Love For the World
Written on 12/24 at 11:15 PM by Andy Posner
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Prose
Here in Los Angeles, where I am visiting my family, a steady rain is falling on the landscape of my childhood. When I was little, and adulthood was as distant a concept as the stars obscured by the rain I adore so much, I would press my face against the windows of my home and watch water fall from the sky, watch how the branches and the leaves and the creatures of the world would crane their necks to receive succor from the upper atmosphere. In those moments my love affair with the world began. I longed to caress the breezes, to embrace the play of light and shadow, to dissolve in the mists that rainy days would bring to me.
It’s Snowing in Providence!
Written on 12/07 at 03:33 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
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Last night the first flakes of snow fell on Providence. When I awoke, the ground had been lightly covered by the white dust of snow, and everything from trees to cars to rooftops carried the brightness of sunlight stored in ice. Due to Providence’s proximity to the water, we don’t get much snow here, and given that I grew up in the semi-arid climate of Los Angeles, I get very excited whenever meteorology conspires to bring these beautiful conditions to my backyard. Granted, the novelty of snow wears off fairly quickly, as the purity soon turns to slush and muck, but I refuse to believe that idealism and perfectionism inherent to youth must inevitably give way to cynicism and doubt. I feel very strongly that the entire cycle of beauty and passion are to be appreciated and celebrated--from the initial first rush, to the inevitable slush, to the crackle and decay of wood and leaves. I wrote a poem dealing with this very issue last year. The poem, titled ”The First Snow,” expresses my firm belief that ideals--purity, idealism, beauty--are not the problem, rather, the problem is with people who are unable to do those ideals justice. Read on for more musings and photos of the snow!
I Believe
Written on 08/02 at 03:12 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
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Sometimes I grow weary and despondent, hearing of the uphill battle I face as I work to better myself and the world. At those times, I wonder why, when the Earth bears marvelous fruits in the valleys and plains as well as the peaks, humans relegate the best of what they can do to the impenetrable heights--impenetrable because it takes so much battling just to get there. I listen to music, watch documentaries, read books, ride my bicycle along the roads that prostrate themselves over the soil, and feel a magical tie to the entire tapestry of history. What is most powerful about this feeling is that history is so rich with trials, tribulations, successes and fails, that it nearly unfathomable that anything new can ever happen.
Of course, the entire cosmos is forever remaking itself, but in many ways change is always a variation on a theme. The leitmotif of history, then, appears to be that though events appear different, they are really manifestations of the same thing. Human foibles and human genius wage war, not armies of individuals driven on by maniacal rulers or misguided beliefs. We live in a world that is ruled not by gods but by themes, archetypes and myths; the mistake we make is thinking those broader trends are deities who set down laws and instruct us on how to lead our lives. The truth is that, as Tom Robbins writes in his great book Jitterbug Perfume, “the universe does not have laws, it has habits. And habits can be broken.”
Tonight, the Oneness of Things
Written on 08/02 at 02:33 AM by Andy Posner 0 comments
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Musings
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It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come. I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all thoughts of pollen and nectar disappear; the world for which I long has crumbled into a fine mist of cool air and gentle breezes. Everywhere around me I see an endless expanse of elemental forces populated by all that is imagined and imaginable. The gap between what is and what could be is more immense than any bridge, and spans a gauntlet of sorrow, deprivation, ugliness and injustice. Looking into the dead of night I strain until light emerges from darkness, and my body burns with a tectonic passion, shifting the plates that divide just from unjust until all is made whole again.
I feel a ferocious desire to be a poet and a monk, to explore and to contemplate, to salute beauty and solve sorrow. The very nature of existence stings me like a sandstorm that then abates, revealing a perfectly sculpted dune in the middle of an ocean of pulverized rock. A force that pervades all living things like some sort of never ending lightning bolt passes through the veins in my body and the synapses in my brain; it is a passion that murders me repeatedly, as though bliss were a wave washing up dead on the shore, only to be dragged back to sea to die again.
Time Flies
Written on 07/21 at 12:25 AM by Andy Posner 0 comments
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Musings
It’s already July 20th. The summer sun is bearing down on Providence, and as I spend my days working on my various projects, cycling and trying to stay cool, I am continually amazed by how fast the days, weeks, months and even years seem to be going by. It feels like it was just January and I was celebrating the New Year. Half a year has gone by seemingly in the blink of an eye. Each day I awake, go about my business, and before I know it I am preparing for bed. Never before have I been so busy and active; perhaps that accounts for the speed with which life seems to be moving along.
But something else is happening as well. It’s almost as though I’ve entered a new phase in my life. I am moving into adulthood. My sense of time is different. I am aware of my age, the age of others, and the entire arc of time that takes one from childhood to adulthood to old age and then death. That is not meant to be depressing--it’s just that I am becoming more cognizant of the way time flows. I never used to think about these things-- the age of my parents, my own age, the passage of time--but now those things are always on my mind.
Welcome. On this blog things get a little more personal. This is where I chronicle my struggles and triumphs, my attempts to better myself and my world, my poetry, my prose, my bike rides, my travels, my day-to-day activities. If you want to know more about Andy Posner--that amalgamation of poet and monk--you’ve come to the right place. So have a look around, and enjoy the opportunity to learn what goes on inside my mind--only beware, my mind is quite a place!
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Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States
Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!
My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…
A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?
Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development. To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…
Tonight, the Oneness of Things
It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come. I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…