Once upon

a very recent time,
tourists trudged streets
while gawping glassily
at buildings and shop-fronts,
fountains and plazas
churches and sculptures.

Now I behold them shuffling along
entranced by their tablets and smartphones.

Paradox

Once the brain of the thinker
has been washed
(ineluctably dyed)
by the notion of worth,
the conclusion is reached
that everything human
(including the thinker)
is worthless.

Meanwhile and far away,

the planet Jupiter
photographed by NASA spacecraft Juno.

There's no control

like self-control
and birth control

We are the species
out of control.

We have nothing to fear

but the truth
(if we ever can find it)
about ourselves.

Nice poster

which is doing the rounds
and will make not an iota of difference.

Senile Insouciance.

Some of us
get to the age
when other people
are less interesting
than plants,

so we hope that our smell
or our unzipped
second-hand pants
will keep them at bay.

No lamentation.

Let us not grieve
at all we achieve
besides devastation

(to be empirical)

just birth, overpopulation
and death without salvation

the miracle.

Half of wisdom

is despair
The other half
is learning how
not to care.

Western European Renaissance Art

is pretty bizarre:

The first small step

towards "Saving the Planet"
would be to stop using the words
animal and beast
as insults.

We haven't got there yet.

A great many disgruntled people

are talking about élites and The Élite 
as they once talked about Jews 
and the World-wide Zionist Conspiracy.  
They'll be lucky that they don't end up
with worse than Donald Trump.

Beyond humanity

evil cannot exist.

Elegant living

and forest-desecration.

thanks for the photo, Almina

We are 'intelligent' enough

to learn
to 'find out'
and to 'know'

but too irrational
and erratic
to act upon our knowledge.

Melting acid snow...

Language demands.

Because we have language
we're always
explaining ourselves
(and the world)
to ourselves.

We should not kid ourselves

that Christianity
(a religion for the poor in spirit)
spread right through the world
from Greenland to Tasmania
and Patagonia to Japan
because of its peaceful message,

but because of a rapacity
greater and more hypocritical
than that of Islam.

Appearance versus Ancestry

from https://eduardo-.tumblr.com/ :

I once read an article that emphasized there is no such thing as a fish. Sharks and rays, lamprey, lobe-finned fish like lungfish and coelacanth, bichir and sturgeon, and of course the multiple infraclasses of more “modern” fish groups are all only very distantly related to one another. They’ve maintained semi-similar body structures only because there are limited ways to efficiently move through water as a vertebrate. 

This:

And this

Are more distantly related from one another than you and I are from a lungfish

Which is absolutely fuckin wild.

Not only that, but all of us air-breathing land vertebrates, all the lizards and chickens and people and frogs, are closer to one another than those three “fish” are to one another as well.

these:

are genetically closer than these

and…

these

are genetically closer than these

- and my personal favorite, it really fucks with people…

these

are more genetically similar than these

And hares cannot interbreed with rabbits.

A message to humankind:

the ice you're treading on
gets ever thinner.

Kitsch consciousness

In vitro fertilisation
Curing cancer
Looking for a Unified Theory
Flying to Mars
Thinking of an after-life
while the Burning Mountain
(or the melting glacier)
falls into the sea.

Escurial Beatus Apocalypse MS : The Angel sounds the Second Trump.
Book of Revelations, VIII.                         Click to enlarge.

History repeats itself - in spades.

The 'success' of the Roman Empire
(in wiping out large species
and small tribes) depended upon
continuous expansion...
which led to its fragmentation
and collapse.

Another surprise on Google Earth.

Just 1% of the population of The Jewish Autonomous Oblast 
in the Russian Far East
is Jewish.

Few things

are as ugly as a lorry *
or a car,
but a burnt-out vehicle
is sculptural.

* US: truck

Religionists -

If you wish to glorify The Lord
offer fallen blossoms humbly,
not the sheer vanity
of mosques and temples and cathedrals
built for the rich
to dominate the poor
and poor in spirit like themselves.

In Europe.

For hunger
there are Food-banks, Restaurants du Cœur.

For thirst
there are ponds and puddles.

For sleeping
there are derelict buildings
abandoned cars.

For dying
there is everywhere.

The banality of category.

Breasts and long hair:
it is called Woman.
Beard and/or chest-hair
and a penis:
it is called Man.
But that is merely appearance.

The root is the mouth

of the tree.
Pour water there
and it sprouts
green
way above
unlike us.

The idea of truth

is infantile.
Truth is what satisfies
the truth-
or sooth-
sayer.

Life is hungry.

It eats us
completely.
Life is hunger.

The most loathsome capitalism

is Social Capitalism.

The worst men are

"men's men".

From 'The Little Ice Age'

to the Big Heat...

"You never feel better than when

you start feeling good
after you have been feeling bad."

Nicely put, William Least Heat Moon in Blue Highways.

Deep question.

Does emotional promiscuity
indicate emotional shallowness
or emotional generosity ?

Of all the addictions,

perhaps the Work-ethic
is the most destructive.

Taste-buds

evolved before teeth.
It stands to reason, really.

Our economic system has progressed

from hiring-fair
to labour-market.

VIA : Very Impermanent Art

So much more fun than the permanent stuff.
Ten a minute is the rate of output.

Coupelle [Michel Perfetti] et Yaourt [Anthony Weir], April 2019.

Unpretentious.

Upper cemetery, Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, SW France.

Most native English-speakers

have heard of The Great Irish Famine
(so-called because there had been lots of numerically-smaller famines before 1845).

Millions of the least-poor Irish fled
(because of the excellent military-road system)
to ports where boats would take them
(at a price) to England, Scotland, Canada, Mexico,
Chile...and, of course the United States of America.

But, it seems, none emigrated to France.

Language cannot have been a reason,
since many emigrants did not speak English.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
was not at war with France.

The potato famine of 1845-50 affected the whole of northern Europe,
especially eastern Germany and Poland.
Even so, why were there no Irish emigrants
to (Iberia or) France ?

It's only a tiny distance

from Take Care!
to You'd better Watch Your Step!

Included in the humbling number

of things I don't understand
is why people think that meat is a treat
(for which they are constantly lusting) -
or, worse - something necessary to eat -
while for me it is pretty tasteless
and slightly disgusting.

If pity is,

as Christians and maybe Buddhists seem to think,
the Highest Form of Love,
I love almost everybody -
realising, too, that pity
is not far from contempt.

There really is no difference

between doing 'the wrong thing for the right reasons'
and doing 'the right thing for the wrong reasons'

because rationality is our destructive delusion.

Liebestod.

Wagner expressed it perfectly :
about mere romantic love.

Pleonasm (or tautology) :

"Language barrier".

"Godliness" :

to suffer like an animal...
but it's not suffering or punishment
or natural retribution
that might redeem us - just
happy acceptance of death and destitution.

People are strangely resistant to the truth

and the truths in novels.
They prefer the lies, half-truths and speculation
of psychologists, philosophers,  statisticians,
journalists, scientists, and politicians.

I wonder which philosopher...

"...says it is our greatest crime
to ignore the beauty of the world" ?

- Irish Murdoch: The Italian Girl

If self is a fantasy,

we are merely
imaginative marionettes.