Hurricane Irene. August 27-28, 2011. Central Massachusetts.

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
August 27, 2011

Oh, what a lovely hurricane.

I like this image of what's about to hit our area (seen faintly in the upper right corner). So magnificent in its raw natural immensity--about 600 miles in diameter. Not that I like the toll it takes on the human environment but one has to stand in total awe of its power, size, intensity, ferocious appearance, agitated power and magnificent beauty. (click on photo to enlarge)

It appears overhead as we lilliputian humanoids run around with our over-bloated egos and political/religious opinions and international warfares and civil war slaughters of Arab-African-Asian countrymen, women and children... so overstuffed with our petty affairs and profits and market values and money that we care so little about the only planet we have to live on. We pollute and defile and abuse the globe as if there were a dozen nearby planetary alternatives to flee to when we've finished ruining the climate and soil of this one.

No, no. Delusional we are to think we can continue to dig up the forests and bury our plastics and lead-filled old computers and spew toxins and radioactive dust into the air.

Look at this incredible photograph of the hurricane. Yes, it is beautiful from afar, but I think it is an angry storm. It is a visceral form of nature palpably reminding us of who is ultimately in charge of our affairs. The planet has not completed its work; it is not a stable playing field for our human pleasures and deals. The forces of nature are very alive with hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, forest fires, landslides, avalanches, ancient trees toppling and new seedlings sprouting.

Human creatures are not the ultimate life form. We are smart mutated species from a primitive past on our way to a 'destiny' shaped by our brain development, our impact on the earth, our aggression, our fear, our ignorance about how to create harmony and tolerance for human differences, and foolish decisions about how to steward our globe floating alone in the drift of the universe.

Ozymandias once stood as a great granite statue in the Egyptian kingdom dedicated to the most powerful pharaoh of antiquity, Ramsses II. Inscribed below on the pedestal of this ruler, this king of the planet, this pharaoh of great power were the words (from Shelley's poem) "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

I visited this colossal stone monarch several years ago at the Ramesseum (photo left), a memorial temple built by Ramesses at Thebes, near Luxor in Upper Egypt. The monument originally stood 56 feet high (17 meters), mighty and muscular, a monument to human art, power and ego.

Today this great nexus of power rests in broken pieces, felled by an earthquake, half buried in sand, mostly ignored (except for tourists) and unknown to the world, in this "annihilated place".

Hurricane Irene (ironically a Greek name meaning 'peace') is a vivid reminder of the change that comes to all human affairs and to this precious planet called home.

Shelley's closing words in his poem about this once pinnacle of human might should give us pause about our purpose, reason and effect of being here today:

"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Sic transit gloria mundi (thus passes the glory of the world).

Hot Men, Great Art and Great Thought

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
August 20, 2011

Recently I sent a gay friend some photos of 'hot' men, that is, beautiful looking adult males with minimal clothes that revealed their handsome faces and muscled bodies. Several such images are included here (taken randomly from the Internet).

After my friend finished swooning he recovered his breath and asked why did some guys have such wonderful appearances leaving most of us 'in the dust', so to speak.

Well, one answer to that erotically profound question is similar to why we have great artists among us who are capable of creating magnificence in a mostly mundane world: Michaelangelo, DaVinci, Rembrandt, Rafael, Turner, Picasso, etc. Or why there are great thinkers who come along and shape the hue of civilization: Karl Marx, Thomas Jefferson, Sigmund Freud, Richard Dawkins, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Reinhold Niebuhr, Jiddu Krishnamurti, etc.

So too with these inspirational images of beautiful men. They are like art, wordless and beyond thought, that touch a deeper level of our being. Indeed, they express the fundamental aspect of aesthetic value--beauty.

Whether intellectual, visual or erotic we desire to be touched at this level; it vibrates the 'soul' and lifts us out of our daily routine of common feeling and thinking that are framed by our immediate repetitive circumstances. Indeed some argue that such experience touches the vitality of the sacred.

'Gorgeous genes' are like artistic talent or intellectual creativity that raise the few above the many, the Bach cantatas beyond the pop jingles of Christmas carols, the Einstein theories above the TV soap operas, the BelAmi boys above the raunch of home videos.

The 'valence' of erotic representations, the appeal of superior male imagery, takes us momentarily beyond the barriers of common-ness into aesthetic fantasy, into a soothing hedonic moment of joy--not unlike viewing Michaelangelo's luminous statue of David. (photo right)

Why some people possess such superiority and most do not is simply the way of evolution as certain organic mutations are more effective at survival or attracting attention or expressing genius. Like much of life, it is simply chance happening.


So next time you go to a museum or an art show or read great ideas and feel aroused, animated, or imbued with the spirit of certain works, it's not so different from the private ineffable 'rush' we feel viewing beautiful male (or female, if you are so inclined) figures.


Enjoy the show and the feeling it evokes; it's there for us to be a willing audience and feel the breeze of beauty and the inspiration of unique originality. And be grateful for the exceptionals among us.

Two Fathers, One Boy: LIfe is Good

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
August 11, 2011


See this wonderful video of music, love, childhood fun, peer approval--a vision of the future : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qf0puHJ-KM

A twelve year-old boy, Terrence, sings a pretty song in tribute to his two fathers, a gay couple in Holland. He sings it at a children's concert in front of an audience of hundreds of other children about his own age who join in three times in the song's refrain:

I have two fathers,
two real fathers,
sometimes cool and sometimes strict,
but it's going great with us,
two real fathers,
who if they have to,
both can be my mother...


For anyone who feels weighed down by the hate, homophobia, fear-mongering and bigotry against homosexual people, this video is a balm, a soothing reminder that gay life is cheerful, tender, child-loving, compassionate and worthy of song and praise.

The hundreds of other kids singing in harmony with Terrence join with him in his love song that's full of respect for his two fathers.

Truly, from the mouth of babes shall come forth the love that will light the world and turn back the dark minds of discrimination and hatred.

The Way of the World: Dalai Lama vs China's Factories

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com

The following bit of news was written by Jamie Johnson and published in Vanity Fair magazine July 19, 2011
(http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/07/harmonic-divergence-wealthy-dropping-the-dalai-lamas-name-literally.html)

"It was big news last weekend when President Obama refused to let journalists into his private meeting with the Dalai Lama. The maneuver reflects increasing concerns in the U.S. that emphatic public support for the Tibetan leader will alienate Chinese officials, and in turn jeopardize our strategic interests in the world’s fastest growing economy... a rising number of international billionaires have begun to worry that backing the Dalai Lama could pose a risk to their personal wealth by potentially limiting access to lucrative markets in China... now that the seat of financial power has started shifting eastward, patronage of the Dalai Lama can come at a considerable cost. Sadly, China’s increasing sway over our economy compromises the Dalai Lama’s ability to attract wealthy American patrons...

The opportunity to make money is something billionaires simply can’t resist—even if giving in to that persistent urge means shunning an enlightened spiritual guru."
--------------

Thus we have the way of the modern world. Not that I'm a spiritual follower of the Dalai Lama's Buddhist beliefs--not the issue here--but I do care that an intelligent and enlightened man (a lot more than most) is seen as losing traction to spiritless commercial forces of low-tech wage-earning and hi-tech investment profiteering. China is a factory producing infinite 'stuff' and the West is a hungry consumer of those goods, insatiably starved for more things, countless baubles, Wal-Mart discounts, stock deals... spending and getting.

Where is all this taking us? What human desire is being met by plastic bottles, credit cards, shiny cars, sugared food, clever-tech toys, FaceBook popularity, political positioning...?

What is the need we are trying to assuage? Some have suggested existential ennui, listless boredom, hollow spiritual life, loneliness... that we buy more and more stuff for our emotionally impoverished hovels and grand mansions. No matter the level of financial status, most of us in this 'advanced' country are addicted to a richly materialistic/monied throw-away lifestyle surrounded by noise (iPods, radios, TV, computers) that we no longer can see outside the cage.

At my local dump/transfer/recycle station in a rural town in western Massachusetts (population 1800) purchased goods become discarded goods: coffee-makers, children's books, dinnerware, air conditioners, stereo sets, microwave ovens, portable BBQs, baby strollers, sofas, pill bottles... off loaded to the recycle shed to be picked over with the leftover tossed over the edge into the dumpsters. (Some plastic, metal, glass, paper is recycled in a separate dumpster.)

But the volume of discards increases monthly, yearly. What is this? What is being thrown away besides stuff? I think at least part of our cultural soul goes out with the trash. We have become mis-users of the land, the planet. We have lost our feeling for our earth home.

After a recent festive party to celebrate a two-year-old's birthday, I watched as dozens of plastic cups, spoons and forks, plastic plates, paper napkins, extra cake, pretty gift wrapping and ribbons were tossed into plastic bag-lined trash cans then tied up and tossed in the back of a pickup truck on its way to the dump the next day.

What is the gift here? (Most of the plastic gift toys to the to birthday toddler will end up as toss-outs within a year.) What is really being thrown away?

I think the message of the Dalai Lama is being lost: compassion kindness and mindfulness beyond our immediate pleasure and families, compassion kindness and mindfulness toward the green planet, toward the needy world of other tribes suffering poverty and hunger, and toward our own 'being'. We have become saturated homo sapiens drowning in our own foreign-made abundance.

Is this the purpose of our being here? To make stuff and make profits? At what cost? What does China offer us beyond it's factories? What is the future the Chinese are leading us to?

I think it is not compassionate, kind or mindful.