Bootstraps
Bootstraps was created to be performed in front of a gathering of municipal poverty reduction leaders from across Alberta. This perfomance was part of a two day meeting held in Calgary from June 14-15, 2012.
by Kris Demeanor
Calgary's Poet Laureate
Sermon on the Mount to tightening of the Bible Belt
Banquet invitation to transparent Trickle Down
Roots of compassion to righteous anger
Fishing rod to coupon for fishsticks
Tenets, teachings, self evidence are liquid
The phrase is born and evolves and morphs again
Re-tooled by culture, age, mythology
A circle or square on different tongues
Tools traded for dominance or wisdom
'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!'
1781- German Baron Munchhausen pulled himself out of a swamp by his boot-
Wait- no it was by his pony tail.
But Americans ammended it to fit the Davy Crockett myth
He used his bootstraps to help himself over a fence
The phrase became synonymous with anyone attempting
A ridiculously impossible task
Try the action- behold. You will pull yourself down face first on the road
Chicago Tribune 1862- The individual who expects to raise a weight vastly beyond his strength, belongs to the same class of fools as he who promises to lift himself by his boot straps.
Then the shift, in the early 20th, to a possible feat, an example of self realization without external help
Kunitz & Haycraft in their Book of British Authors describe "A poet who lifted himself by his own boot-straps from an obscure versifier to the ranks of real poetry."
Joyce, in Ulysses "There were others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps."
Again, the metaphor frankly imagined makes no sense but by now has come to represent success against the odds, to raise or better oneself by one's own unaided efforts
It became a challenge to the poor, a dismissal of misfortune
But, The phrase has been adopted more recently by pioneers of the cyber swamp
Early programmers called it bootstrapping- loading a small amount of code that is then used to progressively load more complex code until the machine is ready for use
A technique by which a simple computer instruction or program activates a more complicated system
A small amount of code put in place to do a lot of powerful work
Final point made by the mad logic of circuitry
The societal swamp, the collective mind will realize that a small amount of concise and intentional policy may take us beyond the unending cycle of bandaid charity.
Boot up, re-boot, let the simple instinct of the heart do the greatest work
For the fallacy that we can do it alone is to resist physics
The absurdly impossible task of pulling oneself over the fence by one's bootstraps
There is no need to go beyond simply slipping the finger in the loop and hiking on the boot
The occupant of the boots will be pulled up by a grander plan that is stronger than any one person.
