I began this New Years Day write,
to share what I have been doing in that wonderful limbo time between Xmas Day and New Years and which to me is a gloriously hallowed space. My intro thoughts, while not ultra long by any means, they unintentionally turned into a complete thang in themselves, and I had been pregnant with them for a while. Now they are out, birthed and born. And definitely not prematurely.
I will try ASAP to do another post on this 1st day of 2025 about that wonderful ‘tween time’ of stillness and making that culminated yesterday with tidying up the kitchen tepu.
There is a hint of my tween production line in the image below. It was total bliss.
Please, do read on, reflection and pondering is creativity in action. Creations are not devoid of mind and the context that made them. There is always a context.
The courage of our conversations and the belief in their goodness for all of us is now more important than ever. We seem to live in a world that’s closing down somewhat, and it takes mahi/work to stay open to each others differences and uniquities in such a polarised world. I just invented that word, I like it. Uniquities means those things that are unique about us. It is a noun and not to be confused with iniquities :-).
My original new year 1st post……….
So here I sit, writing those 1st words of 2025 on my MacBook, parked in the warm morning sun covering the kitchen tepu, parked with coffee, parked with xmas candles still ensconced, a banjo parked in a stand beside me on the grey tile floor, the Golden crashed out within foot reach. I could be full of resolutions, goals, hopes and dreams, and yes, I have some of those still percolating gently in my inner cauldron, but, the greater resolutions, the big hopes and dreams, they mostly went west in 2024. Big stuff seems to have changed sides, or certainly deserted where I come down mostly. The bombs are still falling, people are still dying, hospitals burning. Fuckwits are still decision making, Trump is going to be King, with his Broligarchs, Princes and Princesses in 2025.
Back home on the farm, I am getting down and dirty on the small stuff now, with the hopeful conviction that the small stuff is gonna change the world, and I am indeed small. I am no Bezos, Assard or MuskRat. I can do small shite that the puffed up and pate sated oligarchs (who seem to have everything) can’t do.
Or they get others to do stuff for them.
They think they are the ‘giants’, but nah they are not!
We are!
They are on notice, there is a time coming fast where they think they have finally arrived at point X, but now many of us are onto their schmuckery. The once futuristic and beyond belief apocalyptic film seems very real, and notso far fetched now. Scenes and endings we may be familiar with are starting to seem possible as we see them play out in streets and cities on the news, and in the halls and messaging of the powerful. Gaza, Ukraine and Lebanon are real, despite their similarity to The Planet Of The Apes Hollywood sets.
The toppled Statue of Liberty buried under rubble .
I can weld, develop photos, do exposures on emulsions, sew flags, play the banjo and guitar, compose music and play the ball game with The Corgi in ways that they, the oligarchs can’t. I am prettly awesome on our zero turn mower of grass. I love my Toyota Ractis, my symbol of resistance vehicle, and I am a man most content. I love my wife, my family and friends more than money.
I have my own signature in the top paddock, working with the wind and the real BlueSky. With the real Clouds.
But there’s more, I can make and bind my own books! More on that soon, as mentioned, twas my original intention as I sat to write on this 1st day of the year. Now I have to get these closing 2024 pregnant thoughts birthed. Forgive me.
The bookbinding and creativity, the banjo beside me, the sunshine on the tepu, the Golden on the cool floor, the flowering hibiscus, the roses on the deck, these make up the truly important things, they are the changemakers, if I see them, we see them, or if they could only see them.
Project 2025, and yep not that one, my project 2025 will be about the percolating cauldron of me continuing to do battle by being the best and most creative moi I can be, while I can be moi.
Being the best rich ffffing oligarch does’t seem to be about being the best human possible at all, only being the richest and most powerful. Oligarch creativity seems to be more about that endgame. More, more and MORE! and more.
Not all rich are oligarchs are they, but what’s falling off the tree currently, in this season reveals many of this current bunch and their purpose. Their fruit isn’t palatable to many of us who live on planet earth at a grass roots level, with our feet and hearts in the soil singing No No noooo. Our tupuna/ancestors are singing a different song, but it means the same, NO, No Noooooo.
Trips to the moon, 600million dollar weddings, huge as prisons (eg Assad)……………obscene wealth, in the face of starvation, hunger, the need for medicine, hospitals, freedom itself even, you finish the list. Those kinds of excess in the face of huge needs don’t seem right to us. Revolution touches the edges of our minds as perhaps the change and upheaval needed. As much as I like comfort and a still boat, something’s changed and the same old, same old is not working any more. I think about The French Revolution. The time for safe snoozes is passing.
I have no illusions that the planet is at a crossroads, one the filthy rich have brought upon us in their lust for more dollars, more power, and then more of all that across a whole variety of fronts.
And it’s not the ‘more’ like in, Please Sir can I have some more as in Oliver more; that more from the hungry belly still groaning after a meal of gruel from years of deprivation. It is instead the ‘more’ of ‘I better pick a pocket or two’ more, on steroids, leaching more and levering more from humanity, after decades or generations of them feasting, and we, the very same humanity (us) that has given them permission and the empowerment for the rape and gluttony to happen in the first place. The filthy rich and their puppet filthy and rich world leaders,
they think that ‘rich’ means
having a lot of the money and power to pull strings.
We know, many many of us, that it doesn’t.
And that is our secret power, our idea of wealth is different, and we know it. They know it. Most of us don’t want to be anything like them when we get really honest.
I don’t think that the dreams and aspirations of the little people will suddenly make any difference in the face of the worlds problems, but we will make a difference in the peeps near and far who also live in small places like us, we who are the pockets of resistance, we as them’s who have another definition of wealth that doesn’t involve money, but does involve stuff we can do with our own hands, with our community and our neighbours and that includes loving those we do and can, helping and supporting as best we can. Small stuff.
The Truest wealth is not in a Swiss bank account, WestPac, The ASB or KiwiBank. iT’s not Crypto or BitCoin. Shares or Investments.
The truest wealth is about us, the minority, who make up the face of the world.
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.
"What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, It is people, It is people"
Maori whakataukī/proverb
Thought 1`: (I had this listening to a talk on RNZ about Musk and the colonisation of Mars, meanwhile Gaza was being systematically destroyed and Palestinian’s killed willy nilly, and the word genocide was often heard but nothing seemed to change)
The thought was:
With Princess Elon and the quest for Mars, if that rolls out as a real thing and holds hope as an escape from the dying or failing earth, and it’s inhabitants………………who will be the ones who get to go and populate the other planet…………..who?Who would want to go? Who could afford to go, and who would decide who goes?
Maybe genocide won’t even be a term then, imagine all the people who won’t go, who can’t get a ticket to ride in the rocket. Collateral damage?
That will be most of us across the whole globe.
Who will actually get to go to start the new episode of Lost In Space, Star Trek or The Lord Of The Flies on Mars? I can tell you now it won’t be us, and that selection process will be some kind of genocidal act. Here was I getting up in arms about genocide and yet the biggest of all genocides was out there in the future, waiting for us, our grand children, or our grandchildren’s children perhaps.
Genocides continue unabated in the world at the moment, ones that could be stopped, that should be stopped, ones that need funding to continue…………ones that continue while many of us little people (and little countries) are the ones with the moral code and fortitude to proclaim the uncomplicated solution that ultimately says ‘just just stop it’.
Oligarchs don’t seem concerned enough to fund the ‘Just Stop It’ kind of solutions. Buying off the ‘more for me’ kinds of agendas seems to be the focus, not those humane and justice type agendas, well within their scope of wealth to influence. A drop in the bucket to them even.
Meanwhile, we are duped/lulled/hypnotised/distracted into supporting the BS elite who in the end, should we live that long and get that far, will genocide us in a blink of an eye. Just like the genocides that are rolling out now, the one’s we know about and the ones we don’t. We will be expendable in the end.
And another thought was:
Can these people who seem to now rule the world, people who have been waiting for this time to arrive, to seize and rollout their agendas and self interests. Can these same people be nice, or good human beings deep down. Good fathers, good mothers, good families and concerned citizens???? Good people don’t do what they do, or support what they support. I am not anti wealth……..but the people who seem to be in prominence and calling the shots across the globe right now, they are not the beautiful, rich peanut famer ex President Jimmy Carter types are they?
These are my thoughts on the end of 2024.
The year the music all died, and we were singin. It’s bye bye American Pie for sure. Project 2025, the atheist one is about moi, yes they will like that confirmation of my sinner human state, My Project 2025 is about my small things, my things that may save the world. My being my own person in the face of the crushing the life out of you world today, or even in Aotearoa New Zealand’s face, and it’s absolutely backwards facing coalition government (again with an oligarchic kind of agenda and support, with the global Atlas Network connection problem and you may know who), yup, being your own person, the apple under your own tree, growing in your own soil, your own whenua………….that may be the take down of the non welders and non book binders…………I like the idea and small dream of being that, we could be legion in what is to come. I don’t think it is going to be pretty.
We even clean our own houses.
As always
Thanks for reading. I find it hard to divorce thinking about the world out there and my own desire to be creative. I don’t have to try to create, or think new things, although being creative is a process. For me, it’s really an ‘I can’t help myself’ kinda thang, an ‘I can’t not be’ situation, and I am lucky to have the time and relative calm in mmy life to be so. To think and create. This state is not lost on me.
In another life on a different hill I used to love a verse about Jeremiah the prophet.
“…his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” Jeremiah 20:9,
I loved that as an idea and expression of passion and even urgency. I am sure you will have things in your life like that, things you can’t withhold or keep in. The kind smile to a child, or your partner. The tender stroking of the dog………..the touch on the hand, the kindness to a stranger passing, your pen writing warmth on paper.
The Xmas- New Year tween time I will share soon. It is images, few words. I find this time every year to be a time of magic and re-creation. It didn’t dissappoint this year. That will be my next post ASAP, now the percolating political thoughts are out there.
Now that 2024 is on the wind……..
Thoughts have been birthed. Outed. Now they are loosed.
Diversity is welcomed and needed here, please don’t disengage if you think or feel differently, even violently or strongly so. Your difference is as needed as mine. But you know that. Who wants a fabric woven of the same colours and textures in a diverse and rich world.
Not I says The Little REd Hen.
Happy new year people, where ever you may be.
Namaste
Graham.
P.S. Look for that ‘tween time’ post. Coming soon.
There is a link below that Kiwis might find interesting, and demonstates the validity of some of what I am saying here. Dame Anne Salmond used be a lecturer of mine long time ago. Link below pic. It’s a nice pic.
The link to a brilliant article by Anne Salmond. Jan 4th 2025
I love the thought of the super-wealthy-who-care-about-nothing-but-their-bank-account going and living on Mars, leaving the super-weathly and everyone else who love this earth and it's people to get on with what we love to do: care for each other and Earth, create and appreciate :)
Good to read. Also really like the lillies