Solstice ‘25. It’s broiling hot and really there’s no reasons to be cheerful anywhere you look. All the same, have the merriest Solstice you can grab. Build a politically incorrect bonfire in your garden/balcony/common. Jump over it; it’s traditional. Make a burnt offering to the tutelary of your choice (you never know, it might work…)
Stay cool. Life is short.
Contemplating. Just a thought, you know. Not terribly serious but all the same… I mean, who the fuck wants to hang around much longer in the kind of world we have managed to cook up for ourselves, what with the whingeing genocidal maniacs and the psychotic infants in power and the premier league idiots telling one that one’s bodily ailments are all one’s own fault (for failing to pray to baby Jesus or comply with CBT and so on)? Really. Of course the beasties and the flowers totally disagree and still endorse and press for the usual bloody-minded resistance which, they claim, is NOT futile. Oh, well. We’ ll see… Weekend coming up. Have a splendiferous one.
Sunny Dino. Here be a gift wot is not Greek and it’s useful and dead cute into the bargain. The young Dino is very impressed and the flowers & ferns well chuffed. Happy days!
Moonlight Flowers. Who says I can’t do flowers? (Or flae’hs, as Boob-Boom calls them.) Here be proof.
Green City. 78. It’s scary because it sodding is, it being so close to 80 (which is severely scary). It’s interesting for reasons I won’t bore you with. It’s no longer “late middle age”, or “elderly”, or, as the Spanish say “un poquito mayor” (a little bit senior). No. It’s fucking old, like in seriously old. However, and possibly the only good factor of this generally dreary equation, it’s not utterly devoid of a certain je ne sais quoi and even a discreet charm. Also, I have outlived Gaius Octavius, as he was before he mutated into Augustus, by three whole years. So there! (All said & done, I’ve had worse birthdays.)
Fast Friends.
Buscando mis amores
iré por esos montes y riberas,
ni cojeré las flores
ni temeré las fieras
y pasaré los fuertes y fronteras.
San Juan de la Cruz. Canto Espiritual
In search of my loves
I will go over mountains and shores
I will gather no flowers
Nor will fear the wild beasts
And I will go through fortresses and frontiers.
St John of the cross. Spiritual Anthem.
For brother John, who, with with the excuse of religious fervour, wrote some of the most spiffing poetry ever. My own translation. If you don’t approve of it go learn Spanish, by all means.:-)
Mountains. Come, join us for a (very) long weekend in the foothills of this most wonderful, restful and restorative of mountain ranges. You’ll be warmed by the Twin Suns, taken on eldritch guided hikes by the Lurking Teddies, plied with scrumptious food by the Shoggoths, serenaded by tame Byakhees, treated to a unique variety of Tarantella by the intern Shubniggureths (on kindly loan by their Ineffable Mother) and generally spoiled rotten by the Hovering Things. Forget, be it only for a few days, that these days genocides are a public spectacle that can be seen on TV, and beyond implausible excuses are sought, found and pushed by the genociders and their minions and nobody says boo. Life is short.
Picnic2. Another Ides of March has come and gone and I’m still breathing.
We sit, my friends and I, by the river of Babylon, under a cool love moon and a nice basket brimming with the fruits of our labours. We sing rousing subversive songs and we choose to hope that with a little bit of luck sooner or later we’ll see an inimical corpse or two come bobbing by.
We know that hope is just another self-inflicted trap but we also know that: a) at least is our own trap and not one imposed by The Man, b) that we can walk out of it whenever we wish to and c) that us cultivating such outrageous attitudes annoys Elon Musk. That alone makes our day. And night, forsooth!
Easter soon come and with it the spring equinox. Have a lovely one.
Meanwhile have un po’ di fairly arbitrary mu’ and a timeless all-purpose quote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqU6Xm4A784
Tradition says that Tiberius as often as he left the Senate-House used to exclaim in Greek, “How ready these men are to be slaves.” Clearly, even he, with his dislike of public freedom, was disgusted at the abject abasement of his creature.
Tacitus. Annals. The reign of Tiberius
Slippery Slope. As I was saying, recently, for the Nth time (Bumba help me but I do repeat myself!…), even the wisest and steadiest of creatures can get a fit of the vapours now and again, when not a proper bout of the ubermegrims, seeing how miraculously crappy things are; and ostensibly getting crappier by the minute. It’s like the chap in Ecclesiastes never tires of reminding us:
For in much wisdom is much grief, And he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
Mercifully, there always seems to be some good Samaritan or other at hand to check on the despondent soul and administer the traditional “There, there…” and perhaps even a nice hot cup of hot chocolate. Menos da una piedra…
Fierce Beastie. Well, you know what it’s like. You leave the running of things in the hands of imbecile children with delusions of grandeur, far, far too much money and a set of covetous, lily-livered, grovelling, cringing, enslaved minions to back them up and sanction their every move, and you end up with situations so beyond the absurd as to need a brand new word to describe it. The mostriciattoli, poor mites, are on the farthermost side of flabbergasted. I do feel for them, I do.
