Florida - A Tribute

Florida
© Grover Lawlis


Airport of aquariums, tweets, shells, pastels.
Light bright, royal palms probing ivory grey
Towers teetering, winds whisping their grassy
hairy heads around in pink peach pale pallet of
white tinted tufts, cotton balls tenderly touch the robins egg Blue.

The infinite Atlantic, abode of Atlantis,
twinkling emerald blanket pulled up on
shimmering sheets of sand, an elegant bed
I play and sleep in all day long where
time never is told, existed or exists.

“Paradise”, I call it. Tepid, temperate,
fecund, fragrant forest of green growing life,
luscious, flowered and bearing fruit.
Polychromatic symphony, music
Making my eyes laugh and sunshine making my skin sing.

Spewing Hatred

"Horrified" is the only word I can use to describe my feelings about what I was seeing and hearing this afternoon on the television. As much as I dislike Senator Stupak and his manipulation of the legislative process for personal gain, that dislike pales to how I feel about threats of violence, racial epithets, and epithets against sexual orientation I have seen from Tea Partyers. There is no situation in the struggles of the legislative process where that is appropriate, and I personally feel that this is a wake-up call to some violent racist, fascist, forces operating unchecked in our society currently.

We have seen the murders of any number of people over the past year by people using guns. I have been concerned for the life of our president as the underlying racist elements of this Republican obstructionism has become clear in the Tea Party movement. I watched as John Boehner stoked the flames of these violent sentiments by saying that this had always existed. He said he was outraged anyone would suggest that anyone in Congress had fostered this and that democrats would even suggest that were the cause. As for the reasons, well, he had always gotten these kinds of threats because he is a Jew. Being a Jew is not related to any political issue, Jews are commonly liberal. I should know. I am one and live with another one. A black president in the White House is.

The racial tones seem to be the true colors of the Tea Partyers. That, along with the support of Big Business at all cost, is just too reminiscent of WW II Germany to be comfortable. The people throwing bricks through the windows of democratic offices is like the Brown Shirts on Kristal Nacht. To see our country repeating these pages in history is shocking and troubling to say the least. I call on the FBI and local law enforcement to take an immediate and determined stand to stop these threats and to head off any violence swiftly and with the full consequences of the law of the land.

I also see no place for the personal ownership of handguns. Those are used virtually exclusively against people, and this gun-toting in Starbuck's Wild West attitude has no place in modern society. There are few places I felt safer than in a Starbuck's until they began a policy of tolerance for that. Now, I drink my coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.

Stop the Hate!
Living and Loving is what I am about,
Grover Lawlis, MD

My Father

I recently had the opportunity to spend a week with my father nursing him after surgery for a shoulder injury, a torn rotator cuff if you know what that is. My mother passed away last year after a long serious illness. the visit with my father inspired this poem:
The Old Man
© Grover Lawlis

Clack! Clack! Emptying cans
of pet food upon rising.
Dawn, slivers of light fall on the bed,
I’m roused by both and coffee smells.

Farm life, feeding the animals,
has a cadence that’s timeless
constant as sunrise and sunset
life streams one day to the next.

Gray, drawn, his words slower
since Mom died. He works the
New York Times crossword, alone now,
slurping his soggy Cheerios.

His truth comes in sound bytes,
“I’m a Christian.”
Yet inside, a mind far more
complicated slices, dices, processes.

He faces the Reaper knowing,
“I’ll die of a stroke.
All my kin did.”
Old doctors never die,

They mosey into the next dimension.
Once rash, arrogant, even cruel, now
wiser, measured, tempered,
a more generous, loving soul.


Hope you enjoy it,and have a good week!

Loving Lillias

I first saw her face in a movie about 3 months ago. She had the most beautiful feminine face I ever recall seeing. Her eyebrows or fine dark hair like 2 feathers above her perfectly symmetrical almond shaped dark eyes. Her lips were the classical angelic shape of a bow, and she had a head full of curly black hair, a curl falling onto her forehead, another over an ear.
I next encountered her as I was standing in the the hallway of St. Davids hospital, this time in real life. Her beauty was striking and I felt my heart pounding with excitement. I was awe-struck, the same fine dark eyebrows arched over her dark blue almond shaped eyes. Her curly black head full of hair was the same with a lock on her forehead, another draped over her ear. She had prominent cheek bones and the same angelic bow shaped pair of almost cherry red lips against her fair skin. Again, I could not recall seeing anyone with more perfect features. I've seen her twice now, and I feel giddy at the thought of touching her.
My granddaughter Lillias was born 8lb. 9oz. by C-section on January 19, 2010. She looks amazingly like her 4-D ultrasound movie in the womb. I have spoken to other grandfathers and heard about these powerful feelings but until it happens to you, you can't really understand what it fools like. This is living and loving.

The Cosmolological and Moral Self

In "Anna Kareninna" Levin describes how I see myself cosmologically, "In infinite time, infinite matter, infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me." That describes my view except I will add that my bubble is part of the vast lattice-work of the "Totality",and when my bubble bursts it effects the whole lattice-work.
My bubble is guided in its course through "life" by the moral compass that guides Levin, "an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two (or more in my case) courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it." If I live according to this moral compass, I feel pretty good most of the time. If I don't I feel the knife of my conscience piercing my heart, and I feel quite miserable. I find alcohol dissolves the judge, and that I can not hear what he is saying if I drink. As soon as alcohol evaporates from my judge's robes the judge reasserts his powers. If I have done something under the influence against his better judgement, I will feel powerful remorse. There are people that I observe who are never in touch with "The Judge". My second observation is that if this is the case, these individuals are capable of most any behavior regardless how heinous. If their behavior becomes very heinous, their demeanor is proportionately hateful.

David Bohm's Hologram

David Bohm’s Hologram

© Grover Lawlis

Waves of energy criss-crossing,

Their convergences imprinting,

Patterns of all universes existing,

The Implicate Order enfolding.

What we know

More than we see;

Our visual spectrum so

To us invisible this Sea.

I long to envision

The Implicate Totality

The ultimate perception

Of all-convening Infinity.

David Bohm (1917-1992) was a physicist who was one of the early creator’s of the concept of quantum mechanics and a contributor to the Manhattan Project. He also studied holograms extensively and developed the holonomic model of the mind. The concept of the universe being a hologram led him to develop, along with Karl Pribram, the concept of the human mind being a part of that hologram. Many thought he deserved the Nobel Prize for his work in physics in the 1980’s, but it eluded him. It is probably the closest science has come to some scientific understanding of a Creator.

The Queer

The Queer
© Grover Lawlis

Dark quiet solitude
How in this deep night
Came to me odious attitude
That I did not invite.

Growing from a realization
A notion is nagging me
A feeling of damnation
Of something I’m doomed to be,

Or is it I’ve been told
A damnable assignation
That my heart does hold
Love of a queer orientation.

When after life-long discontent
I finally discover
It is My Creator’s intent
That a man be my lover.


This poem represents my reflections this week.