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Brian K. Noe

Winter Solstice 2020

Brian K. Noe · December 21, 2020 ·

For the coming of the light
For a lifting of the darkness
For hope, at least

We are thankful

Wishing everyone a blessed solstice. I love you.

Filed Under: Notes From The Field Tagged With: Blessings, Depression, Lifting, Solstice, Winter

Girl With Her Back To Me

Brian K. Noe · December 8, 2020 ·

We were touring
the little Crackerjack Palace
Where I was raised

We were talking with my mother
Who has been dead for 26 years

She was carved out of wood for the occasion
She held a little baby of blue

You two seemed to know each other well
Talking like old friends and rivals
Have you ever met?

It was just like you
understood
Each Other

Looks like you’ve got a little hostage there

Don’t let Erwin stray too far

I have
Always been
Faithful
to
You

It’s 4 AM
You are snoring gently
You are warm like my mother was

I feel
Safe

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Dreams, Love, Memory, Mother, Wife, Woman

The Inward Turn

Brian K. Noe · December 1, 2020 ·

For much of my adult life, I have been “a political activist.” This activism took many forms, some having to do with electoral politics, some having to do with community organizing and advocating. All of these activities were conducted with the best of intentions, and with the goal of “making the world a better place.” My attention was ever focused on injustices, and problems, and the people who were responsible for causing them.

On April 28th of this year, I attended a Zoom call for a socialist reading group that I had first organized years ago, and found myself feeling tense and frustrated almost beyond description throughout the entire call. It felt like a recurring, tedious nightmare. Afterwards I took a breath and realized that this chapter of my life had come to an end.

I had begun what might best be described as “a turn inward” a year or so earlier. The more I delved into the stillness, the less attraction the huge contentious ball of negativity held for me. Increasingly, as time passed, I saw political organizing and activism as massive wastes of energy. Still, I was hesitant to entirely turn my back on activities which had been at the center of my life (I would even say had largely defined my life) for such a long time.

Finally, though, engaging in struggle as a way to effect change got to be incompatible with what I was coming to believe about the fundamental nature of our world. This was a hard realization for someone who considered himself a Marxist, but ultimately it was too compelling.

So I just stopped.

I stopped attending meetings and calls. I removed myself from various groups on social media. I handed off projects and websites to others, or let them die. I stayed away from political discussions. I quit attending and promoting community actions of a political nature. Throughout the 2020 election cycle, I was, for the most part, mute.

For some of my erstwhile comrades, my friends, and even some of my immediate family, this change in my thinking and activities seems to have come as an unpleasant shock. The need for change has, perhaps, never been greater. The Trump years brought one catastrophe after another for working people, and particularly for the most oppressed among us. To turn one’s back on struggle, to forswear outrage, to be one less pair of boots on the march, one less voice raised in resistance, one less caller getting out the vote, one less hand being lent to the organizing efforts – I suppose it appeared to be something akin to betrayal.

For me, at last, it comes down to this. If people are hungry, I should feed them. It is as direct and simple as that. The moments that I spend and the material contributions that I offer to immediately relieve suffering or need are worthwhile, and are enough. This sort of effort does not require that I propagandize, or argue, or cajole, or sit in judgment of others. It does not require that I join a mutual aid group on Facebook. It does not require a stirring up of any emotion other than compassion. It does not require shouting, or the clenching of fists, or the carrying of signs or the drawing of lines in the sand.

I won’t go so far at this point as to say that the clenching and the shouting and the marching is a waste of everyone else’s time, but there is no question that it would be a waste of mine. It brings out the worst of my judgmental, impatient, unpleasant tendencies, and if  “the good fight” cannot be conducted with a smile on one’s face and with love in one’s heart, then it ceases to be good, and becomes just a fight.

Energy goes where attention is placed. If attention is placed on nastiness, negative people, and negative states of mind, then all of the energy goes into an endless, recursive tsunami of negativity. This is the current state of politics in America, and I refuse to contribute any further to it.

Perhaps it is naïve to place one’s hope in the spirit of love. Or perhaps one day that spirit will give rise to a mass movement toward peace and justice and light and life and redemption. I do not know. But I do know that I am contented, despite all of the madness swirling around us, for the first time in a very long time.

I have been accused, very directly and pointedly, of exercising privilege as a grey headed white straight cis male in my refusal to opt out of that contentment. If it is necessary to be angry and outraged and addicted to one’s own stress hormones in order to demonstrate concern and compassion and solidarity, then I will plead guilty as charged. But I suspect that all that is truly necessary is the spirit of love, and the works which are attendant to it.

So I will continue to give my attention to feeding people and to nurturing that spirit of love.

And that will have to be enough.

Filed Under: Essays

Dying Words

Brian K. Noe · November 24, 2020 ·

Through all of the roses
And all of the dead ends
In one back yard after another

You just didn’t care

Quite enough

Dying words
“If you leave me now we’re through.”

He would have hurt you anyway.

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Dreams, Poems, Poetry, Roses

The Question of Distributing

Brian K. Noe · November 20, 2020 ·

Oh receiver of alms
Charity Receiving once toward home
home
justice
didn’t it symbolize home

I though clean
arrived with not a conflicted
abandoned
world
distributing a drop
a guise
the hand immaculately describes a path
something was on the left
Justice observed
alms point the circumstances

we kept down now
each perhaps disappeared
save This person
I was upset about
the question of distributing
I continued walking

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Ambiguity, Burroughs, Charity, Cut-Up Technique, Paradox, Poems, Poetry, Poverty, Tarot, Wealth

An Introduction to Transcendental Meditation

Brian K. Noe · November 15, 2020 ·

Although I am not a trained TM practitioner, the technique is (from what I understand) similar to what I practice each day.

CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, Bob Roth, recently spoke about TM in an online video seminar for folks who are interested in learning it. The video doesn’t describe the step-by-step specifics of how to meditate, but is an excellent introduction to the philosophy and benefits of the practice.

Bob Roth Nov 10 Intro Talk from Maharishi University on Vimeo.

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: Change Your Mind, David Lynch Foundation, Meditation, TM, Transcendental Meditation

A Look In The Mirror

Brian K. Noe · November 13, 2020 ·

I turn away

Mirror, you misunderstand
You cast me in a bad light

Not I, this coarse beast

This ugliness is the fault of my
Children
My spouse
My circumstances

The wounds
The suffering
Are justified

I am not the one who needs to change

Filed Under: Poetry

Election 2020 Post-Mortem

Brian K. Noe · November 12, 2020 ·

I don’t have a lot to say yet on the technical or political aspects of this year’s Presidential Election. I think that we will learn a lot once data on Hispanic voters can be parsed.

Like many, I am relieved that we will have someone in power who is more competent, better mannered, less buffoonish, and less overtly racist and sexist.

If someone is expecting a Biden Administration to be anything more than that, though, I am afraid that they may be disappointed.

Filed Under: Notes From The Field Tagged With: 2020 Elections, America, Elections

On National Greatness

Brian K. Noe · November 11, 2020 ·

Perhaps it is just my own perception, but I’ve noticed that Veterans Day 2020 seems, at least for some, to be more an occasion to celebrate military might than anything else.

To the extent that America is, or ever has been, great, that greatness has derived from the strength of our ideals, not from our nation’s ability to destroy more things or kill more people more efficiently than other nations.

Among ideologies, nationalism seems to me to be among the most childish and ignorant of all. I am sad to witness so much of it.

Preface notwithstanding, here is a post from nine years ago that still expresses the gist of my own personal observance today.

I wish you peace,

Filed Under: Notes From The Field Tagged With: America, Holidays, Militarism, Nationalism

The Language of the Birds

Brian K. Noe · November 6, 2020 ·

Guggenheim Fellow Anna Badkhen writes about zeitgeist in Philadelphia, collective spirit in the Global North, and what the birds foretell.

We may say we like to be surprised, astonished, but we like to be surprised in a particular way that is expected or suits our projected needs. This is why children like to hear the same stories. Their predictability is something to hold onto. This is why I am rereading the classics, which I first read as a very young child: it is like worrying a rosary or a wave-grooved seashell you keep in your pocket, something familiar for the fingers to run over and over. This is why we read projections for how long the pandemic will last, or who will win the election, or whether the global uprising against racism will prevail: we want to know when those of us who survive can go back to normal. We want to project that normal.

Source: The Paris Review – Blog Archive How to Read the Air – The Paris Review

Filed Under: Curated Links Tagged With: America, Birds, La Langue Des Oiseaux, Language of the Birds, Literature, Musings, Paris Review, Philadelphia, Women Writers

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