Famous people

are rarely sane.

Discuss, with reference to Schopenhauer.

Private (閒人免進)

 

photo by Fan Ho, Hong-Kong, 1960.

It is ever more difficult to be private
in an aggressively public world.

'There's something awfully sad

about happiness.'

– Noël Coward, Present Laughter, 1939.

First we had 'The End of History',

but now we must consider
the end of Philosophy and Psychology:

human shame at being human.

Typical human extremism.

Alcohol-free drinks are booming in France,
including wines from which the alcohol is extracted.
The non-alcoholic beers are good. 

But why not a 'happy medium'
of low-alcohol wines and spirits
like Northern Portugal's Vinho Verde ?

How to see

beyond the seeming

seems impossible to me.

Denmark's 'Crimes against Humanity'.

One of the first and most brutal slaving nations,
'Little Denmark' has been waging a subtle genocide
against Greenlanders since Iceland
finally gained independence in 1944
(during Nazi occupation). 
Contraceptive coils were inserted into their wombs
without either their consent or their knowledge.
Birth-rates plummeted, of course,
and Greenlandic culture almost collapsed
as a result of Danish education forced upon them.

Meanwhile the rich planet-destroyers
keep on breeding and arrogantly consuming.

Like frost on barbed-wire,

the amyloid plaques in the brain
which indicate Alzheimer's disease.

Dresden James,

alias Donald James Wheal (1931-2008) :

“The ideal tyranny
is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims.
The most perfect slaves are, therefore,
those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.”

and:

I quite liked balloons,

but was never attracted to balls,
specially not rugby, soccer or cricket balls,

until, forty years old,
I encountered the small, tender.
skin-encased balls 

of a beautiful lover, at a time
when to nuzzle them, even in private,
in that country, still was a crime.

When I was a little boy

I loved going with my grandmother
to visit her friends – lovely old ladies
in lovely old houses with old furniture. 
Now, owning old furniture,
the only person I visit is an old lady
five years younger than me.

My favourite word :

unspeakable.

Cruel Christmas

Hideous Hypocrisy
Happy Holiday !

Britain's brilliant billionaire prime minister

asks a homeless man at a soup-kitchen
do you work in business ?

In 1970 I discovered that I was a feminist.

Protest against the Miss World contest.
The loathsome Bob Hope and the tarted-up Grenadian Ms World.

 

Now women have to behave like men
(but tougher)
AND
submit to the crippling Cosmetics Fraud.

It's very cold in much of North America.

 A toot from Mastodon :

Meanwhile in Canada@MeanwhileinCanada@ohai.social

A publicly-funded snowplow just went past my house. Will this liberal tyranny never end?!

@beyond@tooting.ch

Which of us is not

behind a window behind a cage ?

photo by Margaret Courtney-Clark

Christmas in Anatolia.

 ('Deep and crisp and even.')

photo by Ismail Kaplan

'Metamorphoto'.

My Berlin friend Karl-Heinz
as painted by Modigliani.

My doctor retired.

His young replacement took my blood-pressure,
asked me my height, my weight, my alcohol intake,
whether or not I smoked, what medication
I have been taking – that's all.
He did not ask what I ate
He did not ask if I
(as an 81-year old living alone)
managed to cut my toenails.
He did not ask if any disease or condition
ran in my family.  He didn't ask when I last
had a blood-test. When I told him (unasked)
about my femoral head replacement he only inquired
how long since I had it – not: did I have any pain ?
Needless to say, he did not show any interest in
my eyes, my teeth, or my hearing.  

To renew my prescription I'll have to visit
this recently 'qualified doctor' again...

To celebrate the Winter Solstice

(possibly my last) in a prehistoric way,
I painted neolithic graffiti
(not very successfully)
on an ugly section of wall
opposite my house.
It may fade nicely,
like myself.

Freedom of Expression,

though everywhere vulnerable
is not so important, and not so threatened
(principally by what we are taught)
as freedom of thought.

When a village,

town or 'community' has more second-homes
than second-hand cars
it's likely that it exists
only on Facebook.

The Bandwagon of Doom

is made of indestructible plastic.

Meaningless Collective Nouns

are worse than Fake News :

The People
The Disabled
The Electorate
The Gay...Hispanic...Muslim...(etc.) Community

Society.

The 'meaning of life'

is Passing Meaningless Time
or killing it and much else.

People with power

 don't know
(or refuse to remember)
what it is like to be powerless.

Nor do they care.

Outdated technology.

Language has enabled us
to do our worst.
The result is beyond language,
beyond remedy.

Good news from Russia ?

The biggest best-selling book this year
is George Orwell's Nineteen eighty-four,
written in 1948.

According to the odious

and shockingly-influential Ayn Rand,
'Altruism is evil.' 

The Feeling of Desolation,

whether brief or enduring,
rare, occasional or frequent,
is almost universal.

What we do best.

 

Two Christian Paintings

from 1987, by painters born in 1941.

Firstly, Markus Lüpertz's 
St Francis Prevents the Extermination of Rats.

Secondly, my Self-portrait as Lazarus with Dog.

Lüpertz was disruptive at art-college and was 'sent down' without a degree. 
I (also refused a degree, but in Philosophy) am entirely self-taught
and do not have a Wikipedia entry.

We both have white beards.

Snakes have a clitoris:

'scientists overcome "a massive taboo around female genitalia."’

“Female genitalia are conspicuously overlooked
in comparison to their male counterparts,
limiting our understanding of sexual reproduction
across vertebrate lineages,” the study’s authors wrote.

I have always liked snakes and spiders.
I have lots of the latter in the house,
and once welcomed a visiting viper.
But she didn't stay,
at least not upstairs.  She may be feasting
on mice in the cellar.

When I was a weedy, bookish and cold-rife boy

and was forced to play rugby football at school
three times a week,
soccer-players were pale and ugly
and didn't have beards.

They also had day-jobs.

Now that soccer-players come in beautiful colours
sometimes with neat little beards –
and therefore look sexy (to me),

and are insanely rich,

still nothing would induce me to take an interest
in any team sport, especially not one
between nation-states, played on a pitch.

*However, as a Berber-lover, I hope that Western-Sahara-seizing Morocco beats genocidal France in today's World Cup quarter-finals in obscene Qatar.

'Plastic-man'

 

The environmental activist Modou Fall,
alias ‘Plastic-Man’, poses for a photo on Yarakh Beach
littered with trash and plastics in Dakar, Senegal.

Truth, like belief

(and Easter and Ramadan)
is a moveable feast.

The best hugs

start from the tips of your toes.

Capitalists just love slaughter and destruction.

 

Seventy years too late,

I think of the right riposte to

'Why do you always have to be
different from everyone else ?'

which is 'Why do you all, always
have to be the same ?'

L'esprit de l'escalier, alas,
is not a Medical Problem.

A Girl named Madeline,

with a vivid imagination and remarkable awareness of how bureaucracy can dash dreams, got her wish when she asked Los Angeles animal control authorities for a license to own a unicorn – if she is able to find one.

The first-of-its-kind permit came with strings attached, however: the mythical creature must be provided ample exposure to sunlight, moonbeams and rainbows and have its horn polished at least once a month with a soft cloth.

[read more]

Lies, Damned Lies and Economics.

An 'inexact science'
is not a science at all,
but akin to genealogy.

A microphone

is a teleportation-device.

A 1923 BBC ‘Meat Safe’ stand
with its accompanying microphone.

On Book-signing :

'At my first Salem’s Lot signing, I had one customer –
a fat kid who said,
Hey bud, do you know where there’s some Nazi books?’

– Stephen King, who had not arrived with a translation of Mein Kampf, just in case.

'I did a signing to which nobody came, except a guy who wanted to buy some Scotch tape and thought I was the help.'

– Margaret Atwood, who now knows that one should never be without some handy scotch-tape - and that one should dress up for signings.

'The Banality of Evil.'

We are all banal,
and every one of us
is evil – even if only a little.

The book in my head

is called
Empire and Infantilism.

That's as far as I've got with it.
I shall keep it under the bed.

The Reichstag, Berlin 1945.

 

I have devoted my life

to making a little nest to die in.

'It's not because I cannot explain

that you won't understand;

it's because you won't understand
that I cannot explain.'

– Eli Wiesel

Hundreds of aeroplanes

flew to hideous Doha
bearing thousands of
(mainly masculine) gawpers in thrall
to international and nationalist
testosteronal (and not very beautiful)
ballet with a ball.

Nonsense of History.

When Russian forces entered Chernobyl
very soon after entering Ukraine
they started digging World War One trenches
in the radioactive soil.

Alcohol and Entropy.

A bar of the abandoned cruise-ship
Costa Concordia, run aground on the Italian coast.

For those who believe in General Human Progress.

Indonesia set to make sex outside marriage punishable by jail

Indonesia's parliament expected to pass new criminal code that will also make insulting the president or state institutions a crime.

Let's not worry about Climate Catastrophe.
There are far more pressing issues.

The problem of translation.

I have recently sold a portrait
of a German guy who visited me,
with his partner, in 1985.
He had Parkinson's Disease
and had a serious mobility problem.

Around him is a quotation from Rilke
which is perfectly comprehensible
but almost untranslatable:

Nur im Raum der Klage darf die Rühmung gehn.

Praise/glorification can only come/arise/emerge
from within lamentation/sorrow/mourning/grieving/grief...

Descent into chaos.

I wonder
if the rise of inane and infantile music
as serious culture
led to the rise of divisive populism
as serious politics...

Trapped within the tumour of time

we never actually recognise
when something is really ending.

We've invited some friends for dinner.

 

In 'The Free World'

under capitalism
we all live with the obligation
to celebrate its rottenness
and collaborate with corruption.

Sweet!

'As football fever takes hold,
one young fan is more interested in the cuddles
than the goals.'

In the same issue: nelson-mandela-gave-great-hugs

The unspeakable sadness of being.

 

© Tauseef Mustafa

The gruesome truth.

Almost everywhere
animals and trees
are worth more
dead than alive.

A fox-squirrel

photographed near Naples.

It is the ultimate anthropomorphism

to declare that Life on Earth
is a Huge Mistake.

But we are doing our best
to erase it.

The Unco-operative Animal.

The very existence of so many languages

suggests that speech was designed to divide

rather than to unite.

A True Hero,

very much of our time.

'Sir Alfred'

 

A great metaphor for life.

'The great thing about a walled town:

no matter how lost you get, 

you eventually come to a wall.'

– Tim Dowling

Well, actually...

 

...the world is indeed run by cabals, conspirators,
autocrats and criminals.
You just have to identify the true conspiracies
– such as conspiracies to disseminate
conspiracy theories

'Original Sin'

is an obtuse way of saying
that we are intrinsically evil.
We are made even worse
by the wicked fiction
of redemption. 

'The only good human being is a dead one.'

Animal Lanterns to cheer us up !

In some cultures

nose-picking in public
is less acceptable than
sodomy in private.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001df5x

The transient and the ancient.

 

So much art

is now self-advertisement.

How many delegates to COP-27

in sun-baked Southern Egypt
are reducing
their personal use of water ?

On the 100th anniversary of his death,

I still find him unreadable
in either French or English.

He showed, at mind-numbing length
how odious are they who live in luxury.

He was pretty odious himself.

The Dead Proust, by Man Ray.

Some of the 40,000 Russian refugees

(including colonels and counts)
who fled to Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution
drove taxis, just as Putin had to do to keep alive
seventy years later
when the Turbo-capitalist invasion
hung his country out to dry.

(The fabulously rich Russians were already there.)

Oscar Wilde did not remark

that the trouble with civilisation
is its brain-washing vulgarity.

This quiet medieval village

is a good place to be.
I never lock my house,
nor my car, which I park
on a very quiet street
100 metres from my house
along with a trailer
currently half-full of firewood.
Yesterday I left 60 euros
on the front passenger seat
where I discovered them this afternoon.

'Even the dead can't escape climate change.'

 

Ericky Boniphace’s photographic project –
Even The Dead Can’t Escape Climate Change
– followed labourers disinterring the remains of those buried
in a cemetery near Dar-Es-Salaam’s Msimbazi River.
For several years in a row
rising water levels have eroded the land the cemetery sits on
and swept graves away.

An admonishment

to humans and literate pets.

'New Liberal Economics' ensure

that the inevitable poor pay
proportionally more in taxes than anyone else,
because most tax-revenue comes
from 'goods and services', alcohol and energy.

In Ukraine,

CT215, a French street-artist,
is Doing His Bit for Democracy
with stencils.

"The Western News Media" are not mentioning
the inevitable (if small) Ukrainian atrocities...

"History shows"

that language
creates more conflict
than co-operation.

Evolution is not the same
as progress.

Today's Interesting Fact.

Rigor Mortis
usually begins with the eyelids.

We all go through

The Almost-Universal Brainwash:

that we should Like Other Sheople
(except those whom we are taught
to dislike or to hate).

Light-show,

Salisbury cathedral
(twelfth century).

Ah, the music to accompany it!

One can drive oneself to distraction

trying to keep sane.

Hot news from Italy.

One of the Etruscan bronzes
preserved in the mud of the hot baths
at San Casciano dei Bagni,
between Viterbo and Montalcino.

It is probably too much to expect

that people should consider
thoughtfulness
before 'mindfulness'.

 

Today is the centenary of the birth

of one of the USA's greatest writers,
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

 

A little bit of slightly-good news.

 Health

Australian researchers trial

temporary sperm blocker

in ‘gamechanger’
for men’s contraception.

Although human language is a disaster

for the planet, at least
it is possible to say so.
But numbers cannot ever indicate
the catastrophe of numbers.

A famous war-correspondent,

Independent Member of Parliament
and UNICEF Special Representative
for Humanitarian Emergencies,
wrote of the United States:

Of all the 90 countries that I worked in
[as foreign correspondent for the BBC]
it seemed to me. with the possible exception
of Equatorial Guinea, to be the most alien.

– Martin Bell, Through Gates of Fire, 2003, p.149.

It is hard to be kind

and honest and transparent
because transparency is thought to be unkind.

"What a misshapen and ridiculous

thing the penis was!  Half of them didn't even
work properly, and all of them looked pathetic
and detachable, like some wrinkled sea-creature
– like something you'd find goggling at you
and swaying in an aquarium." 

– Paul Theroux: Doctor Slaughter, 1984.

Winter's coming in Ukraine.

A man in Kyiv
shows how, in the event of no electricity or gas,
he would erect a tent in his flat
and pass the nights in a sleeping-bag inside it.

Breathing inside a small tent, he said,
will keep me warm.

On either side of a road in Tibet,

gullies formed by rainwater erosion.

Li Ping/TNC Photo Contest 2022

Twins ?

 

Gay Pride, Buenos Aires.

So...why not cannibalism ?

Anthropologists don't talk about sins,
but they do make value-judgements
which are largely Abrahamic
(or should I say Abrahamist ?). 

If I were to consider flaws as sins
I'd say that the first sin was
to regard sex as other than fun;

and the second was
to view animals as other.

As for the third
and maybe subsequent sins
I'll need to ponder further.

The two ugliest mammals

are, surely, the tiny, harmless
naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber)

and the paler forms of naked human ape
(Homo sapiens amens var. pallidus). 

It seems obvious,

after you reflect a little:

To know too much is not
to know everything.

Flesh of their flesh.

Only the very corrupt
(and politicians)
can even imagine the corruption
of the very rich. 

'Drop-box Babies'.

'Until women's constitutional right to abortion in the USA was overturned by the Supreme Court in June 2922, no one gave much thought to Safe Haven laws. 

These allow a mother to give up her new-born baby for adoption, at a designated site, anonymously and without risk of prosecution. 'Safe Haven' legislation first appeared in the US in 1999 in Texas, in response to a rise in the number of abandoned babies. Now it exists in every state. These laws were never intended as an alternative to abortion. But as the options for unhappily-pregnant women diminish, some are anticipating an increase in the number of babies left by desperate mothers in hospitals and specially designed Baby Boxes at local fire stations.'

(report from The BBC)

In earlier times, such drop-boxes, baby-hatches or niches were organised informally (if not always anonymously) by the Catholic Church.  Here is one (no longer used) in my village of Caylus in SW France.

Hypocrisy

is just cultural schizophrenia.

 

Family Portrait, 1997.

 

Rimaldas Vikšraitis

If Russia

'is where idealists are sent to die',

America is where they are genetically modified.

 

Collins Dictionary 'Word of the Year' –

Permacrisis.

It should have been
the first word ever,
maybe even
the First Word of God.

The Social Circus.

First conform

Then perform.

Nice to see you.

 

photo by Tanya Griffin Houpermans

Tell a man

that something – anything –
is a machine, 

whether a house,
a hospital, an army,
an assembly, a relationship,
a person, a deity,
a brain, an atom or a galaxy,

and he'll love it.

The clocks go back (in Europe).

The older I get
the less I like myself
and others.

The Next British Prime Minister ?

photo by Kin Cheung

 

One of the great truths,

written by a great writer
in the persona of Bernie Gunther :

Being wrong is an important part of being right
and only time* can tell which it turns out to be.

– Philip Kerr in Prague Fatale.

*Actually, only the end of time.

"Mondriaan painting

 

has been hanging upside down for 75 years."
What a tragedy!