Guns and Grudges
Who knows the questions? or the time?
What if there is no time?
What if all the time has all been wasted, or lost?
When karma comes around,
where will it go?
Why keep running into the same things?
How did we get here?
If only I knew
how to fix it all–
I would be honored
to be unremissed.
I’ve been having trouble completing things lately. Bjorn at dVerse has us asking Google to finish our thoughts. Perfect.
What I learned:
1) Many of those searching on Google are thinking about death–lots of killing and dying going on.
2) And remiss. Many many of us feel we are remiss.
method two madness 
I like the paired questions in the third stanza, Kerfe, unresolvability being at the heart of the poem, ending with the guilt. Yes, we are all remiss. Nicely crafted.
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Thanks Dora. It seems from Google that many people feel that way. And we are uncertain how to make things better.
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This is delightful, feeling like I fell down a rabbit hole and loving the confusion.
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Thanks Helen. Confusion is exactly right for these times.
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Certainly not a waste of time, yours creating or mine reading!
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Thanks Dave. It was a very interesting exercise, giving me an insight into people’s thoughts I didn’t have before.
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That’s a strong justification of creativity.
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I think you’ve painted with a very broad brush here. I don’t accept the idea of such generalizations as we are all remiss or guilty. Of what? At which times? Against what standards? We can only take responsibility for our own actions and answer for them. And we have to do so in the face of the fact that life is often cruel and always inscrutable, that’s the nature of existence. Just by Living in this world doesn’t make each person complicit in the acts of others.
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The point of the exercise was to go where Google led us. You can go to dVerse and read about the prompt.
When you type in “I would be…” remiss comes up many times before anything else. Clearly many people feel they are remiss, since that comes up so frequently when you search. I was just commenting on the surprising (to me) fact that it must be on many people’s minds.
I was not saying you in particular should feel that way, or anyone in particular. I’m not accusing you of anything. I said nothing at all about complicity.
I agree, life is difficult. And I do believe we are remiss if we do not try to make things better for everyone, not just ourselves.
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We are under a dark blanket of fear right now. Lots of cramped styles these days 😦
Your page format looks different. Glad you made it so you can click on your image and it goes full size.
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It’s interesting to me–this poem and maybe this whole google exercise is like a Rorschach of people’s inner dialogues. I was surprised by many of the phrase completions, and did not stray far from the initial leads. I do believe what came up indicates that dark blanket well.
As to formatting, I did not do anything intentional. So I’m not sure I can reproduce it!
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I didn’t look at them like that but now that you mention it… When I did it, I ended up with more than a full sheet of 3 columns of words (I went through the alphabet so there were more) then went through again to see what jumped out.
As to your formatting, it looked more compacted and not necessarily in a better way, just different.
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The block editor is still a mystery to me. As long as something shows up, I can deal with it. I think I’m doing the same things every time, but who knows what option I selected unknowingly?
I was doing questions with Google, and people have seemingly common concerns that would never occur to me. It was a good way to examine my own assumptions as well. Or maybe Google is shaping our concerns, and we are just allowing ourselves to be led by them.
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The splatter painting is an appropriate pairing, here.
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Thanks Jack.
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Remiss. Why doesn’t that surprise me? It goes with the breast beating that takes the place of change and political action, Bless me, Father for I have sinned.
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I hadn’t thought about that aspect of it, but that’s exactly right. We can feel contrite without actually having to do the hard part–working for change, and giving things up so change can happen.
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No, we agree, it’s sad, we have our part of responsibility, so here’s some thoughts and prayers to make it better.
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Thoughts and prayers…no one has even bothered with them lately. I hadn’t noticed, but it’s true. Even that much effort at empathy has been discarded.
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That’s an interesting question Kerfe, where will, girl.? At times I think karma has basically just a banded us we don’t seem to be acting to imbalance so between karma and Yin and yang we may be a disappointing species at this time on the planet hope we get it together. I enjoyed this piece curve. I love your artwork special stuff.
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Thanks Rob. We need to keep asking the questions even if we don’t have all the answers.
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Life is full of questions these days. Not sure if there is an answer within the questions yet due to the nature of the times, but definitely points to universal concerns. I think there may be one answer after your coming election.
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I don’t know Olga. I think no matter how the vote turns out there is so much anger on both sides that clarity will be difficult to achieve. It bothers me that people are being encouraged to confront the people they disagree with not just with words but with weapons. There is no good ending to that approach.
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Yes, using force is never the solution. Too bad weapons are so proliferant in your country.
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What do people feel remiss about, Kerfe? I know lots of people are feeling depressed and anxious. Lovely words.
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I’m not sure Robbie. It’s not a word I would think of normally at all, yet it kept popping up in my google search. Perhaps people think, as I do sometimes, that somehow they could have done more to heal the gaps between us before they got so large, or to keep the destruction of the earth from seeming so inevitable. And yet I’m not sure how far back we would have to travel to change the course we seem to be on. Anxiety and depression, I agree, seem much more to the point than feeling remiss.
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In hindsight, I may wish to be unremissed about many things, but forward is the way.
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It’s true. Regrets are not going to make any difference. Perhaps the small contributions we each make now will add up to big changes going forward. I hope so.
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Lots of questions without answers. And people do probably feel remiss. And powerless.
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Powerless. That is probably the true feeling behind all of it. What can one person do to make things better? How can it ever be enough?
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Yes. Sigh.
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Really love the first line… who knows the questions? … I think we care too much about answers when it’s really the questions that matter.
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I think you may be right Bjorn. Asking the right questions can point us in the right direction without constricting us too much to any particular answer.
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You have penned this so beautifully .. following where Google led you. Yes, I resonate with feeling remiss.,, at times.. the world and its energy is full of uncertainty.. and I guess that can get to us.
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It does. Still, as Ken said, forward is the way to go.
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I’m really resonating with your words here, Kerfe….having many of the same thoughts these days.
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Thanks Betty. I don’t think they are leaving any time soon.
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