You may not like this.

Or you may like it for superficial reasons.
Or (most likely) it may tumble down the well and make no splash.

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Where to begin?   OK. Let's see if eight months (almost a 'term' or a 'gestation') of Chris Hedges' trajectory sheds any light - three points on the curve. 1) We can start with Abby Martin & Chris Hedges just after the People's Climate March last fall: Thought provoking. Regardless of the presenters or the format, the scenario of massive civil disobedience seems preferrable to ISIS, Boko Haram &c. (and preferrable to what came before these extremities) on the one hand, and stunned complacent inaction on the other. 2) In February he delivers 'The Rules of Revolt' at SFU (Video): It's a barn burner! Literary an' all. (Turns out it's a set-piece he's delivered here-and-there since at least 2013 but that doesn't diminish the power of it. Nor, necessarily, do the bogus references to Melville as Shakespeare, Nietzsche's 'molten pit' & what not.) The tall fellow on the left is Stephen Collis. 3) Then, towards the end of March he's back in Vancouver again (over the objections of Stephen Collis this time, the fellow pictured above who was praising him only a month before): There is a video of the event on YouTube, and three related articles: Recalled to Life, March 23 2014; The Whoredom of the Left, March 8 2015; and, No One Is Free Until All Are Free, March 29 2015. He starts out with large scale integration, unification - bringing all of it in under the environmental catastrophe umbrella - this is good. He then he segues into talking about the abuse of women by men. He doesn't like either pornography or prostitution (but then, he didn't find the Charlie Hebdo cartoons funny either). He reminds me more and more of a preacher I used to know who when he used 'concupiscence' or 'incontinence' (and such like words) would screw up his mouth into a perfect imitation of someone sucking lemons. That's not to say there's nothing to be learned from listening and hearing what he says. But ... then he says abuse of women is not under the umbrella after all - the issues are separate and explicitly stand-alone. And it becomes ... confusing. The pimp/cunt/abuse/slavery stereotypes he employs are painted entirely dark. Anything subtler, even vaguely gray, is immediately lumped with the capital 'E' Evil. And the confusion becomes overwhelming. Toghestiy is driven out into the hallway, apparently by personal demons, and then returns with a more-or-less inarticulate 'final question' (which is not consistent with what I have seen of him previously around the Unis'tot'en blockade). Hedges comes back with "all of this is better out in the open" which is, of course, true. (Here's Toghestiy in Muskrat Magazine with videos: 1, 2, 3, 4; in 2013.) What has been proven is that the process of bringing out difficult experiences is fraught with fugal reactions which can turn the exercise nasty sometimes. Digging and delving in the ol' compost heap almost always releases odours, many of them (apparently, initially) unpleasant. Best done on a breezy afternoon when you've got lots of open-ended time, or when you're experienced and have a glimmering of what to expect and how to deal with it and the resources to deal with it (you don't need professionals but you do need lots of willing ears). To my mind all of this, while undoubtedly important, is a large-ish red herring, a distraction, a diversion, a source of division. When Stephen Harper sees us hareing off after it I am sure he rubs his hands in glee. It's the environmental catastrophe! THAT's the EXISTENTIAL part of this!   Doh! Hedges has been railing at Canada's Terrorism Bill C-51 too: Rabble: C-51 - They have won, and it is up to us, March 17. (Four points on the curve now.) [Note: Some of these articles originate at TruthDig. I find the site annoying because the text is chopped up into more-or-less arbitrary lumps - presumably to boost the numbers of ads and a traffic counter somewhere - but especially because when I browse there my computer is regularly attacked by phishing and what appear to be malware invitations. So the links in this post go to a safe archive - where the original TruthDig links may also be found if you're determined to go there.] An old friend once told me he'd gotten addicted to pornography. At the time I thought the realization had something to do with a woman he took up with who had strong opinions. He said he'd absolutely given it up and I believe he did. Other old friends have told me they're alcoholics and gave up drinking. The mantra of addicts seems to be that the condition is permanent with constant resistance required to withstand temptation. Pornography is not a shared pastime (at least not in my experience) but drinking often is and I always wished my alcoholic friends had found another way so we could spend more time together. My credentials include three up-to-the-elbows home births. I'm an old man now but if it came to a pinch I might still be able to help bring another babe into the world. A-and, (I hesitate to say it but) some of my best friends are garotas de programma - I know something of the landscape they inhabit. Old men, coroas and viejos verdes, like looking at young women - this is a fact of life as I know it. Maybe it helps keep the young bucks sharp and on their toes in some evolutionary way - I don't know. Sure, some get carried away (though generally it's the younger and middle aged ones), hurt people, hurt themselves; but the same goes for bog-standard courting, bringing up children - any and every intimate human activity includes some possibility of getting it wrong. Does this mean I support, or accept, or condone or countenance the violence Chris Hedges is talking about? No. I like quotes taken out of context. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," says Robert Frost, and for me it also covers all of the so called 'zero tolerance' oversimplifications that pass for public morality these days. The curve (remember the curve?) I see here is flying high and crashing into contradictions in one's own fundament. Others may see it differently. Cut to the chase. If the project of avoiding the potential for extinction in the unfolding environmental catastrophe depends upon perfecting human ... substance along moral lines, then I'd say we don't stand a chance. (With all respect to divinity school graduates and socialists who like to keep such progress myths going.)

Emily Dextraze is 12 years old. Sharie Farina is her mother. Emily has been competing in beauty pagents since she was 4 years old. The photographs come from a recent NYT article based in turn on a project by Ilana Panich-Linsman (unfortunately her site does not work very well, for me at least).

I like it when pictures tell a story even when I don't like the story very much. No name was given to the girl at the left beyond an embedded tag: 'Adorable Teen'. According to what looks like a Cæsarean scar she is also a mother. What I appreciate is that she shows a certain defiant insouciance in the last frame which I admire. Ordinary humans I'd say, getting by somehow flaunting tits & coochies. And if these few images are interpreted as obsessive or myself as perverted - all good.

There is a Thai restaurant nearby that serves green mango salad, and another I know of with a papaya salad - both replete with chopped nuts & subtle chillies, hot and tasty. I sometimes buy a mango at the supermarket. Of course it is nothing like a real one but it reminds me (at least) of the originals (of yesteryear) dripping down elbows and off chins into shirts while joy & laughter bubble up irrepressibly while the hot hot HOT moqueca de peixe simmers on the stove. [The OED tells me that 'yester-year' was coined by Rossetti to render 'antan' in his translation of François Villon's Grand Testament. Delightful!]

The image of Melida Prado there is the single largest draw to this blog. (For the record there is no underhanded watchful intrusion going on here - the Blogger traffic monitor reports this without any IP address or other trace-back.) Fifty or so people pass by most days and most of them come to see Melida without any clothes. Ho hum. Oh well.

In Brasil there is a well known spike in births nine months after Carnaval. Children born in late October through early December (being Spring in the Southern Hemisphere) are received with a knowing "Ah, aproveitou Carnaval, né." The complementary forces of illegality and poverty make abortion less frequent in Brasil than elsewhere. So here we are. Carnaval, Fat Tuesday, Lenten reflection, Maundy Thursday, and Easter are all past. Like it or not April showers are bringing May flowers. Lobster season gives way to trap time in Placentia Bay and the old make-or-break Atlantic gas engines thump in and out of harbour. That's if there is still anyone engaged - I am told there are very few to none. Watershed Moment:           [This space left intentionally blank.] Sargent, I need love.         I'll assemble the troops and get a volunteer.               I don't believe in Yes commander.              No! No! No!                                                             voluntary love. Idea.                     It's an incredible idea -      Off you go, idea.                      Look, the world changed!                             it will change the world                                                    I don't recognize it!                             through the simple fact                                                   Who did this?                             of someone's having had it.                                             We have to look                                                                                                                     at everything again. Convoluted Bastard:   Certain words and phrases set me off: 'Mitigation' when it is used to mean stopping CO2 emissions; 'Mother Earth' when the person using it appears not to understand that it is a metaphor not a fact; ... there's a list. Certain attitudes as well - particularly the notion that natives, indigenous peoples, first nations, have inherently closer links to nature and sustainable living than say, old white men. This list goes on too. In the 70s sometime two ex-professors of mine financed a prototype, what I called a 'renaissance yurt' to house the then numerous Afghani refugees living out in the snow and rain of northern Pakistan. It wasn't a big investment - maybe $300, time was unpaid, I think they used it on an R&D tax credit. We built one, and then nothing happened. I met with them one day and it became clear that their involvement was over. I was now to somehow parlay the prototype into a CIDA contract or whatever on my own. I said, "But I don't now how to do that and you do." They had framed one of my design sketches and hung it on the wall of their office in which we were meeting. The conversation turned ugly and one of them shouted at me "You are such a convoluted bastard!" And I said, "Sure I am, but you knew that from the get go." And that's the end of it. The next time I'm in the area Jim Strutt is already dead and I'm told Bill Dawson is 'very old'. My informant declines to give me his email address. Who knows? Maybe he's already past being able to read emails. Bottom Line: It's not just the kids slaving in sweatshops making cheap sneakers for other kids living marginally better in big cities around the world who are in Hell. We are all in Hell. And I don't mean some after-death cauldron you get pitched into when you die if you've been bad - I mean here and now and no judgements. The whole object of this post (and all of the posts in all of the blogs for that matter) is to wonder if we are thinking ... properly. Humans mostly (myself included) don't think at all but it is at the point now where we'd better. (Heaven being no more than the thickness of a thought away.) So, a convoluted bastard I remain. It's an honorific.   Be well.

 
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(Valentine's Day)

When the music (finally) stops and you're between chairs,
and there's nowhere left to go.
What then?

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Friday 13th yesterday and the start of Carnaval. A rare confluence and hard to resist. This is the 128th post, 26. Imagine that! This ambiguous young person at the right with appliqué breasts. Who can say with confidence what's goin' on? It's the stuff of bedtime stories, of Prospero & Ariel. Proper thing to do was take the money & run to a hidey hole. There were hints, clues & examples - all ignored. Thing is, one can always emerge from a well-stocked Thousand Secrets bomb shelter - and pick one's time to do it too, or not, or, not have the choice. I closed the deal on the house in Metcalfe on Valentine's Day ... mid-80s sometime ... 85? No reason for choosing that day, a whim. I paid way too much, doomed from the get-go, simple as that. I thought, "I'll make a stand in Metcalfe," and then I tried to but didn't have the jam. ashram: a place of religious retreat, sanctuary, or hermitage; adaptation of Sanskrit 'asrama' hermitage, from 'a' (near to, towards) + 'srama' (exertion, earnest endeavour). forbear: a very old verb indeed - many citations in the OED starting in the (incomprehensible) 9th C; check out Ephesians 4 (& read on about the whoremongers). Elections in Nigeria today, could be the end of Goodluck Jonathan. And it's the anniversary of the sinking of the Ocean Ranger - there's a stone memorial halfway up Signal Hill to close that story. I recommended three good efforts recently and forgot to mention Angela and GreenSpiration! Doh! I found these excellent videos thanks to her newsletter (there's a link on her site to sign up):         Bill Moyers, The Children’s Climate Crusade; and,         Naomi Klein & Owen Jones, This Changes Everything.     (Both videos point at books.)

When this (right) by Chiquinha first came up I missed the connection with Charlie Hebdo and thought, "She's heartbroken and is (simply) telling us about her broken heart, sweet." Then the insatiable curtiosity of elephant child kicks in ... (see TV clip).

Why don't you put    Why don't you put     Why don't you put    Why don't you put   Who are you your memories         your metaphors         your jaws                your molecules        really? on paper?                on the clothesline?     in the barrel?           in a credit rating?    I'm not shouting! [Serasa: The word is not in Dicionário inFormal nor Houaiss - nor anything in between: Webster's, Collins &c.. The only on-line references I can find are to the name of the largest Brazilian credit rating agency: Serasa aka Serasa Experian.] If Jerry Van Amerongen's air-horn floor-lamps catch on (like, say, hula hoops) will it be enough (I wonder) to penetrate, to upset the smug complacency that rules? Probably not. Life would be simple if it were all white-hats & black-hats like in western movies; all Citizens & Terrorists. The correctitude mavens (in white & brown) at The Globe and Mail want it to be the cancer of extremism. There is a notion among some Christians that pursuing the historical Jesus is persuing a red herring - along the lines of the "If there's a design then there must be a designer" falacy, heresy, whatever these kinds of things are called theology-wise. Chris Hedges (in the article referenced a few posts ago) quotes his friend Hamza Yusuf talking about duelling in Kentucky & Ireland and honour and "something deep in the soul of men". He may have something useful to offer here - even if he did write a book called 'I Don't Believe in Atheists' just a few years ago, even if he doesn't find the Charlie Hebdo cartoons funny, and even if he makes the (mistaken I think) leap with Hamza Yusuf to "I have no feeling of solidarity with mockers." The people at Charlie Hebdo knew they were pulling the tiger's tail and knew, not hypothetically but from experience, that the tiger has claws. I do find some of the cartoons funny (though I also appreciate how Hedges may not) but regardless of that their characters include courage - in spades! I know a shrink who thinks that all humour involves putting someone down. I don't agree with her but she has arguments (which I'm sorry I can't remember well enough to recapitulate) including references in Freud (I think). I just wish Charlie Hebdo would chase the purveyors of the environmental catastrophe with the same enthusiasm, fervour ... as assiduously and acerbically! Here, this was going to be a separate post but I'll make it a Valentine's bonus: How fuckin' stupid Are these people?!! •   EU paper calls for binding CCS targets by 2030, Arthur Neslen, Monday 26 January 2015. Phony solutions proposed by time-servers - even the time frame (2030?) is nonsense;   •   David Cameron rejects call for fracking ban, Damian Carrington, Monday 26 January 2015;   •   The Other Pipeline You Should Worry About, It’s Not Just Keystone XL, It’s Also Line 61, Dan Kaufman, January 16 2015;   •   The Keystone XL Illusion, Joe Nocera, January 16 2015;   •   Regulators grant environmental permits for Lancashire fracking site, Press, Friday 16 January 2015;   •   Oil lobby calls for North Sea tax reductions as BP cuts 300 jobs, Terry Macalister, Thursday 15 January 2015;   •   Engaging with oil companies on climate change is futile, admits leading UK environmentalist, Damian Carrington, Thursday 15 January 2015;   •   It is 'impossible' for today’s big oil companies to adapt to climate change, Jonathon Porritt, Thursday 15 January 2015;   •   Does climate change exist? The Senate is about to let us know, Suzanne Goldenberg, Thursday 15 January 2015;   •   Harvard defies divestment campaigners and invests tens of millions of dollars in fossil fuels, Suzanne Goldenberg, Wednesday 14 January 2015;   •   For the Love of Carbon, Paul Krugman, January 11 2015;   •   Australia accelerates coal mine projects in the face of study that finds it should stay buried, Oliver Milman, Wednesday 7 January 2015;   •   Organic farming not always best for environment, says government adviser Lord Krebs, Fiona Harvey, 7 January 2015;   •   Heavyweight Response to Local Fracking Bans, Jack Healy, January 3 2015;   'Infantilizing dictats' says George Monbiot. It's out of context here but ... that's exactly the phrase that seems to sum it up for me and I like it. ['Dictat' (with a short 'A') is not quite in the OED, and the plural (not quite) suggested is 'dictata', and one might expect italics for a Latin expression - SO - it may simply be a typo in The Guardian (and not the first time) - OR - it may be intended as written, in which case, like I said ... I like it.] Your keen apprehension will have picked out Lancashire in this list of official nonsenses ... So. This Valentine is also going out to the members of Frack Free Lancashire: Good On 'Em! Meanwhile the science gets clearer & clearer: •   Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk, say scientists, Oliver Milman, Thursday 15 January 2015;   •   Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet, Will Steffen et al., January 2015; and an accessible pdf; and Supplementary Information (pdf);   •   The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration (pdf), Will Steffen et al., January 2015; and Supplementary Material;   •   Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says, Carl Zimmer, January 15 2015;   •   Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean, Douglas J. McCauley et al. - Abstract the rest is locked up tightly;   Grant you, the scientists involved are not naked and shouting on streetcorners or rooftops, the conclusions are all carefully hedged, but you don't have to read between the lines, you just have to read all of the lines to get the message: We Are (Very Nearly) Fucked!

I think there's enough in the frames above to see what they have in common. And now? We will do what?

Anyway ... I checked in 'Six Nonlectures': ee cummings absolutely uses 'soi-disant' so I am diddled. And doubly diddled because in the process of re-reading emerges a privileged, smug, self-involved ungrownup child, a 50s Mick Jagger (of a sort) whom I missed first time through. Oh well. Still laffin' over it though; have to say I would include both expressions in my lexicon: soi-disant for self-styled solipsism, pretentious pretence, general complacent assholery - bog standard pillicock posers; and soi distant for serious & pathological alienation carrying hints of ecstasy, Greek theatre, (possibly noble) hauteur, (possibly fearful) reserve - the mind-state of politicians, bureaucrats, drone pilots and weapons manufacturers.

A Moment of reflection with Herman the Wolf:   Starting tomorrow I'm going to start loving people ... as if there were no tomorrow. This was another ... Moment of Reflection.

I'm not dead yet. Anything could happen. You thinks I know fuck not'ing, but I know fuck all! [Thanks to Lloyd & Anita, and this Valentine is for them as well."]   To err is human! To really fuck up is even more human!   Be mine Valentine.

 
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