![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingtycoonThe other day it seemed like everyone was after me to watch the new Cosmos, and I didn’t want to point out I didn’t like the old one. I never liked Carl Sagan or his smug curiosity. I never liked any physicist I ever met actually. Chemists, those guys are cool, biologists are perverts and that’s what I know about scientists. Then this morning, after the change of the clocks- that pernicious mutiny against good humor – I watched the sun rise over the east – the long road neighborhoods of the city running off that way.
The sun, you never see the sun. It’s always swathed in clouds and with just small cracks in them, they regress inward, no doubt, recurring infinitely, they have a dendritic pattern of cracks, like the veins of a leaf of the veins of the continent that are mainly called rivers but that I think of as Dragons. That’s what the sunrise is- gold rivers in the cloud strewn sky. It’s the morning and you’re certain you can see the firmament, understand what they were thinking when they made it up.
I haven’t seen a robin yet. Not one. I think, watching the sun rise, different each day, that we think of the world as seasons and it’s really like the weather. It seems that it will be every day and year, unfailingly the same. But really, it could all be over and we could be scoured off of it in a moment. The wind could stir up angry enough to wreck your town, or the stars and the moon could just tumble down and wreck the earth entire. The idea is, we all just wait and expect and I thought about Carl Sagan and popular science and about how it falls into contention with popular religion in our culture and then I thought about why – and I guess that it is because they both tell a story about why one day will follow the next and that one day the sun will rise and not set and the world will be over. There’s a story about the continuation of life and the world of the living.
Yesterday the weather was balmy and the air had a sugar in it. I walked home from work all up the hill in mostly dry sidewalks, in mostly good spirits. I came home and got asked out – just to stop on over for a while, invited to a friend’s for a beer. I go and immediately talk her into walking around the neighborhood. We end up talking about War in the Crimea.
To me… War in the Crimea… The Stoics – they said that we were all like dogs tied to a cart, that we could not change or alter our destiny but must follow the cart. They said that the world was comprised of atoms and that when the world was over it would repeat itself indefinitely in exactly the same way. War in the Crimea.
Of more interest is the rioting in Kiev and elsewhere that’s the ignition of the conflict. In The Wasteland, in my town, there’s many, many Ukrainian people – and the Parma-people at my work talk about their meetings and their involvement with the old country. We talked about street violence and rioting. She was all in favor of the atl-atl as a weapon of resistance, but we were both impressed by scenes of rioters in re-claimed police riot gear. The fuck-you of looting the bodies of your enemies tingles my D&D sense. Anyhow, I said that rock throwing and truncheon-on-shield-action was one thing, but that it’s important to immediately escalate such a scene by destroying bridges. This was a long argument, a lot of people have a worshipful adoration of the infrastructure – the ties that bind and the cohesion they represent.
Which is exactly why you blow them up when you’re in a revolution. Out with the old.
Because there’s a story, you might have heard, about hope and the dream of the nation – and that’s what sustains you, or is supposed to, this story of how the world will continue and how it will eventually, end.
Safety is less than a joke, less than a dream. Safety is the most tenuous of fantasies, and yet all of these stories are built on it, every next day is expected, every season is looked for.
And I still haven’t seen the robin.
The sun, you never see the sun. It’s always swathed in clouds and with just small cracks in them, they regress inward, no doubt, recurring infinitely, they have a dendritic pattern of cracks, like the veins of a leaf of the veins of the continent that are mainly called rivers but that I think of as Dragons. That’s what the sunrise is- gold rivers in the cloud strewn sky. It’s the morning and you’re certain you can see the firmament, understand what they were thinking when they made it up.
I haven’t seen a robin yet. Not one. I think, watching the sun rise, different each day, that we think of the world as seasons and it’s really like the weather. It seems that it will be every day and year, unfailingly the same. But really, it could all be over and we could be scoured off of it in a moment. The wind could stir up angry enough to wreck your town, or the stars and the moon could just tumble down and wreck the earth entire. The idea is, we all just wait and expect and I thought about Carl Sagan and popular science and about how it falls into contention with popular religion in our culture and then I thought about why – and I guess that it is because they both tell a story about why one day will follow the next and that one day the sun will rise and not set and the world will be over. There’s a story about the continuation of life and the world of the living.
Yesterday the weather was balmy and the air had a sugar in it. I walked home from work all up the hill in mostly dry sidewalks, in mostly good spirits. I came home and got asked out – just to stop on over for a while, invited to a friend’s for a beer. I go and immediately talk her into walking around the neighborhood. We end up talking about War in the Crimea.
To me… War in the Crimea… The Stoics – they said that we were all like dogs tied to a cart, that we could not change or alter our destiny but must follow the cart. They said that the world was comprised of atoms and that when the world was over it would repeat itself indefinitely in exactly the same way. War in the Crimea.
Of more interest is the rioting in Kiev and elsewhere that’s the ignition of the conflict. In The Wasteland, in my town, there’s many, many Ukrainian people – and the Parma-people at my work talk about their meetings and their involvement with the old country. We talked about street violence and rioting. She was all in favor of the atl-atl as a weapon of resistance, but we were both impressed by scenes of rioters in re-claimed police riot gear. The fuck-you of looting the bodies of your enemies tingles my D&D sense. Anyhow, I said that rock throwing and truncheon-on-shield-action was one thing, but that it’s important to immediately escalate such a scene by destroying bridges. This was a long argument, a lot of people have a worshipful adoration of the infrastructure – the ties that bind and the cohesion they represent.
Which is exactly why you blow them up when you’re in a revolution. Out with the old.
Because there’s a story, you might have heard, about hope and the dream of the nation – and that’s what sustains you, or is supposed to, this story of how the world will continue and how it will eventually, end.
Safety is less than a joke, less than a dream. Safety is the most tenuous of fantasies, and yet all of these stories are built on it, every next day is expected, every season is looked for.
And I still haven’t seen the robin.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Date: 2014-03-11 03:52 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2014-03-11 03:58 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2014-03-11 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-11 07:18 pm (UTC)2) I think the fear of destroying something like a bridge is the public nature of it, the communal aspect (like you said ties that bind). As for private corporate interests, I can see that happening much easier or being more agreeable. Infrastructure, I mean, that's kinda biting the hand that feeds. But well - if you're talking Wastelands...
Like I really don't think World War 3 is gonna start over this, but goddamn if there isn't this ominous sense of something. I mean, people didn't think WWI was gonna happen, or WWII (maybe to a lesser extent on that?)... It just fell into place. I guess, speaking of atomistic determinism or maybe historic materialistic analysis or whatever.
I just have a hard time that the US/NATO would actually go and invade and try to restore Crimea to Ukraine. My guess is that, if anything, they'll send in NATO Peacekeepers or some other form of mission, along the waterfront/border with Crimea and the Russian Border to help prevent any further infiltration of Ukraine.
I'm glad China isn't speaking out in defense of Russia (or Ukraine). I don't particularly trust the US with its motivations or intentions, but nor would I be foolish enough to trust Russia.
Did you happen to see that post of Alexander Dugin's regarding a potential map for Russia conquering "Europe" and making a new multipolar alliance with Europe/Eurasia against American hegemony? The dumbass at NRO that translated and posted his claim that "A Putin advisor is recommending an invasion of Europe..." is so fucking whacked out in paranoid views of world power that it's one more Siege Fantasist spinning a yarn to drum up more support of Right-Wing American Political Warmongering. I worry what would happen if we had someone less chill than Obama about things. Not that I think Obama is some peace loving hippie, far from it, the man is just as murderous against Afghanis (if not more so) than Bush was, what with all the droning going on. But in terms of geopolitical processes, having a sense of perspective and stepping back is definitely necessary here.
It's strange how few people are even really talking about it, at least, from what I see. Shame.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-11 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-12 02:27 am (UTC)I haven't ever watched Cosmos, but every clip I've ever seen makes me think it's full of the same kind of nonsense.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-12 02:36 am (UTC)I didn't like the paternal, triumphal representation of capitalism in it at all though, I remember that - hating on the oligarch who funds the project through trickery.
And the conceit of magic space-travel just bugs me every time it comes up in fiction too.
I think you're appropriately vicious here.