Sunday, April 17, 2016

A drop in the ocean

When I heard today that the Pope took 12 Syrian refugees home from the Island of Lesbos
He invoked the words of Mother Theresa

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.



I said,

Forget the apostles, tomorrow I'm taking 13!


I don't know what the Pope intends
But I will break the bread with these refugees and one day hope
These victims of war can forget man's brutality in favour of
Spreading the gospel of Art and Love


Then I got a call on the phone, it was the Pope who told me that
Balancing the world's interests has always been an act reserved for the Astute Acrobat
Only a few can see advantages upside down
Taking home 12 or 13 didn't matter
And I could swear he said this with a frown



"My eyes are lucid" said the Pope to my outreaching ears
"And to stretch out and shake hands of adults and children
That others seem to vilify takes little effort and few tears"



When he hung up I thought it but a daydream
Only the news flashed again reminding me of those intense faces, full of hope and anxiety

Yet I was feeling anxious as well
I knew this was not the first or last refugee crisis
In the l680s Louis XIV kicked some 200,000 Huguenots out of France 
 Just because they were Protestant


And even in earlier times if you belonged to a clan and
You were different
A male unable to hunt
A female unable to weave
Consequences were rude


Was it possible that modern society's humanitarian drains of empathy were clogged?
Was it possible that our uplifting spirit was fading into a smog?
Was it possible that our ocean couldn't care for "that missing drop"?






Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Blurring reality

My doctor said that I shouldn't walk downstairs with my new glasses
The steps could become blurry

I said that's ok
At work they call me the "Smudger"
I becloud what once was
Focused into
A nebulous disorder of
Disenchanted pixels

From my desk on a daily basis I becloud

Cow tags to




Clownfish




Who are all in search of guarding their privacy

Just like a secluded, enchanted forest
That needn't balsa bashers who tip toe into the timber
With tree-hugging ambitions!


But then there are the Teddy Bears that I diligently befog their misty surroundings
To protect them from their whereabouts as
They may fall prey to kidnappers, torturers or simply vandals


Smudging isn't only a fad of the day
When the Parthenon was first built
The architect Phidias is rumoured to have wished that the Goddess Athena,
The Goddess of Wisdom and Strength,
See it after a bleary, sleepless night so as not
To appreciate its imperfections.



The Goddess Athena after a rough night, circa 437 BC


One of the first photoshopped images and example of blurring, circa 432 BC*

But even Einstein



When he first discovered his theory of relativity smudged
The curvature of spacetime representing operational forces of gravity




Because in those days his family said that he took an anticlimactic dive
Today he would have listened to DJ Khaled's minute on motivation


And moved on to the next theory.

Still some things not travelling at the speed of light travel so fast that they appear
Blurred
The puck of a hockey player that has been wacked on
With full follow through using body, weight and stick
Is rarely clear to the naked eye


And morally and ethically should it ever be unblurred?
Would the puck not lose its status as a MOOI (moving object over ice)?


And so if you are offended or not 
I shall go back to my chores and my mission
To blur where no one can blur
To smudge where no one has smudged 

I choose from my palet my tools 
Just like Leonardo would chose his colours and brushes
And I smudge and smudge and smudge.



*Find attributed to archeologist Langola