A Samuel Beckett Alliterated Christmas
Act One
"No one that ever lived ever thought so crooked as we." - Endgame.
I am certain cerebrum certified mammalian bio forms can collectively concur on one point of common concern. To riff a greater queen, this was our annus absurdus. More than a modest modicum of modern absurdity characterized our current social/psychosexual syllabus. Based on an exploration of themes, memes, and schemes that consumed the digital diachronic denizens over the last 12 months, absurd is the word that defines the herd.
In Canada from floods and Fords and federal frauds we witnessed a little egg on everything. Our neighbo(u)rs to the south struggled with the Boston bombing, Medicare meddling, and adolescent affluenza. Have a read for some other 2013 highlight while I pour another drink or two. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013
At the merciless midway mark I first thought perhaps perchance pernicious cosmic calamity had befallen and the February meteor crash in Russia sent our planet off on an alternate alien assimilated timeline. In March we discovered the roughly rotund rogue of a mayor in Toronto enjoys his social coping mechanisms a bit more than we the popular populace publicly support. Imagine what we don't know. Oh wait, by November we began to see what we did not know. For some reason the mayor does not comprehend the communal concept of moral responsibility. Feeling teacherly, I will break it down.
The English word moral comes directly from the Latin moralis "proper behavior of a person in society," literally "pertaining to manners,". Responsibility - that for which ye shall be held responsible. Again from the fine folks at etymonline.com Responsible (adj.) 1590s, "answerable" (to another, for something), from obsolete French responsible (13c., Modern French responsable, as if from Latin *responsabilis), from Latin respons-, past participle stem of respondere "to respond" (see respond). Meaning "accountable for one's actions" is attested from 1640s; that of "reliable, trustworthy" is from 1690s. Retains the sense of "obligation" in the Latin root word.
Mr Ford does not have the mental nor moral acumen to understand that as long as his copious corpus crams into the municipalities highest pedestal of political power he is obligated to try to be an example of the best behaviour that the general populace has agreed upon. And yes, the mayor of a city should be held to the higher end of that communal spectrum of what it means to be a well behaved citizen. Throughout all this miscreant mischief mister Ford seems only truly sorry about one thing, getting caught. Everything else is callous or clever word play aimed at misdirection or deflection. Mannerly man this man not. As the belligerent bellicose belly bowled over the mores of the masses the city, nation, and planet are left gobsmacked.
“There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.” - Godot
The reason for palm to face en masse is few can understand how a person can go so off societal sanctioned script and not realize it. The red welt growing on the side of the face is the sound of one hand clapping and the realization that municipal politics does not have in place the mechanisms to deal with such mayoral moronic misfiring. Leadership just ain't what it used to be, or is exactly that.
Act Two
In other leadership leading news, in June we learned that "skynet" (Prism) is being built to facilitate big brother's brow beating of anyone asking anything about anything that anyone is analyzing. There are tenacious technological and capitalistic currents creating on autopilot. The oversight of systems is so limited that the systems are being moved forward frenetically while the oversight is a snail of a system two steps slow. We are in control as long as we operate within the systems we serve. Sitting in the dark is not an option. Imagine what we don't know. Oh wait, Mr Snowden, freedom fighter to some techno terrorist to others, gave us a glimmer of a glance behind the hands holding the wool over the woes of us, the mass class of ignoramuses. And then he ends up in Russia...
Speaking of, have you noticed how the idea of gay is becoming more and more polarized? We in the west with our unctuous urbane understanding often fall into cosmopolitan comfort when it comes to homo-happiness. For every place peacefully passing permission slips for same sex services there are lands languishing in lethal laws and dogmas of death. New laws built on old hates killing kindness. Tribal ideologies are aligning. The battle for the dominant global meme is on. The option of returning to our own backyards and learning to play nice has been long off the table. Everyone is elbowing in everyone else's efforts. We believe we are so well-rounded and well-read yet tribal trumping naval gazing glorification is usually the days reading list. Those who hate can spend all their day reading just love for their hate. Those who want to watch anthropomorphic animals have almost as many options. Did you see the video where the dog and the cats are doing the....
“The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors.” - Godot
Go pee. Get a beverage. Walk the dog. We're almost home.
Act Three
Let us not limit our alliterate illustrations to man made maliciousness.
Meanwhile down stream...Mother Nature was being a brutal bitch. Not content to let the wonky worrisome walkers of the world have complete control of the 2013 numbskull narrative, Gaia goes gangsta and attempts to throw water on the ego fire of fickle humanity. I was in Calgary during the flooding in June. Just prior to the washout, I was in Banff the day a guy on a motorcycle was chased by a wolf. Listen we have to lose the Mother Nature metaphor. She ain't yo momma bitch!
HAMM:
Nature has forgotten us.
CLOV:
There's no more nature.
HAMM:
No more nature! You exaggerate.
CLOV:
In the vicinity.
HAMM:
But we breathe, we change! We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals!
CLOV:
Then she hasn't forgotten us.
- Endgame
She was never thinking about you. Nature does not care about you or me. We are not seraphim suckling at the planetary maternal teat. We do not become masters of this tempestuously turning tableau of human hubris. Instead of beating our chests as the conquerers of carbon we should be beasts on bended knee giving thanks that we have not been bitch-slapped into the middle of next month. The rising water does not dance nor discriminate. The hurricane winds whipper where they will. They don't care if you like penises or vaginas, gods or demons, princes or paupers. Whether the waves are torrents of the miseries of deities or the meteorological manifestation of the laws of natural reality, if you are in the way you will not be for long. Nature will have its way with us regardless of how clever we think we are at outwitting it. I got this heated jacket for Christmas! OMG!
We can do what we want to cope with and manage nature but in the end we are on the short end of the stick and affluenza or drunken stupors won't save us or probably mean much more than moments of madness.
Absurd is the word defining the herd. How do we moo forward navigating the shit heaps underfoot, all around, falling down? How do we maintain a sense of personal peace pulsing amidst the pounding? Can we be quiet in the noise? Can we move into stillness to cultivate the still? To listen? To hear?
Will we hear? The rhythms.
Everything that has happened has happened.
What happens next?
“Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?
Vladimir: Yes, yes, we're magicians.” - Godot
End
