CHAT: happy 4th of July

Democracy   by Leonard Cohen

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.
It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on ...
I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.


---
Hanuman Zhang, _Gomi no sensei_ [Master of junk] <A
HREF="http://www.boheme-magazine.net">=> boheme-magazine.net</A>

"To live is to scrounge, taking what you can in order to survive. So, since
living is scrounging, the result of our efforts is to amass a pile of rubbish."
- Zhuangzi

"...So what is life for? Life is for beauty & substance & sound & colour; &
even those are often forbidden by law [socio-cultural conventions]. . .Why not
be free & live your own life? Why follow other people's rules & live to please
others?" - Liezi

"Taoism in a nutshell: Shit Happens. Roll with the Punches. Hang 10 - Go with
the Flow!" - anon. California Surfer-Beatnik

    "[The modern economist] is used to measuring the 'standard of living' by
the amount of annual consumption, ... that a man who consumes more is 'better
off' than a man who consumes less.
    "A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively
irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be
to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption." - E.F.
Schumacher, _Small is Beautiful_

"Western man not merely blighted in some degree every culture that he
touched, whether 'primitive' or advanced, but he also robbed his own descendants of
countless gifts of art & craftsmanship, as well as precious knowledge passed on
only by word of mouth that disappeared with the dying languages of dying
peoples...." - Lewis Mumford, _The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine_

Non scholæ sed vitæ discimus. (We do not learn for school, but for life.)
- Seneca

"Anarchism's great project is to dissolve the asymmetry of power. How? There
are thousands of alternatives & there is not only one solution. To advance
'one' solution would be a doctrine of power, a manifestation of power." -
Venezuelan University Academic Alfredo Vallota quoted in _El Libertario_

    "1. the world is not at all as it appears to us
      2. under certain conditions it could well become different"
                                        - Andrei Tarkovsky