Abs

I am totes amazing,
Amazing I totes am.
I weren't totes amazing,
I'd not have wrote this poem.

I am totes amazeballs,
Amazeballs I totes is.
If I ain't totes amazeballs,
Then what the fuck I is?!

I am totes jamazin',
Jamazin I still is,
If I weren't totes jamazin',
Man, I'd love to know who is!

I am abs amazin'
I absolutely is.
If I'm not abs amazeballs,
Then I don't wanna be it!

Solstice hymn (absolute silliness)

A baptismal chrism of dew drops in June
'Neath a sky lit at once by the sunrise and moon...
Branch rustle crack under wild feet in shadows,
And the early supper before winter commences.
The trees heave with wood pigeons and all sorts of nesters
Awake at the sunrise of four forty-nine,
All baptised at once in the bountiful wine.

All sorts of flies and moths lit up like stars,
So that bats tear across to hunt them with ease
The warm night cooled intermittently by a godsent breeze
So gently to awaken the choir of trees branches
Stirring the solstice and arousing the creatures
All awake to partake in the midsummer feast.
All sorts of shadow and all kinds of beast.

But the sky is alight with the stars, moon and Sun
A miraculous view of the heavens from the dark of the garden.
The sunrise so early took its time to horizon,
So the light danced enchanting against the darkness of night sky
And transformed all the nature around it.
It is mystic you see, a mysterious glee
As the light enchanting and the nature transforming,
So as to be overwhelming.
The spirit leaps in bacchant ecstasy...

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An old.woman speaks of the solstice at sea,
You could scarcely believe what you're seeing...
On a ship's deck all moonlit, the sailors look seaward,
Only to see like great islands afloat,
All sorts of creature from the maritime deep.
They arise in the light, the whale sing hymns to the high sun
Like a chorus of angels, in a sound only heard
By the ears of a god,
For it's their language they sing
And offer unto heaven.

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Away in a land far away from this England
The soil could be heaving with waking cicadas.
The great forests that reach to the clouds at the top
Swell and grow in the great fetour, that accompanies the theatre
Of bountiful feasting,
By all sorts of beasties
On the dead cicada shell...
So wondrous a feat of a species of tree
Has its foundation in the high summer revelry...

The horny cicadas lie dormant in waiting
For the ancestral period of mating.
After eighteen long years, the soil surface tears,
And the cicada gets right to his work.

They are young now and free of their captivity,
So they must mate and repopulate the soil.
They number millions you see, and in the long summer day,
They mate relentlessly.
For when they are done, they fall dead in the mud..
Even living, they are in great peril!
For all sorts of animal come to prey on them fiercely
And eat them alive before mating.

They are clumsy as well when they first reach the ground,
They are very easily preyed on.
And in more or less three more days
All will die anyway
And their bodies produce wondrous humous
For the giant red trees to stretch up with their leaves
To become a Canadian redwood.

Islamic Faith Schools in England - is faith education equal? (work in progress)

I've been following a story recently about schools in Birmingham, UK, wherein some schools were uncovered involved in a plot to 'Islamify' the local state education sector. The letters and emails seems to suggest the following:

1) The schools involved coordinated a plan to out head teachers and senior leadership, as well as governance, to be replaced with preferred Muslim leadership.

2) The local community were involved with the schools in inaugurating predominantly Muslim governors, drawn from the local ranks.

Now, before you go screaming about gerrymandering, cultural invasions and the destruction intrinsecus of democracy, listen to this. The schools were, as a majority, deemed 'Outstanding' or 'Good,' bar a few exceptions (including one school requiring significant improvement), by Ofsted. In one case, the inspectors rated a school as 'Outstanding' in the category of Leadership and Management, citing an obvious commitment to quality education and impeccable standards. While drawing a criticism of one school as "inadequately preparing students for multicultural Britain," the inspectors found these faith schools to bring an important service to their local community.

In my mind, two questions were raised by the state of affairs:

1. Is the UK's general tolerance of faith education limited to Christian institutions? Is there something particularly abhorrent to any majority of UK citizens to Islamic communities having their own faith education institutions within the same state education system as UK comprehensive, grammar, independent and Christian faith schools? If so, why? The main issue of contention is the freedom of religious affiliation extended to all British subjects: does its existence not entitle the Islamic community to their education style as much as it entitles RC schools, or independent schools?

2. Were the same situation applied to a Christian school, in a majority Christian community and region, would there be such a furore? Christian schools actively proselytise in multicultural areas and communities, where various religious communities live adjacent to non-believing and atheist individuals, groups and families. The UK population, in each census and data-collecting, has shown itself to be growing irreligious and agnostic, with many people reporting to be disenfranchised by mainstream religions, and disillusioned with recent, prominent scandals and revelations. The religious communities in the UK sacrifice much to be affiliated with their churches and temples, in the hopes that the overriding morality woven into the community fibre brings safety and comfort to all involved. It is decidedly un-individual: you must be aware of what you are doing in relation to the entire community; when you are not meeting the model moral character you expect others to possess; when you hide yourself for the sake of communal stability and where your family are deeply interested in religious adherence.

What is Morality then?

I have a hard time describing morality in a short, definitive way. You have to digress massively in order to convey (largely through examples) of what morality is. Since I work around young people, I have to be able to break almost anything down to its simplest expression. I ask them, "have you ever done anything you knew was wrong that you got away with?" Being teenagers, the deafening silence usually indicates a resounding Yes. It could be as simple as "I ate an apple once while walking through an open fruit market on holiday. I never paid for it." You know it is bad that you didn't pay for it, and tend to feel bad knowing you've done this nebulously bad thing. You are effectively punishing yourself for the thing other people didn't punish you for i.e. guilt. The only individuals who may have a really difficult time understanding this are some of the autistic spectrum disorders and Antisocial Personality disorders (ASPD), wherein a lack of empathetic stimulus or understanding of other's feelings impair one's notion of "X is bad for others, even if good for me." Morality is this knowing what good actions are, and ethics is the decision-making process of choosing good actions every time (note: not necessarily the best, as Kant revealed).

There are some problemata associated with morality and ethics, the most prominent being universality: how universally applicable is the category of moral? Another is the religious association and dominance of the field, as there exists much evidence for their connection and shared origin. These problems merit articles of their own, but I'd like to get back to discussing the faith schools.


3. The final question raised was about whether the situation arising in Birmingham is evidence of community ghettos in small corporations in the UK. Is England in particular as multicultural as it titles itself? There exists a lot of evidence that scenarios like this develop in England because many, particularly rural, communities in the UK haven't been open to immigration in recent years. Areas of Birmingham, Greater London (esp. Tower Hamlets), Bradford and Luton have long established large Muslim minorities. Is it unfair that these community cultural citadels be allowed to encourage their children with authentic faith education? The last three decades have strained tensions with many Muslim communities, either in direct conflict with them (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia) or through their supporting the aforementioned nations (Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan). This tension has been furthered strained by calls from some moderate Muslim political leaders for equivalent Shariah law practice in the UK, as well as the death of drummer Lee Rigby; 7/7; Lockerbie; calls to ban women from veiling, arranged/juvenile marriages and Female Genital Mutilation in the UK. In many ways, the UK has become a society of two shades: the multicultural, multi-ethnic, free native majority; and the small-minded, insular and surreptitious minorities of extremists - primarily Muslim.  
        

Feeling Fat Today.

I know that beauty fades for those who have it.
I know they'll whimper softly in their pillows,
just like I do every night.
They'll remember the attention, the affection,
paid due them when their bodies help up tight.

But not I.

I know that beauty's in the eye of the beholder.
I know that those beheld are happier than me,
they bask in their own glory.
They'll know the bitter sting of base rejection,
and they'll suffer more for having known the joy.

But not I.

I know that life is fleeting, not eternal.
I know that we are all in it together.
They are just like me.
For them, there was no division, no dejections,
they are the victims in their eyes.

But not I.

Io

Can I even begin to retell the tale told to me so beautifully: that of Io in Ancient Greece? Perhaps I would leave out some of the more factual details, so as to better capture the nature of the story alone. The river naiad, Io, was the spirit of a lady much beloved by Zeus - though married, he oft took other wives, much to his wife Hera's distaste...

Io was one such concubine, who lived an enchanted life in the land of Argos, by the banks of the river Inachus. She was a spirit of this river, and never ventured far from it. Zeus much loved, lusted for, this personable and charismatic female - he was a well known lover of that form. He would watch her daily from Olympus, and was enthralled as the lechour in the tree.

One day he stopped the spirit, in the grand magnificence of his corporeal form. Io was very fearful: to stand in the presence of the king of the gods is unnerving for a human, imagine what it must be like for a spirit? He said to her, "You are so very fair, you've drawn the eyes of the gods. I would have you as my wife, and show you splendor, unparalleled and eternal."

At first, Io resisted his approaches (upon her knees, fallen in his presence, though she was) and replied, "What wouldst the king of the gods want from me? I am but a humble servant of my father's house, nothing so special as to merit attention..."

And she began to walk away from him, with a polite curtsy; yet as she pulled away, it was as though all nature had changed around her; the trees seemed to bend invitingly; the hot sun warmed the grass below her bare feet, and all the colours of the surrounding nature began to brighten beyond all recognition... All the world, even the ground beneath her feet, turned her around again to face Zeus.

He softened suddenly, warmer than even the great euphoria of the surroundings, and knelt down upon the grass:

"I would have no other, Io... for that very reason, that most wondrous manner of yours! You are greater than, and more deserving of, the attention of any god, myself included. I watch ye, from high upon Olympus, that I stopped all other mountains reaching as high as. I wonder as you make your father's house proud, you toil and play in the river and the countryside. Such fine creation I wonder at sometimes, even though I am miraculously its creator - in you, I marvel at my own magnificence..."

As she began to blush, he continued: "I would only ask this of you: if you would have me as yours for all eternity, come meet me in the wood beyond the hillside." She'd never been there before, "I wouldn't know the way nor trust my direction..." Standing up now, but still warm and genteel as ever, he replied, "Follow the path of your desires if you wish to come to the wood, you will know the way to where I will be. I will stay there three nights, you may come find me any time before then." He walked off over the hill to the east, and Io was alone.

She pondered by the riverbank, Should I stay, or should I follow him? A god for a husband is a grand thing indeed... I believe I should visit upon this man in the wood tomorrow, he was right - my desire is true...

She arose on the first night, in a night so clear and bright in the June-tide moonlight, that every burden of Helios above could see her journey. The spiteful crab, the ferocious lion, the hunter with bowstring drawn, and the listing, stomping bull - terrifying calamities of the sky - saw her skulk through the wisps and faeries, the mushrooms and small beasts, satyrs and nymphs, into the woods...

All was alight in lapis lazuli and azure magnificence, all death and age was despatched, all was joy and perpetual youth. All forms of life, mammalian and miscellany, seemed to team inside the wood. Rivers and wild flowers converged into one grove such that Pan and Dionysus could conceive. It was indeed all splendor never-ending. She fell into his arms for that night, and two days, until he left on the third night for Olympus. Before he left, he told her she was carrying his son, and he would be a half-god...

Exit Zeus

All this time, in the clouds above, Hera - Queen of the gods and first wife of Zeus, witnessed the carnality in its entirety. She was desperately jealous, as all the capricious gods of old were, and set about a great plan of vengeance. "He would give her a child, and his love... a lesser spirit, than me? In Argos (which was her own land), I will have my revenge on him - for this betrayal..."

She set about a scheme to capture Io, and use her to garner a confession from Zeus. Not for any great purpose, of course, merely her own godly satisfaction. She cared not for Io, nor the child, nor any unaffiliated mortal. She is the goddess of women, and as any real man knows, women do not make good friends of one another; they can be spiteful and indignant of their closest friends. Hera was the Queen of that...