Letters to Friends

Sometimes we get caught out 

Xxxx,

Sometimes we get caught out in life,

the wind gets too strong

and the seas too big

We gotta tuck a reef into the sail, or two or even three,

And maybe just heave to and ride it out

All of our technology and belief in our 

higher evolved minds

don't change the facts or 

the marching on of time

A young woman, just entering the convent,

with more wisdom and humility than

most ever get,

said, "On the day I was born I also began to die."

No matter how many miles we travel,

Upon the sea or on the land,

we find that the planet is round-ish,

we always end up where we started,

and we actually never went anywhere

They send those guys up in rockets,

but they all just come right back.

While they are up there, out there,

they take pictures of the earth.

1 minute, or 100 years,

for the person living it,

it's a life complete

You can't know what you didn't have,

and you can't have what isn't yours.

I don't remember a single thing that happened before I was born,

I don't have reason to believe that the day after I die will be any different

That doesn't make me sad or scared or even curious much.

It does make me really enjoy these strawberries while they are in season this year,

I may not be here next year, or maybe they won't

When the seas is crashing all around and my hands are locked upon

the ships wheel, trying to keep my little ship afloat, and I see

Another ship out toward the horizon

I know that the crew has it's own ship and storm

and heading

We may eventually see each other in an anchorage

and give a knowing nod to each other, having both weathered the storm

or, one of us may lie to an anchor, in a safe harbor

and look out passed the breakwater and wonder,

"Did that other ship weather the storm?"  "Are they safe in some other harbor?"

"Are they lost?"  " Am I and I just don't know it?"

No matter if I am out on the atlantic sea, or the red rocks of the desert,

or on my couch in my little house,

I can never go to a place, where I don't bring with me,

all I have ever been, all the laughs, all the tears, all the wonderings

and all the pains and regrets.

Tools

I have wondered what our world would be like if we CHOSE to build tools that only used human power to do the work they assisted us with.

No pollution and no need for a gym membership, or the vast
amount of entertainments that we currently use.
(picture taken from internet)

This seems like a reasonable choice.  We'd still mine and smelt ore.  We'd still manufacture things........
But,
Instead of a leaf blower we'd use a rake.

Instead of a car we'd use a bicycle, or maybe a horse.

Instead of a dryer we'd hang clothes in the sun, or by a wood stove.

In so many ways we might remove so many of the problems that we have created with machinery.

We might have less traffic fatalities due to high speed collisions, and we'd have less pollution from cars.  True we'd have do deal with horse shit if we used them for transportation, but that can be absorbed by the earth and even used as fertilizer, adding to the quality of the soil.

We'd need more people to do the work that is now done by machinery.  The jobs are traditionally less paying but then maybe the goods made would have to cost more to balance out the whole system.

Owners of farms have said that they can't afford to pay workers, but that is a construct of man.  If the food cost what it does in labor to grow it then the price at the market should reflect that.  What choice is there otherwise, not to eat.  Each laborer on the farm should be able to eat well if he, or she, is in fact doing the work it takes to grow the actual food.  Doesn't that just seem reasonable?

I'd rather here my neighbor's rake dragging across his leaf and stone than the whining motor of his leaf blower.