[Oe List ...] audio to ... Peace on Earth

[Jaime R Vergara]

Thanks, Ellie.  Yes, let me have a copy.
 
Thank you also, Nancy.  Borrowed your Alice Walker lines in the following, which I am sharing as my last output this year.  Promise.

Usual caveat: if curious, welcome; not, meet you at the next bend.
 
 
Peace on Earth
 
We are not a bit sentimental about the title phrase as wishful thinking, nor does the romantic in us fail to see the reality of a world tearing itself at the seam.  
 
This is the time of the season when the little girl realizes that Santa did not improve her lot and is told by Mom that she was too young to join the adults in egg-nog-in’ it to New Year.  So she hies to bed, recites her Lord’s Prayer with carfully pronounced words: “Forgive us of our Christmases as we forgive those who Christmas against us.”
 
An acquiantance opts for a different reading of the old season’s greetings: “Peace on earth, goodwill to all”, to “Peace on Earth, to all of goodwill,” the assumption being that certain people are not of goodwill, and are thereby, justifiably excluded.  Why, some of my fellow human rights activists even object to the UN flag being lowered at half-mast on Kim Jong-il’s passing!
 
We are at the end of the 365.25-day cycle when the earth completes a journey around the sun.  It is not a return to the same position as it was one revolution back, nor does the revolving orb remain the same in that whole period of time.  Our time consciousness moves forward, though not with a predetermined destination, and nor does it repeat itself.  In fact, it is susceptible to change, amenable to human choices.
 
It was a convenient time measure that the people by the Nile devised to anticipate the pattern of inundation (not much rain in lower Egypt but the flooding from rains in the upper Nile was devastating and predictable, which led to faith and religion, astrology and science) leading them to the cycle of flooding, planting and harvesting, from whence our calendar came when Julius Caesar brought it out of Egypt into Rome.
 
We have been uncharacteristically sensitive these yearend to those who arrived at the terminus of their lives.  Centenarians flourished including a German at 102, an ukelelist with a Filipino sounding name of Bill Tapia at 103 (who could also be a Pacific Islander who missed the whole debacle of the refined sugar), a Canadian-Asian at 112, and a Singapura-Chinese at 113.  A Russian rocket designer made it at 99; might have checked in early with the vodka.  Many young ones succumbed to athletic injuries as well as traffic accidents, but Ms. Venezuela 2000 was KO’d by cancer.  
 
Science with its genetic engineering is now predicting that we might have 150-year olds in 50 years!  Why the rush for longevity when we cannot even handle the quality of the here-and-now!  Immigration lawyer Ted Laguatan made it to our fear-filled shores as deportation count rises along with the blood pressure.  Abramoff is back big time, but Lang and Uncle Ben do not look good.  Ah, we’ll reserve this thread for another time.
 
Across the Atlantic is the forgotten playwright and activist of the velvet (to Czechs) and gentle (to Slovaks) Czechoslovakian revolution of ’89, and the reluctant presider over the dissolution of Czecho-Slovakia in ‘93, memorialized this month.  An acclaimed man of peace, Havel Vaclav went unnoticed in gently passing at 75.
 
Apple’s Steve Jobs’ sister recalled his last moments at 56 as an achievement to the last breath, which makes us wonder why we rational humans are not more intentional about our going, whatever circumstances the exit may be.  Death remains under cover yet none of us solitarily are excused from claiming it our own.
 
I travel to my mother in Oahu who is heading towards 92.  Her pathos got aired by my brother’s ears when, sitting on the floor on the dampness of a no-longer controllable bladder, she murmured: “Please do not send me to a nursing home!”  Somehow, that sense of pride and self-dignity makes her remaining years worth breathing for.  Sadly, not many get the chance to express such sentiments to their offspring, and those who do so find children railing at the State structures for its failure to provide the social service their kin provided in the past and feel guilty for not wanting to provide themselves today.
 
The cycle spirals onward.  Here in China, prodigious baby making transpired this year.  The Year of the Dragon is an auspicious time to bear children, and the red that normally accompanies the fireworks of the Lunar New Year is anticipated to be more resplendent this year than the previous one.
 
Meanwhile, we are a third of the way on the season of Dong Zhi, the 30-day period between the winter solstice and the advent of Spring.  ‘Tis the period of real winter, according to the elderly Zhongguoren, who in this northeast corner of the Asian mainland used to carve ice lanterns outside their homes to guide spirits in the night (including those who downed too much bai duo), and leave a rather comforting aesthetics to the calm and crispy air before the dawn.  Urbanization, alas, rapidly crept into the farmland and the lanterns have given way to the florescent bulb!
 
That pretty much sums up our sentiment on this turn of the Nile water cycle.  We’ve watched the turning in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt with Yemen, Syria and Iran cauldrons of manipulated change.  The Mayan 2012 frenzy amuses as, and we echo Alice Walker:
 
I will keep broken things:
Thank you so much!
I will keep Broken Things.
I will keep you:
Pilgrim Of Sorrow.
I will keep myself.
 
With Zorba and in Dong Bei, we dance!





j'aime la vie



-----Original Message-----
From: Ellie Stock <elliestock at aol.com>
To: Dialogue <Dialogue at wedgeblade.net>; OE <OE at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Thu, Dec 29, 2011 11:54 am
Subject: [Oe List ...] audio to In the Fullness of Earth's Time


Hi folks,
 
Fourth day of Christmas greetings,
 
If anyone wants an audio copy of the tune of In the Fullness of Earth's Time, I can email it individually--as an attachment.  It bounced back from the ICA/OE listserve.   Because of the way it was recorded, the first verse is a bit muddled, second and third clearer, but you can get the gist of how it goes.  The last verse should read, like the prose sent earlier:  Stretch the arms of Woman and Man to build the earth again".
 
Ellie
 

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