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loboto-mae · 2 months

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a flurry of wings

bodies arched towards the ground:

birds are feeding

#poetry #haiku #haiku poetry #original poem #original haiku #nature #birds #poems about birds #birdwatching

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loboto-mae · 3 months

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glow through the window

knotted but still beautiful;

i will stay in bed

#poetry #haiku #haiku poetry #original poem #original haiku #original art #film photography #35mm #35mm photography #olympus om10 #photoart #original photographic works #nature #poem and a picture

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loboto-mae · 3 months

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lofty fluorescents

coat the warehouse in pale light;

demand obedience

#poetry #haiku #haiku poetry #original poem #original haiku #warehouse #antiwork #workabolition

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loboto-mae · 3 months

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#photography #film photography #35mm #35mm photography #photoart #original photographic works #nature #olympus om10

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loboto-mae · 3 months

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#film photography #35mm #photoart #photography #original photographic works #experimental #experimental photography #art #original art #exposur #olympus om10

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loboto-mae · 3 months

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“Before the throne of Freedom, the trees rejoice with the frolicsome breeze and enjoy the rays of the sun and the beams of the moon. Through the ears of Freedom these birds whisper and around Freedom they flutter to the music of the brooks. Throughout the sky of Freedom these flowers breathe their fragrance and before Freedom’s eyes they smile when dawn comes.

Everything on earth lives according to the law of nature, and from that law emerges the glory and joy of liberty; but man is denied this fortune, because he set for the God-given soul a limited and earthly law of his own. He made for himself strict rules. Man built a narrow and painful prison in which he secluded his affections and desires. He dug out a deep grace in which he buried his heart and it’s purpose. If an individual, through the dictates of his soul, declares his withdrawal from society and violates the law, his fellowmen will say he is a rebel worthy of exile, or infamous creature worthy only of execution.

Will man remain a slave of self-confinement until the end of the world? Or will he be freed by the passing of time and live in the Spirit for the Spirit? Will man insist upon staring downward and backward at the earth? Or will he turn his eyes toward the sun so he will not see the shadow of his body amongst the skulls and thorns?”

Kahlil Gibran, Spirits Rebellious (1908)

#kahlil gibran #Spirits Rebellious #poetry #philosophy #lebanon #freedom #love #self love #egoism #the unique and its property #the ego and it’s own #political freedom #freedom from religion #freedom from society

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loboto-mae · 3 months

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The Wolf

In 1970, an ecologist named David Mech published a book called “The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species.” A book which catalogued all the information researchers had at the time on the worlds of wolves. A book that Mech himself would later spend the rest of his career trying to end the publication on. You see, Mech had mistakenly used research on wolves that were held in captivity, and found later that much of the assertions made in it did not hold up to scrutiny when observing wolves in the wild.

In the west we’ve heard, often to death, of the “Alpha Wolf.” We compare people to wolves quite a bit. Especially in the recent trend of armchair youtube “sociologists” and american conservative grifters attempting to explain human behavior in terms of so-called “Alphas” and “Betas,” a great many people still believe that humans, by nature, are pack animals with rigid heirarchies. Like the wolves in Mech’s research: The strongest, most fit male eats first while the weaker of the pack get what’s left over. The Alpha leads the pack, makes key decisions for them, and always has first pick of the mate. Mech’s research contained much of the information used to argue this point and it was inaccurate. Mech researched only wolves in captivity, however, when he took to observing wolves in the wild, he quickly realized how this view of captive animals was simply not how free creatures organize. A pack of wolves in the wild is a family; usually, two parent wolves with a litter of puppies. There’s no “Alpha” male, there’s a father. And the weakest pups certainly do not eat last, quite the contrary. This dynamic is more indicative of a community than a heirarchy.

In research such as this, we can infer that animals in captivity adopt new forms of social organization in order to cope with their incredibly narrowed freedom. Often this organization is inherited from the order they were bred from, forcing them to maintain it generation after generation.

Despite this false representation, I actually do believe people are like the wolves in Mech’s book. I believe that we are in captivity. One so coercive that it encourages us to believe in social heirarchies. We organize our worlds around it. We have our bosses, our landowners, our teachers, our leaders. We see each other as rungs of a social ladder to step on in order to make it to the next level. We either live believing we are or can be the “alpha wolf,” or we struggle accepting that we will only eat when it is our turn. And for what? Why allow our choices and passions be squandered by believing we must adhere to rules upheld by those who are superior in title only?

In my neighbors, my friends, my families, I see animals in a cage. I see a polar bear that shuffles back and forth all day in a bored frustration like an animatron. I see a whale with a melancholic song for a mate, though it has no room in its tank for itself let alone another. I see a panda that refuses to mate, lest it doom its child to a life too much like it’s own. I see a wolf that would want nothing more than to sprint as far as its breath can carry it to the far reaches of the forest it calls its home. Wishing only to be stopped, not by the glass of an enclosure, but by the limitations of its own, wild imagination.

We are not ranks in a social order. We are beings whose freedom has been withheld. We crave free community, free association.

"To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism [greed and selfishness], is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough," says Andrew Collier.

We are not free, we are captives. And attempting to learn the potential of an enclosure will get us nowhere closer to freedom. We can appreciate those who were able to conquer or cast aside that cage, like Emerson or Thoreau. And we can find a glimmer of hope beam into our enclosures from the minds that saw hope beyond the cage, like Goldman or Tolstoy. But until we can learn to band together as the wolves we are and break loose of our captivity, we can never truly be free.

mae