Essay-on- Love - Creative Non-Fiction
As I walk down the road I’m thinking about those
Greeks, and their eight types of love.
I remember too that I am of another age. Less scoped, freer.
One thing I agree with them, love is high frequency, not
ever low. Traditional people may have viewed it as a one -on-one feeling state,
without resistance.
I kick a stray stone off the road. Watch it lodge in a
bunch of dead grasses. Alone, without any resistance. It is.
I watch a Kingfisher dip and dive from the blackthorn
tree beside the staid canal. Flashing blue colour, intent on catching its
supper.
Love is a state of being. Heart full in flow, receiving
and giving.
Lived fully it will arrive at joy. I see it in the
battered blue metal jug once used to fill blue-stone mix, into a copper drum. I
watch it in Ox-eye daisies weaving in the sun haze
I hear it in the music of Yo-Yo Ma. Or a trumpet
player in a jazz bar. It catches in my throat breathless, as I fight with tears
that want to fall bitter-sweet.
Or a sunset spreading liquid gold, letting go the
light, yearning, I swallow it too.
Or Venus rising as dusk evens-out the bare spots of
land, blending.
If hate is hell surely love is Heaven.
Perceptions of Peace - Creative Non-Fiction Essay
New-Earth
What possibilities exist to share our planet more lovingly,
and with each other?
The man on the street corner might say anything is possible.
And it is true to say, things are possible, something always works. Does it
work for every man and woman in humankind? There was a time perhaps, when it
did. Before the before.
The binary highway of Left and Right thinking became
established and used to organise society. A Colonial organiser’s dream. A
perception of Otherness was created.
Elitism arrived as an aspect of reactionary ideology
and, autocracy.
There had been the highway of ancient knowing, food and
health knowledge, flora and fauna, original caretakers, oral truths and storytelling
with myths, mutual governance. Solace, and learned solutions. Navigation by
original caretakers. Indigenous sciences. Voiced for the tribe. By the tribe, the
children were considered and protected. No guardian ad. litem needed.
The water tribes of Ecuador had enough savvy to keep
the water flowing cleanly. But time brings change, transforms un-thought of
situations and things. Before a moth becomes a butterfly, it is happy- out, I
guess. It doesn’t know it will become an exotic butterfly.
Then international global autocratic organisations began
to behave and operate like owners of the planet. Texaco came to south America,
amongst other places. Other businesses arrived there too. Then the voice of the people was not listened to and,
eco-disasters that were beyond horrific
nightmares, happened.
There were river sludges, the trees cried, and natives
died. But that is fore- telling. I must return to the past. Back to the
calendar of the middle eighteen hundred.
That time, a change came. Selected families and oriented
persons decided to create industries on a big scale. It coincided with worldwide
white ascendency.
The natural fear of difference may have contributed. To
a them and us division, or not. A colonial fascism on a binary path.
Elitism triumphed, and a new order created to last
hundreds of years. Families became super-rich and beheld a sense of
entitlement.
Powerful because of their cash. They could influence
world events, politics, kings and queens, stock-markets trading, land-prices, territories,
and outer space.
Even life?
Fortunes made by the few and shipped out.
Over time the system would become a neo-liberal arena
with innovative technology and power. Capitalism in a spirit of fascism where
trade unions tamed or bought out. The perception of “otherness” remaining, you
were either an ally or a threat.
At the turn if the twenty first century there were
rumbles of change in society. People on the street had appeared to have arrived
at a knowing of discrepancies in the world. Clear eyed seeing of a worldwide
ascendency of white nationalism and ultra-right-wing movements. A global financial
collapse. Fascism was again evident and renewed. Polarity created a very heavy
energy among the peoples, and they spoke about it. On the world-wide web, in
the street and elsewhere.
Attitudes and behaviours were informing a different
type of person. Who were these waking people? In the morning who was the Self
they met. Did they love falling apple blossoms or horseradish sauce. Did Yo-Yo
Ma fill a void?
They spoke of galactic beings and native sciences. The
endless possibilities for solutions in health, education and, in the language
of spirit, art, earth society. No business models, just selves and souls getting
on together. Solace. Believing you are me and I am you.
No borders and therefore no passports. No dominant
religions. The ecology of the earth and the individual being the same thing.
Spirit and soul. Consciousness.
A living wage for each person. A home and time to talk
to the trees and lie on the ground, earthing. Ancient places and sacred sites
gathering the people to watch the stars. To the music of babbling brooks, the
birds will sing. All in harmony of pulsing earth life.
To speak to the Venus star in a dew drenched morning
and wait for her reply.
A famous man once said, “I have a dream.”
That a dream is sweet to hold. To bring alive.
Our dreaming so precious we dare to visualise. I have
a dream of that peace too,
the endless springtime of hope giving way to summer.
Margaret Kiernan - nominated for Best of the Net in 2021, writes fiction, non-fiction essay, memoir, and poetry. She has had poetry and prose published in e-book, in anthology collections, and literary journals and magazines - including, Black-lion Press, Pendemic.ie journal-C19 collection , archived at University College Dublin, The Blue Nib Lit - Journal, The Write Life Magazine, Unity Global Festival, Vox Galvia at the Galway Advertiser, A New Ulster Literary Press, The Burrow Lit. Journal, Poet-Head.Wordpress.com, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Galway Review and The Irish Canadian Cultural Newsmagazine, New Brunswick.
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