.

Here is a thought that I've been having again and again, almost intrusively, for the past few months:

Life. Is. Too. Short.

It's strange that the immediate catalyst for this (entirely mundane) realisation was the onset of spring. That's usually the time when I become so immersed in the annual renewal that I am positive down to the my bones.
Not this year.
This year, I've been catching glimpses of old people getting off busses, their knees creaking, their eyes dimmed, the grasp of their hands weak, their understanding of this new, fast, hard world sometimes incomplete. And it floods me with pain to think h0w quickly that happens. 70 years, 80 years, 85...
I've been thinking of all the things I want to do, want to see. All the things I want to be. All the things I don't even know I want yet. All the things to love, to hate, to know, to change, to touch, to learn. All the bigness, the vastness, the deepness of the world.
It seems impossibly crazy that we're given One life. And it's a short one. And we're given an instinctive hold on it. A desire to keep it going. How brutal.
It seems as though inside everything that is beautiful, wildly moving or worth learning there's the incessant ticking of a clock that never stops. A sadness. A knowledge that this lovely friend, our time here, is moving always further and further away, until one day she is gone.

I was on the phone to my mother today and I told her what I'd been mulling over in my head, again and again all through spring, and now summer.
She laughed, and reminded me that she'd turned 60 this year, and that I was too young to be thinking like this, I should go out and kiss the Man and enjoy the sun and forget everything else.
But I really can't. I feel a new sense of urgency, of mad attachment to this one, wild, precious life. And a breathless desire to make it stay, keep it around longer, hold on tight.

For the record

(FTR)
I am PROFOUNDLY Disinterested in the World Cup. I've been wanting to say that since the damn thing began.

And Also:
Not that it matters at all to anyone (as with the rest of the content on here, tee hee, but still I thought I'd scream about stuff anyway), but:
I dreamt of a kiss I had fiveish years ago now at Home. Last night. Kisser was on Facebook and chatting, so... Must've jolted the old brain cells.
But.
He told me was getting married and has become as raddled as... as... the most raddled person I've ever seen.
Why does this happen to everyone?!
I told him I was still 'just' living-in with the Man.
He said: 'Oh. haha. Grow up na. All that romance is so juvenile.'
Not what he said when he was salivating for a kiss under my mother's neem tree in the garden.
I hope he falls into the fire and burns his lungi off in front of his mother.
I wanted to say that out loud too, but I controlled myself. I have greatly improved.

FullStop

Dear __________,

Ever notice how conversation flows exceptionally smoothly when I focus on how's work-what did you buy today - ooh nice heels! -oooh show me your new bed! - aarrey yaaar, why don't you call him - arrey man, he's a jackass, and then just stops the second you say: So. How are you really?

I couldn't give a toss about the new bed, or the new boy in it.
The heels are great, but high as they are, you still look pretty low to me. Even online, even longdistance.

So why can't you just talk about what matters, and stop hiding behind boys and beds?
I probably can't fix it for you, but babu, neither can heels.

So.
Talk.

A thought, which perhaps you should put off thinking about if you've been feeling low, because thinking about it when stressed is likely to just be the last straw.
I'm keeping track of the run up to the next big climate summit in copenhagen, esp. the noises coming out of the US, India, China and Brazil. Then planning to write something about it. And part of that is watching lots of speeches. And today, again, I realised the difference between intellectually knowing something is wrong, and being horrified in your gut.
I've been thinking about climate change now for 4 years, ever since I first began studying it.
And there have been moments when I've been absolutely sickened by it. But today I thought this thought:
You realise how BIG the world actually is, how deeply ancient, how vast? And how much life it contains and nurtures and the scale of the processes that it takes to keep a global, interconnected life support system going? My god. And you realise how much time it's taken to evolve to this stage? 4 point something billion years, and every passing second brings up that number. And in the space of a few human generations between the start of the industrial revolution to now, we're fundamentally changing that entire system. Dismantling it systematically.
Don't get me wrong. The system is so perfectly self-correcting, after a tipping point, have no doubt that it will heal itself and get rid of the offending organism, or reduce it's numbers to keep its further actions absolutely under control.
But in the meanwhile, we're taking the ground out from under our own feet, and causing whole nations of creatures to simply tip into nothing. Not a single centimetre of the earth's surface is unaffected, now, by us, because the very air has changed.
I invite you, an individual, human, being, to feel, in your gut the horror of being, in this case, on the wrong side.
The powerful, all-changing, supreme, side. We know what happens to those in all our fairytales, in all our history.
Don't get me wrong. The wrong side is also a product of nature, and so it also has the capacity to correct itself, and it's taking baby steps, perhaps too late, to at least look at what's it's doing.
But feel it - actually imagine it - unless you're a member of an indigenous island tribe or a herder in sub-saharan africa, you, me, us, all, everyone you know and love, is on the side that is whipping the oceans up into storms, sweeping deserts further across the globe and buying, flying and discarding our own way into misery. Imagine it, sincerely image it. If everyone did that, and then knew what to change, perhaps we could hope that it won't go so badly for us in the end.

Truly Scary

I was leafing through an old article on Arundhati Roy in the Guardian and a vague sentence about "increasing fascism" in India caught my eye.
It's a sentiment I've encountered briefly before too, and for some reason I felt like chasing it.
I googled 'The rise of fascism in India'.
And lo and behold, 146,000 results. The first one being a report with the exact same title.
Yikes.

Oh. And welcome back to the other home.

Post 26/11

When the dust settles, when the heat goes off and the lights come on, we're going to finally see who's to blame. All the blood on our hands will give us away.
In the land of karma, we're blaming everybody else and passing the buck.
Sad.

My election moments

In Greece

The top three remember-forever election moments from Barack Obama 2008:

1. Historic both politically and personally - I stayed glued to my laptop all night, drinking 'American Cola' (seriously - when you're too broke to drink Coke, just how broke are you exactly!? - still, it was good stuff) and writing my first lecture, toggling between .pdfs and the huffington post, NY times, the independent, Barackobama.com, the guardian.... Around four, we were both done. And I settled down to listen to his acceptance speech and burst into tears.

2. Running between my 'office' and the Man's room every time a state turned Obama, and saying, 'PENN!!!!' and 'NEW YORK!!!!!' and...'OHIO!!!' Sitting on the Man's lap and watching the electoral vote cross.... 200.... 230.... 270... 300.... and onwards and upwards.

3. Standing, dazed and happy at the bus top this morning, freezing cold, and seeing one of my old professors - a self-confessed and extremely proud socialist - running (he is past retirement age) with a big smile on his face, towards the bus. We smiled and both immediately knew: 'You didn't get any sleep, did you!!'
Him: 'It was astounding, wasn't it?' (Oh yes, dude, it was)
Him: 'It's a changed world'.
It may not be, it may just be the buzzzzzzzzzz speaking. But it certainly felt like it in that moment. And what was especially touching: He said it so enthusiastically, with so little caution or restraint. If I had said it that way, people would probably give me the old 'Awww, so naive, so young. Stupid, they're all the same' speech. I'm so glad we were miles away from any such people on that bus ride. The pair of us giggled and gossiped about each YouTube clip we'd seen through the night, all the way from Debenhams to campus. When someone older acts as if the world is young again, it's so... touching. And inspiring. If he can spot it too, perhaps I am not entirely alone in being mindlessly and needlessly happy?

(Please, Gods of Hindsight treat with kindness).

Ladies and Gentlemen: Barack Obama is in the White House.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s sister celebrates Obama

Both images from The Huffington Post.

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Ten second later edit: OMG the moon is (almost) exactly half dark, half light tonight? Synchronity, how I love thee.

pps - I think I am now all wired out. In precisely two minutes, I shall fall asleep in my bowl of soup. 'Night.

Uff!

"If you're not fearful, you're crazy."
- JAMIE DIMON,
JPMorgan Chase's chief executive, on the fear factor among credit card lending

We have, as I see it, reached a breaking point in our society, our civilization, our journey on Earth, when it is completely realistic to be shit scared about the state of the economy rather than happy to be alive on Earth.

I do not wish to discuss the caveats involved, though I am aware of them. I lack the words to adequately contrast what I think is realistic and this whole other world view where economic signals are now life signals, where the prospect of cutting back fills people with existential dread, where the vibrant, desperate joy of living is somehow naive, worthless, crazy.
Hell. I must be batshit crazy. Because I'm concerned, yes, for those people for whom cutting back means cutting your chances of any sort of health, comfort or security whatsoever. Am I scared in general? No, man. I am not.
Go ahead and call me crazy.

On behalf of cat lovers everywhere

Another one (Stars, rising (Barack) and falling (Wall Street) are on my YouTube a lot :P) -
'Fat Cat' : Sleazy lazy greedy evil overpaid mafia type in a sharp suit?

Or this:
Mr. Pasha Puddington, light of my life, fattest of them all, poodiest of them all, wisest of them all, king of fat cats everywhere, they're not fit to be called cats, are they?!

A loving disclaimer.

A comment:
Much as I love Barack Obama (this is not the post to get into why, and there will be no post justifying the use of the word 'love'), I would like to place on record, that if (when) he wins this general election, I will:
- Be ecstatic (reasons to be outlined in future post, stay tuned)
- Be wildly ecstatic (just who I am)
- Reverse my judgement on the judgement of the American people (electing Bush again?! C'mon, people!!!)
- Start to see glimmers of hope for the world (at the very least, he won't go around talking shit)
- Pray that his calm, silversharp intellect continues to work along the lines it has so far.

I will not, however, start thinking of him as 'the leader of the free world'. Under no circumstances does the land of the free have borders. The land under my feet, at this very minute, wherever on earth I am standing, is the land of the free. With all the reflected light and heat of this election, it's easy to think that we're all basking in the glow of the USofA. Well, we're not. He may be good for the world (and depending on who the he turns out to be, he might even wreck it Baby, wreck it!) but he does not run it. Each of us do. And anywhere there is someone who wants it, there is the land of the free.

The angels (should) weep for (them)

... and here's what's really in Colchester...
Hats auff to everything that's wrong with the world, encased in under 3 minutes of video.

+ Black cotton dress that dances in the wind

+ Gold roman sandals

+ grey skies with a dark edge of thunder

+ new oak leaves. Tiny, fragile, inevitable.

Who could still be despondent.