And countries get closer to reviving
old trade wars, where neighbours withhold,
and ransom, emblems of neighbourliness,
goods that were once thought basic to survival.
Instead we get closer to the remoteness
where arms and drones are what we exchange,
in wars that offer no escape from conflict.
There our former stance of holding tight
to our allies, whilst keeping a closely watch
on our enemies, all in the hope of unity,
now seems somewhat pointless.
The attention span economy
is a much used phrase nowadays,
what the phrase measures out first
is the amount of time we spend online
clicking in and out of sites that entertain us
until we can take no more in. Then the clickbait
invites us to agree to something that costs us money
that we did not want, so we scurry to the bank
to save it costing us more than we can commit to.
The attention span economy is one
of time first, seeking that endorphin hit
from watching and hearing something
well beyond what we could make without assistance.
Until the unit of currency becomes money,
which happens when we lose our focus
whilst idly browsing a website where we
did not read the small print that tells us
'this will cost you'. That wakes us up.
Where terrestrial analogue television was slow,
and lacked nuance but was good for embedding habits
the way people used to time their lives to radio schedules,
YouTube is now there all the time, and is edited
much tighter, its algorithms move much faster,
so we have to decide for ourselves when to leave:
before the clickbait becomes rage bait I suggest.
I have been very slow to choose
a resolution for the coming new year
that I might be able to sustain.
But over two weeks after others
have made all their decisions,
I may have found one.
I am going to come out, late in life,
as an introvert and forget the alphabet
of mental health labels by which others
define and redefine themselves.
If a lack the words in the middle
of an attempted conversation
it is because I am 'an introvert' coping
with a world set to 'extrovert' terms
of change, need, and want, and grabbing attention.
*here 'In' is short for 'introvert'.
Thoughts and prayers are like public apologies
by media figures, the more detached the presentation
of the speaker, as they retreat from the specifics of the matter,
the more the speaker devalues themselves
and the public space they are occupying.
I never liked football as a child,
but still I tried to understand life.
I disliked how easily football
used to as fill television screens.
Sport on television was more about television
than ever it was about sport. The alternative
was that television was about advertising.
I would have liked to be on the stands
and joined in the roar of the crowd.
but I could not find local matches
and from them, pick a side I liked.
Now the new American Empire has ended
legal visits to it from seventy five countries
across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East,
Asia, and Eastern Europe. This dictum excludes
citizens from across large parts of the world
from attending World Cup matches in person,
as part of their planned summer holiday.
Countries whose citizens are not banned
from visiting America may well discourage
their citizens from attending the event.
On the grounds that the World Cup
was meant solely meant as an own-goal
scored by, and for, American democracy.
American exceptionalism wins/defeats itself again.....
of a world where politics, power games,
and other dialogues of the deaf
leave the oxygen in normal conversation,
and where the silence does not roar or deafen.
Where every day life has its own flow
and presence. Everything is in its place:
nothing seems like it is missing.
Then I wake up to where I am,
wishing I lived somewhere else,
or, somehow, another person.
I cannot escape, or embrace, who I used to be.
Is over 200 years old, marginally younger
then the Republic of America, itself.
This doctrine is as definitively American
as Mom and apple pie, but is far less innocent.
It proclaims the rights for presidents of the USA
too rule the roost, as they choose,
in the smaller countries that make up
the continent to the south of them.
Initially it was written to keep Europe
out of South America, and it was not a doctrine.
It became a doctrine in 1846 when James Polk,
then President of the USA, upgraded Monroe's statement,
by invading Mexico to nearly double the size of America,
only for a civil war to be started about the right to keep slaves,
versus ending the trade and keeping of slaves, fifteen years later.
Every geographic expansion had it's price.
Ending slavery was the big change, where
the descendants of slaves still pay the cost.
Fast forward to the 1904 when Teddy Roosevelt
added his corollary of taking pre-emptive action
to the countries in South America that he thought
needed American reform from Cuba (from 1898), Haiti (1915),
Nicaragua (from 1912), Dominican Republic (1916),
Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), and Panama (1989)
are among the many countries whose governments
have been modified by updates of American Capitalism
where The Monroe Doctrine is a political instrument
of uncertain long term political effect, beyond the world
expecting further lectures to be presented
from the American Bully Pulpit of History.
Please left click here for 30 mins of audio which
investigates one of the over eighty USA interventions
in the name of what started as the Monroe Proclamation.
AI, when applied to science, to reading X rays,
and other types of scans of the human body
is truly intelligent and reveals what humans
cannot divine without the help to see it.
But like every other computer based prosthesis,
when is applied to the appetite for entertainment,
in a world reprogramed for maximum patriarchy,
it multiplies the male appetite for the works of the flesh,
and other imaginary relationships, until what it feeds
will run away with itself and take its followers with it.
Only when we take back our previous sense of self,
and reclaim a human sense of proportion, can we
better sustain what follows on from a limited intent.
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| Could go in several directions, and may even go into reverse, but it can't go into more than one direction at once. |
The history of empire is the history of time,
The earliest empires invented calendars
that were pegged to the reign of the emperor
or the founding of the city state that becomes
the centre of empire. Egypt, Greece and Babylon
were exemplars of this, all three relied for growth
on enslaved labour which varied and could be benign
according to the skills the empire needed, on the day.
In all these empires slavery was a way
of organising large scale labour,
as much as creating social control.
Rome was last empire of the ancient world,
and into it Christianity was born and took root
in a way that was beyond rational explanation.
Rome later made churches the backbone of the state,
the place where citizens eventually paid their taxes.
Islam came after and became a faith built around empire,
built around externalising mass conflict management,
making their homegrown troublemakers trouble for their enemies.
None of these empires started with founding documents
of statehood, or constitutions that sought to define 'freedom'
or what freedom, or purpose, might be for, or against.
America was the empire that inherited both slavery
and the word 'freedom' from the English, to free itself
of England. Whilst keeping hold of a rampant, Capitalist,
model by which to conduct modern industrial slavery.
All whilst claiming to be Christian whilst being unaware
of how many of the earliest Christians were Roman slaves,
who found a balm in Christianity that made slavery endurable,
their faith unrecognised by their superstitious, grasping, masters.
English quirkiness has rarely found a more peaceable competitiveness
than with The Good Funeral Awards, an annual competition
run by The Good Funeral Guide, The Natural Death Centre
and The Association of Green Funeral Directors. The winners
of the awards for their 2025 competition can be found here.
But the winner of the award for Gravedigger of the Year
has already found his moment in the national spotlight.
Please mark, read, and inwardly digest the news,
of who won this award, and admire the trees
that have replaced the memorial gravestones, here.
The trees celebrate life past, life present,
and life in the future...
And newer excuses for the three superpowers
for each to encourage each other to backslide
to the foreign office position of their choice
as they divide the world into spheres of influence
I recall afresh why the USA was first created.
In the 1770s the American colonies could see
The British East India Company eyeing them up
and decided, for all sorts of myths and false excuses
rebellion from British rule was the better option.
Now America is playing a part akin to the role
its old nemesis that made the colony-states stop
wanting to live under the old country's rules.
The plunderer has changed his face, but remains
the same corporate liar and thief, underneath
the new skin lives a renewed vigour for destruction.
The last eighty years have not been peaceful.
Where countries have declared 'peace',
it has been by masking how their military
and intelligence services have operated,
and making their armament industries
'for export' and 'for defensive use' only.
But with new technology, old alliances
weakened, and weaponry that could never
be purely defensive now setting the agenda
the world is turning to a new darkness,
that we now realise never went away.
So watch out for a new NATO where America
has no allies and share no values with anyone else.
And its near neighbours, Cuba and Mexico have
no safe distance from an enmity they can't control.
Ukraine and other states that border other empires
inclined over-reach themselves will seek out
a frame of mind more cautious, than enlightened.
With the world as we once knew it ending....
Even the poor in our society
have six times more
than it's sane to desire
And the rich everywhere are always wanting
something for nothing, as if they deserve it.
When wanting less means less want,
how to make sure of our sense of sanity?
 |
| But it it will happen to me one day, in the meanwhile I can live and wait. |
Hope comes to me,
from the belief that when I am long gone,
there will be more of life to come after me
than there was when I was there to share in it.
To simplify what I have,
who I know, and what I know them for,
so that the next time the next word
or idea won't come to me in conversation
I can reassure myself that I am missing less.
Because time shrinks all things, anyway.
 |
| Bonne année, Frohes Neues Jahr, Gelukkig nieuwjaar, Buon Anno, Feliz año nuevo, Gezuar vitin e ri, Kαλή χρονιά, Cреќна нова година. |
In the 1970s, as I reached toward
what 'being a grown up' appeared to be,
and as my hopes of mature choice
kept retreating from me, one phrase
that I found to convey how I felt
repeated itself ad nauseam,
and took on a life of it's own.
I wrote about 'having mixed feelings',
to spare the shame of my family.
until I almost believed it.
Adding the word 'mixed' to 'feelings'
meant to me that what I felt was complex,
and explainable. 'Mixed' gave me a pivot
away from how impossible it was
to explain to myself, then family and friends
that surrounded me who always denied
that anyone's life could be that awful.
Decades later, through several therapists,
I found the words it was previously
impossible to spit out, and they cleansed me.
The unbelievable life became not only credible
but disposable as well, with sympathetic company.
 |
| Étienne Trouvelot (1827 – 1895) was a French painter, astronomer and entomologist. |
 |
| In his youth he lived in France, as an adult, for political reasons, he lived in America. |
 |
| These water colour paintings are now remembered as the peak of his creative life. |
 |
| The precision of them speaks of many hours at the telescope, and slow resolve of memory to recall the images seen afterward. |
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| There are 14 of these images in total. Please left click here for an image of the man himself and a link to all the images. |
