G. Michael Vasey's Blog: The Wacky World of Dr. Vasey, page 80

The Question Song

Am I alone in thinking these things?

My imagination stirred not shaken

Is it just a feature of disintegration?

Do I run and hide or simply wait

On the inevitable.

Is action now too little too late?

And simply horrendously regrettable?

How will I know right from wrong?

How do I tell true poetry from a lyrical song?

What happens when we die?

Why are we even born?

Why are people so brutally cruel?

Why do little children suffer?

Why do the words that I utter

Fail to find a mark?

Is anyone really listening?

Does anyone really care?

Is anyone out there?

Or am I all there is

Alone

Forlorn

And ultimately

forgotten.

Review: Moon Whispers – G. Michael Vasey

G. M. Vasey:

A nice review by Dani…..

Originally posted on onlybooksandhorses:

I received this book as part of Rosie Amber’s Book Review Team.

Moon Whispers – G. Michael Vasey – 4 stars

I was so excited to receive the anthology, as this will be my first time reviewing poetry! I couldn’t have been offered a better collection to begin with; Dr Vasey drags the reader onto a roller-coaster of profundity from the word go. I can honestly say that I devoured every poem.

While each poem is a text in its own right, the book is held together by recurring themes like God, life and death, media, and current events. His style of writing screams of intelligence, and he invites the reader to join him in his thought processes. That said, you’ll have no difficulty understanding the language; the words have a clarity to them that makes them both refreshing and all the more challenging on a practical level.

The poems…

View original 145 more words

Paradise or Prison?

We had selected a place called Kipriotis Village on Kos mainly for its kid’s facilities. It turned out to be very large – too large in retrospect – with 1378 beds or when full, over 3000 people. It had 4 or 5 pools, 4 water slides, 4 or 5 bars, three restaurants, an outdoor theater and, outside of toilets in rooms, I counted just 14 toilets per sex. I would say it was short on toilets and I can only assume that management expected guests to pee in the pools – which I am sure they did given the stink of 14 toilets to serve over 3000 guests. After the first day in which we discovered row upon row of sun beds festooned with towels but no people, we too began the practice of rushing first thing in the morning to claim a sun bed by the pool returning later after a leisurely breakfast, to claim our hard won resource.

The food, at first, wasn’t bad at all. As its all inclusive and free, the temptation is pile the plate and pile the plate I did – at first. By about day 4, I began to sicken of the food. Whatever it was, it tasted somehow the same. The pizza tasted like the chicken that tasted just like the salad. Strange I know, but true. Furthermore, I spent much of the vacation having to make rather urgent trots to find one of those 14 toilets that was free periodically and I suspect too much olive oil to have been the culprit. Of course, one could try the Greek restaurant or the Italian restaurant by booking the night before but, other than a change of scenery, it was the same food.

Next time I do this, I will check the meaning of all inclusive carefully. The drinks were also included but it was only a subset of the drinks and they were all made with local produce. I did ask several times if there was actually any alcohol in the cocktails to which the waitress usually smiled and showed me the bottle which, proclaimed 30% alcohol. I suspect this to be a lie as I never experienced the remotest feeling of being giddy, drunk or tipsy the whole time I was there and I drank a lot of these cocktails – until they too began to taste the same.

Another thing about camp life is that you are in close proximity to several thousand other people not all of them the sort of people you would desire to share a vacation – or a toilet – with. The Russians in particular were the most obnoxious people I have ever met outdoing my fellow Brits and the ever present Germans by a long haul. They shoved in, jumped queues, were loud and simply didn’t fit in at all. I know a number of Russians and these tourists must have come from some deprived housing estate outside of Moscow because they were not at all like the people I know. ‘Russia First’ seemed to be the only English words they knew and that should give you all the information you need to back up my assertions….

By then end of week 1, Kipriotis village began to take on the characteristics of a prison camp complete with its guards who in this instance were the so called life guards. The life guards appeared to have been instructed to do their best to stop anyone from having fun. Make so much as a splash in the pool and the whistle blew along with a stern look in your direction. No jumping, no diving, no horseplay, no coming down the slide anyway but alone and on your bum….. The highlight for me was when we notice our daughter on the other side of the pool obviously struggling just below the oblivious guard. My partner leapt immediately executing a near perfect (9.9) dive into the pool, gliding underwater effortlessly towards our daughter to help her to the side only to have the same guard blow the whistle and lecture her on diving. He felt the full wrath of my tongue let me tell you.

So, it was with some glee that on day 8, we made our bid for freedom. A two-day car rental for 50Eur was our opportunity to explore Kos and change diet, location and toilet use. It was heaven. We toured almost the entire island and what an exquisite place it is. The car was however a bit of a disappointment. We asked for a ‘topless’ car – it was on special. We thought it would be fun. Mistake.

The car was the smallest vehicle I have ever driven and that includes a go-cart. It was advertised as seating 4 however. It had been well used just like Kipriotis Village. When the roof was opened it rattled so noisily that you couldn’t hear each other shout. The roof stayed shut and topless was not allowed. The engine warning light was on the entire rental period. I told them too but the rental lady smiled and told is it was an additional feature of the cheap rental. Mustn’t complain too much, despite only managing 3km/hr up the hills and having to stay in 2nd gear most of the time to accelerate, it did its job and was returned after the rental in the condition we found it along with several empty drink bottles, a ton of sand and sweet wrappers.

We then found ourselves with 4 more days of the prison I mean holiday camp…. That’s when we discovered the bus. Ah, the bus. We managed to escape each day into the lovely town of Kos where we shopped, ate and drank and found toilets quite easily for the remainder of the trip.

Tagged: Reality

Love is all it Takes

Violence flares

Bombs fall and rockets rain

No one cares

No one seems to give a damn

Taking sides

Pointing blame

Both sides

Are exactly the same!

The only winner here

Is the policy of hate

Perpetrated by both sides

Closed minds

Innocents die

Children cry

No one gives a damn

Love bleeds

Hope dies

Truth lies

Evil stirs them on to war

Stop this insanity

No more

Love is all it takes

So simple a solution

So hard to implement

The resolution

Is love.

Kos its Nice

It is funny how the mind works isn’t it?

On arrival on the Greek Island of Kos early in the morning after a night of no sleep and continuous road and air travel, Kos seemed to be a scruffy wasteland of a place unkempt and even perhaps dilapidated. Arriving at the resort we had selected admittedly without much thought other than it catered for kids, it seemed large, impersonal and frankly, as if it had seen better days. I felt a rising sense of disappointment.

A few days later and perhaps with a sleep refreshed mind, I was wondering how I could possibly wangle a permanent move to a place like Kos. The island now seemed ruggedly beautiful sitting in an arid heat haze. The volcanic origins of the island plainly observed in its angular and rugged mountains and in the rocks and boulders strewn over the landscape. Its beaches comprised of volcanic rounded pebbles or in many instances, a fine grey volcanic sand were lapped by a deep azure and amazingly transparent Aegean. Periodically, small remnants of its former glory peaked from small areas set aside of preservation of its ancient Greek past and small stone columns seemed to be everywhere. Yes, as my mind adjusted to Kos, I began to like what I saw there. Even the resort grew on me – a little.

By the time we left, I was of course, sad to leave. I love Greek food but it doesn’t agree with me – too much olive oil perhaps? So there was a part of me that yearned for normal food and my own bed but other than that…. I wished I could have stayed.

Divine Mind

Slinky silver surface

Golden granite glow

Show me what’s up

And point me down below

Ripples disturb the surface

Images moving to and fro

Shimmering silent shards

With nowhere left to go

Molecules are jostled

Writhing en masse

Weird wispy waters

Lapping up to grass

Moving like Mercury

But not so retrograde

Patterns in the mind

The Gods play charade

This pool goes deep

Constantly water churning

Eternal perpetual motion

Intelligently discerning

All is mind of the deity

Vibrating fractal thought

Reality as it might be

Or was, but now forgot

Divine Play by freydoon rassouli

Two Weeks of Silence

After today, I can promise you almost two weeks of silence from G Michael Vasey. While I am gone, I will imagine you all running out to buy my books and reading my archive of delicious articles on this blog and on Asteroth’s Domain Me? well, I will be laying in the sun, swimming and drinking cold beers to cool off in Kos. I can’t wait.

I have been neglecting Asteroth’s Domain which I reserve for more esoteric articles mainly. I guess, I simply haven’t had much to say esoterically recently. Instead, I have been focused on building a business (Commodity Technology Advisory LLC) and trying to build a platform for my writing. Both are non-stop activities and can slowly eat away every minute of the day one way or another. After a while, you look up and kick yourself because you realize that yet again, you have slowly losing sight of what is really real and important. Meditation has gone from 30 minutes plus daily to once in a while again. I think at such times, my subconscious self gets truly pissed off with the other me. That’s when I get bad and weird dreams like the one I described the other day. I have had weird dreams all of this week to be honest and so as I lay in the sun and in between frolicking in the pool or ocean with my daughter, I shall try to refocus again……

I often think that in fact, this is the dream and the false illusion that we get sucked into and allow it to become our only reality. The truth is that there are almost certainly many realities created by the many me’s that exist. Some of you may take that as the statement of a crazy man but think about it. We are all fractured characters playing roles and being different people for different purposes aren’t we? Mum, daughter, friend, enemy, clown, and so on…. as we play out our roles, we are creating a reality for them too. Each character that we play has an audience and an energy and they create the daily dramas that occupy our lives.

The trick, I think, is to wake up and recognize this. To start to try to bring all these separate bits of ourselves and all of those different reality streams under control… the control of our true will. Some people will call this God, some Goddess and yet others Divine Providence or simply the Perfected Self. Whatever you name it, it is the same thing. In order to listen and take guidance from this presence, we have to be quiet and listen. We have to talk to it via prayer – creative visualization. We have to allow It to guide us and in doing so, hopefully, we bring together the fractured aspects of ourselves into the Divine whole we were always meant to be.

energy-in-motion by michael-massurin

Tagged: Consciousness, dreaming, Failure and success, Happiness, Reality

Great New Price for Kindle Last Observer

After a couple of attempts, I managed to convince my publisher to knock the price of the eBook version of The Last Observer down. I always thought eBooks should be substantially cheaper than the print versions but that hasn’t been the case in practice for some reason. So, if you pop over to Amazon, you will find the Kindle version now selling for under five bucks! Just in time for that summer vacation read.

Poems Featured in Writer’s Wheel Magazine

Four of my poems have been featured in Writer’s Wheel magazine’s summer issue. They can be found on p42-43 and include three from Moon Whispers and one from Poems for the Little Room. The entire issue is packed with good stuff so do take a look and download it now…

You Need A Degree For That

Once upon a time a degree was really something. Those letters after your name raised eyebrows especially if followed by the extra valued (Hons). Of course, when you went on and did the doctorate, well you could chose – letters after the name…. or before and then deliberately confuse people by changing that choice periodically. One minute you are Dr. XXXXX and the next you are incognito as XXXX Ph.D. Great fun! Actually, you could build up letters after your name by adding rather grand memberships of various societies too. In fact, you could wangle it so that, by joining the right societies, those letter actually spelled something meaningful – and sometimes you could make them spell something rude! Sometimes, over a beer or three, we young students would make up whole reams of letters just for fun…. T.I.T and D.I.K. and so on. Juvenile I know but none the less, good laughs. The point is, the degree and those letters had a bit of snob value but more than that, it actually had value and meant something.

There is a slight problem these days though. Too many people have those letters after their name.

I think there are actually two issues here. First, its pretty easy to ‘buy’ those letters now. You just sign up at a ‘private’ college and do your three-years knowing that the money you invest will result in those nice letters. It’s endemic here and in the US – degrees for sale. I watched one individual here pass their undergraduate degree having others write their essays, thesis and they even called me via cell phone from their English final to ask me the answers to the questions! Incredibly, that same person added three more letters recently at the same school for a bunch of money and is now planning a Ph.D. Sorry, but this is BS! This individual would have been laughed out of town had he applied to a college in the UK in my day…. he isn’t college material but a wide boy who knows how to pull stunts and bend rules. Nice guy but why does he get away with paying for letters after his name?

OK, now I defend my statement about too many people having degrees. Sorry, the idea is that you keep something worth having by making it hard to get. The value of having those silly letters now has been minimized to virtually nothing because they are ten a penny and a good proportion of them are bought.

Here in the Czech Republic, cleaning jobs now require a degree and I am NOT joking. The sorts of jobs 15-year old CSE students coming out of regular school would get in 1975 now require a bloody degree. Furthermore, they pay like a part-time job.

The employers have figured it out you see. Everyone now has a degree – many not worth the paper they are printed on so if you want to pull pints in my pub – get a degree!

There is also another side to this and it is one that causes me great concern. The next time you visit your GP, might you not just be wondering if their degree is real?