Friday, June 20, 2008

Can we find another Ace?

It's winter solstice time again. The mornings have been foggy on and off for the last two weeks - lending a slight air of mystery to our walks. It burns off by 8.30 and then the days have been largely clear and bright. I can hardly believe it's winter. The full moon is gorgeous in the bright nights and I'm looking forward to Spring when I'll have my outdoor-moon-chair set up. The yard is still not an enticing place to spend time, but it will get there eventually. Or I'll leave. You know how it goes. So for solstice tonight it's just some incense, a candle in the window, some pondering ont he cylces of our world and a good dinner.

Rumi the Giant Snow Cat has taken to eating Riley's dinner as well. Riley sits and looks on with a slightly sad face as if to say "If that's what you really want, I'm not going to stand in your way." Meanwhile, Rumi seems to be attempting to grow to rival Iorek Byrnison for the kingship of the Ice Bears, but somehow is unable to stand his ground against Tiger the three-legged tabby who's just moved in next door.

I have been forgetting things lately. I've found it difficult to connect the list of words I know I have somewhere in my head with the idea I'm trying to express. Also, just simple forgetting - leaving my lunch on the kitchen bench, completely erasing conversations, tasks that need doing, or things I intend to do. It's really confusing. The world has a different tone to it. I think I'm still remembering the important stuff - but who's to say?

Last night on the "7.30 Report" (go the ABC) there was a fairly sober interview with an Chappie about how the price of oil is just going to keep going up, and how urgent it is to start switching over to renewable resources and so on and so on. I sat on the couch, thinking how nearly everything in the house (and the house itself) is cheap-oil dependent. Me too. I'm cheap oil dependent, I think nearly all of us are. Anyway, I won't get onto this again, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned peak oil before, and immanent ecological downspin etc etc etc Al Gore etc etc etc Global Warming etc etc etc Carbon Footprint etc etc etc. It was just, to hear this step-by-step implications on the ABC and realise that these issues do still not have a mainstream understanding, was beyond sobering. It was shocking all over again. If Kerry O'Brien has to work that hard to get his head around it (or to feel confident that his audience has their head around it), and the pollies have gone back to ducking the issue, what hope do we really have? If we wait too late we won't even have the reserves to build the new infrastructure we need! Isn't anyone project managing this thing? There are critical paths people!

I'm not a big fan of humans generally. Obviously there are some stunning human achievements, but they just don't seem to make up for this greedy, self-destructive impulse that over-rides all in it's path. We could call it the Trump Factor. Like there's this idea in the back of people's minds that we've anthropomorphised "Mother Earth" into reality, and like all mothers we can either threaten her children or pay her off, and she'll back down. It's Trump Brinkmanship. we are going to fuck ourselves because we can't grasp the simple rules of the game, and we think that oceans of cash will sort it out.

*sigh*

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