A link to 'a provocative blog post' came to me by email from JustEarth. I know a few of them in the Toronto chapter: ex-MPs, ex-Judges and the like; none remember my name when I meet them again, all good. I get their newsletter and read it. The provocative post turns out to be second-hand. The original seems to be: Why I’m marking passing 400 ppm by getting back on an aeroplane; which is worth a careful read including the comments. Rob Hopkins (in case you don't know, I didn't though his book is on my shelf) is an instigator of the Transition Town movement in Totnes, Devon, UK, and the author of The Transition Handbook (which seems to be out-of-print) - there are pdf copies here & there ... ... but getting back to the 'provocative post', the key phrase both to me and to himself is "Give it another 18 months, 2 years at most, and then the funding and political effort will shift from mitigation and into adaptation and defence."
Which comes on like a punch in the heart.
 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Red Right Hand, 1994. take a little walk to the edge of town and go across the track where the viaduct looms like a bird of doom as it shifts and cracks where secrets lie in the border fires in the humming wires hey man you know you're never coming back past the square past the bridge past the mills past the stacks on a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man in a dusty black coat with a red right hand he'll wrap you in his arms tell you that you've been a good boy he'll rekindle all the dreams it took you a lifetime to destroy he'll reach deep into the hole heal your shrinking soul but there won't be a single thing that you can do he's a god he's a man he's a ghost he's a gu-ru they're whispering his name through this disappearing land but hidden in his coat is a red right hand you don't have money? he'll get you some you don't have no car? he'll get you one you don't have no self-respect you feel like an insect well don't you worry buddy cause here he comes through the ghettos and the barrio and the bowery and the slum a shadow is cast wherever he stands stacks of green paper in his red right hand you'll see him in your nightmares you'll see him in your dreams he'll appear out of nowhere but he ain't what he seems you'll see him in your head on the TV screen hey buddy I'm warning you to turn it off he's a ghost he's a god he's a man he's a gu-ru you're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan designed and directed by his red right hand | |
I have mentioned before what I call Leonard Cohen's 'untrustworthiness' - Nick Cave is not trustworthy in any degree, not at all, simply does not pretend to it. And then there is a book, The Death of Bunny Munro, which is awful embarrassing dreck ... so ...
[Apologies for the over-done and (likely very) brittle HTML. I hope you can see about what I put, if not ... Firefox 9.0.1 under Windows7 with the display set to 1600 x 900 landscape (if that helps, otherwise, sorry).]
And just in case you think I embrace this (or any other) brand of nihilism, fatalism, any'a that ...
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"I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet."
Down.
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