An excellent article by David Owen pointing to the fact that the only unambiguously effective method of reducing the long-term carbon and energy costs is to consume less—-a behavioral change, not a technological one. But who is ready to do it?
This article closely echoes my own beliefs about the environment and consumerism. I'm excited to buy Owen's book too.
"Own A favorite trick of people who consider themselves friends of the environment is reframing luxury consumption preferences as gifts to humanity. A new car, a solar-powered swimming-pool heater, a 200-mile-an-hour train that makes intercity travel more pleasant and less expensive, better-tasting tomatoes—these are the sacrifices we're prepared to make for the future of the planet.
Our capacity for self-deception can be breathtaking. In 2010, a forward-thinking friend of mine took me for a ride in a Ford Fusion, a gas-electric hybrid that gets more miles per gallon than comparable cars with conventional engines. His dashboard fuel gauge filled with images of intertwining green foliage, a symbolic representation of the environmental benefits we were apparently dispensing from the tailpipe as we aimlessly drove around.
I felt a twinge of idiotic virtue while in that car, as I also do when I leave an especially large pile of cans, bottles and newspapers at the end of my driveway for the recycling truck. Like many concerned Americans, I'm susceptible to the Prius Fallacy: a belief that switching to an ostensibly more benign form of consumption turns consumption itself into a boon for the environment.
If only all big problems could be tackled with product substitution. We're consumers at heart, and our response to difficulties of all kinds usually involves consumption in one form or another. My car's a problem? Tell me what to drive instead. Wrong water heater? I'll switch. Kitchen counters not green? I'll replace them. The challenge arises when consumption itself is at issue. The world faces a long list of environmental challenges, yet most so-called solutions are either irrelevant or make the real problems worse. That's the conundrum facing anyone who yearns for "sustainability."
Energy efficiency—which has been called "the fifth fuel"—is especially problematic. In 2010, I flew from New York to Melbourne, Australia. My plane consumed a lot of energy and had a big carbon footprint; in fact, my proportional share of the jet fuel burned during my round trip was greater than the total amount of energy that the average resident of the Earth uses, for all purposes, in a year.
“A new car and better-tasting tomatoes: These are the sacrifices we're prepared to make for the future of the planet.”
But the environmental problem with modern flying isn't that our airplanes are wasteful; it is that we have made flying so efficient that the main impediment to traveling 10,000 miles isn't the cost but the unpleasantness of spending a whole day watching movies and sleeping in a cushioned seat.
When people talk about reducing the energy and carbon impact of air travel, they almost always focus on improving the design of engines, wings and fuselages, or on using computer systems to shorten flight paths and eliminate delays. By this point, though, the total potential gain in any of those areas is small. Today's passenger jets are already something like 75% more fuel efficient than the jets of the early 1960s, and the physics of flying imposes a low ceiling on further advances.
The main effect of additional engineering improvements will be the same as for all such improvements in the past: to make travel easier, cheaper, more convenient and more attractive—thus encouraging us to do more of it. That's a good thing for those of us who love to play golf on other continents, but it doesn't move the world closer to resolving a long list of energy, climate and environmental challenges. In fact, it pushes the solutions further away.
Even if you think that climate change is a left-wing crock, this ought to be a matter of gnawing concern. Global energy use is growing faster than population. It's expected to double by midcentury, and most of the growth will be in fossil fuels. Disasters like the BP oil spill attract world-wide attention, but the main environmental, economic and geopolitical challenge with petroleum isn't the oil that goes into the ocean; it is the oil we continue to use exactly as we intend.
Many people assume that we'll conquer our addiction through technological innovation. But engineering breakthroughs not only enable machines to do more work with less fuel; they also make it possible to manufacture new and desirable products, swelling our contentment as consumers and further increasing our dependence.
Many supposedly green strategies pose a similar conundrum. Consider locavorism—the idea that it's irresponsible to eat food that was produced more than a short distance from where it's eaten. But shipping is almost always a trivial contributor to the environmental impact of eating.
Much more ecologically meaningful is what we eat, how it was grown, how much irrigation it required, what was sprayed on it and how it was prepared. Locavorism is appealing because it feels enlightened but entails no actual sacrifice. A colleague of mine produces her own eggs by raising chickens in her backyard. But she also drives individual hens to the veterinarian, giving her breakfasts an impressively huge carbon footprint.
Even when we act with what we believe to be the best of intentions, our efforts are often at cross-purposes with our goals. Increasing the efficiency of lighting encourages us to illuminate more. Relieving traffic congestion reduces the appeal of public transit and fuels the growth of suburban sprawl. A robust market for ethanol exacerbates global hunger by diverting cropland from the production of food.
We may believe that we care about the world's deepening environmental challenges and are merely waiting for scientists, environmentalists, politicians and others to come to their senses and implement effective solutions. But we already know more than enough, and we have for a long time. We just don't like the answers.
Flying from New York to Melbourne in 1958, on a propeller plane, consumed more energy per person than my 2010 flight did, but it was "greener" nevertheless. It required stops in San Francisco, Hawaii, Canton Island, Fiji and Sydney, and it cost each coach passenger something like a quarter of that year's U.S. median family income, each way.
If comparably slow and costly flights were the only travel option available today, I and almost all of my fellow passengers would certainly have stayed home: a gain for the environment, though a loss for the global economy. The only unambiguously effective method of reducing the long-term carbon and energy cost of air travel is to fly less—a behavioral change, not a technological one.
But where's the fun in going nowhere?"
![[ j i m m y ]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UuEjfNWPdHs/Tjux-Kt-G5I/AAAAAAAACSc/5tJcqaro3uo/s1600/blog-title%2Bcopy.jpg)
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
home is within
 |
| taanayel, bekaa, lebanon / january, 2012 / nikon d300 |
music: patrick watson/ the great escape/ close to paradise/ download
Monday, 30 January 2012
famine in the twenty first century!
here's a punchy article that sheds the light on the failings of global food supply systems and highlights the urgency for local food systems and support networks.
the article highlights how compounded failures are making for the increasingly devastating famines that some african nations are facing today, and calls for an immediate recognition of this new reality: the dysfunctions of the global food aid system, the threat of climate change, the delayed humanitarian response to food crises, the failings of poor nations in measuring and addressing emergencies, and most importantly, the fact that too little has been done to support smallholder farming and other local systems who produce food for their own communities, at a local scale, and who act as safety nets in such crises.
supporting small scale farming fights poverty and enables local production to meet the needs, basically helping circumvent famine and alleviate dependence on the global food system altogether. the author notes how diversification in farming systems, agroforestry, rainwater harvesting and other local solutions are sorely needed in high risk areas such as the sahel and the horn of africa. a must read. the article reminds me of an excellent podcast with owen barder discussing the failings that led to famine in somalia and the impacts of the disaster.
famines are always (and more increasingly) very sad reminders of amartya sen's theory of famine and entitlements. charles kenny also puts it well in foreign policy, as he reiterates that famines rarely occur in democratic or even modestly free societies, and that widespread death by starvation is a systematic process led by a governing authority that makes a conscious decision to exercise power to deny food assistance to parts of the population. he also adds that because in the modern world local food shortages only cause widespread famine in places under the leadership of the criminal or insane, aid agencies trying to help will necessarily find themselves in the moral quagmire of negotiating access with the very people who are abetting the crisis in the first place. both edward carr and owen barder have also written excellent posts about it.
it remains to be seen how the looming crisis in the west african sahel will turn out to be a full scale famine. i surely hope not.
the article highlights how compounded failures are making for the increasingly devastating famines that some african nations are facing today, and calls for an immediate recognition of this new reality: the dysfunctions of the global food aid system, the threat of climate change, the delayed humanitarian response to food crises, the failings of poor nations in measuring and addressing emergencies, and most importantly, the fact that too little has been done to support smallholder farming and other local systems who produce food for their own communities, at a local scale, and who act as safety nets in such crises.
supporting small scale farming fights poverty and enables local production to meet the needs, basically helping circumvent famine and alleviate dependence on the global food system altogether. the author notes how diversification in farming systems, agroforestry, rainwater harvesting and other local solutions are sorely needed in high risk areas such as the sahel and the horn of africa. a must read. the article reminds me of an excellent podcast with owen barder discussing the failings that led to famine in somalia and the impacts of the disaster.
famines are always (and more increasingly) very sad reminders of amartya sen's theory of famine and entitlements. charles kenny also puts it well in foreign policy, as he reiterates that famines rarely occur in democratic or even modestly free societies, and that widespread death by starvation is a systematic process led by a governing authority that makes a conscious decision to exercise power to deny food assistance to parts of the population. he also adds that because in the modern world local food shortages only cause widespread famine in places under the leadership of the criminal or insane, aid agencies trying to help will necessarily find themselves in the moral quagmire of negotiating access with the very people who are abetting the crisis in the first place. both edward carr and owen barder have also written excellent posts about it.
it remains to be seen how the looming crisis in the west african sahel will turn out to be a full scale famine. i surely hope not.
Thursday, 26 January 2012
breathe...
 |
| barouk cedar reserve, lebanon / january, 2012 / nikon d300 |
music: patrick watson/ bright shiny lights/ close to paradise/ download
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
finding beauty in a broken world
 |
| barouk cedar reserve, lebanon / january, 2012 / nikon d300 |
music: beirut/ vagabond/the rip tide/ download
Sunday, 8 January 2012
the oak and the cypress
"...sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
for only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
and stand together, yet not too near together:
for the pillars of the temple stand apart,
and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."
gibran; the prophet
even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
for only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
and stand together, yet not too near together:
for the pillars of the temple stand apart,
and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."
gibran; the prophet
distance no more
dawn and dusk collide,
plus ou moins seven is right,
the fusion of light
[a haiku dating from march, 2011 -- adapting to the seven hour time difference between the east mediterranean and the eastern coast of the US was a delicious challenge that we embarked on for a full year. dusk and dawn often collided as we were both kissing the same sun simultaneously, bridging the distances by uniting through earth and light. thankfully, this is no more as we now both melt into each others' lips as the sun kisses us at every sunrise and every sunset].
plus ou moins seven is right,
the fusion of light
[a haiku dating from march, 2011 -- adapting to the seven hour time difference between the east mediterranean and the eastern coast of the US was a delicious challenge that we embarked on for a full year. dusk and dawn often collided as we were both kissing the same sun simultaneously, bridging the distances by uniting through earth and light. thankfully, this is no more as we now both melt into each others' lips as the sun kisses us at every sunrise and every sunset].
keeping quiet
Now we will count to twelve
And we will all keep still
For once on the face of the earth,
Let’s not speak in any language;
Let’s stop for a second,
And not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
Without rush, without engines;
We would all be together
In a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
Would not harm whales
And the man gathering salt
Would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
Wars with gas, wars with fire,
Victories with no survivors,
Would put on clean clothes
And walk about with their brothers
In the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
With total inactivity.
Life is what it is about…
If we were not so single-minded
About keeping our lives moving,
And for once could do nothing,
Perhaps a huge silence
Might interrupt this sadness
Of never understanding ourselves
And of threatening ourselves with
Death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
As when everything seems to be dead in winter
And later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
And you keep quiet and I will go.
-Pablo Neruda
And we will all keep still
For once on the face of the earth,
Let’s not speak in any language;
Let’s stop for a second,
And not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
Without rush, without engines;
We would all be together
In a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
Would not harm whales
And the man gathering salt
Would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
Wars with gas, wars with fire,
Victories with no survivors,
Would put on clean clothes
And walk about with their brothers
In the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
With total inactivity.
Life is what it is about…
If we were not so single-minded
About keeping our lives moving,
And for once could do nothing,
Perhaps a huge silence
Might interrupt this sadness
Of never understanding ourselves
And of threatening ourselves with
Death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
As when everything seems to be dead in winter
And later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
And you keep quiet and I will go.
-Pablo Neruda
Thursday, 15 December 2011
more than machinery, we need humanity
"I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible -- Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there's room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost."
- excerpt from charlie chaplin's movie, "the great dictator"
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost."
- excerpt from charlie chaplin's movie, "the great dictator"
Sunday, 11 December 2011
like a map with no ocean
 |
| qammoua, akkar, lebanon / october, 2011 / nikon d300 |
james blake / there's a limit to your love / james blake / download
Thursday, 1 December 2011
sunrise, sunrise!
 |
| hermel heights, lebanon / october, 2011 / nikon d300 |
the antlers / rolled together / burst apart / download
the good life
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
tree species of lebanon - first batch!
this past year, we've been making an effort to research some of the most common tree species in lebanon! we've documented panels we've seen on trails and in nature reserves, been collecting information from local experts during our hikes, and looking through website and other references.
below is a list of common species that are found in lebanon in general. the list is based on a publication posted on the jabal moussa reserve website, and serves as a great starting point that we'll use and develop. so as we discover more species, we'll be building on that list and expanding it.
main tree species in lebanese forests:
syrian maple, found in eastern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Cyprus and Israel. grows along coastal mountains.
greek strawberry tree is a small tree in the family Ericaceae, native to the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and southwestern Asia.
syrian juniper, a species of juniper native to the eastern Mediterranean region from southern Greece, southern Turkey, western Syria, and Lebanon, growing on rocky sites from 800-1700 m altitude. it's the tallest species of juniper, forming a conical tree 10-25 m tall, exceptionally up to 40 m, and with a trunk up to 1-2 m thick--says wikipedia.
judas tree (fabaceae) a beautiful tree which we don't recall seeing anywhere yet.
azarole (or mediterranean medlar!)--yummy fruits and it's in the Rosaceae family.
south european flowering ash--i don't recall seeing this.
prickly juniper (also called prickly cedar, cade juniper, cade, or cade cedar!) --of the Cuppresaceae family.- it's endemic to the mediterranean, starting from Morocco, passing by France and into the East. according to wikipedia, "cade oil is the essential oil obtained through destructive distillation of the wood of this shrub. it is a dark, aromatic oil with a strong smoky smell which is used in some cosmetics and (traditional) skin treatment drugs, as well as incense."
bay laurel -Lauraceae- a classic. "it figures prominently in classical Greek, Roman, and Biblical culture"
the crab apple (for which there hardly seems to be any online reference). beautiful tree, its leaves seem similar to maple, just a bit more elongated. it's also from the Rosaceae family.
hop hornbeam amazing tree! it's in the Betulaceae family and it's known for its hard wood.
phillyrea evergreen flowering shrubs in the family Oleaceae (olive!) family, native to the Mediterranean region, the Canary Islands and Madeira.
syrian pear (locally called wild pear); used as rootstock to grow commercial pears, because it has the advantage to resist draught and arid situations and can grow in different types of soil. its fruit is small and not palatable. like other fruits, it's also of the Rosaceae family.
pistacia palaestina is a beautiful tree, common in the Levant region (especially Israel and Syria). It is called terebinth in English. it's from the Anacardiaceae family (an amazing family that includes cashew, mango, poison ivy and sumac!).
oriental plane, a large, deciduous tree of the Platanaceae family, known for its longevity and spreading crown. the name derives from its historical distribution eastward from the Balkans, where it was recognized in ancient Greek history and literature.
bear plum, a deciduous shrub. its flowers are hermaphrodite and are pollinated by insects.the species is common around the Mediterranean, and its of the Rosaceae family.
palestine oak is a "turkey oak", native to the eastern Mediterranean region and southwest Asia, from northern Algeria and Turkey east across the Middle East. it's an evergreen, with spiny-serrated leaves. Fagaceae (beech) family.
turkey oak (pseudo-cerris variety) is an oak native to southern Europe and Asia Minor. characterised by shoot buds surrounded by soft bristles, bristle-tipped leaf lobes, and acorns that usually mature in 18 months.
turkish gall, gall oak, lusitanian oak, or dyer's oak, is a species of oak native to Morocco, Portugal, and Spain. a source of commercial nutgalls. galls are produced by the infection from the insect Cynips gallae tinctoriae and are used for dyeing! used by Tamils for more than 2000 years.
wild service tree, or checker(s) tree, is a species of sorbus native to Europe covering west Europe into Asia Minor to the Caucasus and Alborz mountains. Rosaceae family.
styrax officinalis is a beautiful shrub native to southern Europe and the Middle East. of the Styracaceae family.
below is a list of common species that are found in lebanon in general. the list is based on a publication posted on the jabal moussa reserve website, and serves as a great starting point that we'll use and develop. so as we discover more species, we'll be building on that list and expanding it.
main tree species in lebanese forests:
syrian maple, found in eastern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Cyprus and Israel. grows along coastal mountains.
greek strawberry tree is a small tree in the family Ericaceae, native to the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and southwestern Asia.
syrian juniper, a species of juniper native to the eastern Mediterranean region from southern Greece, southern Turkey, western Syria, and Lebanon, growing on rocky sites from 800-1700 m altitude. it's the tallest species of juniper, forming a conical tree 10-25 m tall, exceptionally up to 40 m, and with a trunk up to 1-2 m thick--says wikipedia.
judas tree (fabaceae) a beautiful tree which we don't recall seeing anywhere yet.
azarole (or mediterranean medlar!)--yummy fruits and it's in the Rosaceae family.
south european flowering ash--i don't recall seeing this.
prickly juniper (also called prickly cedar, cade juniper, cade, or cade cedar!) --of the Cuppresaceae family.- it's endemic to the mediterranean, starting from Morocco, passing by France and into the East. according to wikipedia, "cade oil is the essential oil obtained through destructive distillation of the wood of this shrub. it is a dark, aromatic oil with a strong smoky smell which is used in some cosmetics and (traditional) skin treatment drugs, as well as incense."
bay laurel -Lauraceae- a classic. "it figures prominently in classical Greek, Roman, and Biblical culture"
the crab apple (for which there hardly seems to be any online reference). beautiful tree, its leaves seem similar to maple, just a bit more elongated. it's also from the Rosaceae family.
hop hornbeam amazing tree! it's in the Betulaceae family and it's known for its hard wood.
phillyrea evergreen flowering shrubs in the family Oleaceae (olive!) family, native to the Mediterranean region, the Canary Islands and Madeira.
syrian pear (locally called wild pear); used as rootstock to grow commercial pears, because it has the advantage to resist draught and arid situations and can grow in different types of soil. its fruit is small and not palatable. like other fruits, it's also of the Rosaceae family.
pistacia palaestina is a beautiful tree, common in the Levant region (especially Israel and Syria). It is called terebinth in English. it's from the Anacardiaceae family (an amazing family that includes cashew, mango, poison ivy and sumac!).
oriental plane, a large, deciduous tree of the Platanaceae family, known for its longevity and spreading crown. the name derives from its historical distribution eastward from the Balkans, where it was recognized in ancient Greek history and literature.
bear plum, a deciduous shrub. its flowers are hermaphrodite and are pollinated by insects.the species is common around the Mediterranean, and its of the Rosaceae family.
palestine oak is a "turkey oak", native to the eastern Mediterranean region and southwest Asia, from northern Algeria and Turkey east across the Middle East. it's an evergreen, with spiny-serrated leaves. Fagaceae (beech) family.
turkey oak (pseudo-cerris variety) is an oak native to southern Europe and Asia Minor. characterised by shoot buds surrounded by soft bristles, bristle-tipped leaf lobes, and acorns that usually mature in 18 months.
turkish gall, gall oak, lusitanian oak, or dyer's oak, is a species of oak native to Morocco, Portugal, and Spain. a source of commercial nutgalls. galls are produced by the infection from the insect Cynips gallae tinctoriae and are used for dyeing! used by Tamils for more than 2000 years.
wild service tree, or checker(s) tree, is a species of sorbus native to Europe covering west Europe into Asia Minor to the Caucasus and Alborz mountains. Rosaceae family.
styrax officinalis is a beautiful shrub native to southern Europe and the Middle East. of the Styracaceae family.
Sunday, 16 October 2011
go - don't go
'man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. now that he can realize them, he must either change them or perish' - william carlos williams
Saturday, 8 October 2011
not buddha's words
...but close enough
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new...
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
-- steve jobs
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new...
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
-- steve jobs
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Monday, 3 October 2011
be ignited or be gone
What I Have Learned So Far
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of— indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone.
-Mary Oliver
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of— indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone.
-Mary Oliver
:(
"In terms of species extinction and threats, the greatest numbers of species affected and most severe threats are encountered in freshwater habitats. Freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity are the most vulnerable to human activities and environmental change because of the disproportionate richness of inland waters as a habitat for plants and animals. They currently support approximately 40% of the fish diversity and one quarter of the global vertebrate diversity. All this diversity is found within 0.1% of the world’s water, covering only about 0.8% of the Earth’s surface.
Causes of degradation of freshwater biodiversity are typically classified under five headings: overexploitation; water pollution; flow modification; destruction or degradation of habitat; and invasion by exotic species. Other environmental changes that are occurring on a global scale may cut across these categories. Examples include global warning and changing patterns of precipitation and stream flows and atmospheric deposition of pollutants.
Overexploitation primarily affects fish and some other vertebrates (reptiles and amphibians), whereas pollution, flow and habitat modification and exotic species are threats to all freshwater biodiversity. Most developed countries have made progress in controlling water pollution from domestic and industrial point sources but diffuse pollution from multiple sources in rural and urban areas remains a difficult practical and policy challenge. In particular, the problem of nutrient enrichment and other chemical pollutants used in farming or by rural and urban households.
Modifications to flows are common and almost universal, tending to be most severe in locations where the undisturbed or natural flow regime is itself highly variable."
-excerpt from course on water resource management
Causes of degradation of freshwater biodiversity are typically classified under five headings: overexploitation; water pollution; flow modification; destruction or degradation of habitat; and invasion by exotic species. Other environmental changes that are occurring on a global scale may cut across these categories. Examples include global warning and changing patterns of precipitation and stream flows and atmospheric deposition of pollutants.
Overexploitation primarily affects fish and some other vertebrates (reptiles and amphibians), whereas pollution, flow and habitat modification and exotic species are threats to all freshwater biodiversity. Most developed countries have made progress in controlling water pollution from domestic and industrial point sources but diffuse pollution from multiple sources in rural and urban areas remains a difficult practical and policy challenge. In particular, the problem of nutrient enrichment and other chemical pollutants used in farming or by rural and urban households.
Modifications to flows are common and almost universal, tending to be most severe in locations where the undisturbed or natural flow regime is itself highly variable."
-excerpt from course on water resource management
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Thursday, 29 September 2011
unrehearsed autumn rhapsody
drowning in the amber melodies of an evening’s call for prayer. this remote town’s uncertain melancholy is calling. a sea of sticky summer honey invites me to drown my soul in its dense, fatal goodness. it wants to suck me away into the killer guts of this existence.
i’m struggling. autumn's dance draws upon my dwindling energy, and embellishes its pastel repertoire, adding shimmer to its earthy décor.
a sunset daze, an inviting spiderweb, hypnotizing, pulling me closer with droplets of sparkly rain. crystallized pearls of goodness that entrap me. a stream of unconsciousness rushes through my body. and a flow of tie dyed memories.
autumn is species and colors. and bittersweet pain. fire-spitting dragons. gold-dust dragonflies flapping their watery wings. tree frogs and happy fatal stings of an earth-color spider.
i’m fighting the free fall this september, and i'm winning. my silver lining is the shimmer of a web's thread, waiting to entangle me, to free me. i’m floating on a falling leaf.
i’m fighting the free fall this september, and i'm winning. my silver lining is the shimmer of a web's thread, waiting to entangle me, to free me. i’m floating on a falling leaf.
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Sunday, 4 September 2011
shasta daisy
Dragonflies Mating - Robert Hass
1.
The people who lived here before us
also loved these high mountain meadows on summer mornings.
They made their way up here in easy stages
when heat began to dry the valleys out,
following the berry harvest probably and the pine buds:
climbing and making camp and gathering,
then breaking camp and climbing and making camp and gathering.
A few miles a day. They sent out the children
to dig up bulbs of the mariposa lilies that they liked to roast
at night by the fire where they sat talking about how this year
was different from last year. Told stories,
knew where they were on earth from the names,
owl moon, bear moon, gooseberry moon.
2.
Jaime de Angulo (1934) was talking to a Channel Island Indian
in a Santa Barbara bar. You tell me how your people said
the world was made. Well, the guy said, Coyote was on the mountain
and he had to pee. Wait a minute, Jaime said,
I was talking to a Pomo the other day and he said
Red Fox made the world. They say Red Fox, the guy shrugged,
we say Coyote. So, he had to pee
and he didn’t want to drown anybody, so he turned toward the place
where the ocean would be. Wait a minute, Jaime said,
if there were no people yet, how could he drown anybody?
The Channelleño got a funny look on his face. You know,
he said, when I was a kid, I wondered about that,
and I asked my father. We were living up toward Santa Ynez.
He was sitting on a bench in the yard shaving down fence posts
with an ax, and I said, how come Coyote was worried about people
when he had to pee and there were no people? The guy laughed.
And my old man looked up at me with this funny smile
and said, You know, when I was a kid, I wondered about that.
3.
Thinking about that story just now, early morning heat,
first day in the mountains, I remembered stories about sick Indians
and—in the same thought—standing on the free throw line.
St. Raphael’s parish, where the northern-most of the missions
had been, was founded as a hospital, was named for the angel
in the scriptures who healed the blind man with a fish
he laid across his eyes.—I wouldn’t mind being that age again,
hearing those stories, eyes turned upward toward the young nun
in her white, fresh-smelling, immaculately laundered robes.—
The Franciscan priests who brought their faith in God
across the Atlantic, brought with the baroque statues and metalwork crosses
and elaborately embroidered cloaks, influenza and syphilis and the coughing disease.
Which is why we settled an almost empty California.
There were drawings in the mission museum of the long, dark wards
full of small brown people, wasted, coughing into blankets,
the saintly Franciscan fathers moving patiently among them.
It would, Sister Marietta said, have broken your hearts to see it.
They meant so well, she said, and such a terrible thing
came here with their love. And I remembered how I hated it
after school—because I loved basketball practice more than anything
on earth—that I never knew if my mother was going to show up
well into one of those weeks of drinking she disappeared into,
and humiliate me in front of my classmates with her bright, confident eyes,
and slurred, though carefully pronounced words, and the appalling
impromptu sets of mismatched clothes she was given to
when she had the dim idea of making a good impression in that state.
Sometimes from the gym floor with its sweet, heady smell of varnish
I’d see her in the entryway looking for me, and I’d bounce
the ball two or three times, study the orange rim as if it were,
which it was, the true level of the world, the one sure thing
the power in my hands could summon. I’d bounce the ball
once more, feel the grain of the leather in my fingertips and shoot.
It was a perfect thing; it was almost like killing her.
4.
When we say “mother” in poems,
we usually mean some woman in her late twenties
or early thirties trying to raise a child.
We use this particular noun
to secure the pathos of the child’s point of view
and to hold her responsible.
5.
If you’re afraid now?
Fear is a teacher.
Sometimes you thought that
Nothing could reach her,
Nothing can reach you.
Wouldn’t you rather
Sit by the river, sit
On the dead bank,
Deader than winter,
Where all the roots gape?
6.
This morning in the early sun,
steam rising from the pond the color of smoky topaz,
a pair of delicate, copper-red, needle-fine insects
are mating in the unopened crown of a Shasta daisy
just outside your door. The green flowerheads look like wombs
or the upright, supplicant bulbs of a vegetal pre-erection.
The insect lovers seem to be transferring the cosmos into each other
by attaching at the tail, holding utterly still, and quivering intently.
I think (on what evidence?) that they are different from us.
That they mate and are done with mating.
They don’t carry all this half-mated longing up out of childhood
and then go looking for it everywhere.
And so, I think, they can’t wound each other the way we do.
They don’t go through life dizzy or groggy with their hunger,
kill with it, smear it on everything, though it is perhaps also true
that nothing happens to them quite like what happens to us
when the blue-backed swallow dips swiftly toward the green pond
and the pond’s green-and-blue reflected swallow marries it a moment
in the reflected sky and the heart goes out to the end of the rope
it has been throwing into abyss after abyss, and a singing shimmers
from every color the morning has risen into.
My insect instructors have stilled, they are probably stuck together
in some bliss and minute pulse of after-longing
evolution worked out to suck the last juice of the world
into the receiver body. They can’t separate probably
until it is done.
1.
The people who lived here before us
also loved these high mountain meadows on summer mornings.
They made their way up here in easy stages
when heat began to dry the valleys out,
following the berry harvest probably and the pine buds:
climbing and making camp and gathering,
then breaking camp and climbing and making camp and gathering.
A few miles a day. They sent out the children
to dig up bulbs of the mariposa lilies that they liked to roast
at night by the fire where they sat talking about how this year
was different from last year. Told stories,
knew where they were on earth from the names,
owl moon, bear moon, gooseberry moon.
2.
Jaime de Angulo (1934) was talking to a Channel Island Indian
in a Santa Barbara bar. You tell me how your people said
the world was made. Well, the guy said, Coyote was on the mountain
and he had to pee. Wait a minute, Jaime said,
I was talking to a Pomo the other day and he said
Red Fox made the world. They say Red Fox, the guy shrugged,
we say Coyote. So, he had to pee
and he didn’t want to drown anybody, so he turned toward the place
where the ocean would be. Wait a minute, Jaime said,
if there were no people yet, how could he drown anybody?
The Channelleño got a funny look on his face. You know,
he said, when I was a kid, I wondered about that,
and I asked my father. We were living up toward Santa Ynez.
He was sitting on a bench in the yard shaving down fence posts
with an ax, and I said, how come Coyote was worried about people
when he had to pee and there were no people? The guy laughed.
And my old man looked up at me with this funny smile
and said, You know, when I was a kid, I wondered about that.
3.
Thinking about that story just now, early morning heat,
first day in the mountains, I remembered stories about sick Indians
and—in the same thought—standing on the free throw line.
St. Raphael’s parish, where the northern-most of the missions
had been, was founded as a hospital, was named for the angel
in the scriptures who healed the blind man with a fish
he laid across his eyes.—I wouldn’t mind being that age again,
hearing those stories, eyes turned upward toward the young nun
in her white, fresh-smelling, immaculately laundered robes.—
The Franciscan priests who brought their faith in God
across the Atlantic, brought with the baroque statues and metalwork crosses
and elaborately embroidered cloaks, influenza and syphilis and the coughing disease.
Which is why we settled an almost empty California.
There were drawings in the mission museum of the long, dark wards
full of small brown people, wasted, coughing into blankets,
the saintly Franciscan fathers moving patiently among them.
It would, Sister Marietta said, have broken your hearts to see it.
They meant so well, she said, and such a terrible thing
came here with their love. And I remembered how I hated it
after school—because I loved basketball practice more than anything
on earth—that I never knew if my mother was going to show up
well into one of those weeks of drinking she disappeared into,
and humiliate me in front of my classmates with her bright, confident eyes,
and slurred, though carefully pronounced words, and the appalling
impromptu sets of mismatched clothes she was given to
when she had the dim idea of making a good impression in that state.
Sometimes from the gym floor with its sweet, heady smell of varnish
I’d see her in the entryway looking for me, and I’d bounce
the ball two or three times, study the orange rim as if it were,
which it was, the true level of the world, the one sure thing
the power in my hands could summon. I’d bounce the ball
once more, feel the grain of the leather in my fingertips and shoot.
It was a perfect thing; it was almost like killing her.
4.
When we say “mother” in poems,
we usually mean some woman in her late twenties
or early thirties trying to raise a child.
We use this particular noun
to secure the pathos of the child’s point of view
and to hold her responsible.
5.
If you’re afraid now?
Fear is a teacher.
Sometimes you thought that
Nothing could reach her,
Nothing can reach you.
Wouldn’t you rather
Sit by the river, sit
On the dead bank,
Deader than winter,
Where all the roots gape?
6.
This morning in the early sun,
steam rising from the pond the color of smoky topaz,
a pair of delicate, copper-red, needle-fine insects
are mating in the unopened crown of a Shasta daisy
just outside your door. The green flowerheads look like wombs
or the upright, supplicant bulbs of a vegetal pre-erection.
The insect lovers seem to be transferring the cosmos into each other
by attaching at the tail, holding utterly still, and quivering intently.
I think (on what evidence?) that they are different from us.
That they mate and are done with mating.
They don’t carry all this half-mated longing up out of childhood
and then go looking for it everywhere.
And so, I think, they can’t wound each other the way we do.
They don’t go through life dizzy or groggy with their hunger,
kill with it, smear it on everything, though it is perhaps also true
that nothing happens to them quite like what happens to us
when the blue-backed swallow dips swiftly toward the green pond
and the pond’s green-and-blue reflected swallow marries it a moment
in the reflected sky and the heart goes out to the end of the rope
it has been throwing into abyss after abyss, and a singing shimmers
from every color the morning has risen into.
My insect instructors have stilled, they are probably stuck together
in some bliss and minute pulse of after-longing
evolution worked out to suck the last juice of the world
into the receiver body. They can’t separate probably
until it is done.
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
japan
today i pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
it feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
i walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
i stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
i say it in front of a painting of the sea.
i tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
i listen to myself saying it,
then i say it without listening,
then i hear it without saying it.
and when the dog looks up at me,
i kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
it's the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time i say it, i feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
when i say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and i am the moth resting there.
when i say it at the mirror,
i am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
and later, when i say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell, and i
am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
-billy collins
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
it feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
i walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
i stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
i say it in front of a painting of the sea.
i tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
i listen to myself saying it,
then i say it without listening,
then i hear it without saying it.
and when the dog looks up at me,
i kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
it's the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time i say it, i feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
when i say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and i am the moth resting there.
when i say it at the mirror,
i am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
and later, when i say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell, and i
am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
-billy collins
two happy lovers make one bread
XLVIII
two happy lovers make one bread,
a single moon drop in the grass.
walking, they cast two shadows that flow together;
waking, they leave one sun empty in their bed.
of all the possible truths, they chose the day;
they held it, not with ropes but with an aroma.
They did not shred the peace; they did not shatter words;
their happiness is a transparent tower.
the air and wine accompany the lovers.
the night delights them with its joyous petals.
they have a right to all the carnations.
two happy lovers, without an ending, with no death,
they are born, they die, many times while they live:
they have the eternal life of the Natural.
-pablo neruda
this week, majda and i finished making the Sunflower Seed Rye Bread from Peter Reinhart's "Bread Baker's Apprentice". a fascinating exercise of passionate, nerdy epicurian perseverance. it took us a whole week to prepare: sourdough wild yeast starter, then barm, which then evolves into a bread starter, then the soaker, then the bread. it's made with whole wheat flour, whole rye flour, toasted sunflower seeds, yeast, salt and water.
this is our very first attempt at preparing a sophisticated bread from scratch. the result is awesome, with a comfortable room for enhancement, which is the most exciting thing about the process!
we tried to imitate a steam oven while baking it, following Reinhart's recommendation, and obtained a nice crust (again, with a lot of room for enhancement!). we're having it with pesto and cheese, as an accompaniment to mediterranean salads, or with a drizzle of honey.
 |
| lebanon / august, 2011 / nikon d300 |
"and you were waking, day was breaking a panoply of song"
 |
| tannourine cedar reserve, lebanon / august, 2011 / nikon d300 |
here's a hymn to welcome in the day
heralding a summer's early sway
and all the bulbs all coming in to begin
the thrushes bleating battle with the wrens
disrupts my reverie again
- the decemberists
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Friday, 5 August 2011
on the inadaptability of bureaucracy to environmental matters
i think that environment specialists sitting in fancy corporate offices and preaching environmental bureaucracy to field personnel like parrots, are nothing but bureaucratic slaves, totally disconnected from this world's realities.
and i think that "environmental compliance" is a deeply disturbing term that, just like other outdated industrial-era concepts, adopts a mechanistic, lowest-common-denominator approach to resolving complex environmental matters. "compliance" is better left for accounting, robotic tasks, and the like. applying bureaucratic compliance to environmental matters totally disregards the preciousness of the environment, and its ever evolving nature as a context-specific set of realities that emerge from a living planet or system.
and i think that "environmental compliance" is a deeply disturbing term that, just like other outdated industrial-era concepts, adopts a mechanistic, lowest-common-denominator approach to resolving complex environmental matters. "compliance" is better left for accounting, robotic tasks, and the like. applying bureaucratic compliance to environmental matters totally disregards the preciousness of the environment, and its ever evolving nature as a context-specific set of realities that emerge from a living planet or system.
Thursday, 4 August 2011
ode to mediocrity
casablanca airport has no water dispensers, atm machines, and its restaurants don’t accept credit cards despite the card reader sitting next to register and the proud sign: ‘credit cards accepted here’.
i’m hungry, thirsty, and the plane took off after sitting on the runway for 45 minutes.
the smell of food just woke me up and i’m considering whether to venture into the usual dabbling experience or to spare myself the whole process. should i reach out and grab that tray or just forego of the thrill of having a load of reheated food shoved in my lap, complementing the misery offered by the front passenger’s reclined seat and the side passengers’ elbows on each side.
- chicken or fish?
- none, thanks
stuck in a death row of seats i’m trying to come to terms with the fact that my life will very probably end today. this vintage 737-700 looks like it’s more than ready to sink deep into the depths of the mediterranean. that is if i survive the death-by-gucci thanks to the stench of the lebanese fashionista next to me.
all this frustration aside, i’m posting this today to proudly announce that i have finally promoted royal air maroc to the royal status of one of the world’s crummiest airlines.
see, air maroc possesses a stellar capacity to disappoint. they’ve managed to do so to me across every aspect of their business, and in more ways than one; systematically late departures and arrivals. dysfunctioning website. unannounced changes in departure and arrival dates on already-confirmed tickets. irresponsive local offices. bad service on board. loud music playing on longhaul flights. you name it, they’ve bloody done it!
and i must say, as a frequent traveller, i’m really hard to disappoint. my tolerance for bullshit spans across a decade of travels with local and regional airlines including buddha air, yemenia, al arabia, egypt air, al jazeera, fly asia, and heaps others. but i’ve got to admit, air maroc were fast to impress. they’re my new favorite inshallah airline.
my happy days with air maroc started last march on their website where beirut didn’t figure on the destination list. don’t ask why. trying to call their local office in beirut didn’t help either. an answering machine transfers the call then hangs up. no point in trying again. i tried for a week, several times a day. to put it simply, air maroc beirut don’t pick up the phone, no matter what time of day you call, no matter how many times you do it, or how desperate you are. if they exist at all, these moppets must be so damn busy all day doing fuck-all.
i finally bought my ticket through expedia, but upon arrival to the airport i found that my reservation was lost, leaving me stranded for over an hour at the check-in desk. air maroc’s ingenious solution to this problem was really simple: paying $800 for another ticket.
one hour later, the problem was exasperatedly resolved. did i miss my plane? absolutely not. and why? turns out leaving on time is not one of air maroc’s traits. at least not when it comes to flying airplanes.
the delays were systematic on every flight i’ve taken with them so far (today is my fourth). and they make a special effort to disappoint at the level of the smallest details: crappy food, complaisant staff, non-responsive customer service (to whom i wrote a month ago to no avail), run-down on-board toilets, you name it.
and to wrap up, i’m leaving you with a classic: as i type these words, the flight attendant selling duty free items on board is walking the airplane isles asking every passengers individually whether they have a change for $100.
how’s that for individual customer care?
i’m hungry, thirsty, and the plane took off after sitting on the runway for 45 minutes.
the smell of food just woke me up and i’m considering whether to venture into the usual dabbling experience or to spare myself the whole process. should i reach out and grab that tray or just forego of the thrill of having a load of reheated food shoved in my lap, complementing the misery offered by the front passenger’s reclined seat and the side passengers’ elbows on each side.
- chicken or fish?
- none, thanks
stuck in a death row of seats i’m trying to come to terms with the fact that my life will very probably end today. this vintage 737-700 looks like it’s more than ready to sink deep into the depths of the mediterranean. that is if i survive the death-by-gucci thanks to the stench of the lebanese fashionista next to me.
all this frustration aside, i’m posting this today to proudly announce that i have finally promoted royal air maroc to the royal status of one of the world’s crummiest airlines.
see, air maroc possesses a stellar capacity to disappoint. they’ve managed to do so to me across every aspect of their business, and in more ways than one; systematically late departures and arrivals. dysfunctioning website. unannounced changes in departure and arrival dates on already-confirmed tickets. irresponsive local offices. bad service on board. loud music playing on longhaul flights. you name it, they’ve bloody done it!
and i must say, as a frequent traveller, i’m really hard to disappoint. my tolerance for bullshit spans across a decade of travels with local and regional airlines including buddha air, yemenia, al arabia, egypt air, al jazeera, fly asia, and heaps others. but i’ve got to admit, air maroc were fast to impress. they’re my new favorite inshallah airline.
my happy days with air maroc started last march on their website where beirut didn’t figure on the destination list. don’t ask why. trying to call their local office in beirut didn’t help either. an answering machine transfers the call then hangs up. no point in trying again. i tried for a week, several times a day. to put it simply, air maroc beirut don’t pick up the phone, no matter what time of day you call, no matter how many times you do it, or how desperate you are. if they exist at all, these moppets must be so damn busy all day doing fuck-all.
i finally bought my ticket through expedia, but upon arrival to the airport i found that my reservation was lost, leaving me stranded for over an hour at the check-in desk. air maroc’s ingenious solution to this problem was really simple: paying $800 for another ticket.
one hour later, the problem was exasperatedly resolved. did i miss my plane? absolutely not. and why? turns out leaving on time is not one of air maroc’s traits. at least not when it comes to flying airplanes.
the delays were systematic on every flight i’ve taken with them so far (today is my fourth). and they make a special effort to disappoint at the level of the smallest details: crappy food, complaisant staff, non-responsive customer service (to whom i wrote a month ago to no avail), run-down on-board toilets, you name it.
and to wrap up, i’m leaving you with a classic: as i type these words, the flight attendant selling duty free items on board is walking the airplane isles asking every passengers individually whether they have a change for $100.
how’s that for individual customer care?
Monday, 1 August 2011
Friday, 29 July 2011
for those who would see directly into essential nature, the idea of the sacred is a delusion and an obstruction: it diverts us from seeing what is before our eyes: plain thusness
 |
| morocco / july 2011 |
'i suspect that primary peoples all know that their myths are somehow “made up.” they do not take them literally and at the same time they hold the stories very dear. only upon being invaded by history and whipsawed by alien values do a people begin to declare that their myths are “literally true.” this literalness in turn provokes skeptical questioning and the whole critical exercise. what a final refinement of confusion about the role of myths it is to declare that although they are not to be believed, they are nonetheless aesthetic and psychological constructs which bring order to an otherwise chaotic world and to which we should willfully commit ourselves!' - gray snyder / the practice of the wild
Thursday, 28 July 2011
mass media, mass hysteria and the poisoned well
classic, witty commentary by stephen colbert that reminds us that just because the norwegian terrorist is a non-muslim, anti-muslim fuckhead, it doesn't mean that we must relieve muslims from their hypothetical responsibility which we instinctively cast on them at the outset of a terrorist attack!
to immortalise his hilarious words, i've typed an extract from the video.
"some say that these false reports of muslim involvement were a widespread failure of the media, but i say by going with their guts, these journalists were able to get the story they wanted and scoop reality. and even if there was a rush to judgement, we must not repeat that mistake by rushing to accuracy! just because the confessed murderer is a blond, blue-eyes norwegian-born anti-muslim crusader, does not mean he’s not a swarthy, ululating madman.
…
so if you’re pulling a news report completely out of your ass, it’s safer to go with muslim! that’s not prejudice, that’s probability. because the news business is all about guesstimating. just taking shots in the dark. it’s friday, you’re trying to beat the traffic for the week-end, you hear about a horrible attack, and you roll the bones and go “muslim!”. same way when you see someone turn the wrong way up a one way street, your journalistic instincts go “aasian!”.
the point, this monster may not be muslim but his heinous acts are indisputably musl-ish! now we must not let his islam-esque atrocity divert our attention from the terrible people he reminds us of!"
to immortalise his hilarious words, i've typed an extract from the video.
"some say that these false reports of muslim involvement were a widespread failure of the media, but i say by going with their guts, these journalists were able to get the story they wanted and scoop reality. and even if there was a rush to judgement, we must not repeat that mistake by rushing to accuracy! just because the confessed murderer is a blond, blue-eyes norwegian-born anti-muslim crusader, does not mean he’s not a swarthy, ululating madman.
…
so if you’re pulling a news report completely out of your ass, it’s safer to go with muslim! that’s not prejudice, that’s probability. because the news business is all about guesstimating. just taking shots in the dark. it’s friday, you’re trying to beat the traffic for the week-end, you hear about a horrible attack, and you roll the bones and go “muslim!”. same way when you see someone turn the wrong way up a one way street, your journalistic instincts go “aasian!”.
the point, this monster may not be muslim but his heinous acts are indisputably musl-ish! now we must not let his islam-esque atrocity divert our attention from the terrible people he reminds us of!"
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
let's free our minds!
'The reason I write my books is to help build a cultural resistance that will stop this culture from killing the planet.' - Derrick Jensen
Saturday, 16 July 2011
"you can't kill a planet and live on it, too"
extracts from an article on truth out by frank joseph smecker and derrick jensen. reminds me of guy debord's 'society of the spectacle' combined with herman daly's 'steady state' economic theory. a good read.
Let’s expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy running.
With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it’s terrifying to watch the very culture responsible for this – the culture of industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels, primarily a dwindling supply of oil – thrust forward wantonly to fuel its insatiable appetite for “growth.”
Deluded by myths of progress and suffering from the psychosis of technomania complicated by addiction to depleting oil reserves, industrial society leaves a crescendo of atrocities in its wake.
(...) As though 200 species going extinct each day were not enough, climate change, a direct result of burning fossil fuels, has proved not only to be as unpredictable as it is real, but as destructive as it is unpredictable. The erratic and lethal characteristics of a changing planet and its shifting atmosphere are becoming the norm of the 21st century, their impact accelerating at an alarming pace, bringing this planet closer, sooner than later, to a point of uninhabitable ghastliness. And yet, collective apathy, ignorance and self-imposed denial in the face of all this sadistic exploitation and violence marches this culture closer to self-annihilation.
Lost in the eerily comforting fantasy of limitless growth, production and consumption, many people cling to things like Facebook, Twitter, “Jersey Shore” and soulless pop music as if their lives depended on it, identifying with a reality that’s artificial and constructed, that panders to desire rather than necessity, that delicately conceals the violence at the other end of this economy, a violence so widespread that we’re all not only complicit in it to a degree (e.g., if you’re a taxpayer, you help subsidize the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction), but victims of it as well. As Chris Hedges admonished in his books, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy” and the “Triumph of Spectacle,” any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill itself.
Moreover, any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill everything and everyone else in its path as well as itself.
As the world burns, as species die off, as mothers breastfeed their children with dioxin-tainted breast milk, as nuclear reactors melt down into the Pacific while the aerial deployment of depleted uranium damages innocent lives, it is perplexing that so few people fight back against a system that has horror as a reality for most living on the planet. And those who fight back, who stand in opposition to the culture behind such wholesale abuse and call it what it is – a genocidal mega-state (especially if you believe that the lives of nonhumans are as important to them as yours is to you and mine is to me) – are met with hostility and hatred, scoffed at, harassed, even tortured. With so much at stake, why aren’t more people deafening their ears to the nutcases who preach a future of infinite-growth economies? And why do so many people continue to put “the economy” first, to take industrial capitalism as we know it as a given and not fight back, defend what’s left of the natural world?
“One of the reasons there aren’t more people working to take down the system that’s killing the planet is because their lives depend on the system,” author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me from his home in California when I interviewed him on the phone recently.
“If your experience is that your food comes from the grocery store and your water comes from the tap, then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on them,” Jensen explained.
“If your experience, however, is that your food comes from a land base and that your water comes from a stream, well, then you will defend to the death that land base and that stream. So part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and it’s very difficult physically for us to live outside of it.
“The other problem is that fear is the belief we have something left to lose. What I mean by this is that I really like my life right now, as do a lot of people. We have a lot to lose if this culture is to go down. A primary reason so many of us do not want to win this war – or even acknowledge that it’s going on – is that we materially benefit from this war’s plunder. I’m really unsure how many of us would be willing to give up our automobiles and cell phones, hot showers and electric lights, our grocery and clothing stores. But the truth is, the system that leads to these things, that leads to technological advancement and our identity as civilized beings, are killing us and, more importantly, killing the planet.”
Even in the absence of global warming, this culture would still be murdering the planet, bumping off pods of whales and flocks of birds; detonating mountaintops to access strata of coal and bauxite, eliminating entire ecosystems. All this violence inflicted upon an entire planet to run an economy based on the foolish and immoral notion that we can sustain industrial societies, all while trashing the planet’s land bases, ecosystems and life. And the fantastic rhetoric those who insist on adapting to these changes promulgate – that technology will find a fix, that we can adapt, that the planet can and will conform to fixes in the market – is dangerous.
(...) In the real world, you can’t have a nature/culture split, but in this culture you do and it has real effects on the physical world. You can’t live on a planet and kill it at the same time.” You find the problem with an industrial production economy when you unpack the word “production.” As Jensen makes clear in his book “The Culture of Make Believe,” production is essentially the conversion of the living to the dead: animals into cold cuts, mountains and rivers into aluminum beer cans, trees into toilet paper, oil into plastics and computers (one computer uses ten times its own mass in fossil fuels). To go paperless is not to go green, or maybe it is, depending on what shade of Green we’re talking about here. Basically, every commodity one comes in contact with is soaked in oil, made from resources, marked by, as Jensen puts it, the turning of the living to the dead: Industrial production.
(...) In the US, more lives are lost weekly from preventable cancers and other illnesses than are lost in ten years from terrorist attacks. And the corporations this culture fights for overseas are the very organizations culpable for these domestic deaths every week.
(...) “An infinite-growth economy is not only insane and impossible,” remarked Jensen, (...) “Furthermore, according to the stories of industrial capitalism, this economic system must constantly increase production to grow and what, after all, is production? It is indeed the conversion of the living to the dead, the conversion of living forests into two-by-fours, living rivers into stagnant pools for generating hydroelectricity, living fish into fish sticks and ultimately all of these into money. And really, what is gross national product? It’s a measure of this conversion of the living to the dead. The more quickly the living world is converted into dead products, the higher the GNP. And these simple equations are complicated by the fact that when GNP goes down, people often lose jobs. No wonder the world is getting killed.
(...) “A while back I had a conversation with an anarchist who was complaining that I was ‘too ideological,’ and that my ideology was ‘the health of the earth.’ Well, actually, the earth is not and cannot ever be an ideology. The earth is physical. It is real. And it is primary. Without soil, you don’t have a healthy land base and without a healthy land base you don’t eat, you die. Without drinkable clean water you die.”
And this is one of the problems with our culture: its lack of ability to separate ideology – the kind that accommodates maximizing pleasure and domination – from the needs of the natural world. And, so, if solutions to global warming do not immediately address the basic needs of the planet, well … we’re fucked.
(...) “I saw this right-wing bumper sticker the other day that read, ‘You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers,’ but it’s not just guns: we’re going to have to pry rigid claws off steering wheels, cans of hair spray, TV remote controls and two-liter bottles of Jolt Cola,” cautioned Jensen. “Each of these individually and all of these collectively are more important to many people than are lampreys, salmon, spotted owls, sturgeons, tigers, our own lives. And that is a huge part of the problem. So of course we don’t want to win. We’d lose our cable TV. But I want to win. With the world being killed, I want to win and will do whatever it takes to win.”
When Adolph Eichmann stood before the Jerusalem District Court and was asked why he agreed to the task of deporting Jews to the ghettos and concentration camps, his response was, “No one ever told me what I was doing was wrong.” Today, 200 species have become extinct; another indigenous community will disappear from this planet forever; an entire forest will be removed; and millions of human lives will be forced to endure the agonies of famine, war, disease, thirst, the loss of their land, their community, their way of life. Not enough people have stepped forward to say that what this culture is doing to the planet is wrong.
Well, here it is folks: What this culture is doing to our very selves, what it’s doing to the planet, is wrong. So damn wrong. And the sooner we replace this economy, the sooner we can dissolve these toxic illusions and their formative narratives. Only then, can we begin to live the free lives we were born to live and win the fight.
Let’s expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy running.
With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it’s terrifying to watch the very culture responsible for this – the culture of industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels, primarily a dwindling supply of oil – thrust forward wantonly to fuel its insatiable appetite for “growth.”
Deluded by myths of progress and suffering from the psychosis of technomania complicated by addiction to depleting oil reserves, industrial society leaves a crescendo of atrocities in its wake.
(...) As though 200 species going extinct each day were not enough, climate change, a direct result of burning fossil fuels, has proved not only to be as unpredictable as it is real, but as destructive as it is unpredictable. The erratic and lethal characteristics of a changing planet and its shifting atmosphere are becoming the norm of the 21st century, their impact accelerating at an alarming pace, bringing this planet closer, sooner than later, to a point of uninhabitable ghastliness. And yet, collective apathy, ignorance and self-imposed denial in the face of all this sadistic exploitation and violence marches this culture closer to self-annihilation.
Lost in the eerily comforting fantasy of limitless growth, production and consumption, many people cling to things like Facebook, Twitter, “Jersey Shore” and soulless pop music as if their lives depended on it, identifying with a reality that’s artificial and constructed, that panders to desire rather than necessity, that delicately conceals the violence at the other end of this economy, a violence so widespread that we’re all not only complicit in it to a degree (e.g., if you’re a taxpayer, you help subsidize the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction), but victims of it as well. As Chris Hedges admonished in his books, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy” and the “Triumph of Spectacle,” any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill itself.
Moreover, any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill everything and everyone else in its path as well as itself.
As the world burns, as species die off, as mothers breastfeed their children with dioxin-tainted breast milk, as nuclear reactors melt down into the Pacific while the aerial deployment of depleted uranium damages innocent lives, it is perplexing that so few people fight back against a system that has horror as a reality for most living on the planet. And those who fight back, who stand in opposition to the culture behind such wholesale abuse and call it what it is – a genocidal mega-state (especially if you believe that the lives of nonhumans are as important to them as yours is to you and mine is to me) – are met with hostility and hatred, scoffed at, harassed, even tortured. With so much at stake, why aren’t more people deafening their ears to the nutcases who preach a future of infinite-growth economies? And why do so many people continue to put “the economy” first, to take industrial capitalism as we know it as a given and not fight back, defend what’s left of the natural world?
“One of the reasons there aren’t more people working to take down the system that’s killing the planet is because their lives depend on the system,” author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me from his home in California when I interviewed him on the phone recently.
“If your experience is that your food comes from the grocery store and your water comes from the tap, then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on them,” Jensen explained.
“If your experience, however, is that your food comes from a land base and that your water comes from a stream, well, then you will defend to the death that land base and that stream. So part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and it’s very difficult physically for us to live outside of it.
“The other problem is that fear is the belief we have something left to lose. What I mean by this is that I really like my life right now, as do a lot of people. We have a lot to lose if this culture is to go down. A primary reason so many of us do not want to win this war – or even acknowledge that it’s going on – is that we materially benefit from this war’s plunder. I’m really unsure how many of us would be willing to give up our automobiles and cell phones, hot showers and electric lights, our grocery and clothing stores. But the truth is, the system that leads to these things, that leads to technological advancement and our identity as civilized beings, are killing us and, more importantly, killing the planet.”
Even in the absence of global warming, this culture would still be murdering the planet, bumping off pods of whales and flocks of birds; detonating mountaintops to access strata of coal and bauxite, eliminating entire ecosystems. All this violence inflicted upon an entire planet to run an economy based on the foolish and immoral notion that we can sustain industrial societies, all while trashing the planet’s land bases, ecosystems and life. And the fantastic rhetoric those who insist on adapting to these changes promulgate – that technology will find a fix, that we can adapt, that the planet can and will conform to fixes in the market – is dangerous.
(...) In the real world, you can’t have a nature/culture split, but in this culture you do and it has real effects on the physical world. You can’t live on a planet and kill it at the same time.” You find the problem with an industrial production economy when you unpack the word “production.” As Jensen makes clear in his book “The Culture of Make Believe,” production is essentially the conversion of the living to the dead: animals into cold cuts, mountains and rivers into aluminum beer cans, trees into toilet paper, oil into plastics and computers (one computer uses ten times its own mass in fossil fuels). To go paperless is not to go green, or maybe it is, depending on what shade of Green we’re talking about here. Basically, every commodity one comes in contact with is soaked in oil, made from resources, marked by, as Jensen puts it, the turning of the living to the dead: Industrial production.
(...) In the US, more lives are lost weekly from preventable cancers and other illnesses than are lost in ten years from terrorist attacks. And the corporations this culture fights for overseas are the very organizations culpable for these domestic deaths every week.
(...) “An infinite-growth economy is not only insane and impossible,” remarked Jensen, (...) “Furthermore, according to the stories of industrial capitalism, this economic system must constantly increase production to grow and what, after all, is production? It is indeed the conversion of the living to the dead, the conversion of living forests into two-by-fours, living rivers into stagnant pools for generating hydroelectricity, living fish into fish sticks and ultimately all of these into money. And really, what is gross national product? It’s a measure of this conversion of the living to the dead. The more quickly the living world is converted into dead products, the higher the GNP. And these simple equations are complicated by the fact that when GNP goes down, people often lose jobs. No wonder the world is getting killed.
(...) “A while back I had a conversation with an anarchist who was complaining that I was ‘too ideological,’ and that my ideology was ‘the health of the earth.’ Well, actually, the earth is not and cannot ever be an ideology. The earth is physical. It is real. And it is primary. Without soil, you don’t have a healthy land base and without a healthy land base you don’t eat, you die. Without drinkable clean water you die.”
And this is one of the problems with our culture: its lack of ability to separate ideology – the kind that accommodates maximizing pleasure and domination – from the needs of the natural world. And, so, if solutions to global warming do not immediately address the basic needs of the planet, well … we’re fucked.
(...) “I saw this right-wing bumper sticker the other day that read, ‘You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers,’ but it’s not just guns: we’re going to have to pry rigid claws off steering wheels, cans of hair spray, TV remote controls and two-liter bottles of Jolt Cola,” cautioned Jensen. “Each of these individually and all of these collectively are more important to many people than are lampreys, salmon, spotted owls, sturgeons, tigers, our own lives. And that is a huge part of the problem. So of course we don’t want to win. We’d lose our cable TV. But I want to win. With the world being killed, I want to win and will do whatever it takes to win.”
When Adolph Eichmann stood before the Jerusalem District Court and was asked why he agreed to the task of deporting Jews to the ghettos and concentration camps, his response was, “No one ever told me what I was doing was wrong.” Today, 200 species have become extinct; another indigenous community will disappear from this planet forever; an entire forest will be removed; and millions of human lives will be forced to endure the agonies of famine, war, disease, thirst, the loss of their land, their community, their way of life. Not enough people have stepped forward to say that what this culture is doing to the planet is wrong.
Well, here it is folks: What this culture is doing to our very selves, what it’s doing to the planet, is wrong. So damn wrong. And the sooner we replace this economy, the sooner we can dissolve these toxic illusions and their formative narratives. Only then, can we begin to live the free lives we were born to live and win the fight.
thrushes bleating battle with the wrens disrupts my reverie again
Thursday, 14 July 2011
XLVII
i want to look back and see you in the branches.
little by little you turned into fruit.
it was easy for you to rise from the roots,
singing your syllable of sap.
here you will be a fragrant flower first,
changed to the statuesque form of a kiss,
till the sun and the earth, blood and the sky, fulfill
their promises of sweetness and pleasure, in you.
there in the branches i will recognize your hair,
your image ripening in the leaves,
bringing the petals nearer my thirst,
and my mouth will fill with the taste of you,
the kiss that rose from the earth
with your blood, the blood of a lover's fruit.
- neruda
little by little you turned into fruit.
it was easy for you to rise from the roots,
singing your syllable of sap.
here you will be a fragrant flower first,
changed to the statuesque form of a kiss,
till the sun and the earth, blood and the sky, fulfill
their promises of sweetness and pleasure, in you.
there in the branches i will recognize your hair,
your image ripening in the leaves,
bringing the petals nearer my thirst,
and my mouth will fill with the taste of you,
the kiss that rose from the earth
with your blood, the blood of a lover's fruit.
- neruda
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Monday, 11 July 2011
Saturday, 9 July 2011
when 1 + 1 = ∞
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
the body of my world, root and flower
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Friday, 17 June 2011
Sunday, 12 June 2011
the year of the poppies
"i love poppies. could be my favorite flower. and you can’t even pick them, because they quickly shrivel up and return to dust... so you just have to appreciate them all wild and glorious in the fields... seems a metaphor for life, n’est-ce pas?"
june 13th, 2010
june 13th, 2010
the sun
have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again
out of the blackness
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world—
or have you too
gone crazy
for power
for things?
-mary oliver
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again
out of the blackness
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world—
or have you too
gone crazy
for power
for things?
-mary oliver
Saturday, 11 June 2011
Thursday, 9 June 2011
replay: un de ces jours
a replay of a post initially published on 19 september 2006.
Musique: Language /Da Grassroots Body/ BO Les poupées russes /Télécharger
Photo: Baskinta, Liban /Février 2005 /Canon EOS 300 /Kodak TriX N&B /Agrandir
Musique: Language /Da Grassroots Body/ BO Les poupées russes /Télécharger
Photo: Baskinta, Liban /Février 2005 /Canon EOS 300 /Kodak TriX N&B /Agrandir
Sunday, 29 May 2011
what i want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled... and i do
Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe
their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them --
the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch
only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?
I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided --
and that one wears an orange blight --
and this one is a glossy cheek
half nibbled away --
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~ Mary Oliver
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe
their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them --
the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch
only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?
I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided --
and that one wears an orange blight --
and this one is a glossy cheek
half nibbled away --
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~ Mary Oliver
you are the name of things
Letter
I had wanted to begin
by telling you I saw another
tanager below the pond
where I had sat for half an hour
feeding on wild berries
in the little clearing near the pines
that hide the lower field
and then looked up from red berries
to the quick red bird brilliant
in the light. I have seen
more yarrow and swaying
Queen Anne's lace around the woods
as hawkweed and nightshade
wither and drop seed. A new blue flower,
sweet, yellow-stamened, ovary inferior,
has recently sprung up.
But I had the odd
feeling, walking to the house
to write this down, that I had left
the birds and flowers in the field,
rooted or feeding. They are not in my
head, are not now on this page.
It was very strange to me, but I think
their loss was your absence. I wanted
to be walking with Leif, the sun
behind us skipping off the pond,
the windy maple sheltering the house,
and find you there and say
here! a new blue flower (ovary inferior)
and busy Leif and Kris with naming in a world I love.
You even have my field guide. It's you I love.
I have believed so long
in the magic of names and poems.
I hadn't thought them bodiless
at all. Tall Buttercup. Wild Vetch.
"Often I am permitted to return
to a meadow." It all seemed real to me
last week. Words. You are the body
of my world, root and flower, the
brightness and surprise of birds.
I miss you, love. Tell Leif
you're the name of things.
~ Robert Hass
I had wanted to begin
by telling you I saw another
tanager below the pond
where I had sat for half an hour
feeding on wild berries
in the little clearing near the pines
that hide the lower field
and then looked up from red berries
to the quick red bird brilliant
in the light. I have seen
more yarrow and swaying
Queen Anne's lace around the woods
as hawkweed and nightshade
wither and drop seed. A new blue flower,
sweet, yellow-stamened, ovary inferior,
has recently sprung up.
But I had the odd
feeling, walking to the house
to write this down, that I had left
the birds and flowers in the field,
rooted or feeding. They are not in my
head, are not now on this page.
It was very strange to me, but I think
their loss was your absence. I wanted
to be walking with Leif, the sun
behind us skipping off the pond,
the windy maple sheltering the house,
and find you there and say
here! a new blue flower (ovary inferior)
and busy Leif and Kris with naming in a world I love.
You even have my field guide. It's you I love.
I have believed so long
in the magic of names and poems.
I hadn't thought them bodiless
at all. Tall Buttercup. Wild Vetch.
"Often I am permitted to return
to a meadow." It all seemed real to me
last week. Words. You are the body
of my world, root and flower, the
brightness and surprise of birds.
I miss you, love. Tell Leif
you're the name of things.
~ Robert Hass
Friday, 27 May 2011
a home never lost and never found
been walking montreal for four consecutive days now. a good eight or so hours a day, soaking in the details of what makes this city what it is.
like how bike parkmeters clamp around the axle of locked public 'bixi' bikes to keep them in place, or how neatly planted maple trees line the sidewalks, their clean soil covered with mulch. or how various coin currencies lay at the bottom of a plastic cup by the side of a solo musician playing in the street. or the fact that a nickel coin is larger than a dime. or how clean the metro rails are, as compared to london's. or how smiley the cashiers are, as compared to paris'. or how blue and wide the sky is as compared to beirut's. or how most of the city's modern architecture dates from the eighties. or how safe the city feels.
been running in park mont-royal this morning. got addicted to the smell of freshly cut grass as it was being mowed. and the mats tied to those bikes going uphill to the park's summit where the riders would be doing their morning yoga session. or the few bird songs among the noises of the city in the morning rush hour.
as i walked throughout the city, i couldn't help not stopping at local fruits and vegetables stores. watched the raspberries' velvety, hydrofuge skin and their organic, intensely orgasmic feel. and blueberries' pulpous hearts almost bursting out of their dusty skins. and freshly cut asparagus wearing their elegant crowns of chlorophylle and hugging each other like dear old friends. and gorgeous, erotic grapefruit shining their flesh and awaiting to gush out their scent in public.
i couldn't help getting drunk on montreal's diversity. vietnam and morocco and india and china and the cameroon and romania and the democratic republic of congo and italy and canada and lebanon and cuba and france and palestine and everywhere else and nowhere.
montreal is full of details. a home for so many of those who are seeking one. and for someone like me who carries their home on their back, montreal is just another badge. like another spice that i just discovered. fenugreek or something.
another prism that breaks out the same sunlight into a totally different array of colours. another angle of sight through the same kaleidoscope. another fascinatingly sad encounter with identity. a revolting confrontation with an avalanche of human-invented concepts. a rear view mirror of the devastatingly wrong rights.
all those images of a million details invade me, overwhelm me and leave me drugged. i suddenly feel like a bee hit with the colony collapse disorder. i've gone mad, wanting to grow a beard and my curly hair and go wander the world and die anonymously. i feel like i'm totally fulfilled with helplessness and homelessness. my home is the universe. i'd rather be an unconscious ray of sunlight, or a water drop in a river: inexistent as a standalone entity, yet wholly and entirely part of everything.
like how bike parkmeters clamp around the axle of locked public 'bixi' bikes to keep them in place, or how neatly planted maple trees line the sidewalks, their clean soil covered with mulch. or how various coin currencies lay at the bottom of a plastic cup by the side of a solo musician playing in the street. or the fact that a nickel coin is larger than a dime. or how clean the metro rails are, as compared to london's. or how smiley the cashiers are, as compared to paris'. or how blue and wide the sky is as compared to beirut's. or how most of the city's modern architecture dates from the eighties. or how safe the city feels.
been running in park mont-royal this morning. got addicted to the smell of freshly cut grass as it was being mowed. and the mats tied to those bikes going uphill to the park's summit where the riders would be doing their morning yoga session. or the few bird songs among the noises of the city in the morning rush hour.
as i walked throughout the city, i couldn't help not stopping at local fruits and vegetables stores. watched the raspberries' velvety, hydrofuge skin and their organic, intensely orgasmic feel. and blueberries' pulpous hearts almost bursting out of their dusty skins. and freshly cut asparagus wearing their elegant crowns of chlorophylle and hugging each other like dear old friends. and gorgeous, erotic grapefruit shining their flesh and awaiting to gush out their scent in public.
i couldn't help getting drunk on montreal's diversity. vietnam and morocco and india and china and the cameroon and romania and the democratic republic of congo and italy and canada and lebanon and cuba and france and palestine and everywhere else and nowhere.
montreal is full of details. a home for so many of those who are seeking one. and for someone like me who carries their home on their back, montreal is just another badge. like another spice that i just discovered. fenugreek or something.
another prism that breaks out the same sunlight into a totally different array of colours. another angle of sight through the same kaleidoscope. another fascinatingly sad encounter with identity. a revolting confrontation with an avalanche of human-invented concepts. a rear view mirror of the devastatingly wrong rights.
all those images of a million details invade me, overwhelm me and leave me drugged. i suddenly feel like a bee hit with the colony collapse disorder. i've gone mad, wanting to grow a beard and my curly hair and go wander the world and die anonymously. i feel like i'm totally fulfilled with helplessness and homelessness. my home is the universe. i'd rather be an unconscious ray of sunlight, or a water drop in a river: inexistent as a standalone entity, yet wholly and entirely part of everything.
music: fleet foxes/ drops in the river/ sun giant/ download
Thursday, 26 May 2011
into the wild, into your arms
dc - maryland - new jersey - new york - connecticut - massachusetts - vermont - and into new hampshire's white mountains national forest!
sunset hike with the love of my life, from park gate to mizpah hut through amazing forests and snowy patches. according to the appalachian mountain club's website, mizpah (which i found to be a biblical word) means "pillar in the wilderness".
the next morning, we hit the trail to mount washington, a five hour hike in a partly sunny partly foggy weather, through amazing forests and then well above the (exceptionally low) tree line. the weather at mount washington is known for its unpredictability and deadliness.
the only thing that beat the feeling of peaking the summit was the wholesome meal that we prepared once back at the mizpah hut, after a well-deserved yoga session (ooh, and thank god for sierra designs' sleeping bags that zip together!). the hut's caretakers were an amazing couple who kept us company over the evenings at the hut. she's a professional harp player and he's a phd candidate researching thru-hikers on the appalachian trail.
the next morning was equally divine, with authentically prepared turkish coffee, blueberry pancakes, homemade bread and maple butter. never, in my wildest dreams, could i have imagined a more wholesome way of discovering new england's wilderness, accompanied by the most divine morsel of earthy goodness that has ever existed.
sunset hike with the love of my life, from park gate to mizpah hut through amazing forests and snowy patches. according to the appalachian mountain club's website, mizpah (which i found to be a biblical word) means "pillar in the wilderness".
the next morning, we hit the trail to mount washington, a five hour hike in a partly sunny partly foggy weather, through amazing forests and then well above the (exceptionally low) tree line. the weather at mount washington is known for its unpredictability and deadliness.
the only thing that beat the feeling of peaking the summit was the wholesome meal that we prepared once back at the mizpah hut, after a well-deserved yoga session (ooh, and thank god for sierra designs' sleeping bags that zip together!). the hut's caretakers were an amazing couple who kept us company over the evenings at the hut. she's a professional harp player and he's a phd candidate researching thru-hikers on the appalachian trail.
the next morning was equally divine, with authentically prepared turkish coffee, blueberry pancakes, homemade bread and maple butter. never, in my wildest dreams, could i have imagined a more wholesome way of discovering new england's wilderness, accompanied by the most divine morsel of earthy goodness that has ever existed.
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