OMNIA MEA MECUM PORTO / All that is mine I carry with me

THE GIFT OF CHANCE

Along the way, what was once a gift of Chance

sometimes becomes Necessity's next

step into the unknown.

AGAINST THE SCOURGE OF RUNAWAY
ABSENTEE OWNERSHIP

If Freedom and Democracy are to thrive, the rights of land ownership
must not only be protected, but also strictly limited. In the absence
of limits, the acquisition of land, just like money, inexorably accrues
exponentially. This hoarding of land—by far the most essential natural
resource upon which freedom and democracy depend—undermines its
just, reasonable and equitable distribution.

Inherent in this, is that we must beware and protect ourselves against
the implied metaphysics that money gives one the right to do anything
one likes. Clearly, Laws and the Constitution give one rights, not
money.

Responsible, ethical limits on the ownership of land might be: One
has the right to no more land than one can work; no more land than
one can care for; no more land than one can protect. And, most impor-
tantly, these rights may only be asserted by one’s actual presence on
the land.

At present, as wealth goes to wealth, land goes to more land, creat-
ing a world-wide growing underclass of citizens who are permanently
forced below the threshold of ownership. As this division grows, as
it now as a matter of imbalanced systemic necessity must grow, the
resulting gross inequality builds a pressure which will eventually
lead to instability and collapse.

I would strongly argue here, that the way of non-violence must seek to
redress imbalance and injustice with bold and fairer laws, which in turn
will insure as no force of arms could ever do, the ongoing and happy
stability of the rule of law itself.

LIFE WITHOUT POETRY . . .

“There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no
poetry in money, either.” Robert Graves

Imagine a world without shadow. The end of photography.

Imagine a world without echo. The end of music.

Imagine a world without the rhyming of meaning that
is metaphor. The end of poetry.

Worlds in which nothing is hidden, nothing implied, and nothing reso-
nates beyond its own boundaries. Dry, harsh, lifeless worlds in which
the human spirit only with great difficulty can survive. This is the world
ruled by the literal man. For the literal man, everything means exactly
what it says. It is a world reduced to shards, bits, broken pieces that are
perceived as the hard, necessary, unavoidable facts of daily life.

No more, no less. Life without poetry.

AGAINST & LIFE WITHOUT POETRY are part
of THE LITTLE CLAVIER please preview 150 of 631 pages
w/ my black & white photography [opens in new window]