Spacious gracious moments (in k-k-k-Canada).

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Reminder

(or: specious salacious, spurious supercilious ... &c.)
(or: What we need in k-k-k-Canada is a tax revolt!   ...   Whoa! Waidaminit!    We?)

First, a bit of housekeeping: 1) I tried to inform the few Toronto 'activists' I know about of the coming Harmonic Convergence. No interest at all. I went along to the 'weekly 350 meeting' (advertised on a schedule here) and found that they had changed venue - nobody there, perfectly par. I sent them an email (a polite one) and no reply ... so far. Livin' in hope (as the fricken' Christians like to say). 2) Some texts mentioned in the last few posts: Ian McEwan, End of the World Blues (from 'The Portable Atheist', Christopher Hitchens, 2007.   From 'The End of the World As We Know It', Daniel Wojcik, 1997: Acknowledgments, Approaching Doomsday, & Conclusion.   From 'The Singing Neanderthals', Steven Mithen, 2005: Preface, The mystery of music, & Finis.   3) The FAO Food Price Index updated: Cute that someone there in the UN somewhere chose red for the 2014 line. 4) Islands in Lake Turkana: Three islands in a relatively narrow lake running north-south - what the heck, call 'em 'North' 'Central' & 'South'! (Imaginative folk those European explorers eh?) No trace that I can find of anything like original or authentic names for them though there surely are some, somewhere. Wikipedia makes a stab at naming the lake itself: Lake Turkana name. I like 'Jade Sea' (for what should be obvious reasons by now). Given its shape and the fact that it is at or near the original human homesteads we could call it 'Lake of the Eternal Vagina' (with polyps). A-and a joke:   Millennarian Apocalypticism:   'Apocalypticism' has a certain ring to it - once you practice a bit, out loud. Almost no one talks to me. No mystery there in the end, and after a while you get used to it. But still, on rare encounters with (what should be) close family members I may open up and even ask how their air-miles bonus tally is doing (with a smile y'unnerstan'). So one of 'em says to me, "Oh, that climate thing's like when the magnetic pole flips eh?" It took almost a full day for the penny to drop. (I was not aware of the specific association of nutbars focussed on the planetary poles.) How crazy must they think I am then? Very, very crazy I guess, to put me into such a basket. I had not imagined. In our youth in our Toronto neighbourhood the Salvation Army Band would regularly, weekly or so, hold impromptu parades. And of course all the kids followed the music down the street towards their meeting hall. We demurred when it came to going in for cookies & milk (we were instructed to demur by our Anglican and United Church mothers), but loud & outright evangelists were a welcome relief from what, even at 7 & 8 years old, was an obviously stultifying miasma of control. Later on, we were lucky enough to catch the last few years of the Victory Burlesque, music figures there too ... but that's another story. So ... What if the poles do flip? What if an asteroid hits? What if the planet ends with a bang? The difference is that such events have no moral dimension, none. Ending with a whimper though is a distinctly human possibility. And who cares about ethics either? Since all such matters end when the languages end. In the meantime baffle their brains with bullshit (BBB) since even some of the best among them (Lula thinking the 2005 earthquake & tsunami were somehow connected with environental abuse f'rinstance though he later corrected himself - I said 'best' remember) cannot distinguish suicidal terrorists or nutbars cutting off their genitals hoping to be picked up by space aliens, from people standing up with integrity on real issues. DOH! Joke's on me, obviously ... as usual. No problem. The origin of money: I swear I saw it. The guy who brought the food came out of the bathroom and didn't wash his hands! There goes a typical modern guy. Darth Vader t-shirt, daily schedule in his hand, Converse sneakers, iPod ...A perfectly conceited nerd. What spoils it is his hair in bangs. Nothing that a truck tire in the head won't fix ...   Medusa getting capillary nutrition treatment. The party's over and I've got the bill. I'd like to be poor for a day. Just to know what it's like.                     I'd rather die not knowing. If the princess won't come to the prince ...                                 The prince will go to the princess. With kissing it costs more.   Two solitudes: Feel free to sexually molest. Numa Perrier (at the right) has been praised here before. Now it's makeup & plucked eyebrows, hair done up (or a wig-hat) ... and yet the qualities mentioned before - resourceful, self-possessed, strong, substantial, admirable, gorgeous - shine through all that. This illustration to the right was in The Guardian on some article about labour unions. No idea what he is trying to get at. According to the glyphs, the red things are vibrating? Shaking? Or something? So. There it is. What about spacious gracious moment?   My friend Keith introduced me to Erik Satie saying his music sometimes creates an open space, free. We were in Newfoundland at the time, late 60s, and imagined an equivalent architectural space - it was still largely unrestricted by building codes there then. All safely shut & buttoned up now, such notions. And yet at times certain music opens me upon spacious internal landscapes - Arvo Pärt & Simon Jeffes as noted here recently; Erik Satie, Bela Bartok, J.S. Bach himself - though just for the duration and a few moments of echoing reverberation, diminishing. The 'gracious' is just stuck on - comes from my father's Southern roots which I put on like airs. One'a these days an' it won't be long, goin' down in the valley and sing my song. Gonna sing it loud, sing it strong and let the echo decide if I was right or wrong. (Silvio, Down in the Groove, 1988.)   There it is.    And I'm not hearin' any echo.   That's funny ... on that same album is 'Ninety Miles An Hour down A Dead End Street' so I listened. It's a love story but the verse: Warn-ing signs are a'flashing everywhere but we pay no heed; 'stead of slowin' down the pace we keep a-pickin' up speed. Disaster's getting closer every time we meet. Goin' ninety miles an hour down a dead end street. comes across to me as humanity (not) facing the environmental apocalypse as it unfolds. Not exactly an echo ... but ... better than a kick in the head.   :-)   Bob says "It's too late to listen to that warnin' voice," BUT as I have recently been reminded (by none other than Jim Hansen - in an email directly and personally to your's truly) IT IS NOT TOO LATE! (very handy on it but not quite). More to come on this soon, when I have carefully read a few 'scholarly articles' pointed out to me by Mr. Hansen, viz.: 1) Assessing "Dangerous Climate Change": Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature, James Hansen et al., PLoS ONE, December 3 2013.   2) 'A2009' Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne, Myles R. Allen et al., Nature, 30 April 2009.   3) 'M2009' Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2°C, Malte Meinshausen et al., Nature, 30 April 2009.

 


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