I don't know. I'm sorry.

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Rio de Janeiro:


I began the year saying "Lucky '13, the year we turned it around!" If I had known the end of it would be so low (no wonder I'm dreamin' of Rio) I would have saved this poem. Anyway, here it is again:

Angst Asiatisk i vælde er angsten. Den er modnet med umodne aar. Og jeg føler det dagligt i hjertet, som om fastlande dagligt forgaar. Men min angst må forløses i længsel og i syner af rædsel og nød. Jeg har længtes mod skibskatastrofer og mod hærværk og pludselig død. Jeg har længtes mod brændende byer og mod menneskeracer på flugt, mod et opbrud, som ramte alverden, og et jordskælv, som kaldtes Guds tugt. Fra romanen 'Hærværk', Tom Kristensen, 1930.

Angst Overwhelming eastern angst, come to fruition in immature years. In my heart it’s a daily sensation, as if whole continents disappear. My anxiety becomes a longing - visions of dread and distress. I yearn for mid-ocean shipwrecks destruction and sudden death. I long to see great cities on fire, humanity fleeing in a headlong surge, world wide break-up and collapse, an earthquake they call 'God’s scourge'. From the novel 'Hærværk' / Havoc, by Tom Kristensen, 1930.

 

(Gilmar's ambiguity here is eloquent. Anyone who has seen Meirelles' 2001 film 'Domésticas' may remember the sequence of the homem parado, the 'stopped man' who dies in his armchair watching TV.) A short history of politics: Hello! I'm the candidate in the coming elections ... You can take everything but please don't hurt me!   No rich persom must have to suffer seeing the poor on the sidewalks. We'll throw the miserable to the crocodiles Oliviera. But there are thousands of poor people, Good Emir! We don't have enough crocodiles ... Do we have any lions Oliviera? We did have but the poor ate them.   Happiness [for a politician] is the art of completely ignoring public opinion. A quandary: To have or not to have, that is the question. What? It's Shakespeare, frog. But Shakespeare wrote "To be or not to be." Sure ... ... but I'm just bringing it up-to-date ...   An extra special complacent hypocrisy award to Joe Biden: Or is it somewhere inbetween? You're making me stupid. That's inpossible. You were born that way.   There's so much stupidity. I can get rich organizing a championship of idiots. Mark Zukerberg got there first. (Some ambiguity in the punchline on that one.)   Ain't no use jivin'. Ain't no use jokin'. Everything is broken. ... Hound dog howlin', bullfrog croakin'. Everything is broken.

 

... is anyone out there seeing the least bit of light at the end of the tunnel???

Not that politicians are anything like a root cause. Politics in the general sense of 'managed common action, failure therof', maybe. We get exactly the politicians we deserve: Nixon, W, Harper - reflections of ourselves, but with the fear masked, the greed rationalized, and the paranoia channelled into hysteria (and with low cunning & cleverness if not intelligence).

 

I MEAN STOP EVERYTHING!! stop consuming - buy nothing beyond the requirements for survival, stop working - QUIT, stop paying taxes, stop travelling by air, stop driving your car - park it permanently and walk or cycle, stop using cellphones, stop voting ... stop thinking about economics, stop demonstrating, stop purveying institutional compassion (which stinks) ... vote with your feet, walk out on it STOP,   STOP,     STOP! (I know it's crazy stupid mad ... but there it is.) AND THEN (possibly) START talking with anyone who will engage with you about ... What to do next?

 
A repeat:

STOP! STOP!    stop stop stop STOP  !

 
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