Signs Of Greater Age (24)

1-thinking everything you see today
is expensive because yesteryears prices
made a far stronger impression on you
than how you recollect recent times.

2-going the the cinema on spec
but leaving more quickly than previous
when you find the violence more gratuitous
and unpleasant than you found comparable films
when younger. Forgetting that you, like others,
enjoyed depictions of violence because you were young.
But the money spent discovering  the sensitivity of maturity,
for leaving the cinema, is still money well spent.

Giftwrapped!

Our generosity to Mother Nature is infinite. With thank to here.

'Slaughter Your Darlings'

is a term editors use with journalists
and proffessional writers, when they
want the writer to remove those phrases
that believe their readers will find superflous,
that the writer has is attached to,
which is proof of weak writing.
Alas, I don't write enough to have that dilema
and as self editor I would be talking to myself
when I said them.
Writing for nothing is one form of insanity,
talking to myself would raise me
a few notches higher on the madness scale.

The phrase makes sense to me with food
-not every meal I make turns out well
and with the best meals there are always lefovers.
Historically, one point of keeping a dog
was not just as canine hot water bottles,
but lived on the leftovers of the humans
who 'owned' them thus leaving less to the vermin
households were prey to. Now with food
that is less than appetising that still I am
disinclined to waste I wish I could summon up
the grattitude of my inner dog, and slaughter
those darlings, and be grateful for the scraps
my inner human has left for me.
 

Towards A Life Beyond Time

Has there ever been a war that was genuinely 'just'?
I will wager that if there was
it was a war that was just because
it was stopped before it was started;
the argument behind it over land or power settled
at it's core before the blood of man and beast was shed.
I would be happy to celebrate such a non-war,
because I would be cheering what never started.
The only difficulty with such a celebration would be
finding the date for the celebration of a non-event.  

Pursuing The Best,

whilst knowing that we only ever see
how much we missed it by seems good to me.
The virtue is in seeing how much we miss by.
It tempers the jeaousy in the will to win
-an instinct it is impossible to extinguish.  

My Second New Year Card For 2014

Maynard Dixon, Shapes of Fear, 1930 from here

 

From One Of My Favourite Anti-Natalist bloggers....

'Two days ago I was obliged to enter the huge Apple store in central London. My god, what an experience. I don't think I've seen a more crowded shop in my life. What really struck me was that most people were interested in the trinkets and accessories that go with their iProducts. An extra bauble here, another there, and let's be picky about what colour it is. I've rarely felt more alienated from my own culture and was so relieved to get out of there.

I then came home and put on Al-Jazeera and watched a big report on the current slaughter in both the Sudan and the Central African Republic. Comparing the narcissism of the Apple store with the slaughter in Africa, and then reflecting on the west's savage imperialism and raping of that benighted continent, all I can say is that if the African countries ever got their act together and united to invade Europe in a revenge crusade, I could only say we'd get what we deserve. To quote the greatest chronicler of western decadence, Michel Houellebecq, on the mindset of those of those in the 'advanced' world: 'I know only that every single one of us reeks of selfishness, masochism, and death'.'

  You can read his writings, going back several years, here.