Forget it man, it was a long time ago......

The eyes have it.

Above is a photo of one Sara Gudger a former slave. I came across this today after a web search that was prompted by starting to read Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man".

"Invisible Man" begins with the unnamed protagonist smoking some reefer in his basement squat whilst listening to Louis Armstrong. The reefer brings him to a dream state where he talks with a woman slave that has poisioned her master and is crying, because she loved him as well as hated him. Her sons, the sons of the slavemaster, remain inside hooting and hollering with joy, whilst the protagonist of the book questions their mother about her seemingly contradictory relationship with the man she murdered. Eventually the sons chase him out of his dreamtime, and back to the music of Satchmo.

It led me to wonder what the woman slave might have looked like.

Sara Gudger's eyes, if not her face told me what I wanted to know.

I am a bit of a lurker in the "Enemy board" the rap group Public Enemy's bullitin board, and every so often a Right-wing troll comes in and starts a mud slinging match with the bunch of black nationalists and whitey liberals that make up much of its population. The conversation always starts with "Hey man, forget about slavery, it was a long time ago."

Not long enough ago for it to have been before the advent of photography, I'm afraid.

If you are one that occassionally dismisses the effect of slavery on the collective unconsciousness of todays black population (I would have said "African American" but it goes way beyond America's shores) I would suggest that you double click on the above photo and stare into Sara's eyes. What would she have told her kids, what would they have told their's?

And what makes you think that the black person you speak with today, especially in America, has no family stories of their own to tell?

Time heals all wounds you see, but some of those wounds become scars.

Peace and Hope

FatherCrow

The Beaches of Thailand have been claimed by it's Dead.

Lek stares nervously out to the Patong sea from the shore and remembers the command that his passengers gave him on the night of the sixth of January “Go to Kata Beach", seven foreign tourists instructed him, and after agreeing on a 200 baht fee. He drove a while, but then felt numb all over his body.

Looking around he saw the cab was empty.

Ghosts of the Tsunami, no joke, Lek is leaving his job as a cab driver, and never takes off the religious charms that hang around his neck.

This is only one of the many reports of "Tsunami ghosts" that have been reported in recent weeks. At night the screams of a foreign woman ring out from the carcass of a gutted hotel, specter like along the beaches. In Khao Lak a family reports that their telephone rings all night, and when they lift the receiver, all they hear is screams crying out to be rescued from the searing flames of the crematorium. They say the voices belong to friends and family that died in the Tsunami.

A local shrink Dr Wanlop claims that this is all the result of post traumatic stress disorder, and points out that these stories began ten days after the tsunami struck. Though the passage of time hardly cements his case. In my mind, the post traumatic stress disorder model works, but it is only one model, and as such we, not knowing the full details of the situation, should not disregard other models, as a "quick" answer may not provide the right answer that best helps in the healing process, it could be ghosts, it could be sub sonic sound, it could be many things. Dr Wanlop seems to only deal in certainties, another of which is that the reason so many foreign ghosts have been sited is because "foreigners make a big impression on Thais". There, it's all solved and the Thai's can go back to sleeping soundly in their beds.

Except the people who have reported the "Ghosts" say that Dr. Wanlop's theory provides little comfort.

Thailand is a mostly Buddhist country, and Buddhist monks are now functioning as counselors to many of the berieved. Thailands "Ghost" model predates the arrival of the teachings of Siddartha. In recent weeks non Buddhist spiritualist exorcisims have been performed with regualarity on beaches and in houses in an effort to provide safe passage for the "Ghosts" to what the Thais consider to be the other world.

The beaches of Thailand, are now clouded with incense and the mantra of chants as Thai's offer paper clothes, money and slices of pizza to help the foreigners find their way across the Styx.

Peace and Hope to everyone involved.

FatherCrow

Frank Millers Sin City is out on April 22nd.

The air-conditioner in this cheap hotel room is a clanking piece of junk that couldn't keep a glass of water cold, if you sat it right on top of it.

My woman lies dead at my side.

Cops banging at my door, they got here too quick, it stinks of a frame up, whoever set this up paid allot of cold cash for it.

Next time they catch me, I fry.

No reason to play this one quiet, no reason at all.

No reason to play this any way but my own.

The old days are back, the bad days, the bloody days, the all or nothing days.

Whoever killed you Goldie, they are going to pay, and not quiet like you went, no, they die loud and nasty, slow and long.

My kind of kill.



The Trailer is available at

http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/sin_city.html

Sin City stars

Mickey Rourke (back at last, Fuck Yeah!)
Clive Owen
Bruce Willis
Benicio Del Toro
Jessica Alba
Rosario Dawson
Elijah Wood
Maria Bello


It is co-directed by the comic writer and artist Frank Miller, frame for frame from the original comic masterworks. Robert Rodriguez helms the other half, and to get Miller on board he had to resign from the Directors Guild to get the film made.

Its gonna be the film experience of 2005.

It's time to prove to your friends that you're worth a damn, sometimes that means dying, sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people.

Peace and Hope

FatherCrow.

This Revolution.

Blending fact and Fiction, to create friction.

Guerrilla News's new Feature.

http://www.guerrillanews.com/videos/video.php?id=29

Peace and Hope

FatherCrow

Face GRAFFt

Some additional Dublin Graff for you all, this time it bears a striking resemblence to my sick bed, microbe ridden head.

FatherCrow

The Black Plague

Well, my glans (the ones in my neck) have swollen to the size of a bullfrogs, my voice is much the same as the aforementioned frog, my skin is cellophane, and my temperature is that of a coffee maker on the boil.

For the last four days I have been ridden with what people have said is a "virus", which seems to be what people call sicknesses when they have no true idea of what they actually are.

So apologies for the lack of content, and indeed the inability of anyone to contact me by phone, as I took to M's as a convalescent home and did not have my phone charger with me, or email (M does not have a phone line in her apartment).

So anyone who was worried that I might have been the victim of a Jamie Bulger like kidnapping can rest at ease. I am in fact still around, though a pale shadow of my former self.

You know what they say, whatever does not kill you, does not kill you.

So if anyone is looking for posts that are witty, erudite, artistic or interesting in any form, you need to scroll down or reaquaint yourself with the archives of the blog which are listed down the right hand side of the page.

Ill be back when I get well, if not, this page and the others will serve as an epitaph, not one of the quality I would have liked but, you know, you can't have everything.

Back when I can.

Peace and Hope

FatherCrow

We really do live on the Island of Faeries and Leprechauns

The news media today, that agressive armadillo bristling with microphones, and babbling with a cacophony of questions, spent a good deal of time chasing Bus Eireanns director Bill Lilley around.

This was due to a little gaff his company made with some information that was inadvertently released into the Datasphere.

It seems there was, or rather wasn't as Mr. Lilley was later to claim, an horrific screeching metal, limb rending, bone fracturing crash had occured on the N11. Eleven were injured, and emergency services were on the scene, bandaging wounds and cutting screaming passengers out of the bus's flaming carcass. RTE the national broadcaster turned up with an OB (outside broadcasting unit) prepared to broadcast this national tragedy over the airwaves, only to find, well, nothing much at all.

The culprit of all this confusion was a press release that was "mistakenly" issued as part of a drill. I always knew bus Eireann were taking the piss, and that the Journalists of this country (as proved by the repeated false stories planted by the inimitable p45.net) will print anything without fact checking, due to their assumption that all the other agencies have done so first.

That taken into account, I have some news announcements to make myself.

1. Marijuana was legalised today by Dail Eireann by an overwhelming majority.

2. The English have withdrawn from Northern Ireland.

3. All of the Gards that were involved in the Reclaim the Streets expression of police brutality have been jailed.

4. The Americans are no longer using Shannon as a launching point for the Illegal Occupation in Iraq.

5. Forty million in tax Euros have been diverted from the incessant building of Motorways into housing the homeless.

6. Last but not least 900 billion Euros have been found in a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow in Laois and will be divided equally among all the citizens of Ireland.

This has been a dispatch of the Faeries and Leprechauns news service, a division of Sky broadcasting corporation.

Peace and Hope

FatherCrow.

Death is not the End.

I'll be there to greet you at the end of that final tunnel of light MWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!

FatherCrow.

And no one's talking about the strange change in the Weather.

As the white clouds swirl in time lapse anger, and the deep rumble of thunder rolls across the lightning slashed sky with the sound of a mine collapsing under your feet. The rains hammer down from the heavens with an intensity that feels like hate, and we sit calmly inside, backs turned and fingers pumping at the games console controller.

Remember the 90's and all that talk of climate change? Remember the governmental meetings, the cacophony of scientists shouting as one at global conferences, shouting of chloroflorocarbonates, of black industrial smoke that would scour the firmament, of a second ice age just when we thought that we had avoided the threat of nuclear winter. All of those educated cries in the desert, ignored by robber barons and bean counters as profits were weighed against the long term collapse of the ecology of our weather?

Well I remember them, I remember them now, a week after the climactic terror inflicted by one of the first Hurricanes in my lifetime to hit Ireland. I remember the deniers of climate change, the calls for proof, as I remember the photos my friend A showed me of the van overturned in his front garden, of the inverted garden shed, the splinter of wood imbedded in his garden wall, the patchwork of tiles torn from his roof.

This is Ireland this does not happen here.

I remember it all as the met office calls for hatches to be battoned down, as the dark seas roll, and hundred mile an hour winds race toward us. This is Ireland this does not happen here. Yearly the flooding increases in frequency and severity. This is Ireland this does not happen here.

The worst storm of the Winter is on its way.

The met office warns of 100 mile an hour winds, collapsing trees, even buildings. The Weather doctors, modern witch doctors like Dr. Kieran Hickey claim it "might" be global warming, or just a bad year, they need to see long term patterns to know for sure. Well I have been back in the country for seven years now, and my hands are nowhere near my eyes, ears or mouth. It is getting worse, year by year, meterologists long term patterns or no. All you have to do is look.

When the rains come, people run and hide.

Peace and Hope.

FatherCrow

Irish among Smuggest People on Earth

FORGET about Barbados, Paris or New York - if you want to find true smugness, Ireland is the place in which to live.

The country has once again been named as one of the world's most contented and happiest places in which to be, and as reported by the Irish Independent, we also appear to be one of the smuggest nations in the world.

The Irish Independent itself, is, quite possibly one of the smuggest and most annoying papers in the country, beaten only by papers like the Irish Sun, Star and of course the smuggest and most reactionary paper of all, the "Evening Herald".

The Indo goes on to say:

"First, the Economist deemed it the best place in the world in terms of quality of life; now a survey has identified it as the second happiest place in the world.

Forget about corruption, sky-high prices and a backlogged medical system - this "great little nation" is behind only Denmark, Malta and Switzerland (who are joint first) as the happiest place on earth."

The research, carried out by a smug Dutch sociologist, couples Ireland with Iceland as the second happiest country. However it is second place in smugness, with no other nation at an equal standing.

Ireland comes ahead of the US, Britain and France in smugness, and we are rated as "unbelievably smug" while at the bottom of the scale are Armenia, Ukraine, Zimbabwe and Tanzania all lacking in the smugness required to top the chart, and all rated as "humble".

High up, and rated "annoyingly smug", though, is Ghana, which is in third place in front of Canada, Guatemala, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden, who rate only as "terribly smug".

"Smug countries are, typically, rich countries," said the smug professor. "They are, typically, countries with a lot of money, often mis-governed and capitalistic, that tends to aggravate the smugness."

Peace and Hope

Fathercrow

Stalker in the Park

Actually no, it's not a stalker, it's me, in an image culled from my girlfriends phone. Though it is in a park, the Ivy Gardens to be precise.

FatherCrow

On the Appointment of Alberto Gonzales as US Attorney General

The world does not listen to your muffled, bubble scream,
Only you listen.

The world does not feel the cold water in your lungs,
Only you feel.

The world does not suffer the hand that grips your neck,
Only you suffer.

In the impenetrable whiteness,
Barricaded by columns,
Protected by Gun Metal Blue,
Watched by Glass eyes,
Hispanic skin puts pen to Caucasian paper.

Definitions change,

War becomes peace,
Freedom becomes slavery,
Ignorance becomes strength,

And torture?

With the flourish of a pen, torture becomes something less than itself.

© Fathercrow 2005

12 Bush Monkeys - the countdown.

Dublin city stencil street art/Graffiti photographed recently.

The Vision Thing

So 2005 is finally here, and with it finally comes my admission that glasses are needed on this thirty two year old face.

The world surrounding, has gradually shrunk over the last few years, due to, I am sure, too much masturbation, and an excess of computer LCD exposure. It is an all to common experience that people I pass in the street think me self absorbed, or even rude, as I do not speak to them until they are right in front of my face, waving flags and trying to communicate with me in semaphore.

The reality of the situation is, that I do not recognise their faces until they have made this assumption.

Though if I am to be honest, I don't think that I am yet ready to perceive the city of Dublin to the extent that these ocular additions would allow. I have long come to terms with the fact, that to a great extent we activly manufacture our own reality, and with glasses I may be extending mine to a point I might not be comfortable with.

More of everything.

The dark rainwashed January streets will, with the addition of glasses I imagine, stretch off into a greater distance than I have, up to now, allowed it. The horizon will for a while, in a vertigo like shift of perspective, scream away, nauseating, falling, taking my stomach and all the rain, junkies and homeless of Dublin with it. How much of these dark Winter days have been hidden from me, how much do I want that which has been hidden, to remain so?

My world with glasses, will fill with more space, colour, ugliness, beauty, manufactured curves, decaying angularity. Dublin will enlarge, all of it, the people will multiply, the just and the unjust alike.

Am I prepared to deal with this? Is there any other way of finding out save for actually braving the change.

I think not, the eye tests begin tomorrow, the fittings, within the week, the scales will fall from my eyes.

You pays your money, you takes your ride.

Here's Hoping.

Peace and Hope

FatherCrow

Into the Woods of 2005

Sirens wail in the morning grey of the city.

A young boy hoses blood of the sidewalk.

The Corpse of 2004 has been taken away in the meat wagon.

Investigations continue into allegations that the year 2004 commited numerous murders, works of art, robberies, rapes, acts of benelovence, beatings, corporate scams, moments of beauty, financial rip offs, lifetimes of realization, of rebirth, love and hate.

At this time there are multiple suspects, police are not ruling out foul play.

Word on the street is, that 2004's younger sibling 2005 may be responsible for the crime.

The year of 2005 may be recognised as a numeric abstraction, a state of mind, a cross section of space time, and a place. Its favoured manifestation is as a metaphoric forest.

If you witness a year matching this description please report it to the police.

Peace and Hope for the New Years eventual comprehension.

FatherCrow