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Humanity’s Mark
Been reading this book,
It’s pretty informative.
And it inspired the following poem…
Along with this little guy…
Humanity’s Mark
.
My youngest child, holding his newest toy,
Up overhead, like a talisman: a soft doll
Sewn in the shape of a turbaned genie,
Pronounced his wishes would the words
Only carry the power of the fable.
.
“I would have Geniousious – its given name –
Kill Putin, and make it not be able
To have any animal in danger of extinction.”
A sad assertion for a six-year-old.
Which sunk my soul deeper into my bowels.
.
From reading an outline of human history
From the fall of the Roman Empire to
The fall of the Third Reich, I could
Summarise the centuries of papal succession
Crusaders and invaders swaying
To and fro, back and forth over the soil,
Staining with flesh and blood the Earth,
Sweeping millions to their massacres,
In thrusting, thirsting, for supremacy,
In short sentences: shit happened
That never should have, had we only
Stayed on the savannah with mere spears.
.
The bastard causing my son such sadness
And the statement bringing me to tears
Is just the latest in a long list, I insist:
He is not alone. Regardless of their tone
The rest of the pantheon are playing
As if the planet is actually replaceable
Or simply a stepping-stone to the next
Star system they can subjugate.
.
Too late to save those of the second wish
From their fate: the genie would have to
Hold the secret of time, to travel back
To the time of tribes seeking new lands,
Stop seafaring, sledding, steel science…
.
The systems we created to control
Have slipped from our own, and seem
Destined to deliver us back our destiny:
We shall stumble, back to our beginnings
.
As just another species on a rock
Awash with water and organic molecules
Transforming from one shape to another
As all are eaten, even the ones with weapons,
.
Until our form of life dies out, along with lots
Of other sorts, and some others evolve, I surmise,
We shall suffer, I am grieved to say, son, for
We are already, sliding, and, Jesus wept,
.
Seem inept at dodging, not just bullets aimed at us,
But oncoming steam engines of our own devising,
From far off with a blinding light beckoning at us.
.
We sleepwalked into a new disease creation,
Let it clutch enough of us so it shall cling on
Like a long list of poxes yet to appear, but near.
.
The heat waves and fires washing over white houses
Have had no effect on our behaviour any more
Than the waves of refugees fleeing from its results:
Even now the crisis erroneously seen as rideable
Rather than a rising tide set to swamp.
.
The swimmers so far stamped upon by standers, yet,
Littering the sand, shall pile up like plastic:
Become numbers on an ever longer set of statistics,
Of deaths, in the desert resulting from our
Immoral immigration legislation, letting
.
Famine fell far more than the virus, multiples
Of anything we’ve seen over the millennia
Of Mongols and Huns and Hitler’s gas and guns.
.
The lessons of History seem serving only to
Prepare some for the suffering to come:
Send us into the trees yet green to gather up
The tiny glories all around us while we can;
Create a wealth of memories with one another which
Might help us weather better our dour destiny,
Hoping we’re able to die a natural death
From mere bad health before it all dissolves.
.
And if there’s a third wish left upon the table,
Let it be this: that my children stay off such lists,
And choose to spread ideas instead of seed:
Leave poems, not progeny, for words
Do not suffer such as sentient beings shall.
July 2022.
I haven’t even finished reading the book…
This is the page I am on now – coincidentally in a chapter on the Spanish Civil War….
I read this headline today in my local newspaper. It translates to “the Navarra shop owners are against Sanchez’s measures to save energy. Some foresee insecurity if the shop windows have no lights after ten pm.”
The photo caption reads “Complaints about the heat in the market.”
This photo here is some storm clouds gathering over the dry dry (and, as you know, quite extensively burnt) landscape I stare out over every evening as I sit and write.
I’ve posted this photo because there is a fucking storm brewing. The actual storms come stronger than ever, and they do little to help the thirsty land compared to the rain we used to have in Spain.
But also, it’s very beautiful.
And soon enough we might only see beauty up above the landscape, because the landscape will cease to be beautiful by itself.
That newspaper headline tells us how quickly that might happen…
We can not even turn down the AC. We can’t even agree to turn off the lights, the ones that aren’t even being used… (I wrote a poem about that, actually, which I must post some time.)
And that’s to just lower energy use by 15% so we can help the rest of Europe, which will have a colder winter than we will in Spain.
In a war.
How can we hope to avoid the worst of Climate Change in light of this kind of stupidity?
I, as you can see from the poem, fail to have much hope at all.
Horizon
Looking Back Beyond Our Own Horizon.
Archaeology appears a never-ending
Expanding occupation as we explore
Our earth and find more lost lines of
People from the past. Why were they
And their way of life so often severed
Thus that these must dig for hints of
Their hopes and aspirations, methods
Of machinery, imaginations, machinations,
Left shadowed in splinters and shards,
In discarded tools and dwellings abandoned?
.
Is it so easy to snap these threads?
Or is it the exact opposite: only
Possible if families never leave, and
Children have time and inclination to
Listen to old folks round the night fire?
.
The burial mounds and dolmens
Scattered across our island are
Not our own; the céide fields and
Golden torcs were of a different folk
Who we replaced: pushed out; or who
Simply upped one day and walked away.
.
.
.
.
I have been fairly quiet these last few weeks. Hope all are well.
I am reading Barry Lopez’z book Horizon. It’s not an easy book to read, but an important one. It provides food for many thoughts and one of the was this, that we should know more about our ancestors than we do, and perhaps its because they are not our ancestors at all…
I have been writing a little – a few more poems to post soon – and working through some new chapters of my major work in progress, Palu and the Pyramid Builders.. which relies a little on Archaeology, and a lot on my imagination of what a certain ancient civilisation might have been like..
Fewer Flags, More Flowers
I haven’t commented on the current situation in Cataluña yet.
I suppose that some might think that strange, given my previous comments on other referenda, such as the Scottish one, and my advocating for a yes vote on proclaiming independence.
This is a little bit more complicated.
And not just because I live in Spain, where some of my friends and family would be of the opposite opinion, and I can do without the aggravation
It’s complicated because the Spanish are, to throw a stereotype out there, bloody stubborn and ill-disposed to listen to the opposite point of view with much in the way of tolerance. Just a few minutes watching any chat or panel show will show you that. They can’t stop shouting over one another even when they’re paid to give their considered opinion.
This means the Catalan question has the potential to get worse, in a way nobody wants, but well, shit happens, and has happened.
People get entrenched.
Of course, my reticence on the subject doesn’t mean I haven’t been asked my opinion, usually with the anticipation that I’ll agree with the inquirer’s point of view.
I have tried to be diplomatic in giving that opinion. But give it I have, for I never learnt one of my father’s lessons – only say something if it’s to your advantage. I can’t hold back the truth. There are too many wankers walking around our world, walking on our world, because people have been reluctant to cause offence or call them out on their bullshit.
I went to Cantabria last weekend. Wonderful. But a small blemish on the experience was seeing the Spanish flag draped from many balconies. Some of these balconies were on the houses of Guardia Civiles stationed in the towns, others were on working class blocks of flats.
Does the flag add anything here? No.
The thing is, that Cantabria is in the opposite direction from my house to Cataluña. Santander is three hours west, Barcelona five hours east. What the fuck the Cantabrians think they’re doing with the flags that the Catalans will feel any emotion whatsoever is beyond me. Nobody in Barcelona gives a toss if some lad in Santander sticks a flag out his window. At least, they shouldn’t.
But this is how entrenchment starts. First it’s the fucking flags and the waving them and the burning of others’ flags. Next thing you know, you’ve got the Guardia Civil staring across a barricade at a hastily formed citizen’s militia.
I’ve never been one for flags. Nor football jerseys. I can’t see the point of them outside the Olympics, to be honest.
There were several mass demonstrations in various cities across Spain (and I include Cataluña for brevity) over the last couple of weeks. Most of them had flags waving. There were thousands of people in Madrid waving their flags under the biggest Spanish flag ever in the Plaza de Colon, singing Yo soy Español. Amazing. We know you are. You’re in fucking Madrid – the capital of Spain. What the hell has that got to do with Cataluña seeing independence? They aren’t trying to make you a fucking Catalan. How could that demonstration help in the slightest? Or how, pray tell, is bussing thousands to Barcelona from all over Spain to do the same thing going help in the slightest?
It only serves to entrench.
There was one cross-country demonstration where everyone dressed in white and waved white placards. I liked that demonstration. The idea was that the politicians should fucking talk (‘cause you’d be surprised that a group of people employed to talk to each other could hide so efficiently from one another, or from the media for that matter. But Rajoy is a master at staying at home watching football while the country he’s supposed to be helping falls apart at the seams.). Needless to say, it had little impact. Because the politicians get elected by the people in the trenches.
They don’t care if that leads down the road to shitville. They don’t go to war, their kids don’t go to war, they are of the elite to whom this shit just doesn’t stick. And while we’re all in a fluster, they’re quietly getting away with the frauds they’ve been perpetrating this whole time. Both sides are as corrupt as the other.
So here’s my own opinion. which has changed little since last time the Catalans were looking for a referendum…
I would like to see Cataluña remain as part of Spain.
But only on their terms.
If they want to go, the rest of Spain has to let them go. It’s that simple. Anything else is just bullshit. And bloody bullshit if things go awry.
I would like to see true European integration. I bought that idea way back. My kids are trilingual, have two passports and I think we should move to whatever country we like for as long as we like, because we like, and not because some places have better jobs and better wages and their politicians grind other places down to keep things that way.
But the small-minded, short-term thinking of politicians has shown that to be a dream – hitherto fore, anyway.
Until then, though, each community should have as much say about its own destiny as it can get for itself. George Monbiot has been talking about the benefits of the commons in recent weeks. The smaller the group holding the purse strings, the better.
Now, the Catalans have been getting a bad deal compared to other parts of Spain, at least in their view – and let’s face it, it’s their view that counts. So an ever-greater proportion of the population has decided that it’s time to take not just the purse strings into their hands, but the reins and to hell with the rest of Spain.
Once that proportion of the population becomes big enough, then you have to listen to them. You can’t just ignore them as crackpots or begrudgers or whatever else you want to label them.
Sending in the cops against some hippies might work, but sending the cops in against a million people taking to the streets is just not on. As we have seen. I’ve witnessed National Police do similar shit to people in the past, but when they did it to thousands on October first, they got a media backlash that had just the opposite effect to that desired. To quote Peter Gabriel in Biko, “you can’t blow out a fire.”
Had the Spanish government given some certain concessions, perhaps the numbers looking for a referendum. But they didn’t do that. And look where it got them.
If a part of the population looking for independence reaches a critical mass, you have to give them a referendum.
Had the Spanish government done that a while back, well, everybody who knows anything says that the No vote would have easily won.
Look what happened in Scotland, even though we were all sure it would go the other way.
But they didn’t do that.
And look where it got them. Exactly where anyone who knows anything knew it would.
Once you deny a large group something, and especially if you go about it aggressively, without talking, with the heavy hand, the hard boot, well, all of a sudden other people outside that group will ask why the fuck you are denying their fellow citizens, and who the fuck you think you are denying them, and well, hell, they might just ask for the same thing themselves, just to piss you off, you prick.
It’s called History, Mr Rajoy.
So now you have a growing independence movement and a government still saying there’s no way in hell they’re going to get independence. And in fact, some of them are going to jail for sedition.
Easily solved, I think not.
The only option is talking.
There are other options, of course. Like what happened in other countries which became independent. History has lots of those examples.
And at the same time, history means fuck all to the future.
The fact that there was no Catalan kingdom before is irrelevant. The fact that Ireland was never joined as one country before the English invaded was irrelevant. The fact that half of a currently designated area is in favour of separation and the other half isn’t doesn’t mean that they either stay or go – they can split. Look at Ireland – though I know that was a bit of a fudge/fuckup. Belgium can become two countries, if they want, just like Czechoslovakia did. Cataluña might not all become independent. It’ll depend on what the local people say, and how many of them say it.
And everyone else, who doesn’t live in Cataluna can keep their noses out.
Except the goons in government. They need to get fucking talking.
So let’s see more flowers and fewer flags on people’s balconies, please.
Theresa May, please pay attention!
What I can’t understand about politicians is how little they have studied history, and how little weight they seem to give to it.
But there is only history.
None of these people can really be in it for the money.
At least not the wages.
Perhaps they are waiting for the revolving door to give them a cushy number, but you’d never know that when you see how hard they try to hang on to their current positions.
And that’s what’s confusing. Why are they so god damn eager to stay in power over their duty to do what they were voted to do – improve the country?
It’s not as if they’ll be on the dole forever after if they do get voted out next time around.
And it’s not as if they’ve not got a nice pension for the rest of their life off the back of those four years
If they’d studied their history, they’d know, they’d understand, they’d see very very clearly that there is only history.
Nothing else counts.
Staying in power is not important. How long was Churchill in power? The first time was shorter than David Cameron’s stint. Contrast that with Margaret Thatcher’s long reign. What do you think of when you hear her name? That she fucked over the country and it’s poorest citizens. Not that she was in Downing Street for longer than either man.
Yet Theresa May seems to be concentrating on staying in power as long as the other woman, and not accepting the fact that she is there to do one job, and then go if the going is good – to get her people through this next two years as best she can.
A newspaper article I read yesterday says she’s worried about parties on her right flank and their media supporters.
Fuck the right flank. History is not written by the Daily Mail.
You’ll be out of power soon enough no matter what, Theresa. Concentrate on the task at hand and ignore everyone on either side. Do what you have to do right while you’re doing it.
You’ll still be rich enough outside number 10, and whoever takes over will at least, hopefully, have a country worth leading when you’re done.
If the wise among us tell normal Joe Bloggs like ourselves to live our lives thinking of what others will say about us after we’re gone, how much more important should that advice be for our glorious leaders? After all, when I pop my clogs, a few folk might say they’re happy I’m dead, and though I hope more will lament my passing, I don’t expect the streets to be awash with tears. After all, most people will probably have no idea who the hell I am, or was.
But many politicians seem to have no clue, or care, about what we’ll say about them when they’re gone. And we’re all going to talk about them – mostly badly in many cases. Is that worth a few extra years in power? Who thinks about opening up trade with China, ending the Vietnam War, or even the amazing Clean Air Act when they hear the name Richard Nixon? Nobody. Everyone thinks, “he was a c**t.”
End of lesson, Theresa. Thanks for paying attention.
Peace on Earth
Happy new Year everyone!
2014 was a great year for me – started this blog, had two novels published… – and I hope that 2015 will be just as good if not better. Thanks to all who liked and followed this, and read the books.
To start off the year here’s a poem I wrote on Xmas day, looking over the fields of northern Spain during a short walk alone, thinking of my own peace and the peace that is so ephemeral and yet so pursued by the world, and especially remembered on the 100 year anniversary of England and German troops having a spontaneous ceasefire. However, after listening to the new Spanish king talk bollox the previous night in his first xmas address to the nation, the only bit I got was our “competitivity in a global world.” When we have Germany making laws against the Europeans who they asked us to join a union with, as they turn turn the screws on other European countries (and now suggest that Greece should shuffle off and die an economic death rather than hold true to the bullshite they sold us about European Unity) it’s clear that the only way out of this shite is to pay everyone in the world the same wage. Then we won’t bother to immigrate, or buy shite just because it’s cheap… but the kings of this world don’t want us to do that.
Peace on Earth
This is peace on earth, solitary and silent;
Only the swish of the windmills on sunlit hills.
And the war they ceased a century past shows
Each man merely wishes to have his life go on,
To return here. Still our kings tell us today how it’s
Us against them: horse shit best left to fertilise
Their graves. For it’s them against us, and
Together is just them first, till we shed the march
Of history we’re cursed to continue entrenched.
For what differs between me and a Mongolian?
Only that I earn more than he knows and can
Buy what he makes while be barely buys clothes
But what makes me happy is the mere chance to
Visit his hillsides in the silence of sunshine or snow.
David JM O'Brien 