cherokoffdotcom

There are two that echo down the years, changing shades, changing colours.

Focus comes and goes, clarity to opaque.

The clearest are also the oldest. Fragments, but strong and clear.

One tall, a rectangle, shades of brown, background, there but not present, not up front.

The other clear, bright, strong pastels. Shining, the forefront, the first of every day, the last of every night.

Allowing freedom, but always aware, always watching. Patching up, all the nicks of growing up outdoors.

The supporter, the cheer leader, the provider of flavours. The dyer of deep dark maroon  cushion covers.

Ever present, the sunshine, even when the rain bounced knee-high of the rust-red earth.

And even when the widest of blue skies were exchanged for dull and dark and cold, the sunshine was always beside me, leading, allowing to find a way, and always watching.

And the tall, rectangular figure became a little more grey than brown, the costume adjusted to suit the climate, but the distance not diminished.

And the sunshine sometimes lost some glow, and a sharp angle would appear, briefly.

And the shine developed a melancholy twilight, with a little acid sharpness at its heart.

And the distance between the two increased, and it slowly became 3 and 1. Then 3 and none.

And in the innocence of youth, and the distractions of teenage trials, the shocks were sharp and unexpected. And the blame and anger ran deep.

The divide was clearly defined, and whilst the shine became a less constant glow, there was a steel that maintained the support.

And time provides a different angle, a variation of perspective, and the essence of the shine rediscovered some essence. And the distant figure came into focus for the first time.

And the anger disappeared, because truth can do that. And balances start to readjust.

And for a while, separately but in unison, they both rediscovered their realities.

But the shine became a less constant glow, and the sadness and disappointment added the acid angles and sharp rebukes. But the heart and soul were still there, damaged but not broken.

And age took a toll on both, with its own annoyances and frustrations. But genes kept them going for longer than most.

And then gone. within a year.

And the memories churn, and fade and re-emerge. And may not all be reliable, but are all strong. and are not fading.

I don’t know why, but today I miss you both, stronger than for quite a while.

You are there in my thoughts every day, sometimes fleeting, sometimes as a lasting murmur.

But today the gap that is you is clear and deep.

I miss you both, and still need you in my heart.

Mum, Dad, thanks.

Now that was a heading I never thought I would write. But, over the past months it seems that those that shout loudest about the sanctity of the democratic process are the same ones who are undermining it.

Wherever you look there are examples of apparent champions of the rights of man, and woman if you are lucky. But closer inspection reveals a very different view.

And yes, there are going to be references to those thorny old numbers – Brexit, Trump, Johnson, Gove, Rees-Mogg – plus the odd new one.

So, if you wish to change channel now, then please do. I will keep chipping away at these brick walls until they collapse, or I do. A wrong is a wrong, no matter how much time passes.

Now, I have always had a soft spot for a touch of anarchy. It is honest, mostly heart-felt, and usually based on a personal perspective. It is never proposed as an enforcer of the status quo. Or what used to be the status quo.

However, the advocates of democratic revisionism, the returning of the power to the people, the honouring of the mass electorate, all sing from that same tortured hymn sheet. And its all bullshit!

Whether you look domestically or internationally, those that shout loudest about the democratic rights of the populus are the ones least inclined to fulfil their promises.

Over the sea, an orange blimp promised to ‘clean the swamp’ and restore the power to those who had been dispossessed of it. What he failed to mention was that the dispossession was done by the party he represented but, hey ho!

And it wasn’t a return to true democracy. It was more of the same. The swamp got murkier, the half-hidden bottom feeders continued to gain, and the dispossessed? No change. A fair amount of delusion, but no change.

And in the mean time, flagrant attempts to subvert the hard-fought rights of those without power, without a voice. And also the voices of the newly activated.

And back here? Well, much as I have no intention of defending the current administration, there are some things that are not on! And not because of any strong constitutional protectionism on my part.

But, the blatant and very public subversion of the Prime Minister by a small band of self-servers is designed to do nothing productive. The intention is to destabilise her position so that they can gain influence over an outcome that potentially will only help them.

They do not want the ultimate power for themselves. Not yet. First you isolate the leader. Set her up to fail, and carry the can of shite that will descend. Then leave the field for the muggers to scrap over the power vacuum.

When that fine day arrives when those in power stop looking after their own narrow interests ……..

I don’t know where that one goes. Because I can’t see that changing.

We don’t need subversion.

We need anarchy!

 

You would hope that by the time that we get to adulthood, that most of us would have learnt that bullying doesn’t work.

As has been proved lately, however, that is not the case for a significant number of people. And that unfortunately goes double for those in power.

With the aftermath of the Weinstein revelations, the use of individual power to force and subjugate has become a public shame, both for the perpetrators and those who turned a blind eye. For years.

And each day demonstrates how pervasive, and institutionalised the behaviour and attitude is. Across the globe.

And wherever it manifests on an individual and institutional level, it magnifies itself to nationalist aggression and groin-thrusting posturing.

History has proved that bullying doesn’t work, but then who ever pays attention to the lessons of the past. Because we could never make the same mistakes again. Surely?

So, 1918. The end of a war sparked by dubious political machinations that costs countless lives. But we won, if that devastation can be seen as a victory. And so what did we do as victors?

We stamped, ground, pulverised Germany into the dust. With the obvious result of providing a vacuum to be filled by extremism. The bullying attitude of the victors of WW1 led directly to WW2.

So, 1948. The Jewish people had been decimated, by the extremists created by the victors. And the same victors had, at the very least, been slow to acknowledge and address the holocaust. So, guilt, in part, and some effective terrorism, led to the establishment of the Jewish homeland.

Israel was created to give shelter to one of the most bullied nations ever. So what did they do? Decided to bully the people who had lived on that land for centuries. They were dispossessed, driven off and driven out. And the result? Another vacuum for extremism.

So, 2003. The destruction of Iraq’s government, infrastructure, cohesion, on the back of the most flagrant misdirections ever. But the US, the UK, had the power. We had the assumed moral imperative to do whatever we wanted. And so the brutish fist of the bully created another vacuum for extremism.

Where would you like to look next? The division of the Korean peninsula is a result of the opposing interests of outside powers using a smaller country to play out by proxy their differences.

The catastrophe that is Libya, Afghanistan, take your pick.

All examples where the big stick of the bully has opened the door for a more extreme response.

And when the opportunity presents itself to potentially step back from conflict, to grasp the chance of progress and reduce tension, what happens?

The biggest power continues the problem. A quick smile to make them look good then the threats begin. Either overtly with North Korea, or by default by legitimising the illegal activities of the Israeli government and establishing an embassy in Jerusalem.

Even with Russia, the bully cannot resist. Not so straight forward, I admit, but remembering that Russia was devastated by France, and twice by Germany, so being declared the world’s evil empire after two successive world wars is not going to help find peaceful coexistence.

But the lessons of history are always ignored. Each time. And the bullying continues. And the vacuums keep getting filled.

I have been meaning to start this for a while. But then something new appears over the horizon, I await the outcome, and then sit down to start again.

And then another, and another.

So, time to put it out there before I get sidetracked again.

Each new iteration of the national or international leadership posturing has convinced me over and over that there is no point. There is no point in voting. There is no point in expecting that vote to be respected.

Wherever you look, those put in power by our, or some of our, votes blithely abuse the privilege we give them to serve their own particular agenda. Or in some cases, their bloated and uncaring egos.

And in the bedrock of modern representative democracy, yep that is what we are told, the leadership of the country is as bad as the most reviled and despotic dictatorship.

Our democratic structure has been exported, or more accurately imposed through colonisation, on a good proportion of the globe. Each nation has adjusted and adapted it to suit their particular wants and needs.

Or rather, the ruling power brokers have done so. And they have placated the masses with the illusion of representation. But that only happens within the construct that is already in place. And that can, and does, severely restrict any validity the principle may have held.

But we all blindly accept the concept. We vote. They win. They work for us.

The actuality? We vote. The winners, put there by a minority of the population, will work for those who put them there, or more precisely a small percentage of those who gave them the power.

There will be platitudes about representing all, but I am yet to see any substantial evidence of that.

To be given the power is to be presented with a license to play games with people’s lives, with regard only for those that will sustain the hold on power. The term public servant is a myth, and that bubble burst long ago.

There has been a gradual change from paternalistic power abuse to blatant, and as that transition has occurred, what honour there was has disappeared too.

Even honour among thieves no longer exists, and when that happens, the ripples that flow out from the internal back-stabbing have even more profound and terrible effects on the masses of us.

So we turn on each other, through blame around like rice at a wedding, and lose faith in everything that is supposed to be the bulwark against chaos.

Now, there used to be a defense, of sorts, against the excesses of the abuse of power. And that was the media. Or, more specifically, elements of the print media, and the BBC.

As the internet has eclipsed the printed word, and the news has become more of a bullet point  than a paragraph, that defense has largely evaporated. There are flashes, there are moments when the indignation gets toa pitch that it cannot be ignored, but they are few and far apart.

I will give an example.

There has been of late of a lot of public activity, outcry and general gesticulating regarding allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, and in particular the less than rapid response of Jeremy Corbyn.

First of all, yes there are anti-semitic members of the Labour Party. And yes, the response has not been as publicly speedy as would have been hoped for.

And because of that, the media is justified to ask what is being done, and why things are seemingly moving so slowly.

However, there are a few points they have overlooked, points that would have been standard media research points a few years ago.

Firstly, if there are anti-semitic elements in the Labour Party, should they not look at the other main political parties as a comparison. A recent poll did,  and found that there are significantly more clear examples of anti-Semitism in the Tory ranks. And the media said …. nothing.

They made much of Corbyn attending a Seder supper put on by a ‘left-wing’ Jewish group – historically a stalwart element of the founding and development of the socialist movement and therefore the Labour Party ( apologies for the s word, frowned on these days I know) – but only mentioned once, in passing, that there were representatives of all factions and religious strata of the Jewish community. This then disappeared under the weight of the media-driven indignation.

If we want democracy, or at least a form of it that offers some respite from the excesses of factional extremists, then we need to regain a media that writes sentences and paragraphs, not soundbites to gain sales.

And that means we need to stop and think. We need to question, and listen to the answer.  Not demand every question is answered within the space of a tweet.  Accept that most of life is complicated, and inter-connected.

There are only one kind of simple answer. And they are the wrong ones.

The nuances, balanced, cooperative compromise is the acceptable alternative.

Once we see that, then we can force those who claim to uphold democracy to answer in the same way.

Then maybe we can move forward. Not down.

Yesterday was an emotional day. Overall good, but definitely emotional.

It actually began, the emotion, not the day, when an article about depression was posted on Facebook. I know that everyone who has to deal with, live with, struggle with, get past, over, through mental issues have their own particular circumstances.

And I am no different.

My particular tactic, and one that has worked, mostly, since I established where my head was at when I was 16, is, or was, to compartmentalise, package, stack and store.

Back to yesterday, and a visit to my step-mother, in a nursing home and seemingly mostly content. But today is not clear, vocabulary sometimes just won’t come. and memories are separated, reshuffled and returned to a whole new sequence.

There is some frustration, some annoyance with things that seem no longer to make sense. but mainly okay. Which is okay.

And so to see a one-man show about the relationship between a man and his bipolar mother, written and performed by him, with the help of his mother.

It was honest, and brave, and funny, and at times almost too hard.

Because, even though not in any particular way the same as my story, echoes and shadows nudged me to somewhere I spend most of my time avoiding.

This is not a complaint, in any way. In fact, it is probably a thank you.

With a few exceptions, I have managed to avoid being swallowed by the vacuum at the bottom of holes that have appeared over the years. Those times when I didn’t, were thankfully resolved by the memory of the value in my life, or by a timely intervention.

The thank you wasn’t for a solution. Because there isn’t one.

It was for a nudge to accept what is, to acknowledge what can be done to minimise the descents, and the fact that whether I place it myself or its held by someone else, there will be a ladder to climb back up.

Sometimes not all the rungs are there, but hey, who said life was supposed to be easy.

I suppose the main reason for the thanks is that realisation has finally dawned, or at least reached the frontal lobes. I can cope, just as I have for the past far too many years.

And there are good reasons to cope, which weren’t always clear before. They were there, just not as clear as they should have been. And that was my fault, and I apologise if there were gaps in my involvement.

So, thanks to articles on Facebook, my step-mother, an extraordinary performance, and those that have added real meaning, and depth, to a vacillating existence.

It has taken me 63 years to understand the value of the intangible and tangible at the centre of my life. But they all hold the ladder.

 

Have you ever considered how we choose our friends?

Common interests? Common goals? Common location? Common curiosity? Uncommon curiosity?

Whatever the spark, when you look at your friends, your close friends, you see – hopefully – someone who cares enough about you to be honest. And who – hopefully – can accept the odd bit of honesty in return.

And that is probably when you find out how strong the friendship is. Or isn’t.

And this has nothing to do with friends. Nor close friends, Not personal friends.

This has to do with those countries we consider our friends, those we do not, and the difference in our honesty.

There has recently been yet another military attack using chemical weapons in Syria. Unacceptable. Unjustifiable. Wrong on every level.

And as should be expected, there are declarations of horror from around the world – with the odd exception.

But this is an easy condemnation. Syria is ruled by an almost universally acknowledged tyrant, who has been more than happy to kill countless thousands of his own people to retain power.

And because he is supported by Russia, we, and the US, can stamp, and shout, and proclaim our outrage and humanity.

Because Russia is not a friend.

So, change the situation to involve a friend and the declarations change, or simply melt away. Or are never made.

We as a country, along with the US, are making a large amount of money from the provisions of arms to Saudi Arabia. In turn, those arms are being used to murder countless thousands in Yemen.

But Saudi Arabia is a friend.

The US is a friend. When they bellow at the atrocities in Syria, we join the chorus.

There is another chorus we should join. The one that condemns a country that permits the uncontrolled slaughter of its children.

But we cannot do that. Because we don’t criticise our friends. Not because they cannot take the honesty. They wouldn’t give a damn.

We don’t criticise because they are not friends. They are expedient partners in proxy wars. Wars about disconnections that should have been resolved so many lost lives ago. But were not, because our leaders are interested in power, not lives.

And these are not our lives, they are someone else’s parents, siblings, children.

Unless they are your own children, USA, then your true hypocrisy emerges. And our government’s along with it.

If you cannot protect your own, do not declaim the defence of others from the moral high ground. You have no right to be there.

There you are, sitting under your apple tree in your garden, contemplating the beauty of nature, when an apple decides its time to fundamentally change how the world is viewed from that moment onwards.

And I don’t want to diminish in any way the contribution that Newton gave to help promulgate the apple’s theory of gravity. After all, it is nice to have a clear explanation as to why we stay here, on the ground.

But through it all, the deep thinking, the mathematics, the physics, the occasional mystical overtones from left-field, Newton and his apple missed something.

There is another type of gravity. Just as invisible a force, and apparently just as mysterious and difficult to define.

But definitely there, and definitely as strong.

The difference with ‘Gravity 2’, G2 to us aware theoreticians, is that it is not everywhere, and it is certainly not of equal strength when it does manifest.

But when you do discover it, or stumble across it, you know you are in the presence of something powerful.

In case you missed the mention, I recently turned 63, so I have had quite a while to test this theory, and discover its truth.

In my time I have experienced a few G2’s, some significantly stronger than others.

Recently, however, I discovered a powerful G2, and its impact has been profound. And I have not been the only one to respond to the ‘pull’. There is quite a crowd circling in their individual orbits.

And here’s something interesting. Big G2’s can create their own little G2’s. And there is one here that may surpass the ‘pull’ strength of the parent.

And in the orbits are other G2’s, defying the laws of physics, I think, by forces attracting forces.

So, whilst the world is being shaken by preposterous fools and psychotic egos, there are good people, attracting good people.

And as the orbiting expands, the positive can reach out, and create more orbits, and more G2’s to circle around.

And perhaps change will come.

And even if not in my time, I am blessed to have known some truly awesome G2’s, and their growing G2’s.

And, totally unsurprisingly, the vast majority are female.

Today I am 63 years old. These days, and considering advances in medicine, not hugely old, but enough.

And okay, I have developed a few ‘habits’ that could do with modification, and the body is not what it was, which was never that much anyway, but …….

I am still capable of learning. I am still open to new, varied, diverse and original ideas.

I can still adapt. I can still grow.I can still appreciate and accept change.

And, trust me, I am nothing special.

So, if I am capable of accepting the option of alternative approaches, why in the name of all that is human are our glorious leaders completely incapable of responding to a situation in any other way than the same old cycle.

The waste of time, of effort, of resources, and mostly lives. Real people, innocent people. Fodder for their lack of imagination.

With a world facing so many desperate and dire circumstances, with suffering expanding exponentially across the globe, can no-one in power see that the circle doesn’t need to be completed.

There is always another option, even at first it is only to consider, to think, to check, to test. Not just react, not just allow the knee jerk to be the standard.

It fills my heart and lifts my soul to see the response from students in the USA to the horror of mass shootings in schools.

But it is sad when the first people to defend victims are victims themselves.

That should be the role of those in power, but it seems that the old adage still applies. Power does corrupt, and the retention of power is more important than an innocent life.

I can learn, and I can change.

Time you did too, or step aside and let the victims take the power.

Over the years I have tended to have a fairly jaded view of how democracy works. Or doesn’t.

I am all for the theory, everyone has an equal say, it’s just when it is put into practice that the clarity seems to get a little blurred.

Majority rule, proportional representation, first past the post. Each one has its own limitations, and restrictions on the fundamental.

However, I have had a eureka moment.

Having listened to the endless comments and commentaries on the post Brexit referendum negotiations, and more specifically those particular members of the great and good who pushed so hard for the result they have got, I finally understand how it works.

First step, we had a referendum – not an election, but that is another quagmire –  and the result was in favour of leaving the EU. Not by much, but we work on the rule of the majority.

Therefore, the democratic result, where more people said leave than said remain, is clear.

So far, so good.

And that was were things got a little confusing for me, because what I hadn’t realised was that the definition of democracy changes from pre to post Brexit vote.

Now I understand that, I now can grasp why those vociferous Brexiteers are so angry, suspicious, accusatory, derogatory – and many other ….tory words – about the negotiation process.

It seems that the EU negotiating team are not cooperating. They are not agreeing to all our demands. Even though it wasn’t their idea.

What they don’t grasp is that now, having had the referendum decision, the principle of democracy is reversed, and 1 now trumps 27.

The sooner they catch up with me, and understand how democracy – you know, the reason we wanted to leave the EU because it wasn’t democratic – actually works, the sooner this whole mess will be cleared up.

Can’t see the problem.

I get it, why can’t they?

A week or so ago, a female friend asked me if I felt pride in the male gender, in the same way that she felt pride the female section of the population. And the answer was no.

Now, that could be because ‘man’ has achieved all that he needs to prove ‘himself’, and therefore needs no longer to demonstrate his capabilities, and so pride wouldn’t be elicited.

But no, oh no. That just ain’t so.

The reason that women feel pride is because, despite the continued pervasive assumption of being ‘better’, the edifice is showing distinct signs of fracturing.

So, having decided there was nothing to be proud of, as a gender, the question of ‘What next?’ arose.

And the answer is simple. Well simple to say, anyway.

All we need to do is move the goalposts. Or rather, scrap them all together.

If you want to remove the struggle that now exists to define what masculinity is, then remove the definition. If people of all ages are confused as to where on the male-female continuum they are, then scrap the line.

There are enough variations possible if the dividing criteria are centred around the individual’s genitalia, without the added pressure of possession being attached to a particular definition.

The world, and the scientific and technical capabilities within it, allow for a totally different approach to what we are, and who we want to be.

The binary classification that has existed for centuries is already getting distinctly smudged around the edges, and this trend will only continue in one direction. Because, however reactionary the status quo tries to be, there is no bottle big enough to get the genie back into its previous incarnation.

So, instead of man, we have person. Judged not on pre-set criteria of masculinity, but on what it is as a person; what it can achieve, what it can add to the world.

And when each man stops trying to prove they are a ‘man’, then women will get what they always should have had, equality.

Because, if masculinity doesn’t exist, then there is nothing to prove, including that they are naturally superior.

Simple. Solved. Next!