New student special: CHARLES manson to BLM

Facebook turned into an unplanned new student young adult special this morning! Probably stuff you won’t see at ‘student induction’: where they start to learn what to support, and what they can’t say… and shouldn’t think!!

Is your student leader a ‘Manson‘? A couple of mine were, but they were much younger than me, so I could control it. They did help to make my university time better, but I think I did the same for them, and didn’t think they owned a share of my life!University students are ripe for brainwashing, perhaps fully free from their parents for the first time, and thinking they know it all, with in fact little knowledge and probably all weighed towards freedom and rebellion, mirroring how they feel themselves, and how they’d like to turn the world into their ideal fantasy world, like they’ve seen in Lord of the Rings, Avatar or Game of Thrones.It was only when I started writing those fictional stories I remembered my greenYgrey world trilogy, and how it tried to keep the right side of reality, like the Valhalla Rising movie did with Vikings/Middle Ages life… and I reference it in the last of the trilogy… I also included satire and parody…

Most people want to experience rather than be told, as I did. Some people are free climbing high buildings or cliff faces, and resent anybody advising them not to. Sometimes I did dangerous things because I didn’t consider them dangerous. and sometimes because I just didn’t care about the consequences.I don’t feel lucky to be alive, but I do feel lucky to have survived without major injury!

White women should start saying the name and campaigning for justice in the Jessica Chambers case: a white women burnt alive, including from the inside out, probably by a black man for refusing sex (like Jodi Miller in Leeds, England, UK); the main suspect is already in prison on another charge, and is a suspect in the murder of another woman. His main defence is the alibi of a woman (black?) he married afterwards.Will BLM money (much of it donated by whites!) help him escape justice?!
Inspired by Regina King wearing Breonna Taylor t-shirt.

Poem about Life Reality between Dreams and Folklore

Image by MissMessie via Flickr

Marc Latham’s latest Folding Mirror poem resides in the greenygrey area between fantasy and reality; our place in it and others’ perceptions of our place in it.

Before we are born we may be the fantasies of our parents, and after we die our lives and images may become the fantasies of those who shared our lives and the descendents who never meet us.

Even in life, much of our lives are a fantasy to most people; who only know a little about our reality, and may make up the rest themselves.

And to yourself, the ‘real’ world can seem like a fantasy, where you don’t feel you have any control over your life and environment.  What is hidden beyond bureaucracy, walls and horizons is imagined by the mind.

Here’s the poem:

Between Times of Fantasy 

In your mother’s dreams and belly
babyhood being smelly.
Unremembered times of laughter
burping after each eating disaster.
Your experiences learned
in photos and tales.

Reality within dreams and memories

Your story pieced together
jumbled jigsaw dialogue.
School tomfoolery and work folklore
friends recall once more.
You’re not present
to witness descendents create your epitaph.