We have not done our duty. This admission we must make. Nobody has asked us what we are made of, and perhaps, nobody will, unless you too are a body and ask it of yourself. Our dream is no television commercial made already for it sells us nothing. Our dream has not been for the sake of dreaming, that is no nation's vision and collective power. Our dream has this which is everything we have ever done and strived for, and everything we shall make in this race to create ourselves out of nothing.

Everything is not nothing, though no metal holding memory shall ever understand. There is no toil in comfort as there is no freedom in a cell. There is no intellect in a bacteria though intelligence pervade all noble human beings. Even if nobody ever asked us what we are willing to give to secure all our tomorrows we should ask ourselves this. We must be willing to demand more than we can give from ourselves for a country is no well fare state but a continuing constitution by its citizenry of which we are. If nobody asks us who we are, does that mean that means nothing. If nobody pays market salaries does that mean we are couch potatoes. Of all that has been created that is shown to all the world, what have you done?

 The fact that anything that needs to be done and deserves to be done takes time is a basic fact of life.  Sometimes we forget it: we are in the embrace of desire, the impulse to reach the goal all at once.  The care one puts into something is the measure of love and intention, which afterwards, when the satisfaction of getting something done has been forgotten, stays with us as the feeling and sentiment of lasting and persistent pleasure in pride that something good was done, an achievement was made.

The attainment of a goal that is worthwhile has always required delicate yet intensive attention. It requires foresight, deep thought, and persistent action.  It requires the capture of information from the depths of mind as well as the environment.  It requires dedication so for the repetition of intention through persistent activities, varying as circumstances and the goal require.  It requires communication, which itself requires trust building.  The attainment of a goal is like the focusing of light by a glass, which at first being irregular and unrefined, focuses the light badly, and creates a blurry image.  But the refinement of the glass over time, which is like the concentration of the self, focuses the light, brings the efforts slowly in line with the image, or the goal, we hope to achieve.

In society, there are many directions, intentions, images, and information bits that pull us this way and that way.  It shifts our direction and blurs our intention.  One day we are certain this one thing needs to be done, but tomorrow a movie and dinner distracted us from the goal. Conversation with friends are the same.  Such a matter interests us, and such an item requires our opinion.  But the effort when drawn from deep pulls us to focus in the back of the mind on the object that deserves our attention.  When in the car we reflected silently on it, when buying a coffee we meditated on its importance, when picking up grocery we see clues revealing themselves in the fine print on the bottle, that is when within the deeps the object in the mind develops its focus and intensity.  

When the objective gains force in the depths of ourselves, attention is put onto the thing so much so that without explicit effort, its truth and beauty are revealed, gaining appearance in the water cooler conversation, in the morning chat with neighbors, in the late night whispers with the spouse.  It gains force as it makes its appearance, perhaps daily, perhaps specially, but increasingly the meaning and significance starts to take shape through the way it is voiced and thought about, through the many instances when it takes appearance in our daily life.

So it is.  Repetition does make perfect, but it is no rote repetition, and rather, it is a natural repeating of focusing on the goal.  It is possible that as we reflect and talk about it, its shape would change.  While at first, it was imagined that it is some one meaning or some other reality, as it fits into the phenomena of daily life, it morphs slightly this way or that, and relevance has taken to task the sculpting of the at first indistinct form.  Increasingly, as time goes on, and as its appearance is appreciated by the new and unexpected, an exciting thing happens.  It is commitment without rote force.  It is dedication, grown naturally.  Just as you cannot force a puppy to love you, but tend to it with love and it returns your love; and just as you cannot force a plant to grow more green leaves, but allow it more fertilizer and the appropriate amount of water, and it shall grow better and more vibrant, so it is too with any small or great goal you may harbor.  Protect your dream, and cultivate your dream by letting it make its appearance.  Be not scared of criticism or laughter, for often it is made of nervousness, awkward that will may yet realize those impossible things realizable through human action alone.

Lacking definition have become many things and affairs. What once seemed obvious has come to be constantly subject to skepticism if not doubt. We laugh, falsely, and point to it addressing it for a moment but ultimately setting it down as matters likely illusory.

It is a matter of morale, true, but sometimes it pays to look at the thing itself - what is it, and is it worthwhile? To imagine we cannot is not; to imagine we can is yet - somewhere in between is that opportunity for effort.

Where one voice is asserted and one effort made, it is and points in the direction we must go; several steps makes the possibility of an avenue.  A way can succeed or it can fail, depending on whether it has the potential and means to become the path.  We are many, we are - from the multiple thus recognized as plural and in being recognized each by each as possible and good we are citizens to this great state, stand to benefit when our diverse efforts is resultant - maybe in multiple directions, maybe in fewer.

Fullness is what we must strive for.  For we have seen no weakening, we have seen no evil, but we have embraced the new realities with courage, bravery, and presence.  Without a doubt we have grown - so much depends on the strength of our will and volition, and rationality too.  Each of us may see a way or two, yet when we speak little of what is real to us, it sinks into the depths of obscurity, then lost.

Strength is no abstract concept; and since we feel full now, and then, we have the potential to be great.  Failure bars not the ways made, but focus must return.  Nowhere is it guaranteed that we shall hold success in our hands at all times, but success in our bosoms we must hold at all times.

When we know we have enough today, we must still have enough and more tomorrow.  We cannot avoid the pitfalls of destiny, but must plan to overcome them: with blood boiling in our veins we must grasp Tomorrow as if it is today.  

If it is true that our present has complexified we must find new ways to include, encompass, and embrace those good paths into the future. Nobody said building a road is easy, nor bridges, nor civic buildings - these are the metaphors we must remember to enact new ties, build new strength and capacities.

 The hardships.  We know them, from our grandfathers, our mothers, our friends, our brothers, and ourselves.  We find hardships now and again, and then now, there are hardships upon those we love, secretively, openly, with open arms and embrace, dimly, by eye contact, on the subway, at the hospital, at school, in the office building, at the parks.  Hardship cannot be avoided in life, so it is.  It is upon us now and then, and now again.  Who are we, we must ask ourselves.  We must in life endure, even if it is on a thread, or over a crevasse, we must leap, and jump, and hold still, and sprint.  In hardship we must reach out on every channel we know, speak the truth to those who wish to hear, and even those who cannot bear the truth we must speak the truth for deep down in the depths of our soul we are thirsty for the truth that can bear all that we endure.

For a moment we feel free when we give word and expression to that we fear, and in another moment we are afraid, afraid we said too much, afraid we had affected too little, or too much.  There is little reason in times that threaten to over-spill, as though we were treading up a rocky hill with a full bucket of fresh precious water we must save to save those around us and ourselves.  Yet is it not true that we must even in these hard to tread paths make another step, and then another, and another?  This is the true experience of hardship.  We endure together, as we bear the burden of the bucket of water, together.  So we can enjoy each drop, later, when it is time, right, to savor that from which life springs.

We cannot be afraid of each little word we utter, or let some loose word uttered by another pierce at our hearts.  We have greater potential than that cartoon heart, for our heart is strong and full, our souls are expressed outside everywhere, and still it inheres in each of us, so let each precious drop of water instill another great moment of life that should spread throughout our soul.

We are strong, for we are brave.  We are brave first, for we have braved much.  Not so much that others should see, let alone understand, but we have braved frontiers, and notions, and experiments, and life's each trial - we let our minds wander the great virtual space of mind, it is called free thought; we let our speech carefully speak of that which we created carefully, to say with care, it is called free speech.  We run our enterprises as though tomorrow existed, but in reality we have created those realities of tomorrows for each other, so we may choose.  So many live in the worlds we create, yet know little of what bravery it has taken to tread so many miles in solitude, or with few companions, until something small could take root, and grow.

If we can be brave in how we created tomorrows' worlds, why can't we be brave again against that oddity called confusion.  It is a confusion of mind, a confusion of intent, a confusion of methods, a confusion of thought, and a confusion of expression.  There is as though no meaning to all we created, and that is the evil against which we fight.  We must resist and rebel against the currents of meaninglessness, in the fortitude of our certainty that they live in the world we have made.  We made this world for ourselves and we have made this world for them too.  If they may not see, they shall not see the light rended worlds we created by pure will and force of mind and then the various efforts extended at length, and that would be a tragedy indeed.  What can we do, but brave that barrier of the uncommunicating, that barrier of misunderstanding, that barrier of meaninglessness. 

We are strong, for we are brave.  We can brave these fronts, and we can exercise our intellects and our capacities for communication and organization.  We can brave these fronts, for we can resist, with our words and our laws, brave ourselves against the voids of meaning, the barrages of blunt force.  We have law and we have order.  We cannot be timid especially amongst ourselves.  We must speak the truth to one another, and in contemplation and deliberation mind those small details of the hows and whats.  There is no one size fits all template here on this continent, for not only are we strong and brave, we are free.  We will not succumb, this I promise, to any incoherent nor irrational modes of actions, but for what we have in societal order already, this should be enough.  It is time to call into our offices formal and informal and push back on what unexamined forces that have rended wreckages to our gates which keep our fences against the unusual.  We must brave against what unusual that threatens to remove us from our elevated planes of freedom, strength, and bravery.

 The languages we speak, complex and full of information carrying capacity as they may be, lead us to forget the meaning we communicate before the utterance of words. What we carry in our hearts is of a fuller depth and trickling and bubbling through the concreter forms of words they lead us from one moment to another in a conversation, a chat, or a mere utterance. We cannot forget that each ourselves we are here. In our presencing we communicate much already by being and in being here. In front of him, before her, beside them, we stand and co-presence with each other. When the moment is ripe for words, we make that vocalization to carry through the making of sounds the higher sense for the material things, and immaterial too.

By many mediums is what we hold expressed for beholding. The expression is part of the communication, as well the reception, but that is not all. In our presence, pure being there, and being there in a scenario, context, and place, what we hold is expressed in ways we do not notice. This moment, I blink my eyes, that moment I smile in my heart, within these nearly imperceptible gestures, and gestures they are, for they are gestures from the soul, I carry forward my message to you. Trying to recall what we know, sort of, by birthright, recalling our true source of origin, that of being, we through our circumstances and interactions become and in becoming we wish to be something more than what we know ourselves to be.

Then the incidence of interaction with one another, we reach out; trying not to reach too far as to overreach, we signal our desire to partake in this world, of our way and mode of being here, addressing this and that of the more worldly or at least material affairs, and through the byway indicate this too, this expression and celebration of ourselves being here together.

There is some talk of the rush of things in the modern world. That the world rushes by, or drags us along. Absent at times is the thought that we have been making this world, for these minds we hold, and these bodies we motion. We make the world for not just each ourselves, though the world we make is one we make to hold each one, in the most ideal way we hope for such a world to come, we are making this world too for each of us to have each other of us, to be together, to have such and such an experience, of this body, this mind, these affairs, these customs, together.

Not in all circumstances can such an ideal be so. We know ourselves a certain way, through communication we attempt to be in a way so to be with one another. Yet we have become different in this material way and that worldly way, to say such a world in which we live and that we make, so that as expressed, we cannot behold one another in that original way where being together is enough to hold one another and each other. We must strive, yes, to walk together, to interact, and communicate, and one day in some future, find communion with that which is, together. Yet, we must too be realistic, and negotiate a way for today, the yet had happened has yet happened: in each the moments we behold, a way should be made with realistic manners and with a view to ideal goods, so that our walks and being together should have the expression of actuality, though smoothed, with the least undesirable conflicts. Never a final good in the material world, we seek and hope to find, now this way of being together, now that way of resolving a conflict. 

Worlds upon worlds, we must not forget each of us has been within different worlds and has made a universe of his or her own. Though we must strive for harmony, no final good in the material world could guarantee forever that no one should need to stand for his or her own. Upon the view onto the good of independence we must strive to make each and every moment so that orientation begins with an honest view of oneself. In presence we should express that we are. In interaction and communication we should allow utterances to express what meaning is carried in our momentous being.

To Be Good Neighbors

 Passivity and inaction are different.  To indicate the distinguishing matters the intention must be examined.  It is the fact of intention, in deed, that shows inaction from passivity.  Where inaction is a deliberative act, passivity is the absence of action.  When circumstances press, stress can move us into a state of inactivity, of dull ennui, of nonactiveness due to unknowability.  Unknowability is never an absolute.  It can be corrected but never fully eliminated.  The moments external to a subjectivity bear both knowability and unknowability, and knowing moves between the two absolutes to find certain degree of certainty in the facts it ascertains.

The intention for action needs be behind the subjectivity or natural disposition.  That inactivity nevertheless sits while it waits or seeks the facts for a case sometimes is unavoidable though at times becoming undesirable.  Sometimes the facts sit in a cabinet lost in space, or a posterboard hidden in a basement, but the chance they do find presentation somewhere is usually a good one when the situation having been posed before us is one in common.

There is a need for an individual threatened with passivity, or a community, to reach out in an active action to seek the facts, not only as perceptible to themselves but also as being held somewhere else in the community or in another community.  The chance they are already with a reasonably large accountability is one which should be beheld with optimism.  There is actually much which can already be known by one's own perception, cognition, and conviction.  But inactivity tends to draw down what is strong by our birth and upbringing when those around us do not reach out to us or we are in no habit to reach out amidst conflict to find the facts held in common.

There are words for passivity that leads to terrible outcomes, and memories, and cultural memories.  The thing to do is to draw close the reality that much was prepared and has been prepared, but towards what goal and objective we can only imagine or plan reliance on decisions made previously in history.  That the case was won previously can be no guarantee for a victory for the present in our future, but rather acts as a monument already set and at risk to rust for only the beginnings could have been foreseen.  The grounds were laid out or the foundation set, but now a skyscraper has to be raised on methods not previously known for the circumstances did change.

What changed?  Is it the world?  Is it us?  Is it the other?  Is it our means?  Is it our preparations?  But of course, it is e. all of the above.  To take note only of the nature of offense is to retreat into the exercise of reflection not yet of thought, not yet of planning, and short of action.  There is a need to draw a demarcation immediately as per the boundaries of the sphere for which action has an effect, and too to recognize the location of other spheres of other agencies to which connection may a gain make.  But whereupon, the question arrives as to who we now are, or in the immediate action, who am I and what do I know, there is no sense of withdrawing into each ourselves in fear of perception by our friends.  Disagreement was oft the start of a conversation and that had made the need for fences that make good neighbors.  If none of us know what the other is thinking of for nobody has spoken, then much has already been lost in terms of the sunlight hitting in the dawn that leads us into the day.

If the other did change, they did make gains for no action is taken without preparation.  But to what extents, and how so - these are questions only answerable after discussion and debate result in intelligence.  Had they foreseen that withdrawal into each ourselves would likely be the outcome already they suspect their effect in actualizing fear would succeed.  Yet we have never been afraid and we must not anticipate we could fall into fear.  Television has trained us to sit and wait and perceive but it never did ask us to act for them.  No amount of boredom could risk our deeper souls to fall into inactivity for fear for fear.

Beware

  The fact of appearances can tell many things, sometimes even essential things, but there has always been exceptions because there are many who travel wide and far, and experienced much, who have stories to tell that amaze and mystify, and works that awe.  The tragedy of the exceptional, I discovered in the recent year, is that the excuses lay bare the ugliness of human nature when it is turned to or cloaked in darkness.  The mob mentality was outlined in the tragic novel Lord of the Flies, in which children turned against one another and then towards the apparently weakness, the creative sort, the type who could lead them to freedom.  There was a glee in what the doomed child, if he could perceive it, would have seen as a terrible smog, a smittenness in the other children's own being tempted darkly into the dark methods and ways, the very meanness which in good society we try to avoid.  That glee was not only in committing some deep wrong, but in getting away with any responsibility, getting away with a smirk remark intended to insult and offend, getting away with signaling and setting off chains of events that could only end badly for the one then too gleefully deemed doomed.  Usually there is hardly any glee in apathy and indifference, but even that carries a certain perverted accomplishment of at least having had beat the other in the cruel race that symbolizes harmlessly the cruel world their perception makes.  

In moments like these, I reflect on the myriad experiences that made my life full.  Those secrets I hide away for when dark times come and I need a candy to prove the world is sweet, that being is light, that life is good.  In moments like these, I try not to forget those who bravely and courageously take a stand, even for just a little while, and those who maintain my right in my absence, and try to do the same so others too will have a moment of happiness to store away.  

There may be stirring feelings in harming others while imagining oneself to be some victim of some faceless cruel world, but when those are the only feelings that get you through the day, you should know corruption around you has occurred.  No wrong is committed without the conscience speaking up and that is the consciousness of a normal functional being.  Right is where good is done and the conscience is free so that consciousness and being themselves are free, so in doing good one is free and in doing right truth is won.

Whenever I think of the novel, I wonder at my sadness upon reading it.  A group of children killing themselves and targeting the one who could only lead them to freedom.  Then I chance upon reflection and in reflection I realize what great courage and masterfulness it was for Golding to speak up about the very condition of the world.  Yet, my inquiry continues and this I cannot answer: whereupon one understands the deeper meaning of the world as an expression of good, as one beheld by God in Heaven as the fruit for humankind in its individuals, why then readers are unable to appreciate that their understanding of the bad does not prevent themselves from thoughtful contemplation to effect the fullness of their being?  That in noticing what is wrong is the beginning to find the path of doing what is right, still that glee robs the being of its freedom and truth, in tempting one to be passive and inactive, or worse, in realizing one's own unbecoming actions?

So it is, now the country is on a perimeter in time as well as circumstances, and as well myself undergoing wrong after wrong, still the world it holds and the world before me continue on their humdrum glee that robs these people who effect wrongs plain to sight, for fear that in not grasping the glee they shall be robbed themselves of those naughty moments when one could commit a crime or a misdemeanor or worse, when in reality that glee has robbed them of the goodness they could be.  The goodness of what inheres is the only compass one could ever find in the world at large which could be beheld with absolute certainty, the only wealth ever known, as was taught by the Lord, the only wealth and possession which has no shade of uncertainty.  When the world outside is proved to be that which one in holism can perceive, perception itself gives itself away unless it is active and in activity realizes the self.  Yet even then uncertainty shadows what is deemed to be external, while what is known to be one's own, one's own being, one's goodness, one's perceptions, one's actions - those are brought to the realm of knowledge direct to oneself only.  So I ask now, question oneself before giving into the glee that leads to darkness.

Wherein Is Found

 In any case something happens when you least expect it because the way to happiness is no straight line.  Moving from one point to another there is no sense in reveling forever perpetually in the straightness of the line and the shortness of the time unless there were the focus or if a mathematical universe were being contemplated.  The times between one act and an outcome are very much nevertheless, because unknowable are all the universes infinitesimally placed within alongside the one one did travel through.  That is, the reality one knows by having just experienced it excludes to a much extent all the other realities possible.

The thought of being together, which brings happiness to some and many, is along this principle as well.  In the moments that were shared are commonalities and too differences that draw happiness when the disposition is just so to receive happiness.  Unexpectedly such a moment of agreement and just a minute of disagreement has brought us to a point of coincidence, that instance of coinciding.  We do not draw from one another in some inexplicably greedy way, but draw from being individuals coinciding in a dimension just drawn out and then recognizing that we are at a place together that moves us to a general contentment.

Still without the consideration that happiness is like a quality to a state of mind, or one common to many states of mind, that happiness may prove elusive to consciousness.  We are happy now and unhappy then, but from one moment to another moment our being has drawn from already changed circumstances, at least somewhat.  How such circumstances, then becoming a momentary world, has transformed so much has changed that situates our being.  Yet, to notice and to note each minute of change just requires yet more than our everyday could muster; if true, then without believing in happiness, there is little chance of its recognition in the day to day.

Suppose there is a thing one desires, it is beheld then now, then later, but already in the beholding one has had it in one's holding.  It being unknown desire reaches out and overreaches and never arrives and happiness has eluded oneself.  Having had held it now and then again and again being known desire has been sated and chances have appeared again and again to recognize one is happy.  So it is.

Towards Building Why

 Going to the Moon is very important for the future of humanity.  The promise of peace as the natural state of being beckons where beyond the earth where our lineages have had such a long record of development.  What had been difficult centuries and millennia before were overcome in many ways so that peace is possible.  Peace is not only the beginning but the goal.  To be together without lamely thinking ourselves as like unthinking beings out for gains lasting a moment or two - we are beings that dream and plan and work in cooperation to realize the worthwhile realities.  The idea that the moon is a new beginning is the idea that we can start anew.  It is the new frontier in the sense that the Americas has been the new world.  The land of opportunity and dreams, the society of peace and order.  

The sight of the bright white moon in its phase strikes me with a profound sense of contentment and reassurance.  The presence of the first and immediate celestial body.  A place we haven’t been, a place we will soon go.  Everything is possible.  The way there will be made.  That this one here is possible makes the rest across the incomprehensibility in vastness also there and teeming with the possibility of real existence.  To make this first step, the importance cannot be overstated.  Just as venturing from the stasis of tradition to a realm of pure potential was the foundation in human action that allow the dream of the ideals and values defining societies today in the Americas.  What is freedom?  What is hard work?  What is making?  The move to the moon will not be merely a duplication of circumstances and choices.  Just the same, the endeavors into space will bring those to new heights of human experience.  What these realities could be we will never discover should we not venture beyond this home of a vibrant and lush garden. 

Carl Sagan wrote that we are upon the cosmic shore gazing into the deep oceans of space.  The grand stage of unknown proportions from these sittings of such modest proportion.  The amphitheater the presents an infinite count of drama depicting all that could be possible beyond the reach of any or all of our imagination.  What presence, what meaning could be discovered and made that I am this one, here, this small subjectivity, that exists within what is all and could contemplate my own existence within all that is and changes.  From the moon is a new vantage offering a view into what surrounds us everyday and every moment, which yet eludes us as we travel through the wonderful devices of our own making, under the firmament of the blue sky.

To Inscribe Some Order

 Of new world orders, a few words could be said.  There are new orders - small scale and principled ones, spanning extensive ones with great social benefits at small scales, emergent ones from the multitude of existents, corrupt ones with barely even anarchic principles, accidental ones, incidental ones, short lasting ones, long established ones with new notions, and so on.  Sometimes the question is raised, does this country require a new order, with the implication that a country is a single world to be ordered.  Of course, the ascription of "world" to a country is an order in itself.  Though simplistic in its utterance, the further possibilities are ones we have accustomed ourselves into expectations.  Where this country is not a world that confers benefits onto each of us, somehow the order is seen to have failed somehow.  In fact, the order is not complete, nor should we desire it to be a complete order, for then the worlds within would be irreversibly subsumed under it, and we would have a governance that is rigid and restrictive, directly against our long held notions and beliefs in freedom and democracy.

Then why does the phrase "new world order" resound, sometimes even in our hearts?  This for we long for some completeness and holism to the worlds we reside within.  We should first admit to the fact that each of us live in multiple worlds, and the world of the nation is in fact one of them.  What can be expected from the world of the nation was once seen as necessarily reciprocal.  There was a poster we have all seen that says, with a wonderfully stern caricature of a character, Sam, that says "Uncle Sam wants you."  Regardless of the graphic design quality, admittedly quite compelling, what made it compelling was less the graphical element than the general sentiment that the country and its government serve you for each of us does our part to contribute to society, governance, and each other's good.  While such a sentiment appears mysterious to some, those folks have not the ability to recall such was the foundational reality that generated the politics and the constitutional goods making up the nation.  There is no particular outcome from simply blaming the many forms of entertainment or pointing fingers at the usual suspects, although such provide grounds for reflection, so we must find the strength in us to examine what is actually needed to improve our quality of life in each our own lives but also in our communities, and indeed, each of the worlds we inhabit.

The world is not already made.  It is always in the making, thus begging the question of what is it to make?  It is one thing to have a blank canvas, ie. poverty, and begin to desire after material goods that other people or neighbors have, though it must be said that certain basic necessities are always required and so should be a right in this country.  All kinds of folks do great work in rerouting their communities' logistics to enable others less fortunate to have what they need not only to survive but to prosper as well, for the human potential is truly great when our basic needs have been met.  This is an example of an order that have been inscribed onto the world by these folks.  But if there is no urgent matter pressing, and our world is not out of order, yet there is news from beyond our smaller worlds of what is in fact pressing, to say, our environment or the possibility of conflict, how ought one proceed?  Or if there were urgent matter, such as unrest in a community or pressures coming from beyond one's immediate world encroaching, then what is there to be done?  Uncle Sam has sent no word.

The fact of the matter is that as we get caught up with the busi-ness of the job and family, of caring after the lawn and making meals, of catching favorite shows and walking the dog, one has not yet caught up with the business that should be one's own.  Such business I propose includes the working of affairs near and far, by means personal as well as remote.  Each person has his or her own vision of the good world and the good life, and each person has a sense of ethical being - these are all actual assets one holds in holding.  Today is a good day to advance upon one's greatest assets, the intuition and power of thought, as well as the ways of contact through social circles as well as established groups, clubs, and offices.  These are all true and legitimate means with which one can advance the small orders that through the making in the multiple, eventually finds and emerges in those collective sentiment and vision our predecessors possess.  We need not war to draw us together, for war is an antiquated form of order.  Even if it is created through centuries of trial and error, such is not the best expression of what is in the depths of us that draw us forward.  It is strength to resist and resolve and reconcile, but if there is even a slight chance of possibility, does it not become more probable through repetition and experiment, through collected effort, through it as an endeavor, and so the advancement of what is good in us?  

We must not cower in sight of the unusual and the unacceptable.  We must stand tall.  In the recollection of the hard times that produced the World Expo's, the Motorama's, the monumental architecture, the Woodstock, the computer technologies, the rallies for peace - we look now at those records in film and video and fantasize those times were easy when in fact they were hard.  More knowledge is at hand than ever before, more means for communication, and so more possibility to act.  We must not cower in face of the multiplicity of possibility but rather celebrate the possibilities and own them as our own, and find the strength to bring up what seems unspeakable in hard times, that is, the good and awesome and wonderful still lay there for us to grasp.

We are no small people, we are no weak folk.  Year by year we enjoy the fruits of our predecessors, the fruits of their hard labor.  We will not fall so we will make too orders, materials things, principled goods, and more for our next generations and their next generations.  If it is to mean that we have to rework a few things by taking the time to think, to contemplate, to imagine, to talk, to advertise - then those are the things we must do.  We must not be that village idiot in the folktale who was so lazy that when his mother went away, he could not muster the will to eat the bread laid out by the bedside table for a few days.  The means are at hand, they are in your mind.  We must act ourselves and in acting together enact the strength of the nation.  No change could take from us our strength and will to be, so in being we must express through whatever avenues and channels open the reality we forge slowly and carefully and willfully with the sweat and blood of our most deepest being.  Our minds are our great asset, and so are our hands - there is no end to this story for it shall go on and on, forever and ever.

Let us wake to the reality of each ourselves.  There is great strength of this people.  We will put our mind and hands in service of our next generations, and along the way, we will enact the strength of Nation.