WHAT is punctuation when you have something to say that cannot be covered in one paragraph with a full-stop because there so much that needs saying within a 600-word limit, putting on the creative brakes just when you're warming up facts and fictions, with the emoting engine running hot, the ideas humming, why would you stop or even pause for grammar barriers just because there should be pauses for the reader to catch their breath, sip their latte or perhaps a soya milk double shot moccachino plus chocolate swirled into the shape of a runaway train that has left the station late with only half its carriages even though there are rules but rules are only words and writing words gives licence to keep them all together as companions rather than breaking them into little lines standing alone, separated from the fellow nouns, adjectives, adverbs, auxiliary verbs being the spare motor driving a sentences away from the dangers of a dangling participle attempting to reinforce an independent clause within a struggling narrative but if James Joyce could do it why not a columnist overcome with rage at the happenings in a world that connives against children with wars, domestic violence and the politics of austerity that serve only to deprive the most deprived and enrich the ruling classes and corporates who are often the same people, dividing nations and communities by talking up the fiction of us or them being those easily identified as being different in skin colour, sexual identity, religious rituals, income, education, accent, or place of birth which is of course easy as long as there is no challenge, no questioning about what part of being human "others" have not that "we" have in abundance as privilege, that great unseen wall built on the shaky foundations of myths, margins and material measures that only serves to hide those less fortunate than us from our gaze and contain privilege out of reach of those who have very little in case it should somehow be taken from our grasp by taxes or policy defining basic incomes for good housing, education and health because children growing up with these things benefit all of us, reducing the need to lock people up for sentences longer than this one for non-violent offending, using home detention or diversion to community service to repay their debt to society, mind you the fraudsters would require very close supervision mentioned in the fine print, which they know from experience to check carefully while the corporate plunderers who take without giving anything back should pay a surcharge on financial transactions over a million dollars, including house sales to insane buyers, with the surcharge funding social housing projects, something New Zealand once did with head and heart but now is built on the myth that private enterprise can do this better than government when there is compelling evidence that this is does not work as corporate structures look after themselves first with the recent examples being professional sport where the All Blacks and America's Cup winning syndicate expect the taxpayer to punt up money to support their endeavours whether this be stadiums for games or to underwrite the cost of paying yachties when we do not know what Team NZ were paid for their "professional" skills and if we are being asked to stump up we should know the amounts so this can be calculated against the cost of supporting solo parents living on a benefit, bringing up children and contributing to our collective social contract, versus a rich man's sport that does nothing for the widening gap between the have nots and the have lots.
-Today's rant was brought to you by Tel (aka Terry Sarten) writer, musician social worker and rantmaker - feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz
