Wine, Woman, and the Sea

Pavel Simon, Czechoslovakian

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Going Digital

 

http://mattiasa.blogspot.com/

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Symbol & Sign 3: Miracles

The Age of Miracles is the history of mankind. In the present day, we either ignore the miraculous and assume there is a natural explanation for the phenomenon, or we accept the reports of miracles but limit the miraculous to our own modern understanding of the Holy: all events that strain the laws of science are due to our own views of God and the world.

When I was young, the miracles at Lourdes were pushed to the forefront as proofs of the miraculous. Being such proofs, they were constrained even further to proofs of God's existence; who else works miracles if not God? The symbol of the Miraculous Cure which is intensely observed and scrutinized by medical science: a disease for which there is no known cure and the prognosis gives a very short time left to live, yet which is inexplicably cured upon pilgrimage to Lourdes was a potent Symbolic Structure in my youth. It probably still is. 

The signs of cures remain at Lourdes: crutches and wheelchairs rendered superfluous by the miraculous cure of their owners. I saw many such signs at Chimayo, where within the side chapel of Mary - the chapel wherein there is a hole in the floor and the sandy soil is exposed - there are many darkened and roughly made canes and crutches.

Yet these miracles only continue a tradition of the miraculous.

At the temple of Aesclapius - the ancient Greek god of medicinal arts - in Epidaurus, there are inscriptions which much like billboards attest to the cures done by Aesclapius and his priesthood and to miracles.

One goes:

A small speechless child came to the sanctuary to beseech the god to give him a voice. After performing all the preliminary sacrifices and rites, the Pyrphoros, the servant of the temple, turned to the father of the child and asked him, 'Do you promise to pay the medical fees within one year if your child is cured?' 'I promise,' replied the child suddenly.

There were cures done by the medical science of the time and there were also miraculous and sudden returns to health that were beyond the science of Hippocrates. We are not very aware of the miraculous in other times and other cultures. When we hear about such things, we tend to ascribe it to the primitive and credulous nature of the people involved. The antiquity of miracles has been ignored mainly due to intolerant zealotry exhibited by the early Christians once they gathered some portion of political power.
In the middle of the Tiber in Rome, there is an island upon which an ancient spital of Aesclapius stood (spital is one of the roots of hospital = house+spital). It was a favorite spot for slave owners to banish their incurably ill slaves to, prompting the Emperor Claudius to promulgate a law stating that any slaves thus treated, if they recovered from their illness, would be set free immediately, and their previous owners would have no claim whatever upon them. Time and war and the zealotry of religious fundamentalism have left almost nothing standing of it, for it had remained above ground and was subject to the depredations of the Romans. One inscription here reads:

To Julian who was spitting up blood and had been despaired of by everyone, the god advised that he should go and take the seeds of a pine cone from the threefold altar and he should eat them together with some honey for three days. And he was saved...

The history of miracles runs parallel to and is of equal length to the recorded history of mankind; as much as we can tell of the lives of intelligent beings on earth, they have experienced the miraculous.
Yet instead of taking the miraculous as a Symbol of the presence of the Holy and its power to make nonsense of whatever our science and knowledge is, we ignore it or we turn it into a tool of division - our religion is the true religion, for our god works miracles for us alone, or turn it into some holy circus where we ooh and aah.

The Universe is a place of Laws and Breaking of Laws. The lawful regularity fills us with wonder at the complexity of it all, while the miraculous breaking of the laws takes our breath away.
The world is filled with miracles.
And they are miracles because they go beyond our understanding.
But the entire point of miracles in the Christian Gospels at least is the simple statement of fact that our understanding is insufficient: even among the direct observers of a miracle there would be a significant percentage that would yet refuse to believe! Our understanding of miracles is the understanding of children, and at some point we must give up the "toys" of childhood and accept that God is in the world - not out of it and merely popping in every now and then to work a miracle!

When the Holy is remote and outside the world, we have taken the Symbol of the Holy and debased it. Miracles are not signs and omens to be argued over: they are the wind of Life upon which we are the gliders! I remembered vividly how I used to pray, and it was very much like setting out cookies for Santa Claus: a bribe for an intercession and a gift of forgiveness. We really do not have to remind God. Let the World return to its miraculous state! And those who debase it and sully it should be shamed, not rewarded  by wealth, office, and power!

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START Treaty

Apparently will pass... the Republican leader of the Senate can't vote for it, but they made sure there were enough other Republicans to pass it. The GOP leaders can't be seen to be in agreement with anything from the White House. It was a quid for the pro quo of the tax deal. It was political theater.

We may rest assured that we still have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over. The strategy of destruction is called MAD, mutually assured destruction, and we have to keep an eye on each other and also not let anyone else into the game.

Ron Paul

As much as I like Ron Paul, I do not like his monetary paleo-policy and I am astounded that the Know-Nothings of the next Congress have placed him in charge of the Federal Reserve Bank. Hey! Everyone in Congress except Ron Paul: just because you do not have an economic clue, so what? Neither do economists! They just don't admit it while they bray their futile beliefs at the tops of their voices.

Republicans, let's be clear: screw this up and it's curtains for everyone.

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Avarus Avidior

 Old Scrooge had felt the dyspepsia pass away and felt that he could sleep finally. Christmas and all its changes had passed. He heard a noise coming closer and closer, and at last he was shocked to see the shade of his old associate Jacob Marley enter the room, chained with ghostly yet seemingly substantial pork barrels which shooshed along the floor boards as he approached, his mien grey and ashen.
"Not you again, Jacob?" Scrooge said.
"Scrooge, why are you sitting here?" the shadow asked.
Scrooge smiled. "I was contemplating what I would do for the betterment of humanity in the New Year. I thought I'd start locally, on a small scale..."
Here Marley wailed and cut Scrooge short.
"The spirits of Christmas have changed, Scrooge. Mankind no longer is your business. You are to run for Parliament on the platform of re-invigorating the Poor Laws and to re-establish the Work House and Treadmill!"

So Scrooge did a 360 turn and politicked in the New Year as the inconstant ghosts of Christmas counseled him to. Even metaphysical laws and events seemed to be, at best, a divine "guesstimate" and one had to be ready to change with change, he thought, for "...the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night..." and he could but do his best.


The covey of ladies huddled in front of the poulterer's shop to escape the wind. Their sharp eyes spotted Bob Cratchit, and their tongues snared his attention.
"Is it true, then?" said one.
Bob slowed a bit, then stopped, turning his head. "Is what true, madam?"
They looked from one to the other, then the speaker said, "Is it true that Mr. Scrooge will soon be leaving us to spread his philosophy in the seats of power."
"If by that do you mean to ask whether Mr. Scrooge will be representing this riding in Parliament, the answer is yes."  said Cratchit... and God help us, he thought. For the old Scrooge had come back as fate would have it. God help us, everyone!

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note:
title:  the miser yet more grasping

Haiti

10% of the money and aid pledged by countries around the world has been delivered to Haiti.

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Юлия Латынина, журналист

Julia Latinyna, Jourmalist, writes in A Step At A Time:

http://halldor2.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/latynina-on-assanges-aim/
Latynina on Assange's aim:  December 15, 2010 “Assange’s aim is not the maximum dissemination of information – what we have at present, that is. Assange’s aim is to bring the state system into a state of paranoia, so that it stops distributing information within itself and adopts a strict information diet, is unable to make the right decisions. Likewise, what will happen in the world after what Assange has done is highly dependent on the U.S., because the situation is reminiscent of what happened after the bombings of September 11. The problem was not so much the damage Bin Laden directly caused to the economy and human lives on September 11, but the fact that the state, being forced to react to the damage, sharply restricted the freedom of citizens and their rights, and the simple physical convenience of movement.”
Originally from Echo Moscow.


Agree or disagree, it is so refreshing to get an opinion that has not been hatched in the incestuous chicken coop of the Big Media.
There is more here on some disturbing facts about WikiLeaks and their employment of a Holocaust-denier, but read it yourself; just follow the threads at A Step At A Time.
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New Ghost Dance

From Wikipedia article on Ghost Dance:
(By the way, I contributed to the fund raiser at Wikipedia. Please support independent entities.)

Jack Wilson, the prophet formerly known as Wovoka, was believed to have a vision during a solar eclipse  on January 1, 1889...

Anthropologist James Mooney conducted an interview with Wilson in 1892... Wilson said he stood before God in heaven and had seen many of his ancestors engaged in their favorite pastimes. God showed Wilson a beautiful land filled with wild game and instructed him to return home to tell his people that they must love each other, not fight, and live in peace with the whites...  God said that if his people abided by these rules, they would be united with their friends and family in the other world.
In God's presence, there would be no sickness, disease, or old age. Wilson was given the Ghost Dance and commanded to take it back to his people. He preached that if the five-day dance was performed in the proper intervals, the performers would secure their happiness and hasten the reunion of the living and deceased...


While most followers of the Ghost Dance understood Wovoka's role as being that of a teacher of pacifism and peace, others did not.
... Scholars believe that in 1890 chief Kicking Bear introduced the concept to his people, the Lakota Sioux.
The Lakota interpretation drew from their traditional idea of a "renewed Earth" in which "all evil is washed away". This Lakota interpretation included the removal of all Anglo-Americans from their lands. In contrast, Wilson's version encouraged harmonious co-existence with European Americans.

 As we approach 2011, we will need a new version of The Ghost Dance. We are going to be cut down, just like the Sioux. When the fanatics in Congress attempt to balance budgets, they will attack the poorest and sickest and most defenseless first. Then they will come after those who are not Corporate entities and Large enough to withstand their onslaught.
The white men wish to destroy us, because we use up their precious resources.
They will preach austerity while denying themselves nothing.
There is no science of Economics. It is guess work. Their guesses will be proofed upon our bones!

ps. This does not even take into consideration the white terrorists - usually labeled "deranged loners" by the conservative right wing - who will shoot us!

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The Dead

James Joyce's story.

We all stand like Michael Furey, referenced in Joce's story - an invisibile presence yet in some ways more powerful than the Living - and strain to glimpse the beauty of a future now denied us.

The Republicans 0n the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission wish to write history, but have only gotten around to banning words we all use to describe Banks. Since Banks are things Republicans like more than mankind, they must clean up the langauge people use to talk about banks:

From Economist's View

During a private commission meeting last week, all four Republicans voted in favor of banning the phrases “Wall Street” and “shadow banking” and the words “interconnection” and “deregulation” from the panel’s final report, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by Brooksley E. Born, one of the six commissioners who voted against the proposal.
“I think a number of us had really pulled for” bipartisan consensus, said Born... “But this action by the Republicans indicates they have decided to go their own way.”…

...That they would vote to not even use the words says all you need to know.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/12/words-will-never-hurt-us-or-our-cronies-if-we-dont-allow-them-to-be-used.html

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Symbol & Sign 2: Santa Claus

The entire phenomenon of Christmas is a good instruction manual in our modern incompetence for understanding symbols. What came first, the gifts or the Holiday (holy day)?

That is a harder question to answer than may appear, and it probably turns into an endless circle, and our search for an answer is like a dog chasing its own tail.
However, gift-giving is a basic human act. It is a basic act of primates. It is a basic behavior of many life forms. When we talk about Gifting in this way, think of it as something like the acts of Filling and Emptying. We celebrate - and have celebrated for thousands of years - harvests by great feasts where we FILL ourselves with food and drink and thank God for the increase.
Similarly, we have performed rituals of fasting and denial where we Empty ourselves of food and drink and often other types of things, like giving up candy for Lent, or observing Ramadan.

This is as far as we go with this matter right now in this writing. Merely keep in mind that there is more to Gifting than meets the eye. Gifting is a complex behavior, and the times of gift exchanging vary: in what was the Western Roman Empire the time became Christmas in December, while in the Eastern Byzantine and Greek portion it became St. Basil's Day in January. The gifting remains constant even though the trappings and surrounding of the exchange vary.
The season itself and its history will color the festival of gifting. The Norse god Odin, who was usually depicted with a full white beard, had a festival at Midwinter, a season called Jol or Yule, and he was referred to as Jolnir, a Yule person. Midwinter was on or about the winter solstice at December 20-21, not in the "middle" of winter, the word mid here being used to mean "at", so the calendar was "at [the start of] winter" on the solstice. ("Mid" has more than the meaning of "middle"; the "mid" in "midwife" means "with").
We have ancient feasts and ancient ideas and concepts; myths, poetries, and stories; images and imaginations and songs; and they all conspire - the ancient fellows of our fraternity of Mankind - to recall, experience, renew, and create anew the experience of the Yuletide.
There is Sinterklaas, Father Christmas, and St. Nicholas who all have changed through time and report. Dicken's A Christmas Carol has had a profound effect, as well as the illustrations of Thomas Nast. The American Retail Goods industry started on the bandwagon in the 19th century and transformed the image as well as the nature of the holiday.

There is a long and complex history.

Recently I was at a site where the morality of the story of Santa was debated: should parents tell the lie that Santa exists to their very young children since those children will eventually discover the falsehood?

I do not think the tedious discussions need repetition.

When children reach the age of the end of the willing suspension of disbelief, why not discover to them that Santa Claus is a dynamic and complex symbolic structure that sums up and extends the History of All Men and Women of Goodwill?
It is merely a myth... but a myth of immense proportions! It is a living and breathing symbolic creation. We have degraded it into commercialism, true, but we have also sung carols and spoken of the unstinting love of this descendant of St. Nicholas for good children. It is not a lie, rather it is an expression and summation of  our secular desires for peace and harmony.
Touch on the nature of Gifting as simply as saying it is a sign of love: our love for each other and God's love for us, freely given without expectation of return; freely and selflessly as Saint Nick gives his presents to all the world's children.

For heaven's sake, do not destroy Santa! Extend him to encompass the virtues of the season! Let him take under his tabard that godly charity we already express by "Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards Men!" Say that in this Christmas myth, we speak of peace, love, and selfless gifting... do likewise, young people!

The fault is not in a lie: the fault is in being ashamed of a great and powerful symbol of joy which we cannot understand because we have lost the ability to express ourselves.


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note
The religious nature of the Christmas Holiday is not addressed in this essay, so be not surprised at my omission of the Christkindl or Christ child.

China

I think it would be wise to read up on the Real Estate market in China. Look particularly at domiciles bought as investments due to lack of other investment opportunities. Spend 10 hours on it and do not listen to people with an agenda.
If there is a Chinese bubble... if... if... well, all bubbles follow certain patterns and have certain effects on bystanders.

Fun

If Old People ran the Internet:
http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1811426

The Brilliance of the Hawaii Surfer Dude, Obama

 In control? Or not?

I woke up at 2:57 AM with the notion that the Obama Hawaii surfer dude was absolutely brilliant. It seems that the president is back in the good graces of my unconscious mind and the dream-state mind. It does not surprise me at all any more. The sleep parts of my personality have always been more brilliant; while I am desultory, they are agile, lithe, and rapid; while I am feckless, they are competent and effective. It's a tough world and to get by, I have to struggle and play the role like Willie Best, while the parts of my intelligence which do not usually see the light of day are like Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois

The brilliance part - of Obama, not my sleeping intelligences - comes in the fact that he is setting up the Republicans for a monstrous fall. By increasing the deficit by almost a trillion in the lame duck session, the voters will be catered to and yet these same voters will ask over Xmas recess about how's that budget balancing thing comin'? Hmm? Hmm?
So the new Congress comes back with sharpened blades to pare the budget... and people will howl! The austerity budgets will not be enjoyed by Americans any more than do the Greeks and Irish enjoy their own.
And Obama can argue against each and every budget cutting measure. He may veto those which benefit him the most politically.

It will be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Even though such measures are required, everybody will hate them. It will take years and years for any good effects to show up. What politican who takes away your pork will last that long? We are not an altruistic nation when it comes to getting back the money taken away from us in taxes.
We are going to say that we bailed out and enriched the people that almost destroyed the financial system (here we assume the financial system has not been destroyed - it may be a long-term phenomenon that takes a long time to actually play out and the financial system may have already been in chemo and found it doesn't work!).
For this we received stagnant wages and 10% systematic unemployment.

I think there are going to be a number of Nights of the Long Knives in the Republican future.

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Stray Dog

I am watching Kurosawa's Stray Dog made in 1949.

Russian Art: Bilibin

I have always loved Ivan Bilibin. These are pictures from a story I forget... the name is something, something, of Tsar Sultan. I could look it up but it is too cold to find my copies of Bilibin: I keep them in my own private Irkutsk.
 

Symbol & Sign

In the modern day, we usually push Symbols into a subset of Signs that intelligent beings use to communicate. I do not like the way we do this, because I think we lose sight of the most important part of communication; i.e., that it is a dynamic process, not a static entity, and the understanding we glean from communication is something new in history, not a revealing of something old that was hidden.

I have a very strong suspicion of this in the phenomenon of the Meme which was so popular, and still may be widespread, not too long ago.
Succintly stated, the Meme was a concept felt to be necessary to sum up the dynamics of things that went "viral", things that obviously were spreading among people and affecting them and changing right before our eyes; the old ways of looking at signs and symbols was not adequate, because it had lost all notion of liveliness, it was no mensch, had no chutzpah, language and intelligence having been spread out on the medical examiner's table and autopsied until there was nothing of the spark of life left.

The basis of the discipline of Semiotics was linguistics and language, and the science has never escaped its origins in discrete words and phonemes. It is a science that has a extensive basis of understandoing of linguistics, but has no way to understand the vitality of creation, either linguistically or in any other area that intelligent beings create in.

A Symbol is not language alone. It is not solely linguistic.
A film is a symbol. A video is a symbol.

We shall create the science of symbols on our understanding not merely of language, but on every other conscious form of communication, so we may well include the Imaging of intelligent beings, and the cinema is a form of communication based on the grammar of Imaging, not Talking!

Furthermore, a symbol is not a static sign: it is a living creation that builds itself upon other symbols.
If I read Plato's Ion and make discoveries about art and its communication to an audience, I am not elucidating the meaning of Plato necessarily. What I am doing is creating a new entity - the philosophy of Plato through time and including my exposure to it - which is a new entity, not merely the unfolding of the old master genius.
It is a Dynamic Symbolic Process that builds upon previous dynamic symbolic processes. It is a "throwing with" - a joint effort of intelligence - sym meaning "together" (although in the Plato example one may be the superior party) - of inter-communication. And it does not stay just here; it "throws" beyond - bolos. And it creates something new, not a modification of something old.
As long as we continue to think in the old way that our efforts but modify something pre-existing, we shall never be able to understand the incredible strength of symbolic processes... or myths, too, if you will.

When pagans worshipped local nature gods, what did they worship? Did they worship a mountain? The fields? The agricultural genius of the fields? They worshipped their own interplay with the environment, combined with the "old stories" and the histories of the entire agricultural experience of their people and other peoples with whom they had contact. They worshipped the plenty of the harvest in its abundance, and they wished to avert the emptiness of the drought and famine!
They developed dyspepsia in the bacchanalia of the good years, and buried the young and old in the terror of the bad.
They watched the cycle of renewal every year. They became experts of the secret lives of plants. They developed sciences of trees and bushes and wheats and grasses...
Yet we tend to think of them as ritually-bound peoples of little wit.
The Symbol of the Nature God could kill them or support them and they knew it.

In our time, we do not understand Symbols. We think them dead, even though in 2008 the Symbolic Structure of Value and Money, the entire system of financial communication almost destroyed us back to the stone age. We need not fear any force of nature as much as we need fear our own creations! Earthquakes and tsunamis merely kill; our own symbolic creations will enslave and debase, then kill, if we let them run rogue. If we use them wisely, they will liberate and enrich us.

The picture at top is an Arapohoe Ghost Dance shirt. It has meaning that cannot be captured in language alone. It belonged to a dynamic and living symbolic structure that went extinct... until you read about it.

--note


more to come on this. I have spent years searching for an understanding of how we create the world.

A State of Undeclared War

I woke up this morning with the idea that being in the position that the USA is in militarily - ostensibly being the most powerful military on the face of the earth - means that one never has to worry about losing a war anymore.
Of course, this does not guarantee one will win such a war, as history as pointed out to us with our ongoing commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody in their right mind thinks that we'll be out of either place anytime soon, certainly not 2014 for Afghanistan - although a force majeure may force us to leave... another economic crisis.
We were actually quite lucky that we were not bogged down forever in Vietnam. We could still be there if our leaders had their way, still fighting a losing war, still creating dysfunctional relations within a region of the world (by the way, a European report just came out that the USA backed and just elected Kosovo Prime Minister was the head of a Kosovo mafia-like gang.)

By Congress never declaring war anymore, it is off the hook, so to speak. It has been off the hook for a lot of things. These long term commitments have not been entered into with the approval of myself nor my elected representative. In school we learned this is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. Now it seems no longer to be a representative democracy. And no one wins anymore, although there are plenty of losers. Undeclared war serves a different sociological function than declared wars did.
I have to work on how I feel about the loss of representative democracy for a while; I am bemused by it all.

The Day After Tomorrow

The Canadian Highway #402 is the road we take to Toronto, and it is the road where 300 people have been stranded by the snow coming in off Lake Huron. I mentioned the weather patterns here before: how the weather for the most part comes from the west and heads easterly, but you may approach Port Huron, Michigan and see banks of clouds like mountains stretching from as far north as can be seen to the limits of the south... and flowing north to south over Lambton County, Ontario.

I remember telling my friend Ruth that one of her pictures of clouds reminded me of the "mountains" I used to gaze at just 20 to 40 miles away behind Sarnia, Ontario. The land here is so flat that it is easy to get into the frame of mind that those great grey and white masses you are driving towards are some mythical oreology that is a promised Shangri-La. Clouds are like that.

The Canadian army has been drafted to assist the rescue efforts. These choppers are on the same stretch  near Arkona and Wyoming I was traveling on Thanksgiving

Pictures on the evening news of a long line of cars and trucks dressed in silent white; it looks a lot like the film "The Day After Tomorrow". Add a couple of cruise ships shaken up in the Mediterranean and Argentina and we are getting a foretaste of how strange the weather will be when climate change kicks in.
We all shall need a good winter survival kit in the automobiles of our future.

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Fuseli's Nightmares: 2

We thought mankind was Legend. We did not realize how frail they were.

Trash Day

Where did I throw my anti-gravity running shoes??

Late to Meditate

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Terror Groups That Didn't Make It

There was

Al Qa'da

(pronounce the "   '   " sort of like the "r"at the end of "butter" and let it slide.)

But for an "i" you would have had Al Qa'ida. However, al qa'da means the part of the body that does the sitting function., sometimes functioning for "maq'ada", which is "sitter, posterior".  That would have been one heck of a terror group had it continued on.

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The Shining of Washington D.C.

Congratulations, Mr. Torrance. The Management applauds your... "deal" on tax cuts and benefits to add $800 billions dollars to the deficit. They particularly like reducing the payments into the Social Security fund after having listened to 40 years of preaching about how Social Security is "underfunded".

... no one has complained have they, sir? No rioting in the streets like they do in Europe? Americans know how to behave, and you may take care of them in 2011, have no mistake. You will be able to... "correct" them properly, sir.

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Weird as it Seems...

I took the picture for the preceding post (which in blog-world is the post immediately beneath this) from a 2009 post of a blog "Ned Hayes / Notes". Recently he had a post on Michael Dorris, author of The Broken Cord which describes his life raising his adopted son who was diagnosed as having fetal alcohol syndrome.

Fetal alcohol effect is a much subtler and more insidious after-effect of alcoholism, which often manifests itself in a child's adolescent and adult behavior. In these lives, alcohol becomes a chemical with a savagely toxic half-life. Sava and Madeline share a history of instability, of pervasive lies, of violence, of suicide attempts, of aggressive behavior, of inappropriate sexual contact.

http://www.nednotes.com/writing/index.html

Beyond the obvious parallels of "cord" and connections and umbilicals and children and the neck as a cord capable of being pulled or cut, there was

In 1992, Dorris summed up the experience of many fetal-alcohol affected families by noting that over the past four years his family "hadn't had a single period longer than three consecutive days in all that time when one of our alcohol-impaired children was not in a crisis

which is what I feel like so much now. At the beginning of December, there was a short period - I'd say December 3 through December 5 midnight - when I actually said to myself I was free of too many troubles with family and friends. But this week shot it all again. And I seriously wonder that if fetal alcohol children have such problems, what is the reason for the rest of us, and why is life more toxic? Is it just me and I'm going through a period? I don't know.

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The Electronic Neck

I had mentioned recently that Nero was heard to utter "Utinam populus Romanus unam cervicem haberet!"  (I wish the Romam people had but one neck!)  the point being that thus he could behead the Roman crowd with one sword stroke.


Well, it wasn't Nero; it was Caligula. Nero only killed his family and Christians, whereas the murderous impulse of Caligula was more global.


The main point, however, was that present day elites actively are in pursuit of a goal  "...ut totius populus mundi unam cervicem electronicam haberet!", or that the entire world have only one electronic neck for essentially the same goal as Caligula. 
When all the old-fashioned books have gone, and all the newspapers are dead, and free analog TV a thing of the past, the electronic media of cable and internet will  be our only source of information and entertainment. And just us businesses and governments now seek to control our thoughts, impulses, and habits now while there is a modicum of freedom, how much more totalitarian will it be when  all they have to do is pull the plug... or cut that cord-like umbilicus.


Here is our electronic neck:

 

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Our 5 Year Plan

 

Smoke Cigarettes!

Any cigarettes will do. Just smoke them. At the time, the Soviet ministries specified so many cigarettes to be produced, so do your part. The whole story at    http://sovietposter.blogspot.com/2007/12/perfect-citizen.html

It is not all that different from our own comrade leaders telling us to get out and consume, especially around the holidays! Loose lips may sink ships, but closed wallets and tightly clenched purses scuttle society!!

Casting Call

At Market Watch:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wikileaks-the-movie-who-plays-assange-2010-12-10

Jon Friedman's Media Web

Dec. 10, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EST

 WikiLeaks, the movie: who plays Assange?

Commentary: His sinister story makes him the perfect villain

I wonder who will play the hero's role of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

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Our Lady of Chimayo

This is a reprint from my peace-poem-fasting blog from a while ago. I have been writing this morning about Job and irony and Mary, or Miriam, the mother of Jesus, and I feel this would be good now.

--
notes:
Chimayo is a sanctuary in New Mexico. Starting from Los Alamos where the atomic age was born, descending to the desert into Espanola, the low-rider capital, to the eastern mountains wherein lies Chimayo is about 60 some miles.

Sandia is a mountain.

An acequia is a water-course or aquaduct in the desert, running from higher to lower elevations

Chimayo is the locus of miracles, and people who have been cured have left crutches and splints and wheelchairs there.

Our Lady Of Chimayo

He was an acequia
and she a cottonwood tree;
The Lady of the desert placed them
outside the church at Chimayo.

She:
I am rooted in the soil.
What is it to run o'er the earth?
(she looks into the distance)
I see far off within the sky
clouds as big as Sandia,
running faster than a ghost!

He:
I hear your voice in wind and leaf...
I sense small lives upon my course.
From afar, from ridge and mountain top,
I burst free to come to you!

The Lady of Chimayo who stands within
Her holy sanctuary filled with emblems
made from mankind's suffering,
has turned her and him upon Her loom
and wove their souls from cactus fiber,
so that she would not live without his blood,
nor would he flow without her need.

--

Maxims of the Storm

"It rains on the mighty oak and heliotrope alike."


pix
http://danielrrrr.blogspot.com/

Riddick and the Life Interior

Yes, Riddick, who else?

"Now be afraid... be very afraid!"

The results of world wide testing show the USA in 14th place in Reading. It goes downhill from there. A rich interior life depends upon education. For some reason, we have never been capable of a sustained effort in education, and every 10 years we have to ask why Johnny can't read.

Sustained effort takes vision. We get our vision quest second-hand from televangelists. In the past, we had no vision but to settle from sea to shining sea and make as much money as possible. Then we wondered: what? Oh, we may say that our progress was directed by Providence, but anyone can take a gold star with "God" written it and put it on one's own forehead.
When we find our vision ends, we discover it was a short-term vision and more like a will-o-the-wisp. Now what?

When the Cold War ended, we thought there was nothing of which we could be afraid. But, like the Krel in Forbidden Planet, we did not think of what lay inside ourselves: the great empty void wherein monsters are born.

The Life Interior is the hearth of life where visions play. Visions are the source of progress: corn gods of agriculture and benzene rings of science! All dreams and visions.
However, the Life Interior is also the source of human sacrifice and atomic war. If our internal life is soft and flabby, we will be the prey of nightmares.

Turing

 Alan Turing

Who am I to complain and preach about educational failures?

I am the one, after all, who never passed a Turing Test!

--

Barking Muse

"I say, Cymbalta, what shall I write about today?"
"Arf!"
Montag muses. "Hmmm. The Arts, you say? Let me think about that."

Victory Gin Days

Pre-War residences? 21st century?
Did Julian Assange leak this from government files?

Where's the Victory Gin and the war-time ration books? And Spam, we need Spam.

The Classics to the Rescue ! 2

Once again, in the last reel of a cosmological cliff-hanger, Pythagoras is called upon to save our universe.

I have previously remarked on the fact that Pythagoras' Holkos, the fifth element which contained all other elements; i.e., the container of the universe, was a 12 sided figure or dodecahedron or soccer ball.

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2007/11/in-tempore-rerum-novarum.html

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2007/02/football-of-pythagoras.html

It will come as no surprise, then, that within the last few years, the Pythagorean-call has gone out again for Pyhagoras to help Gotham City:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/The_Poincare_Dodecahedral_Space_Model_Gains_Support_To_Explain_The_Shape_Of_Space_999.html

The Poincare Dodecahedral Space Model Gains Support To Explain The Shape Of Space
by Staff Writers
Paris, France (SPX) Feb 13, 2008

The last fifteen years have shown considerable growth in attempt to determine the global shape of the universe, i.e. not only the curvature of space but also its topology.

...Motivated by indications that the Universe may have positive curvature, and calculating large-angle vibrational harmonics to simulate the power spectrum, some authors of the present study had already argued in October 2003 that the multiply-connected Poincare dodecahedral space (PDS) topology was favoured by the WMAP data relative to an infinite, simply connected flat space.

Get It?

The payroll tax for social security has been cut by 2% for a year by President Obama and his victorious Republican allies, from 6.2% to 4.2%.

The first victorious attack on SocSec has been rather bloodless. So far, none of this has contributed to balancing the budget. And would someone please let the people in Washington know that if the higher unemployment is systemic, then all this tax cutting and destruction of SocSec won't do a thing to create jobs within the next 2 years.

Who's right? I stood on the run up to the Shock 'n' Awe Bowl and said it was a disaster in the making. My friends say that I was talking about economic disaster in the late 90's. It was a Montag-thing. Haven't been wrong in a while.

Update
12/7
Stocks went up after the deal was announced, leading to many shallow comments on how wonderful it was and how tax payers are cewlebratings; stocks ended down a bit for the day. There was not much comment at that.

Treasury bonds were being sold, as buyers found this deal what exactly I said it was:  a manipulation that makes the fiscal situation worse, not better as far as deficits are concerned.

Cookies Suo Gan

I am making oatmeal cookies and taking a nip of molasses while listening to the song "Suo Gan", it being a Welsh Gaelic song and if I don't cry at that, I'll be weeping when James Gallway takes up the fiddle and Liam Neeson narrates the leaving of Ireland.

Suo Gan reminds me of Empire of the Sun, a fine film and one of the strongest statements against war - such statements being the style of the Past Times. Empire of the Sun, Spielberg direction with Christian Bale and John Malkovich in 1987.

Suo Gan brings tears to  our eyes as we think of what could have been, and what now lay in front of us!

Climate Dither

London, Ontario, which we recently passed through during homecoming for the U of Western Ontario, has received snow and lots of it. It is estimated that 100 centimeters of snow will have fallen by Wednesday when the storm ends. That's about 40 inches.  Last winter they got 108 centimeters total.

I've mentioned the snow belt that runs south off Lake Huron before, and have been on the 401 in that stretch of road where all is clear before and after, but in the belt of the passing snow, look out!

London is about 110 miles from here, east north east. I feel like I can see Russia from the kitchen window anymore.

The Season

It's Snow Goon weather, buddy!

Update: Election 2012

Hilary Clinton versus Sarah Palin!

My Mother's Containers

I may have spoken about my mother's habit of squirreling away various kinds of containers: cardboard boxes, plastic cake holders, glass containers, the list goes on. Anyway, last week she was sitting on the couch chatting with me and the conversation took an odd turn,
"You know those boxes that  come with the blank checks the bank sends you?"
"Mm, yeah."
"They're very flimsy. I mean, they are very flimsy even if you manage to get them assembled."
I had not really thought of this as a problem, having taken a seminar in box folding in school, although what I was remembering could have actually been an intelligence test on my three-dimensional spatial perception. I seem to remember such things. My counselor said that my tests indicated I should inhabit a two-dimensional universe. He had a furrowed brow as he related this to me.
"Well, yes. They are rather flimsy."
Pause. Pregnant pause. I am always after her to throw out boxes, so I felt she was setting the stage for something.
"Well, it's a good thing I saved some of those sturdy boxes from the old days. I use them, and they are much more stable!"
She had a distinct note of vindication in her voice.
I tried to remember exactly how far back the glory days of personal banking were; 20, 30, 40 years perhaps; but the mists of time clouded memory.

The Great Impoverishment and Pet Cemetary, Inc.

 Flag of IngSoc from 1984

I was writing in a post:

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2010/12/amsoc-war-is-peace-emmanuel-goldstein.html

about the Great Impoverishment, which is what other people call the Great Recession... which is not actually a Recession, having been declared officially dead some time in the past due to a certain number of fiscal quarters in succession meeting certain levels of activity.
Perhaps it has come back, like a zombie that our popular culture is so fond of. Maybe it is a double dip, or a triple dip.

Regardless, we spoke of Orwell's 1984 and how it is coming true in ways we find hard to grasp. Orwell's exact details are off, but the main thrust of our history is spot on with his story. Case in point, the obvious correlation between Orwell's Oceania and our NATO. From the BBC covering new WikiLeak material:


Another cable, signed by Mrs Clinton, instructs US embassies how to deal with the new Nato plan for the Baltic states, and stresses that the project must be kept secret.


"We see the expansion of Eagle Guardian as a step toward the possible expansion of Nato's other existing country-specific contingency plans into regional plans," it says.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11933089

Oceania extends itself right up to the borders of Eurasia, or the Russian Federation.

This parallel between NATO : Oceania, Russian Federation : Eurasia, and China (as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) is so patent that it makes my repetition of it tedious. The parallelism also indicates how far along each Bloc is:  NATO (Oceania) is well defined, China (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) is not so well defined, but is on the road to its full complexity and self-awareness, and Russia(Eurasia) has yet to define itself and the limits of its body - unless, since it is already a Federation, we accept present boundaries as the limits; the Russian Federation is pretty massive.

None of any of this is as interesting as the fact that the state of society in 1984 was that of Victory Gin and low quality cigarettes, reflecting the stresses and shortages of World War II. The people eat synthetic foodstuffs which fare is very prophetic of the deterioration of the quality of food today, taste having been bred out for shelf life, tasteless meats, GM foods (and the problem with genetically modified food is the fact that for all the tinkering with genes and the environment, we shall have GM food designed for the bottom-line of food companies and not for the consumer's enjoyment!)

Our present straitened circumstances are our entry into 1984. It will never go back. If you think it will, I ask: Go back to what?
You would have to say, back to the dream days following World War II, the first generations after that engagement where we came out, not exhausted but in our prime and re-built the world... and made a pretty penny doing it. Everything goes back to WW II, Victory Gin, ration books...

What we have learned is that you cannot kill Authoritarian systems by defeating them, for they will have bitten you on the hand during the struggle, and by the prevailing logic of zombie stories, you will become one of those Zombies which fill popular culture, along with werewolves and vampires: a disease that procreates itself in its death.

We shall not all die, but we ourselves must all be changed.
If we do not change, we create a Stephen King Pet Cemetary world where all the perversions come back to haunt us!

--
ps. I intended to put a zombie picture at the beginning as an illustration, but I find I can not bring myself to put such a diseased notion into this blog. It is a terrible blasphemy against God's love in my mind.

Huis Clos

Nous nous trouvons la-bas...
Nous et la Nausee, notre belle amie.
J'en suis "sartrain".

"Sartrain" is a state-of-being-inside-Sartre's-head.
I feel a being-here-in-the-world, and I feel
the nausea which accompanies it.
We find ourselves late at night in a dead end alley... and we mug ourselves... ouch!

Tax Cut Stimulus

Senator McConnell said Sunday that we can not raise taxes on anyone in the midst of a Recession, forgetting that earlier this year some Governmental department in charge of such things had declared that the Recession was over... or was that last year?
This is Republican stimulus: billions in tax cuts for the stated purpose of creating jobs and ending the Recession, a recession which has already been declared ended.

You can not create jobs fast enough to employ all those who have been put out of work due to radical changes of the economy itself. 80% or more of unemployment is now due to need for less workers due to automation and other improvements. 10% unemployment is a generations long phenomenon; it is not temporary. We are out of the Recession. Now we're in the Great Impoverishment.

You can not balance budgets and retain tax cuts for the ostensible purpose of creating jobs! It is a stimulus hidden in tax mumbo-jumbo. The fact that Republicans and Democrats are doing this right now is a very good indication that they are consciously trying to hide what they are doing, and they will end up doing nothing positive.

It is time to end the self-deception. Rolling up our sleeves when we have nothing is a lot bigger task than rolling them up before you had destroyed everything! Vote Progressive!

--

Handel and New York Fries

I never had any desire to embed a video until I saw this.

I did not wish to mess with the column width so if you left-click on the video here, you will be directed to YouTube where you may watch the full width video.
It has that welling-up-with-whatever Christmas thing effect.

--

Five Card Stud, Nothing Wild... and the Sky's the Limit!

What to do? Economists and Politicians and Everyone wonders what is the right policy to change the course of events.

Unfortunately, I see the present as a generation-long big old Poker Tournament: we're playing five-card, just as the crew of the Enterprise does so often in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Lady Luck deals us one card down and one card up. We bet our hands, and she slowly, very, very, slowly deals us another card up - to be followed by another round of betting - and continues on this way until we reach a total of five cards in each players hand.
We are playing with billions of players.

Each time Fortune gives us our next card, the Dealer provides commentary like "No help there!" and "Possible flush!"  Economists and politicians mumble in the background. It gives the illusion of freedom.
Actually all the cards have already been dealt out, and most of us are already fully in the game and have anted up and bet our shirts; what we are seeing is a documentary video of that in slow motion. The deck had been stacked and the cards all dealt out and bets placed; now we go forward to our pre-determined end.

Why I Never Use the Expression "Post-Modern"

 Sachem Moth: a new Stereotype

We are simple here. You see this shirt I wear? My wife made this shirt from colored cloth I brought to her. We are getting clean from our addictions. I am in rehab for TV addiction. I will come out clean... maybe I shall need the "patch" for a while.

We do not accept the expressions of your philosophers anymore. We define ourselves in the Universe and in relation to God using our own words. Home-made words. Rough-hewn words. Woods irregular and splintery, but bodgered by ourselves out in the woods we share with the woodland creatures.

Your philosphies do not enlighten nor do they free. Your religions have led you to eternal conflict. Your technologies lead to slavery.

We do not use your  words anymore forever.


--

Lost Horizon

The novel was published in 1933, the year Herr Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

To me, that event marks the high point of the story of the Optimistic Narrative of the landscape of the world. This was the story of Shangri-La and the promise of peace and self-fulfillment. However, the British protagonist is morally compelled to return to civilization, taking with him the woman of Shangri-La who has fallen in love with him. When the go back through the mountains and beyond a certain "magical" boundary, the woman ages rapidly to her true antiquity... unhappy endings all around.

From Shangri-La to the Anti-Utopian visions that have dominated the popular mind, we have history since 1933. I pointed out that even religious fundamentalism finds its symbolic treasure in stories of End of Times and strife, not Eden and peace.

We are formed by our World, and we create it, too. It is a feedback cycle. Someone has a monkey wrench or spanner of spiritual dimensions... please throw it into the works! Derail this train to Armageddon!

The Department of Electro-Vigilance

Buy a Book! says Philosopher Katerina Wittgenstein.

Free Television is now dead. It costs over $1,000 US per year to have access to a few fine shows and a sea of wretched insanity. For my money, I have access to raging Religion shows that spout views that in the old days were confined to sanatoriums. Now I am able to hear religion and politics and opinions that are right from the bar fly section of hell!

Newspapers are dying and what will they be replaced by? I'll guarantee you that whatever it is will cost you at least 10 times more than the old newsprint, and it will be something that will be used to manipulate your mind and to keep track of your spending habits.

Books are on the ropes, and many believe they will be replaced by things like Kindle. Within a year after we bury Book Publishing, commercials will begin to appear on your Kindles: Guinness Stout adverts on your copy of James Joyce, Pride and Prejudice interrupted by ads of Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman pitching kitchen items.
And you will be tracked.

Presently, the Business Plan for all electronic devices is to keep track of what we do, how much we spend, what we look at. It does not occur to business nor government not to use every new technology for such pursuits. Everything is bent to enslaving us to the wishes of those hold hold the electronic leash!

Stop it now, idiots!
In Rome, Nero wished that the people had but one neck to make it easier to cut! The oligarchy of the few rich and powerful find it easier to bind us by our future One electronic neck!
Declare Cable TV Holidays when nothing is viewed. Support Newspapers. Buy Books this Christmas!

--

Future Politics

For every Mandela, there are a thousand Mugabes.
For every Gandhi, there are a thousand Stalins.
For every Aung San Suu Kyi, there are a thousand Pol Pots.

Change the equation!  Invictus!

--

The Great Impoverishment: Amsoc, War is Peace, Emmanuel Goldstein and Julian Assange... and Bin Laden, too

Amsoc is the new American socialism, a variant of Ingsoc, or English socialism as portrayed by George Orwell in his novel 1984.

Emmanuel Goldstein is one of the original founding members of the Party that rules Oceania in 1984. It is Oceania that was ruled by the Party, consisting of the Inner Party and the Outer Party, and the iconic Big Brother. The common Proles, or workers, made up the remaining 85% of the population. Oceania was a political entity that usually was at war with its enemies  - or allies for the time being  - of Eurasia and East Asia.
It is Goldstein who is the object of the daily Two-Minute Hate, providing an ideological enemy to supplement the external material enemy Eurasia or East Asia. The constant threat of Goldstein firms up the devotion to Big Brother.

Goldstein wrote The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, an oligarchy being a "rule by a group - and not too large a group" from the Greek oligos meaning "some, a few". There is a vast gap between the wealthiest 5%,  or 15%,  and the rest of the population.
From the fictional book of the fictional Goldstein we learn that Orwell's 1984 concedes that the 19th and 20th century Capitalism could possibly lead to a state where great benefits could be available to large numbers of people, much more than at any time in the past. However, if such a process were to continue uncontrolled, then the workers and proletarians and poor:


", become politically conscious and so depose the ruling oligarchy; therefore, ". . . in the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance". Given that large-scale, mechanised production could not be eliminated once invented, the Party arranges the destruction of surplus goods — before that makes "the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent", hence perpetual war:

is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population . . . It is a deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.

 (Wikipedia, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism)

Each [power bloc: Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia] is in effect a separate universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practiced . . . The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they chose.

To wit, "the war" is "waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact", therefore, war is peace.

(Wikipedia, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism)


Well, that's a lot of ground work. So what does it all mean?
The Oligarchy is being established as we speak. The vast differences in wealth have already established an oligarchy: rule by the few and rich and powerful.
The Power Blocs of the Oligarchies are in various stages of development:  NATO is the embryonic form for Oceania, and China will use the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a template for East Asia; Russia will use a renaissance of the Warsaw Pact for Eurasia.
The Chinese Communist Party will form the Oligarchy ruling party of East Asia, the present Oligarchy in Russia will develop and transform into the Oligarchy of Eurasia, and the Oligarchy of the West is already established as the Oligarchy for Oceania - it merely hasn't become "self-aware" yet!

The Great Impoverishment    (not the Great Recession as the media would have it) we see now as the world's governments struggle to reduce deficits is not going to necessarily be a temporary hiatus: it will be made permanent if the forces of repression gain the upper hand over the next few years.


The Two-Minute Hate has already been incarnated as the Osama bin Laden news clip. To this we add the demonisation of Julian Assange whose WikiLeaks is the enemy of the Ministry of Truth: that vast bureaucracy whose sole purpose was to create the Lie of History for Big Brother and the Party.


Will Julian Assange become a man without a country, always on the run, holed up in Pakistan like that other emblematic enemy of Oceania... er, enemy of the West, Osama bin Laden? Only time will tell. How many more Emmanuel Goldsteins do we need?



--qed--
 some pix:   http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/

We Hardly Knew Ye, Bump!

 From Canada's National Post, this obit. Read the first paragraph.

--

Season of Light

This is it: Deewali just over, Hannukah just beginning, and Christmas getting a head of steam up; Kwanzaa thereafter.
The lights have gone on in Rochester, Michigan.
I believe I have told this story, how I wuz dragged, grumbling and mumbling, to look at some Xmas froo-froo decorations and lights one year; how I stood on the corner of University and Main and sucked in my breath with amazement, my brain reeling from the sight! I had suddenly been transported across interstellar distances to the exact middle of a globular cluster of brilliant and searing stars - of all the colors of the rainbow - or spectrometer, keeping with the Hubbelesque metaphor.

It was Las Vegas without the sleaze! It was Tokyo without the traffic! It was the Big Apple without the annoying Big Apple-ers!

It is locally referred to as the big Lagniappe. This is a Creole word meaning a gift, usually given by shopkeepers to valued customers. It is said to derive from Quecha through Spanish and finally through French: la (the) + nyapa (gift).
According to Mark Twain, it was pronounced "lanny-yap" in his day.
I was surprised when I heard this. I was unaware of any Creole influence in Rochester, Michigan. I have been there, and I have heard absolutely no one swear "Tabernac!!" or any such thing, not even a "sacre bleu!" or "merde!".  But there you have it: noonday sun and calm and - bingo! - the mist of French envelops le monde.

Magic

I read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking in October.
In November, I approached Thanksgiving with a bizarre blot of a song running through my head: Didion dina, dit-on, du dos d'un dodu dindon!
If you studied French 101, you may recognize it. I was just lucky that I was not carving the "chubby turkey" - dodu dindon - with Didion and dining with her! I never would have made it past the cranberries.

Of course, when I recall the book, I refer to it as The Year of Thinking Magically which, if you were an allegorical neuron resting within the old cranium, you would immediately recognize as a collision at the intersection of Memory Lane and Cognitive Boulevard between Ms. Didion's bus and the trolley of The Year of Living Dangerously - a film starring Sigourney Weaver ( sigh...), Mel Gibson, and Linda Hunt.
( I have an entire gallery of memory devoted to Sigourney Weaver. There is an exhibit scheduled for the new year. Check at the virtual TicketMaster...no, send 25 dollars and I shall save you a ticket!)

If you were fortunate enough to have viewed A Very Long Engagement, you will recall that the character Mathilde played by Audrey Tatou was a very magical thinker, "If I reach the bend in the road before the car, Manech will return alive from the war!"

Magic can be an earnest desire for good. Magic can be a fearful obsession to deflect pain. It can also be a desire for evil - or so it seems to me when we wish damnation upon ours enemies.

Magical thinking is something we use to create our conscious world.

This is not to say that it is somehow an illusory exercise; not necessarily.

The thinking of Faith is similar to magical thinking - its images of desire are forged within our passionate hearts.
However, it exists in a conscious structure of Faith which prevents the worst excesses of magical thinking - such as believing God will give me a winning lottery ticket.

A science fiction writer whose name is not immediately on Memory Lane's corner, waiting for a lift, once said that a sufficiently advanced technology will always appear to be magic to a backward people.

We may add that a sufficiently advanced Faith will always appear to be Magic to a backward people.

--
a reprint.
I have lost any creative spark.
crying and spilled milk, what?

Capital

I see that Iran has executed the lady who has been on death row, on and off, since 2003.

I want to condemn this act of barbarism.

I live in Michigan, USA, a state created in 1838, and in all that time, we of Michigan have never, ever allowed capital punishment in our community.

The rest of the USA is not in such a position to make commentary, as I wonder how many women have been executed here since 2003. I know of one who was executed a couple of months ago.

We condemn the barbarism.

--

WikiLeaks

"  You can't handle the Truth !!! "

--