At aga noe en shadow

Crystalized in the present

the past is never far from here

but to live in the past is a kind

of insanity.

We must be like the mad parents

of the children who dove

off cliffs rather than starve to death:

Parents who were amazed

at their children's exuberance.

Except for the young, most of us

are sustained by the past.

Sculpted by time

to be a living embodiment

of the past.

This ranting about courage,

Don't give up the faith; 

Persistence through struggle 

masks this sorry feeling of incompentence

and destructiveness.

If politics is the art of patronage

and the skillful dissemination of power, 

then we are screwed. 

As in the arts, there are brief moments in politics when sanity and light prevail 

but those golden years are quickly replaced by contracting reactions. 

The beauty of an effective political structure 

is its astonishing ability to absorb and neutralize what it is tormented by.

The Sea Mount

"High on a mountain far away ... " The mountain sings to itself. The cockatoo preens and keeps an eye out for a mate. In the great Ocean, two-thirds of our world's surface, all living things sing to themselves and to others.

The great Oceans ofthe Earth teem with life - from the top to the bottom from the bottom to the top. The Methusalii, massive whales, broadcast the news ofthe aquasphere - what is happening in the Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, and Antarctic Oceans. The Nobbli, the crabs, are the keepers, the librarians of the seas. The news, including the truth, is kept by them and when broadcast is heard by all those who can listen.

Now, the news courses with a sense of urgency. Nobbliss, the largest oldest and wisest crab in the Deep assembles his counselors and speaks "brewing in the Oceans there are chemical changes that threaten our world. We feel it in our claws each and everyday. In parts, our numbers are shrinking. So we have heard from the Methusalii who travel the Globe. They say it is the work of those who, ions ago, walked away; those who now sail the tops and suck us up. It is time to persuade those above to cease the warring within themselves and give us love. We must persuade them to become once again our friends as we were many seas ago. Therefore, I am calling a sea-mount. Let

the music go out." Nobbliss had spoken.

In the beginning the music drifted slowly. Each creature making its own sound:

the plankton whispered. The blowfish hissed. The octopi hummed. The dolphins

clicked. The whales sang their high pitched mournful songs until an orchestra of sound

was heard in every port and by every vessel sailing the seas. A miracle: a sound no

humans had ever heard - mellifluous and alien.

For three days the humans crowded the beaches and hugged the coastlines. In the

interior they listened on their radios and I-Pods. There were great debates about the

meaning of the sounds, but soon those who had walked away, so many ions ago, grew

bored. After all Life is for living and working not just sitting around listening to songs.

Nobbliss sat in his cave. He spoke to one of his counselors, a young sea urchin.

"If only they weren't so busy," Nobbliss sighed. The young sea urchin asked, "Did they

listen?"

"Only time will tell," wise, old Nobbliss said. "Only time will tell."