march 2005
Here Sisyphus rested for a while?
THE HANDSTAND is closing down for a while. I feel this will perhaps be misunderstood by my thousands of readers; not only have I reached utter exhaustion, but also utter disgust, cynicism, and even hatred for the politicians in this world. When there is even a good man standing up to make a speech - has he, prior to this, been careful to find a consensus on any aspect of its statements that can be backed up? Or even provoke an onslaught on the status quo of these servile puppets, Presidents and Prime Ministers, of the Bankers and Industrialists and the laughable remains of "aristocracy" that are actually RULING nations and governing institutions and treaties?Michael Meacher is one, as is Ken Livingstone,who continues to lobby public conscience with the back-up of large numbers of Scientists and the organisation ISIS (Institute of Science In Society)There are few others,because egotism, that now appears to have always been the most ridiculous and dangerous form of exclusive notation for "the history books", is still uppermost in the political and public imagination.
The ancient, illustrious, and certainly outdated individual hope in Western civilisations, that one man (or woman) will here and there be recognised for having penultimate wisdom of such a kind that brings about change, is still prevailing as a method of fame provoking lustre in one GAP or another.Foolish and worthless, and even those, who make us laugh and relax enough to think for ourselves, are harassed with accusing or political connotations that destroy the simple medicine of a good laugh.
The phrase,
"we are all middle-class now" is one of the
most misleading features of persuasion given in schools
today ; everywhere and in every study children are taught
that the disadvantaged, who live without vehicles,
without electricity, without enormous shopping malls,
without fashion's trash and even in the misfortunes of
murder after a night's drinking, these are the
"others" , the victims with the indigenous
misfortunes of the poor, are "those who should be
punished", those who "hang around". The
"middle class", instead, have grace and favour
before the law, and in the eyes of thier peers, the
elites of professional life.
The Handstand was initially started as a form of
historical notation on our times after a political event
of magnitude (the collapse of the World Trade Centre) and
it was hoped to place in it some of the literature
collecting in such spaces as Community Magazines. However
the egotism of name and nature are so unweildy, are so
given over to the suspicion that someone else might
collect your "laurels" by imitation or outright
copy, that material from writers is so scant - it is
laughable. Especially for a magazine that has been going
for three years and has from 6-8,000 readers a month;and
regularly 300 hits a day to pick up one page or
another.For sure, a recent pole in America among young
people, indoctrinated by the ridiculous forms of
nationalism that USA's education follows, findsyoung
people now strongly advocating control of all routes of
information by a government! Here in Ireland, on 21st
February we salivated and welcomed the head of the
Hungarian Government in an article in the Irish Times,
who as you will see from a document herein rules his
country with the rods of iron, punitive disciplines,
familiar from any study of fascism and Stalinism. He
calls himself a socialist! More and more signs of
political propaganda everywhere.
So my friends, brothers and sisters of concern, there are
two or three heavy political articles herein and
hopefully if I come back to the computer there will have
been a shift, described as, perhaps unfortunately, under
the circumstance of pre-vision in the frontispiece of the
Jan.2005 issue, where, several days before the Tsunami I
set a page with the following illustration and text:
Many thanks to my correspondents who send
me so many essential news reports,cartoons and tall
tales; may the world learn peace, and may we disport
ourselves in the blissful waves of a redeemed
civilisation. jocelyn braddell.
If anyone wishes to write to me with
comment or literature for a Handstand production of the
future, please write to info@thehandstand.org as designated in the navigation column to the
left. With thanks for your massive support for the last
three years. My best wishes to all my Irish and
International Readers, Jocelyn Braddell.
The Words...
The words of this poem
Are mine, chosen from
the world
Culled and lined
As difference and
meaning
Tentatively joust
antennae...
When the light and
heat
Comes on
The wing of cells flutters
Against the bulb of
your eye
And the apertures of
lines
Open and close under your hand.
If there is music
I would play in its forces
Without rhyme....
But reason,
Reason might be in this light
Time stolen from all my years.
But it is here, in fact, as a curtain
Embroiders the idle
moment's screen
As you chose to smile with a woman,
As she closes her
wings,
Without forcing, or denying, a constant light.
