Ach, Life, and all those Angsts!

    Where are we now? Wo ist meine liebe? 

    Auf Deutcschland, ich weis. I think. I tink.

    We make fun of stereotypes, be they Germans, or French, or Ethiopians, or Filipinos, or 

    Americans.

    Nous sommes Americaines, say the Chilean rock group Los Prisioneros.

    How the South American rockers characterize how they see themselves,

    much in comparison to everyone else.

    Existential gripes--angst, as I said up above.

    I tried the m dash. Artificial Intelligence, is the M dash, says a co-worker.

    History has led us here, intrapersonal and interpersonal.

    Contextual, material, and factual, and sometimes the irrational enters as well.

    The fictional, the untrue even.

    Style and tastes, predilections and drives. Or styles, plural.

    Marx and Freud, and less known Germans and theorists and philosophers, and "thinkers" and "influencers" (at least academically), who create environments where we operate and behave and live.

    And eventually die.

    The whole circle of life, Walt Disney.

    It's the circle of life, Elton John.

    I have gone into my consciousness stream,

    where our dreams have been and go.

    The music and the lyrics and the drugs and the overdoses that we confront, daily or hourly or week by week, year by year.

    How are we doing?

    How are you?

    How many things and emotions do you sublimate. Repress? Hold down. Keep hidden.

    What do we hide? What do we wish to say and do?

    Where are we today? Emotionally. Psychologically. Mentally, spiritually. Physically!

    Where are you now? Where have you been?

    Can we, should we, do we have the capacity or band-width, to answer all these questions?

    No, we must prioritize. Create hierarchies of care.

    Mazlo and needs.

    Do what we can, do what we want.

    Sure. Easy for me to say. East to write. Easy to blog.

    There, I have said it. Okay, I said a few things.

    There is always more. And that is, hopefully, a beautiful thing that we call life.

    God, us, and all the rest.

    Happy Sabbath. Wish you were here. (To quote Floyd).

    But, really, I am glad and appreciative that I am here and you are there.

    Ich liebe dich. 

    Ich liebe Got. God? Auf Deutsch, it is the Father in Heaven like in most other places.

    We have and make room for Buddha the Enlightened One, too.

    Sure. All good.

    Bavaria and our bloodlines.

    We are all connected.

    Angsts and calms.

    All of them.

    Cheus.

 I Need the Lord

    Without the Lord,

    I am lost

    Without His grace

    I lose my way

    All me alone

    I cannot find

    My peace

    I need Him

    I crave others

    His creatures

    His children

    My loves

++++++

    Break: I had a tune to this melody. I shared it with family. But perhaps I will not retrieve it.

    I had more words and tunes in my head, too.

    But yet, I need the Lord.

 Poetic Stream, from October 30 afternoon, 2025

    I am not sure if this comes a frenzied mind, or a frenzied world, or a bit of both. Maybe it is no frenzy.

    Poetry from the end of October, 2025.

    Japanese manga

    See it over 500 hours

    Anime, live film version

    Mangaku, they create worlds

    Stories, characters

    A Nippon guy, a nihongo writer

    Creator of Robbie the Robot

    Later, Lost in Space

    --Artistic robot maker 

    When Asimov was young

    Clarke and Heinlen, too

    

    I brought up haiku

    My wife brought up haiku

    I love her

    That is life

    My life

    She visited Japan, now Germany

    The axis powers

    The allies of today

    We pivot to Russia

    China, even extremist 

    Iran or Muslim jihadis

    Osama fought the Soviets

    Highly, or densely

    Composed of Ukrainians

    A Georgian led 

    the U.S.S.R., killing

    his own peoples

    What does Soviet mean?

    Not perestroika,

    Clearly not glasnost

    More like spetznatz

    or however, I would wager

    Da. Ja. Oui. Hai. 

    Sher sher shur.

    This is our world

    in the present

    Money and drugs galore

    Do you take either?

    I avoid most.

    

 Enough about Baseball! How about the NBA?

    We are a couple weeks, or less, into this new season. Does anybody care? It is just a leather ball, and a wooden court, with 10 foot metal rims

    The Oklahoma Thunder, the best regular season team, got by my Indiana Pacers last June. The Pacer were a big surprise. Cleveland was the first victim, and then the local Indianapolis guys kept going.

    This year is very wide open. The Pacers lost Miles Turner, so maybe they are not going to be as good.

    Houston is looking mean, San Antonio is better, Cooper Flagg is in Dallas. Just Texas alone may do it.

    But Oklahoma is the defending champion, and you got Denver and the LA Lakers, both former champs, too.  Utah is better... Maybe Portland, too? The West is tough.

    In the East, the Celtics are always able, aforementioned Cleveland is real, the Knicks are favored, and the Bucks could be their old selves. Who else? Philadelphia. They may be legit. Maxey scores like a maniac, and they have new blood, added depth. Oh, and the Timberwolves. They are Western Conference, but they went far last year. And Memphis Grizzlies might be good.

    The Miami Heat? The Chicago Bulls?

    Hmmmm.... Hmmmmm....

    Should be a fascinating and fun year, I say.

    Only the best teams and athletes with a leather spheroid. Let's make it till June, a noble goal.

    Thus the season is upon us.

 My Family Dislikes Mellencamp because of Me

    I was always commenting that I attended school with his daughter, which I think caused an inoculation against a more objective of his merits and styles as an artist. Now granted, he is not Billy Joel (who is?), or Elton John, or Phil Collins, or James Taylor, and on and on.

    But, some of his music is iconically good, yes? I think so. Despite having some lean years in my liking, as well, I enjoy hearing a John Cougar Mellencamp song, which can be because of nostalgia due to my Hoosier roots, my Bloomington background, my presence closer to his family.

    He is no world killer, Perry Cuomo, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond.

    But, he is one of the best that Indiana has.

    Maybe when this Hoosier is gone, his music may sound a little better to them.

    Maybe not.

 Poets and Emotions

    The first poems were being made long before the languages that we know today existed. They were songs, or chants, or some kind of phrases that likely meant things.

    Hold on! Who is getting their masters in the history of psychology? Not me! I would say it my progeny.

    I read Anna Karenina in 2021. My daughter read War and Peace in 2012 and 2013. There were no happy characters, she tells me.

    Oh, the emotions of reality and fiction.

    Poetry sometimes does the trick.

    And we blog it, and blog on.

    HATE

    Do we hate? 

    Surely we do.

    But those flames will burn us up with them.

    We must learn to quell the heat and the fires...

    And become peaceful and resigned,

    Poised, and strong.

    Not really stoic, but above the rancor.

   

 Germany and Us: Deutschland

    We all live in our respective lands, but whether we live in Europe, the United States, China, or any other part of the earth, we all have a relationship with Germany. Some of us are more connected than others. Germany and its influences of money, ideas, and culture, percolate or saturate all of us across the globe. 

    What is your connection or influences leading to and from this place, people, culture, economy? How are you linked to this land, the language, the arts and ideas? Is it a philosopher, or a scientist. We all mutually benefit from each others' innovations and ideas. Language has a big place, too.

    In the Midwest, or other parts of the United States, many of us say gesundheit when people sneeze. There are those that teach German, those who studied it, those that possibly came from there, like Hein Tlustek who lived 30 minutes south in rural Bedford, Indiana, or Robert's mother Mrs. Calder from East Germany. In Chile I went to visit a German colony that sold very cheap wine and had floral gardens, and a woman of German origin who seemed rather standoffish to me. 

    Austria and Switzerland are German-speaking countries, and are not Germany, but the cultures cross over and overlap with Germany, the motherland, which in many ways is the engine and heart of the western world of Europe. They are industrial, economically dynamic, moving and shaking; their history with arts and ideas and theories are powerful and far reaching.

    Hegel, Heidegger, Jung, Freud, and on, including musicians and writers, theoreticians and planners, like Marx and Engels. We have had German political and military leaders, most of us have heard of the most notorious, which we do not have to mention here...

    But the reverberations of the those times and people still affect us today. Modern day Israel and the Arab issues, particularly but not only the Palestinians, as we talk of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, over to Iran (not Arabs), and on to Iraq and Turkey, and us, the West, all of us dealing with modern political realities and economic trends and markets.

    My mother has her mother from southern Germany, from Swabia of Bavaria, or Schwabe of Bayern. I have potentially a quarter blood of German heritage. My wife, too.

    What do have to do with Germany? 

    You tell me.

    Some of us worked with German engineers, or other German professionals. Others have seen films, or heard music, or read novels or been impacted by other German thinkers over the ages. There was a German Pope, Joseph Ratzinger. Germany has a place in sports, like football (soccer), and other world events. There is the food, the historical and current music influences.

    How much of what we are is German? I would say it is disproportionately a part of who we are today in 2025. Millions of immigrants have channeled through Germany and speak it. They are partners in the international crime and military scenes of global intelligence and might. 

    Are they growing enough in native population? Do the foreign immigrants enculturate enough to carry on German traditions and knowledge, foremost being the language itself?

    I think that time will prove the German people, and its influence, will continue to be formidable. Austria and Swiss speakers may grown closer to its northern bigger, neighbor, perhaps. Or that might prove immaterial. Regardless. Germany is a part of who we are.

    Danke schoen, for what you are, Deutschland.

    Aufwiedersain.