Fidel, the Faitful

Fidel Castro, Fidel the Faithful. A man and a spirit set against the multitude of Judases, Thomases and the faithless and the faceless.

Fidel Castro: "I began revolution with 82 men. If I had do it again, I'd do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action."

If there is an Isle of the Blessed (or Paradise) for the faithful communists, one has to wonder how it would look like and how many or few would make it there.

Socrates: "And that I am given to you by God is proved by this: - that if I had been like other men, I should not have neglected all my own concerns, or patiently seen the neglect of them during all these years, and have been doing yours, coming to you individually, like a father or elder brother, exhorting you to regard virtue; this I say, would not be like human nature. ... Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth - that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance."

It Occurred to Me to Pose a Strange, Daring Question:

Is There an Isle of the Blessed for Such Communists?

And if There Is What Would It Be and How Would

The Blessed, Select Ever Get There if At All?

Chinese I Ching Was Kind Enough to Reply

It furthers one to abide in what endures

like nine at the beginning,

the arching in the meadow

that love paired in the open enacts.

To continue to lead an ordinary life

as long as possible is life’s command.

For, as gifts of earth recur,

heaven’s gift comes

in their own time,

and one has to wait.

Light within comes

only through sincere waiting.

Sincerity that does not persevere

is one that has not been meant.

That’s how hard it is

to face things exactly

as they are in truth,

exactly as we are

enduring through it all.

Only then and thus

we’ll be able to to cross

the great water

and bridge it

to the Isle of the Blessed.

The way clouds rise up to heaven.

For such waiting is engraved

in all the waters falling down,

following and flowing

like in the unerring verses

in which our being,

constant beginning abides,

as destiny works her piece.

The Devil is all

about the horns,

entanglements,

butt, butted and butting.

And the goat.

Caught in the hedge.

Power in the toes om his head.

Against the power in the toes

of the ballerina dancing.

Against Giselle.

The inferior man works through power.

The ordinary man listens

to the breath expanded

between deaths and lives

and souls and shades

and words and lines.

Until the hedge opens,

and the loom of our life

is a verb again

in Fate’s nimble hands;

now in the present

and now again in the past.

Truly great power does not degenerate.

It remains. It remains united with justice.

When we understand—when we understand

that greatness and justice must always be

indissolubly united, then all

that happens in heaven and on earth

begins speaking to us the logos

and poesis of the truth.

Just as the beginning of earth

touches off Eros,

and so its end

touches both the end

and the beginning of truth.

Fidel Castro on the Russian and Soviet leadership: "The Russians sold themselves [and others]."

Не юлил, не заискивал, не выгадывал, не обворовывал, не предавал и не продавал свою Родину и свой народ. Российская нация продала свою странцу за ваучер, уж не говоря о шайке, захватившей власть, которая и предала. и продала и страну. и народ.