Sustainable? All (good) things come to an end.

Happy Birthday kiddo. Lucky Thirteenth!

[Up, Down]

Next Sunday.   One Week To Go.   It's Now or Never! The People's Climate March website is replete with good information. Elizabeth May will attend, and Naomi Klein (link to follow). 350 Toronto are coordinating bus transportation from Toronto and lodging in NYC. I won't be goin': no money, no offers, no jam. Feels like one'a them Flander's Fields moments ... but ... the 21st is the Equinox, so on Saturday night the 20th, at midnight, I will go over to the gazebo in Kew Gardens park on Queen Street and light a candle, quietly hum a few tunes. A solidarity vigil that will last as long as it does, probably not long. In Toronto Avaaz, 350 & Greenpeace are organizing a solidarity march: Sunday, September 21 @ 1:00 pm, Nathan Phillips Square/In front of City Hall. See here. A further meditation on feet of clay. [This is interesting: Satire is dying because the internet is killing it.] Particularly and especially urban feet of clay, feet that mostly tread pavement and engineered non-existent beaches and have been entirely uncoupled from reality. Sustainability is temporary. It only makes sense mid-stream. Like a urine sample or ... a consultant's wet dream (for which any boojum'll do). Human appreciation is understandably limited (threescore years and ten &c.); unless, that is, it can be augmented by incomprehensible and fantastical visions of eternity. Viagra for the soul. Notions that economies or lifestyles or civilizations can be sustainable are nonsense. Just as nonsensical as what comes from the other side: that growth on a finite planet can go on and on. My own feet first then: no idea what this next cartoon means; seems to hint at 'slouches towards Bethlehem to be born' but ... don't know; can't figgure it out at all; and the informants are all gone mum. Come to the dark side of the force.   No thanks.   Come back.   There is also the pink side of the force. Daniel Pudles & tOad make a good pair eh? Martingale: A system in gambling which consists in doubling the stake when losing in the hope of eventually recouping oneself. Eloquent without being pretentious. "All (good) things come to an end." So trite as not to be worth repeating? The superficial side of the Internet (which is all I can access) seems to think the phrase originated with Chaucer in 'Troilus and Criseyde'. A third of the way into Book III there's: "But at the last, as everything comes to an end, she must be going home, and took her leave."             But at the laste, as every thing hath ende,             She took hir leve, and nedes wolde wende. And a bit of penultimate Christian moralizing in Book V: "O young joyous people, youths and maidens, in whom love ever grows up with your age, get yourself home from worldly vanity. Cast up the eyes of your heart to that God that made you after His image, and think that all this world is but a temporary amusement and passes as soon as the sweet flowers."             O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she,             In which that love up groweth with your age,             Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee,             And of your herte up-casteth the visage             To thilke god that after his image             Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre             This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre. Something about that final rhyme makes me think the text may be corrupted. (?)    Anyway it's considerably less than a clearcut source for 'This too shall pass,' or 'All good things must come to an end,' or whatever it was ... This was going to be one of the 'banches' that got 'trad' but the post got to be too long: Ique has either never seen a real pickaxe or is being subtler than usual. STF is the Brazilian supreme court - Supremo Tribunal Federal. This has all been written with Laura Nyro's amazing tune running around my brain. Here's herself (which never seems to wear out) and Blood Sweat & Tears' cover (which surprisingly, does ... "Yee Haa" ??!). "All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me, and all I ask of dyin' is to, go naturally." Last one out turn off the light. Looked high and low for a larger version of Pascal's cartoon (left), none found; so if you want to read it you will have to click on it and put on your glasses. By that time you may be thinking about it. And ... why does Fewings (right) feel that he has to explain? About the same vintage the two of them: born in the 70s when the Biafran war (1967-1970) might still have been a relatively fresh memory in Nigeria among the 'winners'. There are grisly images of Mohammed Yusuf's dead body on the Internet for those who like that kind of thing. Not exactly poster boys for my urban/rural distinction since their backgrounds are both quite rural & tribal. What is the population density in Nigeria? What was it in the 70s I wonder? And the 80s? Any clues there? Mohammed Yusuf & Abubakar Shekau could be thought of in the context of a reversed and inverted Pygmalion. D'you think?

 
[Up, Down]