The Magician and The Wind #32 #cong19

Paul O'Mahony

Synopsis:

I suspect the prevailing wisdom is that “Community is a Comfort”.
In my world “Community Crucifies”.

4 Key Takeaways:

  1. Communities are Imperialistic.
  2. It’s hard work to be an anti-imperialist
  3. You have your own wind
  4. Blow your own trumpet

About Paul O'Mahony:

I’m not the man I was last year.

Contacting Paul O'Mahony:

You can follow Paul on Twitter @omaniblog and Instagram @ omaniblog.

You can also reach him by email

By Paul O’Mahony

Communities are Conversations. Conversations attract Collaborations. Collaborations change Communications. I have noticed strong communities are nearly as strong as poems fit for purpose.
In this day & age, and in this place & stage, the melody of metaphors, allegories and similes is the best way to cut through cant. Unfortunately for many communities, the gestation of the foetus is done, the birth of the Individual has come. Recently …
The Magician turned her back to the sea and spoke to the Wind:
“Come join us in our unity.
Take your place at the table, you belong among us.
Together we grow stronger than our surroundings.
We rise above the ground that supports us.
Feel yourself hugged by a multitude of villagers eyed with affection from every squinting window.
Come inside your birthright, and sign the book of your life written in invisible ink.
Let us understand you better than you understand yourself.
Let us guide you past the temptations that fester under your skin.
Let us make you whole.
Our health, your health, Your health, our health.
Unity in unity.
Lose yourself in magic.
Speak wind, speak our language.”
The Wind spoke:
“You touch me in every orifice.
Your smell invites me into your cave.
I see your shadows beyond the fire where I was forged, your reflections on my mind. 
Have I the right to resist, the power to deny, the authority to cry ‘NO’? 
I shall not be bent into shape like a plashed hedge” whispered the wind. 
This breath is not for turning.
You can keep your unity Community.
I’ll be no village clone, I am grown to live alone.
I belong to a grander table, better fed, vulnerable as the weather, fragile as glass. I am an elementary particle.
Call me Neutrino, I am so small I pass through your imaginations unimpeded and undetected.
Surely you see my city, Diversity.
May you understand yourself so poorly you sink slowly from your throne.
I am the Authority authorised to sing louder than your choir. That’s what you mean to me.”
And the Wind blew the Magician into her sea where she went in search of a victim weaker than an Individual Gust.

Where is home? Ramblings of a rambler #16 #cong19

Synopsis:

For some of us. Perhaps you will relate.
We are young, we have no purpose other than to live. To live our best life. Living to our own excesses. In youthful ignorance of times to come.
Unbeknownst diverging paths leads to divergent futures.
Once excessive youth, exuberant burns low, realization of future needs prevail.
Communities grow on the heads of all or fall when we go.

4 Key Takeaways:

  1. Nothing youth loves nothing more than youth.
  2. Choices. Invest in your communities
  3. Promote work life balance, it’s benefits wherever you go

About Geoffrey Giobbons:

Geoffrey Gibbons
I once was somebody other than I am now.
Telecoms/IT Solution Architect
Distracted by ideas.
You get the picture

Contacting Geoffrey Gibbons

You can connect with Goeffrey by email or LinkedIn

By Geoffrey Gibbons.

Where is home? Ramblings of a rambler.

 

Daisy weeps.

Empty nest, all alone. no one home.

Educated and trained all grown. City bound, nothing here. Eager they fly away, adventures await new places new people to meet, new countries and new lives.

Daisy weeps now old, now alone.

Children weep,  no jobs to bring them home.

Reverse the Mega City trend. Reverse the translocation of the youth away from rural communities and their family’s. Create a better economic future in a Mega Culture.

Daisy is happy.  Growing old with dignity, growing old with her family and community all around.

As I write this I am at odds having moved again, looking back at a community I have loved, now left behind.  18 months is such a short time to grow evolve into something new. To see people to see a community to be accepted, to feel at home. My uncles words resonate in my mind.  Would you come, would you move.  My answers was yes I would.

I had moved back to the community where my father was born. Tír na nÓg where the people are young even as they grow old.

I started off Daisy weeps.  My grandmother I never asked was this true.  I assume that in a way she did. But it is has become the norm.  Children grow and move away to live there own lives.

I associate communities with families.  Without families there is no continuation of communities.

Without families a community shrinks and dies.

We are living in a divide.  Rural versus urban A divide in a style of life.

Daisy my grandmother, a beautiful kind woman living in the west of Ireland. She raised 3 girls and 6 boys all but one moved away, including my father.  Communities of people slowly displaced around the world. Once thriving rural communities of 20 to 30 houses slowly been erased by time.  Once fielding teams of eager energetic youths. Now fields where houses once stood. Only a few remain. Surrounded by holiday homes where family’s once lived.

The translocation of people, to cities, to man factories is in the past. Office blocks stand full, overflowing, congestion of roads, small spaces.

All this is in the past.  Technology surpasses  the need for centralized resources.  Yet we are slow , companies hesitate to implement structures for home working. Investment in local hubs, regional hubs is slow only now beginning.

I have become a nomad or at least that is what I hear in whispered words.  They won’t settle, won’t stay in one place never settling down. I listen thinking about choices that I have made. Family over profit. Family above endless travel. Endless corporations blindly following archaic thoughts of work life balance while shouting out about technical innovations but stuck in the past. I have worked, I have enjoyed the office life.  But for us all a time comes when family needs come first. To turn off to become at odds with the norm.  It has become common for companies to see families as an unwelcome hinderance to profit.

It is easy to hope,  easy to move with expectations of success.  It’s hard to create success get that remote job.

To live where your heart tells you you belong.

It is this that sees us move again.  Once I moved from job to job, contract to contract.  Living around the world.  Leaving to make money or to go where I am told.

Are my roots shallow with no place of my own.

No they are strong, set deep into the cultural norms, honor bound to uphold the ingrained values imparted upon me by the communities I live in.

My mind links to similarities where ever I am.  We all look for a community of like minded people to fill our need to belong.

Where is home?