Tag: books

Take My Word – 20th September 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Do I have time to read every written word?
Don’t look at me as if it’s so absurd
Absorbed in stories that taught me much
Each one holding a teacher’s touch

The words to learn from times to burn
Find the right words for your concern
If it hits you hard then read it twice
Take my word, that’s my advice

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that I can read books wherever I go. One for Utopia, one for school/House, one for evenings, one for bedtime.

Well, the weekend passed by quickly, with going to Amy’s aunties’ memorial on Friday and Saturday night and then her cremation on Sunday morning. I was happy to have a phone with me and felt less conscious of using it on these occasions, as I’ve gotten used to Thais doing it. Even one of the monks took a call whilst his leader was chanting.

At times when I looked up and around, I still could not feel what comforts these odd rituals provide. They seem a nonsense and can be adapted in any way anyone should please. If we got rid of all religions, would we just make new rituals to comfort ourselves? Perhaps not. It’s not so obvious in those who have no faith. They (we) accept the fact that we live and die and not much else.

Recently, I’ve been reading much about the USA’s foreign policy and interference in other countries, and it reinforces the fact for me that all of it is beyond meaningless. People left to themselves are generally ok and without any implanted biases, get on with everyone.

I’m thinking that China’s approach to world affairs is a more powerful way to share the world. From an outside perspective, it looks to me as if they are aware that helping people to help themselves benefits everyone in the long run. Trying to force your way of life on other people has continually shown in history to not be successful. Every country, group, philosophy, and government will have its share of bad apples, and the current media obsession with focusing on them forces a bias that is not conducive to love.

Religions have also failed at a mass level, of teaching to love everyone, even though it is a major tenet of them all.

Whilst these situations remain, frustrated people, like me, want to give up, see no hope. Even in our own happy lives. We can’t ignore the suffering of others. These people are humans, and we play this game of life together.

The Poems of a Ridiculous Man – 7th August 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

So here’s the last of my Dostoevsky cool quotes for now, this time from the fantastic The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Despite being quite dark and moody I feel like my poems came out a little more on the positive side – perhaps a reflection on how I was feeling when I wrote the poems compared with when I was inspired by the quotes as I was reading the story.

Acknowledgement to Husker Du and Rob Crow/Heavy Vegetable for some relevant phrases and ideas and, as before, the poems borrow heavily from the text.

Searching for a picture for this post also lead me to finding this hand painted animation of the story.

Ah, it’s so hard to be the only one to know the truth! But they won’t understand it. No, they won’t.

No Truth

Only I know the truth
They sure won’t understand
I carry this burden
It is just as I planned
Truth is in the saying
The truth will set you free
But I will never share
The truth is just for me

Maybe it was the result of the conviction that dawned upon me quite independently of my will that nothing made any difference in this world.

Conviction

I tried and tried and tried and tried
To make a difference before I died
Close to the end a sudden dawning
Independently and without warning
Your time is pointless, meaning, none
A pinprick in millions more to come
So make the best and start believing
Despite the sentence we’re all receiving

…eternally dear to the hearts of her most ungrateful children.

Realm

This earthly realm
Where it all starts
Never ending, eternally
Dear to the hearts
….of her most ungrateful children

We can truly love only with suffering and through suffering. We don’t know how to love otherwise; we don’t know any other love. I want to suffer so that I may love.

Love and Suffering

I wanted it all, wanted it so badly
Staring out of misted windows like a fool
To love this love is to suffer it gladly
Our twisted hearts make us look so cruel
This love, true love, it knows no other way
Crushed and broken hearts not spoken thereof
Life lived without it, not for another day
I must, I want to suffer so that I may love

My hatred for the people of our earth had always contained a feeling of despair – why couldn’t I hate them without loving them?

World of Masochism

My hatred for the people of our earth
Has always contained a feeling of despair
Why couldn’t I hate them without loving them?
Why did I have to care?
Some days I’m just in KEN Mode
A rage of pure hate and seething
Other days I wish for utopia
A paradise full of our dreaming
Which way will it go today?
Which side of the bed did I wake?
Every thought is masochism
No matter which path I take

They grew to appreciate the beauty of untruth…the germ of the lie penetrated their hearts, and they took a fancy to it.

A Good Lie

Sometimes a lie is like a lover
A beauty to be believed
The untruth penetrates the heart
Willingly deceived

…they experienced suffering, and came to love it; they declared that suffering was the only way to Truth. Then science spread among them.

To Suffer

He felt he’d suffered enough
So the Buddhist jumped from the roof
Science says ‘he’s dead’
He thought it the way to truth

Each became so jealous of his individuality that he had to do his best to belittle and humble the individuality of others….

Tall Poppy

You’ve reached the greatest height
Like it’s some crowning achievement
Society brings you down to earth
Where everyone is in agreement

Voluntary slavery in which the weak submitted to the strong of their own free will, if only in order to gain their support to oppress those who were even weaker than themselves.

Shit Trickles Down

Submit to the strong by your own free will
Eat the shit until you’ve had your fill
So you may enslave those below you
Pass on the shit your master throws you
The human centipede, a fitting analogy
A voluntary agreement to this economy
A vicious circle made of 7 billion pieces
The pyramid scheme of human faeces

We’re striving for the same things; we’re all, from the sage to the worst criminal, making our way toward the same objective. Only we’re trying to get there by different roads.

Different Roads

You take the high, I’ll take the low
It’s the same whichever way you go
You take the low, I’ll take the high
Arriving together, just in time to die

Let’s say paradise will never come about! I know myself it won’t – yet I’ll still go on preaching.

Right Turn

Never stop believing
Counter negative traits
Never stop the search
Paradise awaits
It will never come
In your lifetime’s fight
You know what is right
Be doing what is right

Afterword:

Man’s desires are not reasonable and often make him act against his own interest and common sense, but they are what makes him human.

Contradictions

I am respectable, yet not reasonable
My flaws are the things that make me
My desires maybe contradictions
This human interest will not break me

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the daily struggle of thinking of something to write here, without repeating myself. During the day something will pop into my mind to write but when I sit down to do it I struggle to remember. As days are somewhat repetitive at the moment I keep coming up with the same ideas. So anyway, I am grateful that I have this first-world problem.

In Empathy – 6th August 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I cannot close my eyes
to the injustices I see;
unable to make a difference,
it’s just frustrating me.

Whilst others suffer,
happiness is an illusion;
I can’t wrap my head around
this disappointing conclusion.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the availability of almost any book I desire to read. If I can’t buy a physical book I can usually find a digital copy.

Reading ‘The King Never Smiles’ is a saddening experience. Each night, I read about 10 pages, and I am enlightened more and more about the reality for Thai people. They have been totally manipulated and tricked into submission – not even submission – it’s like Stockholm Syndrome.

They have learned to love their captor. Every protest and uprising in the last 100 years has amounted to exactly the same thing – a useless government hamstrung by palace politics and corruption. Governments can barely last a few years, sometimes not even making it to their first day. It’s so frustrating that it makes one wish for private fighter jets to go and eliminate evil.

Whilst mine and Amy’s lives here are beyond comfortable, we are struggling through empathy for the rest of the population, deluded and ignorant or not. When Amy says she wants to leave, I can’t help but feel it is a case of wanting to stick one’s head in the sand. If it can’t be seen, then it has no effect.

Unfortunately for me, I have always felt empathy for people around the world suffering in this way, no matter where I reside. I have been, and still do, enjoy my time here, and the suffering I see for the people here doesn’t lessen my concern for those suffering in Brazil or the USA, anywhere else.

With the rules and laws here, though, trying to fight back against them is very dangerous if you live here. The ones desiring radical change are forced overseas to speak their mind and often lose the local population’s confidence by being abroad. A catch-22 easily exploited by the powerful. It’s sickening and saddening and pushes one to the dark corners of nihilism.

There seems little hope for humanity despite these comparatively good times we live through.

Infinite Jest – 23rd May 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Be on guard, the road widens
And many of the detours are seductive
Talent is its own set of expectations
Try to be a no-one, so instructed

Of multiple exposure melodramas
Learn to care and not to care
This is where you are not who you are
Shaped or broken, remain aware

Learn from those who fail
This is your body, they want you to know
This is the whirlpool, a friend
Your torn blue ankle tells you so

Unconscious exercise becomes a way to escape
A long waking dream of pure play
On the line, you must call it fair
A thousand times and every day

*pilfered and inspired by David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest’

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for a relaxing Sunday morning with coffee and a book and then a couple of hours watching football. A little cooler today, thankfully, though still hot. The future is looking bright (if you close your eyes to other things!).

I Am The Librarian – 15th May 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

I am the librarian tending to my books
Sniffing, smelling, rearranging order
Perhaps one day I’ll open them
Be a reader instead of a hoarder

A world of so many tales
Told by those who breathed them
Where I can be lost, then found
And I can be relieved then

I am the librarian lending out my books
We can share such stories
Of those failures and losers
Or those who shined in glories

20th Sep 2024 – Submitted to Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge – Hoarding

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to Art at Utopia for giving me two free coffees today. I gave him a couple of books and some sketches I did but didn’t expect anything in return. As a bonus, the coffee was even more delicious than normal.

There’s nothing that you stole from me that I didn’t give up willingly – 6th January 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

My head is already at school and I’m not in the now. Bring it back. My body is in the morning routine and I need to have my head in it too. Practice – pay attention to that meditation.

Onwards to the shower and the rest of the day. Body feels good.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that I remember to keep a book in my car so that if I forget my headphones and can’t study in the morning at least I can read a book. Dostoyevsky this morning!

The best thing that happened to me today was putting together some lesson plans that I hope will go well for next year’s classes. I also met a lot of the Primary students this morning and they all still seem to really like me. That made me happy.

I have nearly finished level 4 of Yousician – I’m doing it very badly but once I’ve passed I will go back and practice more. I think I will be on level 4 for a while before I can advance any further. I’m still enjoying playing guitar though.

The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour #69 – Against All Odds – 18th December 2020

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

There’s a lack of equipment where we are hiding in the cave networks on the edge of Burma. But we made a new show – against the odds! The director is not pleased.

This week there’s music from Chavez, Kurt, bEnt, Warhammer 48k, The Freeze, Tera Melos, Jeff Fox, Bee Vamp, Dreamies, Space Negros, Electric Deads, Secret Snack, Private Dicks, Spycker, Larval and Suspiria.

Incidentals taken from the Church of the Sub Genius Hour of Slack.
Listen right here or Mixcloud, Stitcher, Apple, Amazon…..all those cool places I guess.

https://www.facebook.com/The-Chiang-Rai-Alternative-Hour-107307097314670/

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for all the books asked comics that I have waiting to be read. I can choose from fluff to depth depending on my mood.