times are tough for the 99 %

Help me go & speak to Obama for the 99% & you!

I'm a poor artist surviving on a pension & SS. I'm seeking donations to go Obama's dinner so I can break things down to him for how it is for the unprivileged. I would love to have an opportunity to explain how hard it is for us who will never own a home, for those of us who live right in the way of people fracking our water supply so that in several years probably half of us will be dead and those of us who survive will be diseased. I would definitely like an opportunity to voice my opinion. I want to tell Obama how it is everyone's basic right to have adequate medical care food and shelter.

I want him to know that the poor need an expansion of social welfare programs like we had in the Johnson era and that he needs to stop giving big pay outs to people on Wall Street, that he needs to follow President Roosevelt's tactics when it come to taxing the very wealthy because the poor can no longer shelter everything plus pay for everything the rich want.

No one can afford their own apartment anymore. Where are people to go?
There's no jobs and what about the man who makes 23000 and has 3 young children and a wife? He pays taxes and can barely pay the rent.
Things are rough all around for the 99 percent.

For the first times in years - spending some time with the 99% in Zocotti Park and participating in their activities and sharing their space, I feel hopeful that sometime in my lifetime there will be change and more equitable distribution of resources, jobs, money for food medical care for working poor. I haven't felt this hopeful in years.

I even got to hang out with Uncle Eddie & Robin which was great fun. Robin said they'd traveled from West Virginia to be with their brothers and sisters. Uncle Eddie even accompanied me with his banjo when I performed the following poem. Very cool people.

Billie’s Consumerism Blues

What I find crazy is that none of this is being reported in the news. I mean why should we know that a grass roots organization has moved into a park on Wall Street or that this same grass roots population has the same type demonstrations going on in at least 50 more cities.

Yesterday at occupywallstreet.com I was surprised to learn that this occupation is going on in other cities simultaneously and somehow miraculously this news is being kept from our citizenry.
I was really happy to be there today and see so much going on. They even had a performance corner which I participated in which was great fun.

A lot of solidarity permeates the air!

Check the link below at Kevin Zeese's blog to see exactly where and spread the word everywhere to everyone you know:

occupy occupy occupy 
This is a great blog for disseminating information.
http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/99-are-standing-everywhere-occupy-together

Celebrities Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore visit Zucotti park

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2042317/Occupy-Wall-Street-Michael-Moore-joins-protesters-New-York.html

Above is a profile of Uncle Eddie and below is Robin.

And here's Robin, his cohort in crime!

occupy wall street all day all week is the chant you hear!

My first short film is now online: "Toss up and Sides again"

Ben Hopper filmed his first short film - check it out! Shot over a period of 2 days using a Canon 5D Mark II during the 18th Israeli Juggling Convention in Gan HaShlosha (Israel) back in April this year.

My first short film is now online: "Toss up and Sides again"

We Are the 99 Percent

We Are the 99 Percent

Misunderstandings

Nurtured with contempt instead of acceptance I came to understand that contempt was what I deserved. A world filled with maladjusted tendencies, constrained to a room, one of many to come. Three beds stood in our one bedroom with two side-by-side windows with deep sills that faced a wide open schoolyard that ran the entire width of our square city block.

Six of us lived in a one bedroom walk up gratefully situated on the first floor of a five story red brick building. There were two graceful entrances to the left and right of the main courtyard surrounded by well tended shrubbery. 

In our one bedroom there was a double bed plus two singles side by side against the wall, facing outwards so that all of our feet directly faced each other. The two single beds pushed together were mine and the middle sister's. The double bed on the opposite side facing ours was occupied by my eldest sister, Georgette, and my mother. 

My bed was closest the window and Harriet's bed was pushed alongside mine, the heads pushed against the wall. There was only a few feet of space left to walk between the four beds. I spent a lot of time in bed. That was where I did my homework, read for hours and dreamed away the hours.

My favorite part of weekends and mostly all I looked forward to was the ability to stay late in bed gazing at the sky. If my sisters came in or my mother I would climb on the window sill behind the curtain where they could not watch me and I could imagine I was alone with my dreams of clouds constructing lives of gods and goddesses while I instructed them on how to play nice with one another to have a good time.

I never did fit it with anybody, especially in first through third grades. Children made fun of me. A girl name Ruth told me she and her friend were going to get dressed up and have a lollipop party and everyone was invited. Did I want to go? I looked in Ruth’s face feeling suspicious of their niceness I felt trapped but didn’t know why. I nodded yes. “Sucker,” they yelled gleefully laughing hysterically, whilst staring into each others eyes, they danced away arm in arm. I stared after them.

I sing misty blue for you today

Misty blue just for you today Daddy

Sing misty for you every day

Waiting to hear you say

You’re coming on home today

My life’s on hold – my mind strays

I see you in my mind’s eye drinking that Bombay Gin

Sitting alone in a Starbuck’s café

Knowing life plays me like a Violin

But I can’t stop wondering and hoping
That there's a better way

Please tell me you’ll always love me Daddy

The way you know that I love you

The way you know that I love you

Please please come on home to stay

My soul has turned misty like the
weather before the storm

While it keeps playing the same old song

Play it in reverse today and tomorrow

Let me coerce you to come on home

Let your worries disperse

Things can’t get much worse

So come on home baby

We’re going to jam the night away
and play new music all night long
till the dawn lights up the sky Daddy

The weather of my insight has changed.

The days grow shorter sun up to sun down yet they feel longer. I toss nightly sleeplessly awakened by the pitter patter of rain on my A.C. Relentlessly the same way every day like the A.C. upstairs  at the Medina’s  drips steadily down on top of mine. The storms won’t abate. Although the wind is gone a steady rain remains like the leak in my heart. I’m bleeding out and can’t say when. Only it’s not blood, it’s the leaking of love and spinal fluids and I can’t hold them back. I know it’s going to rain again today.

I look out the window. Quiet yet in spite of the quiet the rain falls like a silent cellophane sheet blanketing my world. Consumed by tireless passion I consider my options on how to avoid contact with the world. As though hearing my thoughts a breeze awakens outside my window whispering to me about the loss of his mother, the rainbow warrior. I console us and entreat him to try again.

He foreswears off the grain alcohol and thunder and moonshine light up the sky.

The wind is my friend. He whispers words only I hear so I listen again to see if I fear the answer. 
My thoughts and the wind have moved on. I hear a car barking down the street. The sound of the city whistles and my ears ring.

The pain in the crook of my arm keeps me alive. I google ‘pain in crook of arm’ to see what I can find. It’s described as some weird tendonitis. Ice as usual oh my. Shouldn’t I know that already?

I google group venus astrology. My astrology tells me “Avoid pessimism and don’ t retreat into yourself. You must expand psychologically and seek new experiences.”

Story of my life…

Onwards to new adventures!

What am I waiting for…

The Only One

 I thought about you and watched videos of us inside of me. I sat and cried for what I thought we’d had but slowly over the next year I realized our life was recreated from a fantasy of what I desired from you. In my mind the dream I’d created of who you are became real. Slowly over time you proved to me again and again that the dream was a fantasy. Being subjected to your unrelenting anger and sarcasm was nothing new. What became new was now I saw the things you did for what they are. You proved that I never possessed the dream I desired. You proved that I only see things the way I want to see them. I went back in time in my mind rearranging the pieces of our lives. I had never wanted to see you for who you are so I created the man I hoped to find. Picking through the events in time now I see I saw you, as I wanted you to be.  You were always the way I see you now but I refused to see who you were when we were together. To survive I lived a fantasy.

Living in dreams enriches my life but there is the comedown when I realize it’s only a dream, a rich fantasy about how I want things to be but not the way they really are. Everyone I see is colored through whatever lens I am wearing that day. I live in bright-distorted colors of varying shades and intensities.  Blue is rarely true blue and it is in my nature to stay true to myself. I am fickle. I change colors.

My sad is midnight blue yet I keep trying to see stars peeking through. Green seeps through me helping me keep in touch with nature yet I’m streaked with red where I’ve been led astray by envy or anger. My lust puts a golden dust on the dawn. It’s all I see when I’m in love, like being trapped in a lovely crystal ball with gold dust all around. It ends with releasing blood ties at season’s end; the red turns shades of yellow and orange, where I struggle with my faith in mankind. I’m ready to begin again. My color is aqua. I become a shade of royal plum. Like the Aegean Sea I float in the arms of eternity searching for the right you to understand me.

After the gold dust settles pastels show me like a misty savior heading towards threatening seas to rescue them from the dark. Colors shift from dawn to dusk inside of me as I rearrange my life accordingly with a party cake pink; a perpetual continuity lives inside of me as I struggle with the colors. They consume me. I realize I’m not the only one who can’t escape so I pray for us all instead.

I recycle the stories in my head and see they are all the same. The names change but the stories remain the same. After some time telling stories, the men run into each other knocking each other down because they don’t watch where they’re running. After a few stories I realize it doesn’t matter who did what. It’s like any one of them could have been in any of my stories doing the same things the other one did. The faces and names become interchangeable. They blur together and become one. For God’s sake it’s the same old stories with new and different faces.

LIFE JUST GOT BETTER

“It’s ok.” I said, “I’ve been there too

I understand where you’re coming from.

Just show me the dotted line and

I’ll be ready to sign,

I promise I’ll make no demands

for alimony or child support.

My life’s worth more than you could ever pay.”

The gun trained on my face

I heard the click,

saw him pull the trigger back

Imagine the surprise written in his eyes

when still we stood eye to eye 

bullet jammed in the chamber

My life handed to me on a

platter that day, I understand now

But for the mercy of God 

I’d be dead not only broke

Lucky not to succumb to a bullet that day

I said, “Show me the dotted line 

I know when it’s time give in and sign

Because I’ll never get nothing from you 

except a hard way to go.

You never liked sharing anyway 

so I’m glad to let you know

I’m glad to see you go

I want you to know 

I’m glad you know 

I don’t need you to have my own

I had my own before you were born

no - please don’t interrupt," I continued,

holding up my open palm,

"You misunderstand.

Go with your government job 

and all your big benefits.

It’s ok if you refuse to share.

To care for and love your children,

I swear it’s o.k.

I’ll sign it all away to you

As long as you let me go my own way.

I'll sign that dotted line, 

I swear I will!

I’m not giving in to death yet – 

it’s premature to date.

Please don’t make me 

leave my son motherless

Hand me a pen 

I’m ready, willing, able to bend

I’ll sign on that dotted line

By the grace of God

I absolve you from all future debts

Please let me go

Thank God I’m not dead 

Here I go, pen in my hand 

I’m ready to sign on that dotted line.”

The surprise registered in your lifted brows

as you pulled the trigger

and stared me dead in the eye

no remorse for what you’d planned to do

“An eye for an eye,” you quoted, 

“So bang you’re dead, gone in the wink 

of an eye,” and you winked at me.

On your way out the door,

Certainly I hoped this was the last wink of yours I’ll ever see.

In the blink of an eye, my life is worth more than child support

Gleeful smile, no mercy for the bitch written on your face

A New York City minute changes life

when you saw no bullet had emerged from the chamber

no bullet came clambering through 

no bullet rammed through me

By God’s mercy I still stand here before thee

So let me be me and I’ll allow you to be free of me

Free from responsibility demands you could no longer stand 

You were so cruel to me

Ready to sign on the dotted line as long as you’ll let me live

Yes I’m ready to sing there’s a song in my heart

Glory Hallelujah I'm so glad I survived

I'm so blessed to be alive

money ain’t mean nothing, I’ll give it up to stay alive

I got a song in my heart so glad to be alive

Infidels

Disappointed in man’s inhumanity to man,

I live each day like it’s my last

Time moving so fast

Everywhere I turn, someone new is hurt.

Living on the edge of despair striving to stay afloat and hold on to my hope.

It’s all I’ve got left.

I bide my time and wait behind closed curtains in love with a perfect life gorging

on dreams of a different world where everyone’s my brother.

I turn on the evening news in time to hear the brother speak,

the one who killed his brother’s wife last week,

He says she was just no damn good anyway. 

He knew for sure because she used to be his wife. 

She disappeared around the same time he was convicted of killing her. 

He said, "I already served my time for killing her,

you see it’s called double jeopardy 

and they can’t charge me twice for the same crime. 

Thank God I got rid of the no good bitch once and for all 

She can't do this to no one else no more."

The scene switches to the crazy Jewish guy in the orange jumper 

the one who tortured the little Jewish boy then dismembered him. 

They caught him abducting the boy on one of those street cameras

It’s enough of a dose of TV to last several days.

I try to decide what I can do about man’s inhumanity to man 

I bring it all home. The buck has to stop somewhere.

I examine my life in a whirlwind of thoughts to discover 

I’m trapped in a medieval prison where I’m tormented the same way 

every day and still can’t learn how to escape.

Man’s inhumanity to man makes me suffer.

I envision a day it will be different.

Julio examines my planet’s positions.

He declares that now I’m full of romanticism.

I told him that no he’s wrong that now I obsess on man’s inhumanity to man.

African and east European towns there are wars and bombs in the middles east.

Women raped daily, life disrespected as a matter or course.

I don’t know what to do. Where has my romanticism fled.

Searching my mind for a better place in time I reassess the layout.

A perfect place is hard to find.

It won’t matter where I go so I decide to sit this one out

and work on creating a better space inside myself.

I go inside and look around to find a better place and instead sit

Here today and gone tomorrow
I sit and cry and pray every day for a better world someday.

20 Essential Chinese Novels Plus Other tidbits

20 Essential Chinese Novels | Bachelor's Degree Online

These are worth a look with a contemporary and classical mix.

One of my personal favorites not listed here is the Buddhist Tale of Monkey King with drawings and text.

Below is an abbreviated story line to the famous work, "Monkey King", known to the Chinese as "Journey to West",written by Wu Ch'eng-en (1500?-1582), a scholarly-official, is one of the renowned classical Chinese story about an allegorical rendition of the journey, mingled with Chinese fables, fairy tables, legends, superstitions mixed with popular beliefs, and includes stories about  the Taoist and Buddhist religions. It was based on a true story of a famous Chinese monk, Xuan Zang (602-664). After years of trials and tribulations, he traveled on foot to what is today India, the birthplace of Buddhism, to seek for the Sutra, the Buddhist holy book. When he returned to China or the Great Tang as was called that time, he began to translate the sutras into Chinese, thus making a great contribution to the development of Buddhism in China. Monkey King is an indeed rebellious extraordinary being, born out of a rock and fertilized by the grace of Heaven. A being extremely smart and capable, he learns all the magic tricks and gongfu from a master Taoist and is able to transform himself into seventy-two different images such as a tree, a bird, a beast of prey or a bug as small as a mosquito to enable him to sneak into an enemy's belly to fight him inside or out. Using clouds as a vehicle he can travel 180,000 miles in a single somersault and he wields a huge iron bar that serves as ballast of the seas and can expand or shrink at his command. This becomes his favorite weapon in his later battles. He claims to be the king in defiance of the only authority over heaven, the seas, the earth and the subterranean world -- Yu Huang Da Di, or the "Great Emperor of Jade" in Chinese. To declare himself as emperor is an act of high treason, coupled with complaints from the masters of the four seas and the hell, he invites the relentless scourge of the Heavenly army.
After many showdowns,the emperor offers the monkey an official title to appease him. Enraged he revolts, fighting his way back earth to resume his claim of his own kingdom after learning that the position he held was nothing but that a stable keeper. Eventually, the heavenly army subdues him after many battles and with the help of all the god warriors.
Having a bronze head and iron shoulders, all methods of execution fail and the monkey man dulls all swords used upon him. As a last resort, the emperor commands that monkey king be burned in the furnace where his Taoist minister Tai Shang Lao Jun refines his pills of immortality. Instead of killing him, the fire and smoke add fiery golden crystal eyes that can see through what people normally can not. He frees himself and fought his way down again. Finally, with Buddha's help the monkey was suppressed under a great mountain known as the Mount of Five Fingers and could no longer move. Five hundred years later, ,the Tang Monk, Xuan Zang, came to his rescuer.
The Monkey King became the disciple of the monk and escorst him to insure that he could bring the sutras to the west. He travels with two other disciples, actually also arranged by the Buddha. Here begins the four's stormy journey west which is packed with actions and adventures that brought into full play the puissance of the monks' disciples, the Monkey King in particular.
The story of Journey to the West is divided into three parts: (1) an early history of the Monkey spirit; (2) pseudo-historical account of Tripitaka's family and life before his trip to fetch the sutras in the Western Heaven; (3)the main story, consisting of 81 dangers and calamities encountered by Tripitaka and his three animal spirit disciples - Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy. The average readers are fascinated with the Monkey King, all prowess and wisdom, while many critics agree that the protagonist embodies what the author tried to convey to his readers: a rebellious spirit against the then untouchable feudal rulers. This story has the appeal of the ages with its moral thrust and pictures.

Adapted from HaiWang Yuan, Western Kentucky University

On another note keeping in the Chinese vein, yesterday I visited Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel NY where after some meditation I received the gift of books and shared lunch with the monks. Here are some photos. 

 Below are people giving the service to keep up the grounds.

 They call this the temple of a thousand Buddhas for a reason - you think?