Oh, ..... Onions!

Beautiful, maieutic onions! Eutrapely!

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Inflation in Brazil: Onions up by 145.53% this year. It so happens I (may) have knowledge about onions in Brazil. But first, a précis and a processional ... Précis:   (for busy executives with no time to spare) Half-baked Hysteria:   Proceeding from the vestry to the chancel at the opening of this service with three vignettes. 1) Andrew Nikiforuk presents an 'elegant metaphor': The Earth's Battery Is Running Low (Source: PNAS, abstract & full pdf.) He says, "[It] gives ordinary people an elegant metaphor to understand the globe's stagnating economic and political systems and their close relatives: collapsing ecosystems." Call me a curmudgeon but it don't shed any light for me, rather the opposite. 2) I expected better from Peter Sale: Bonfires and Vanities - How changing attitudes to climate and privilege signal the revolution has started. He says, "As an ecologist, I knew ... that if the Harp Seal population was not managed, the cod fishery would likely decline." There is a Plexus & a Nexus of nonsense expressed in this single sentence (worthy of Henry Miller himself). Second only to a few paragraphs later when he says, "It’s ameliorated by our growing separation from nature, and our consequent lack of awareness of our need to kill animals for animal food or other products. This is not logic. It’s emotion, pure and simple. But it leads somewhere potentially good – the beginnings of a new respect for non-human life." So ... the collapse of the cod is down to seals, and stupidity will save us. Wowzers! 3) Wazizname ... Mulcair, is in favour of sustainable oil sands development. The oxymoron in the headline is echoed and re-echoed in the text. Read it and weep. If they keep it up, Stephen Harper will split these fools from stem to gudgeon pintle-pin, leave 'em to flail & founder, and go for the gold (black gold that is), again. One further aside:   I also weep to see the silly Greens trying to make Elizabeth May into a sex object as evidenced by her ridiculous coached performance in the Macleans debate. She won anyway of course. There's turbulence in the Zeitgeist (I guess), call it 'The Chicken Little Syndrome': when the pressure of reality comes on and otherwise thoughtful people lose all discernment. If my brain were equal to the task I would draw a detailed map comparing and contrasting the letter from Jorge/Francis - a substantive reference point - with this wretched dreck fit only to frighten, flatter, and entertain urban know-nothing muggles. If, as Peter fatuously opines, a revolution is really to begin, the muggles must first undergo a (highly unlikely) conversion - not to Catholicism, but to thinking - or it will not be a revolution at all but most brutal chaos - what the good bourgeois burghers imagine as 'anarchy'. Jorge/Francis (for all I vehemently disagree with him on so many things) is keeping his eye on the ball with a timely: World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on September 1. Toronto Catholics are all on vacation of course, busy damning Laudato Si' with faint praise and inattention, so don't expect any official organization for September 1 in Toronto The Good. I don't think this Jorge/Francis fellow's a dilletante either (unlike Alan Rusbridger) - I bet single malt he keeps at it 'til he drops. I could be wrong. ... and now back to regularly scheduled programming: I wake singing in the morning almost every day. The last week or so it's been Neil Young: See the lonely boy out on the weekend tryin' to make it pay. Can't relate to joy he tries to speak and can't begin to say. One of my sons, a most competent critic of the pop, complains that our Neil is so whiny; and after a week I do agree, but the tune still sticks. So ... onions ... Down towards the southernmost regions of Brasil are Rio Grande, São José do Norte, Pelotas, small cities, towns. Very flat country, and low - most of it sand dunes just a few metres above sea level. They used to grow a lot of onions here. Then the government made a trade deal and now, even in local supermarkets the onions come from China, some investment group in Porto Alegre gets rich, and onion farms lie fallow. One can fall in love with the horizon; and, because flat can mean windy, with the wind - an old man needs lots of gears on his bicycle. It should have been easy enough to buy a defunct onion farm. Not so. Gringos attract the heat. Almost found a place out on Ilha dos Marinheiros but the government already knows it's going underwater and there's a plan in place with regulations to prevent speculation, especially by estrangeiros. I tried everything I knew but nothing washed. I said to my sweet beloved, "Vamos virar fazendeiros de cebolas," and she, not quite understanding, said, "Sou preta mas não sou escrava meu amor." RS-101 runs north from São José do Norte, is called 'The Devil's Highway' and eats tractor trailers whole. The beach goes alongside it for 100 miles or so. The other way, south from Cassino is about the same but with no highway. Hard sand, easy to cycle on as long as you're going with the wind. Inside are Lagoa dos Patos, Lagoa Mirim, and Lagoa Mangueira. They're very shallow. There's a local flat-bottomed sail boat, much like a Newfie dory, that people use to get around them but when I go to visit the boat-maker he's out (twice) and I need an easy win at that point. Enough stories of failure and round-tuits to fill a bin. I'll spare you except to say something happened and I still don't know exactly what it was, something existential but I can't seem to see the bottom of it. I did see Orion one night in July from my balcony in Ipanema. What a surprise! I thought, "You're a long way from home," but it was nothing of the kind. Humans generally don't (can't) communicate, cooperate, work in common, et cætera; but very occasionally they do. [Oh look! Et cætera, a diphthong; and here's another comin' up with an accent an' all ...] My friend Keith had a theory that humans have become two species. I mocked him for it at the time but maybe he was right. Compassion/altruism is that rare that it could be a genetic sport. If and when they find the gene I bet it's on the Neanderthal side. Homo grǽdum: from Old English grǽd/greed, greedy, hungry, eager(ly). Worth a look in the OED; and also see Bob Dylan "Gimme a string bean. I'm a hungry man."   VERSUS   H. agapiens: from Greek ἀγάπη/brotherly love (and presumably comprising the sisterly as well). Unfortunately the H. agapiens purveyors are about all woo-woo space cadets with no stroke: Matthieu Ricard, Thomas Berry; the meek-and-mild side of Jesus Christ and such. Smart guys; it's easy to tell they've got it right - they know anything that is accomplished will be one on one. They're lucid but not inspiring. Of course I wish them well. See: The great work: our way into the future, Thomas Mary Berry, 1999.         The sacred universe: earth, spirituality, and religion in the twenty-first century,                 Thomas Mary Berry, 2009 (essays 1972-2001).         Altruism: the power of compassion to change yourself and the world,                 Matthieu Ricard, 2015 (translated from French).         The Copernicus complex: our cosmic significance in a universe of planets and probabilities,                 Caleb A. Scharf, 2014. (This last to serve as ballast.) So Orion goes chasing the Pleiades. And Aristotle's seven moral virtues too eh? Well, who wouldn't? This is all beginning to look like fodder for a spelling bee huh? In 'Treme', the New Orleans 'serial' (mostly no more than tourist tout), John Goodman as Creighton Bernette nonetheless delivers an amazing eight-second monologue. "Fuck you you fucking fucks!" And shortly thereafter commits suicide by ferryboat. A large digression is called for here (which will not be supplied, just sketched out) to describe the path from certain approximately feminist roots to enforced positive thinking (possibly via 'Waldorf Shortfall'), and thence to virtual fatwa and jihad AND hijra on any display of anger whatsoever, righteous or not. 'Virtual' because outright violence and suicide bombers are replaced by forbearance, shunning, and (as needed) hypocrisy & 'meds'. This can all put a hitch in struggles originating in perceptions of injustice; the most effective end-run becoming non-violent confrontation & civil disobedience. (Sorry for the shorthand.) So ... not ignoring Jorge/Francis' recent call for conversion in Laudato Si' ... When it comes to conversion experiences C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton may serve as exemplars: either a sudden change that comes upon one whilst walking up a hill, or a process so gradual it almost seems not to proceed, or ... none of the above. Atheism (an exception to the 'i before e' rule) comes to me graciously while sitting on a park bench a few years ago listening to and watching the orchestra in the leaves; and the clincher is that it arrives (with a host of antecedents in tow) and does not diminish the beauty of it all by one iota. A careful distinction needs to be made: atheism is 99 and 44/100ths% at best, more often ⅞ ths (see Richard Dawkins). If a 100-percenter shows up she or he is faking it; a 100%er on either side for that matter, certainty and wisdom being an inimical pair. And then, just the other day in the park, again sitting on a bench (same park, different bench), another penny drops: The default answer to any question put to a human is "No." Oh yes, the (braggart) optimist wakes singing, most days; but on the occasional midnight a troll hand creeps 'round my ribs from behind and grips my heart. I get up and pace, thinking, "This terror too shall pass," ... and sure enough, it does. Two flawed & bogus visions of Barack Obama: Some very good work by Rebecca Hendin: And then there's Hillary, who doesn't even need to be bought: As the internal Musak® modulates to 'Jerusalem' and "green and pleasant land," but in a minor key that makes everything strange and over it I hear 'The Swallow' moving into minor sharps & flats as she cries "Young man! What have ye done?!" I want to pass this on somehow (silly, fond old fellow - a 'communato' as Keith called it) especially to the grandkids who will bear the brunt; but pass it on without scaring the pants off 'em either; so I cook up this half-hour video. I'm not sure they watch it but my old friend Chris does and tells me later: Yes, it's a poem, and poems are permitted to be subtle. It's hot & muggy in Toronto and the cicadas are singin'. And there are (still?) a few Monarch butterflies fluttering about.

 
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Why ... NOT?

TARTUFFERIE!   FUCKERY!   ASSHOLERY!
(Being an attempt to conclude a previous meditation 
on the death of 'The Movement' by correctitude.)

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Is there life after    And death after     And life after death                  death?                 life after death?     after life after death?                  Whatever!             We'll know.           Do you want to find out                You watch the                                                                        right this minute!                           game yesterday? There's a demonstration in Quebec City on April 11. It takes me a minute to figgure out why not 11 days later - but I do. I think about going but know the bus ride will do me in, and anyway I have no money. A week or so later someone passes this article: A new high bar for campaign integration onto a list server that comes my way. I READ IT ... & ... SAY WHA?   !!!! [Background music here is (still, a hangover from Earth Day) Leonard Cohen's 'The Future'.] OK, let's look at the text: One: The address of this 'advisor' is Salt Spring Island. This is a clue. He thinks there is a 'parliament' building in Quebec City, which cinches it. Two A: He uses a specialized terminology - words like 'pivot', 'digital campaigning' &c. - which is the clear indication of a consultant. Consultants are like lawyers except they mostly have British accents and don't know anything about the law. Two B: The author has apparently been taught that positive thinking will trump facts. Simply not so, but especially after-the-fact when what you need is (possibly brutal) honesty. Instead he is full of hearty back-slaps and most of them for himself. Positive thinking is not all bad - it can make unpleasant events palatable and used ironically can be humourous - but it isn't really thinking at all. Two: No amount of analysis of spun or bent or simply incorrect & incomplete facts will ever deliver useful results - unless it's government work, the objective is simply to keep your job, or the objective is to get laid. Three: He is confused about computers. I saw Occupy Toronto lose considerable momentum through similar confusion. (The infamous) Halliburton used to pay me a lot of money because I am not confused about computers. They are tools. They are means not ends. They are particularly prone to be misused based upon the "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" fallacy because most of the people who promote them are ... consultants. Anything that calls itself a "digital-first strategy" is bound to fail. Another important clue around computers can be found in this: "12,000 RSVP's online, 12,000 ongoing social media followers, well over 100,000 views of march videos, and a 'reach' from all related content well into the millions." The epitome of 21st century smoke & mirrors (or the very model of a modern major general if you will). Someone who does a lot of this kind of counting is Bill McKibben. [Leonard is singing "There won't be nothing you can measure any more."] Alpha & Omega: This began (for me, as I read it) with comparing 250,000 people in Montreal in 2012, and 100,000 (actually 75,000 according to most reports) people in Montreal on April 2 this year, with 25,000 people in Quebec City. Rule-of-thumb (given ~3 million Montreal population and ~1 million Quebec City population) gives us that the 25,000 could or should have been larger before calling it a success. "In her recent dystopia Margaret Atwood portrays the collapse of civilization in the near future. One of her characters asks, 'As a species we’re doomed by hope, then?' By hope? Well, yes. Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism." (Ronald Wright, 'A Short History of Progress', 2004)   There are those who pin their hopes on hope (so to speak) and fearfully disparage & despise despair as the certain way to apathetic catatonia/catalepsy. This is a false distinction and incorrect ætiology as well. I'll leave it there for you to think about - just in case you're (still) able to think. Tom Toles - A Victorian Arch from Popes to ... Popes: (or an eloquent squiggle as may be) Good to see a Pope getting over onto the right side of history for a change. The timing seems calculated to achieve maximum bang-for-the-buck before Copenhagen ... er ... Paris. Not a disinterested spiritual meditation then. Almost sorry that it's impossible for me not to put this praise backhanded; and I can see (from his approximately incomplete effort) that Tom Toles is comparably conflicted. Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, & Stephen Stills: Must be the season of the witch. C'mon Francis! Yeah! Get ALL the pussy! Another memorable suite from Laerte - a primer in semiotics: Make a likeness of my cruelty.                 I didn't say "a portrait of ME."           Why are you trembling?                                                              I said "of my CRUELTY."                   I'm not trembling. You made a likeness of my cruelty?         I didn't say a picture of the VICTIMS,       Would you rather do I did.                                                      but of my cruelty ITSELF.   Try again.      a likeness of my                                                                                                                          kindness?   No. No. Congratulations,        I know it wasn't       Not a portrait of me,                             You can ask for what you did it.                 easy, but it's           nor of the visual effects                         you like.   Exile. I'm pleased.              a true likeness        of my cruelty, but of itself,                                of my cruelty.          of its essence.                                I'm very pleased. I claim not to've had any feedback but (of course) it's not strictly speaking true. Early days in 2009 sometime I had a short email from Adriana Mugnatto that criticism might not be the best way forward for me in Toronto. I did read it carefully but ... it took a long time to sink in and then I guess I got distracted when she began turning her back on me. And since then, silence on all sides. It seems like a long time. If wishes were horses beggars would ride. Toronto had an official (paid) Fool when I was at Rochdale. Kim Foikas I think his name was. I tried hanging out but it was springtime (almost summer) in Toronto and cunt was in the air and he didn't want a wing man; so I fell in love with a tiny welfare-mom and her kids instead and spent all my money buying her groceries until I found out she was headed off to a farm somewhere in B.C. with the (quite large & competent) guy who organized Rochdale's cafeteria. I remember thinking that getting out of town would be a good idea. I was already clear of notions of jealousy and 'women as chattel'. As it turned out she wasn't and off they went. So. Maybe by now anyone with any sense has already left town, and THAT'S why there's nothin' happnin' here. Is that it? Which is trump: Hope or trust? Which is possible inside a city? And which is (only) possible outside or beyond? These (urban? young?) people don't read resumés - they don't read at all - but if they did, my time as a Fire Chief & Mayor and later on learning Portuguese thanks to Dick Cheney's Halliburton is no secret. Easy enough then to identify me as the CSIS guy (since we know there is at least one in every woodpile). If I were Stevie Harper & Joe 'Arseholedent' Oliver and wanted to hamstring a movement of vicious foreign environmental terrorists on a shoestring budget I would have CSIS vaccinate 'em with every notion of correctitude known to man ('man' used advisedly) and then leave them to thrash their way into total ineffectuality. Call it the '4 & ⅞ths column' then eh?.   What d'you think? A-and pass a law so if anyone does stick their head up we can render 'em quick & extraordinary. I have seen the best minds of my generation ... distracted, enervated, buggered (and loving it). (Apologies to Allen Ginsberg.)   The Guardian's first viral video has plateaued at just over 100,000 hits. Not enough. Worth sticking around though, just to see what our good Alan R. tries next - I don't think he's a quitter. Not like Jim wazizname in Alberta ... Jim Prentice; he's a quitter, petulant, smirking. So am I I guess. A quitter and a blamer-of-others. All around asshole. Oh well. I take it as given that the gentle (but perspicacious) readers of this blog know it takes two to tango and that all knives cut both ways, and that meditative reflection does, in fact, reflect. I ask: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG  WITH ME ?!   as well, and know I share in the near universal TARTUFFERIE!   FUCKERY!   &   ASSHOLERY!   Albeit these aspects are mostly left implicit. This is an unrepentant whoremonger over here remember. It ain't no saint. And I trust y'all can figgure your way through Matthew's text "go and tell him his fault between thee and him" with this in mind. I was going to do another post titled 'Feral Jubilee' but I may not get around to it so:

For the record, I don't know for sure that these two animals are from Cape Breton or even if they're coyotes. The meditation is not properly concluded is it? Oh well. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Or read & reflect or think as the case may be. Probably didn't get as far as maieutic and if they did, dismissed it figguring me for a show off. It does no good at all for me to say I'm not. [They cancelled my 350 membership though, with no announcement and no recourse. I should be honoured I suppose.] This is the 144th post in this section of the blog. 144 is an interesting number. It has a name: a gross, a dozen of dozens. It has resonances other than decimal; and with numbers like 256 / 28 (which is important in computing) and 169 / 132 (being the next square). Pounds shillings and pence. Pecks & furlongs & fathoms. Even (perhaps?) as far away and along as the Mayan system of 20s. The cross is empty. The grave is empty. (Say the Christians.) But of course they're empty! They're always empty. The person is gone - and it is most natural to assume that she or he has gone off ... somewhere else. The clues that are left, memories, feelings, artefacts (including the corpse itself), sustain the 'elsewhere' and it augments if for no other reason than that it is ... not (and so cannot be tested). A proposition that can be tested is this: Don't listen to the fat old fuck! Don't answer him when he speaks. Ignore him. Say nothing to him. Maybe he'll just ... go away, vanish. "I seen pretty people disappear like smoke," sez our Bob. Last words to John Donne: As Sicknes is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sicknes, is solitude; when the infectiousnes of the disease deterrs them who should assist, from comming; even the Phisician dares scarse come. Solitude is a torment which is not threatned in hell it selfe. (John Donne 'Devotions upon Emergent Occasions and seuerall steps in my Sicknes.  Meditation V: Solus adest. The Physician comes.' 1624)                               But of course, John Donne wasn't a Brasilian! Isn't that a portrait of death? It is. But don't be afraid. Pet her. You see? Gentle. [Or possibly 'tame', or both.] Shove a few more in here, too good to pass up:

 
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