How do you dig yourself into a hole this deep? and Worthy (continued).

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Open & Shut
["The carpet too is movin' under you, an' it's all over now baby blue." See below.]

Yesterday (according to Jim Hansen) the case of 'Alec L. et al. vs. Gina McCarthy et al.' took the U.S. government into the United States Court of Appeals in Washington DC for failure to deliver a plan defining how it would reduce emissions consistent with what science shows is necessary. Nothing I can find on-line today to let me know how it went. I will update this on Monday if anything turns up. [Ah! The public session has been called off (again, according to Jim Hansen). Hansen's epistle implies that the case is going forward but doesn't give any procedural details. I will try to find out what is happening and report in a later post. See also:         USCA Case #13-5192 Document #1490019 Filed: 04/25/2014,         USCA Case #13-5192 Document #1496137 Filed: 06/05/2014. The court has afforded the issues full consideration and has determined that they do not warrant a published opinion.] My neice died a few years ago, more than a few - seven or eight. I was away and could not get back for the funeral so I copied Northrop Frye's 'The Double Vision' by hand to create this presentation. No one acknowledged this expression of grief. Unacknowledged grief sometimes festers (apparently). It regularly happens that I post one of these silly rants having either forgotten what set it off or what it was I meant to say or both; what I meantersay as it were. In this case two of them: 'How do you dig yourself into a hole this deep?' about a month ago, and 'Worthy' after that. [Joe's 'meantersay' - when speaking to Pip - is not in the OED. An unrelated observation is that 'mean' (and possibly meaning itself) is linked by an obscure secondary definition to lament: "to mene one's moan," and onomatopœically (I suppose) to the Irish verb 'keen'.] Oh sure, I know this kind of meditation is ridiculous & strictly verboten! [I think maybe there's a clue in Dylan's 'Dignity' so I listen a few times ... but there's not. Although ... maybe remembering the distinction between such bogus transcendence as "God is Love" or "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," or "The Truth shall set you Free" and some authentic kind of insight like "Dignity never been photographed," is a step in the right direction.] Anyway, sometimes later on I remember. Usually I don't do anything about it; but this time I will at least make (minimal) notes: I was standing in the first March sun waiting for a bus (to go downtown and try to find 'Spiegel Im Spiegel' sheet music for my grand-daughter), having a smoke, watching the people on the street - and there it was: "How do you dig yourself into a hole this deep?" I thought I would see about answering this question; perhaps it'd be of some use to someone some when. This is just a placemarker really. Whatever it was sparked 'Worthy' is gone somewhere between the tip of my tongue and lost in the mists - all very trite (of course it's not 'trite' exactly, more 'hackneyed' or ... some other word I can't remember). Not surprising really. As a medium of communication this HTML leaves a lot to be desired. So wrapped up trying to get all the '>'s and '<'s balanced (exactly) and in their proper places it's easy to lose sight of the alligators nevermind the swamp itself. (Not to even mention that it is so ... intuitive.   :-) Some of the sources of identity (where worth & worthiness originate) are in those events and situations, training wheels ... when (f'rexample) as a child someone sends you up to the corner store for a pack of "Black Cat Cork" and you manage it somehow, coming back with sweaty change in the other hand, nickles and pennies. Compared with being, say, of no use or ornament. "While one who sings with his tongue on fire gargles in the rat-race choir; bent out of shape from society's pliers; cares not to come up any higher but rather get you down in the hole that he's in."   (Bob, 'It's Alright Ma') "I got a hole where my stomach disappeared."   (Bob, 'On The Road Again') "There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes."   (John Prine, 'Sam Stone') "I'm falling through a hole in the flag."   (James Rado & Gerome Ragni & Galt MacDermot, Hair, 'Don't Put It Down') Not to mention Liza and Henry going round and round the bucket. This may also be where we can begin to distinguish the brutal ideology of positive thinking from genuine up-building. [Suddenly one of those internal manifestations of Tourette's leaps to the fore: "The only way to prove innocence is bloody inquisition." ¿Where on earth did that come from I wonder?] Jacques Doillon's film 'Raja' with Najat Benssallem: The first picture is the only non-screen-grab-from-the-movie I can find. Remarkable hands - I wonder if she plays piano? She has fallen off the radar since 2003 somehow. The NYT Review gets most of it right. Jacques Doillon himself with (his daughter) Lou touting another film: There is very little in the way of explicit sex in 'Raja'. Even the (seemingly obligatory) scene in which Raja & Fred have intercourse is mostly without body parts (a welcome relief). What there is is a sensibility that (as the NYT reviewer says), "... gets to the bottom and stirs up all the mucky dregs." Not 'all' certainly but some of them. The scene in which she beats him up ... well ... she's not a pushover is she eh? It has been a long and lonely six weeks since the possibility of a Harmœnic Convergænce caught my imagination. No action in Toronto that I could find. Maybe the way I went looking determined that - can't say. The snapshot-screen-grab from Credo was taken on April 15 - a full week before Earth Day. I held back - that's what hope does t'ya. I am wondering today if there is a symmetry operation, some kind of 'glide' transformation/inversion, that will help establish the connection between: 1) belief in an all-seeing all-doing deity; and, 2) complete inability to act in the face of possible extinction. Call it 'virtual denial' - so to encompass the widest possible selection, not only of those who explicitly refuse to act but the silent majority who know and sit on it. No way to dig out of the hole I am in and no way out of this awful city either. Getting difficult for this old hippie to find reasons to smile. Say wha'? The original banner read 'Mother Earth Day to May Day'. I took the time to edit 'mother' out of it. Where can you go with prejudice, however polite and well intentioned? Nowhere. But the involvement of Tim DeChristopher & Jill Stein gave it enough credibility for me to do what I did. Not much but ... what I did nonetheless. But they seemed to cut their losses early and gave it over to Timeka to run. No real wonder that she didn't - a lovely name for a lovely girl, coffee coloured skin, a coiffure worthy of Milli Vanilli ... They got some of it, the foundations, ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! y'unnerstan': Convergence, inclusion, one umbrella for all! Forró! And then didn't know how to pull it off! Why not? I can only guess ... but ... let's say: 1) didn't think enough about it; 2) didn't pull out ALL the stops on the organ; 3) polite correctitude (which I infer from the 'mother' earth); 4) failure (let's say inability) to involve k-k-k-Canada; 5) taking the low road and too frequently dunning for donations; ... 6) ... 7) ... I can only hope that in some room somewhere they are up to their fricken' arseholes in a post mortem 'lessons learned'. Oh sure, I am a great big asshole for saying this, a troll ... what ever.

 
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