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Welcome
To the Web page of Gordon J. L. Ramel
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Who is Gordon Ramel? You may well ask. Gordon Ramel is a flesh and blood accident of fate who occupies considerably more physical space than a web page. When I haven't got anything else to do I play at All Poetry behind the avatar Distant Mind - Here it says a few things about me. What else can I tell you. I'm single, I like reading, writing, running, walking, bird watching, bugs & photography as well as cooking and eating. I have been stuck on planet earth for some decades now, as the technology here is not sufficient to fix my space yacht, I might well die here. I am the author of the whole of the Earthlife Web online zoology text for home schoolers which I sold in 2009 and no longer work on. |
Gordon in Greece in 2009
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Other Current Electronic Projects |
On KindleNon FictionBreeding Invertebrates for Food & Fun - $2.99FictionWill-O-The-Wisp (a novel of the young at heart) - $2.99PoetryTall Tales, Beautiful Beasts & Peculiar People (For the young at heart) $1.00The Human Disease - $1.00 Naturally Beautiful - $1.00 Dreams of Other Worlds (SciFi Poetry & Prose) $1.00 coming soon. |
With the Subdirector of Huai'yin Normal University, Huai'an, China. 16-03-2012
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On the Internet apart from KindleI Don't Smoke (e-book to help people give up smoking)ShoppingI have a nice shop at CafePress (there is nothing about me here, just things I have made) called "The Thinking Man Shop". Here you can find things like mugs, t-shirts, caps etc that promote the beauty of Nature as well as a paperback copy of The Whispering of the Leaves, a miscellaneous collection of my poetry, mostly about Nature and Us, her errant child.Poetry.You can find some of my poetry online at the Ecology Info site. Look under 'Poems' and 'Children's Poems'. All three of the Children's Poems are included in Tall Tales, Beautiful Beasts & Peculiar People |
With subdirector Prassert of Chiang Rai Municipal School 6; Chiang Rai, Thailand.
Welcoming Students in the morning. May 2011.
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Two more poems Darkness and One Poet Against The Genocide in Dafur from The Human Disease are featured on Michael Burch's The HyperTexts.
A separate selection of my poetry (that which has been published in NeoVictorian/Cochlea and The Deronda Review) is available at The Hexagon as part of the Point and Circumference web site of Esther Cameron. This collection might be considered a good preview of the adult volumes above, particularly Strangely Human. The fantasy ballad, The Tears of Kharnoon has been published online in the April 2012 issue of Aphelion Webzine and on the Dragon'sInn web site. It is part of the fantasy creation "The Dragons of Bhargat" which will be a Chapbook when it is finished. Finally 3 of my dipterological sonnets (A Fly, Chloropidae and Sciomyzidae) have been published in the online journal Fly Times, issue 48 April 2012. Two more fly poems will be published in issue 49. All of these are included in Naturally Beautiful |
Birding on Elephant back (Watsama) Thailand 2006.
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One Point of ViewHumanity is an amazing thing, but our view point is limited. We have a snapshot, postcard view of life on earth, less than one second of a great movie, yet we insist on making sweeping judgements. Much of the poetry in a book like The Human Disease exits to point out the shortcomings of our species, to make us aware of how destructive and self deluded we are. It is necessary, at this moment in time, to say these things, it is part of our evolution. However I suspect that by the end of this century such poetry will be out-dated, and as time passes beyond this its only role will be as a reminder of what we went through. Looked at from the point of view of coherent species, which often have lifespans of 10 to 15 million years or more, the 150 to 200 thousand years that homo sapiens has been in existence is nothing. If we were to look at the life of a species using the metaphor of a single human life as our lens, we are a baby. A squalling child unable yet even to clean its own shit off its own body. As a species, though not always as individuals, we are maniacally selfish, short-sighted, ignorant and blind to the consequences of our actions, all symptoms of gross immaturity and childishness. |
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I believe this will change, if we survive the next fifty years or so, and I think we will, we will enter a new stage of development, one with different problems. However it will be who we are as a species in a million years time that will really tell the universe who we are. Hopefully, as our species matures and the market for condemnatory poetry falls away so the market for poetry that highlights and praises Nature, or disgusses the ever present questions of self knowledge, self fulfillment and consciousness will continue.
Finally one of the biggest problems humanity as a species faces in the long term is a our tendency to delude ourselves, as both individuals and as groups. This self delusion, usually taking the form of elevating our own worth to such a level that others often have no worth at all, is behind many of our greatest crimes both as societies and as individuals. As a general rule the more vigorously you or your ego deny your own state of self delusion the more hopelessly deluded you are. Wishing you well. Gordon J. L. Ramel |
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