Haiku 090809

he lies
with a book in bed
a loon's call

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Recently, we read the following:

John-Yoko Photo Copyright by Central Press/Getty Images

NPR: “After 40 Years, The Bed-In Reawakens” by Margot Adler

“In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent their honeymoon in bed…

“The Bed-In was a publicity stunt: Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon to talk about peace during the height of the Vietnam War and the Cold War. Lennon sang about the event in ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko.’

“Drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton. Talking in our beds for a week. The newspapers said, ‘What are you doing in bed?’ I said, "We're only trying to get us some peace."

“Since then, other artists have used the bed to explore similar themes. And this year, an international peace group called The World March for Peace and Nonviolence decided to bring back the bed-in to promote hundreds of global peace events taking place in every continent over the next year. The issue at hand: the spread of nuclear weapons.

“So on Aug. 16, the organizers brought a bed to Central Park and put it near Strawberry Fields — only a short walk from the Dakota apartment building where John Lennon lived and the street where he died. There was a big bed with white sheets, fluffy pillows and flowers. Anyone could take the microphone, sit on the bed and say his or her piece on peace…

“Chris Wells is the North American spokesperson for the World March for Peace and Nonviolence.

“ ‘John and Yoko had the vision to turn their honeymoon into a call for peace,’ he says. ‘They asked us to imagine a world without violence. It is a call that remains unfulfilled.’

“After their Bed-In, Lennon and Ono sent acorns to heads of state and tried unsuccessfully to meet with them. Wells and the organizers of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence are planning hundreds of events this fall and winter, in the hope that they might have more of an effect.”

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And we thought:

… Yoko and John – they evoke love or hate. For what they actually stand for or what people think they stand for. Genuineness. Hypocrisy. Spirituality. Godlessness. Freedom. Anarchy.

Is imagining peace so crazy? For instance, why are some folks so suspicious of John’s “Imagine”? The song’s just saying, certain institutions have historically subverted peace. They have engendered conflict and war: Countries and governments. Religions and traditions. They have created, and continue to perpetuate, “us” and “them.” Can't we imagine other options?

Of course, things are more complex than what "Imagine" tries to distill in several lines. It’s up to us to break things down into elements we can possibly act on for now. Then, it’s up to us to ask, Why not? ...