Somehow, these same four walls
Metaphorically speaking, of course
Don’t look so
bad after 18 days.

Old acquaintances speak from the shelves,
A polyphony of voices.
Serigraphs, framed, five of them.
Big Sure coastline etched behind
skeletal branches, olive dusty oaks
speckled against tawny mid-summer
hills.
Gnarled eucalyptus, hallucinogenic
Tear-drop swirling fog, a crane in profile, balanced
Thin branch, Japanese watercolor,
And
Burnished oak armoire, our little family
Of four
Its fourth generation.

But the air now possesses
An extra, palpable dimension
Uncertainty, dread
Blow with the wind,
Our world connected by both
The idea of virulent
And its reality
Moving across the world at
2000 mbps
 
The world has grown quiet.
I used to, on Sunday evenings when
Admiring the brown East Bay Hills turn
Orange in the setting sun, be able to
Half-a-dozen big airliners, landing
Lights on, queued up
For arrival at SFO
But this evening, clouds clearing, nary
A plane in sight.
Wild turkeys strut through
Downtown parking lots, wild pigs
Make the rounds through suburban streets,
Streaming services and Clorox
Stock rake it in.
 
But where will we be
In two weeks?
Enter a new era,
If we are still here to
Witness it.

Poor Francis Fukuyama. He, and other theorists such as Slavo Zizek who voiced the idea that, with the triumph of the internet and virtual reality, with the supremacy of capitalism and the death of communism, history had ceased, and we had entered a new continuum.

What a load. Most of us were not fooled, however; the flaws in the argument were so obvious as to beg the question "how could anyone make these assertions to begin with?"

And now corona-virus, on top of global warming, a global refugee crisis, and a world-wide resurgence of right-wing populism.

I'd say history is back and with a vengeance. Hope we are still all around in a few months to talk about this all with a sense of relief, rather than apprehension that far worse is just around the corner.

Rereading two classics - "The Brothers Karamazov," in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, and out of necessity, Camus' "The Plague" in the Gilbert translation (would read it in the original but don't have it), and there has been an odd impression left by our current coronavirus contagion upon this reader's experience. The first - following Dmitri's arrest, the district commissioner of police Mikhail Makarovich Makarov is introduced into the story, and it is mentioned that "his house was never without guests." My initial reaction was the thought that this was a very unsafe situation, reading social distancing dictates into fiction transpiring some 135 years ago ....

Then the Camus novel. So much of the initial description of Oran rings true with Fremont, where I live in the Bay Area, or many other of the surrounding suburbs. The town he describes "has a smug, placid air," ... "[o]ur citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce." Not that this is so uncommon, as Camus notes, but he identifies other kinds of cities and towns, "where people have now and again an inkling of something different. In general, it doesn't change their lives. Still they have an intimation ... Oran [read Fremont], however, seems to be a town without intimations." And finally "all that was to be conveyed was the banality of the town's appearance and life in it ... Oran ends by seeming restful, and after a while, you go complacently to sleep there."  Oran was around the same size as Fremont when Camus published "La peste" in 1947, around 220,000, so calling it a town reflects Camus' dissatisfaction with the city's stultifying provincialism, a feeling many would identify with Fremont, despite its ballyhooed multicultural demographic make-up, its pretty much just a large bedroom with attached bank accounts, a barrage of Teslas with personalized plates, mediocre restaurants (now empty - well those complying with the stay-at-home orders from our governor), and not one cultural institution of note. And now our own plague has cometh.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-doesn-t-ancient-fiction-talk-about-feelings?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Click on the link above to go to an article, by a Brown academic, who bemoans the lack of emotion in what she calls "ancient" literature. But the "ancient" literature she cites consists of medieval, mainly Icelandic literature. To my knowledge, "ancient" literature in the West refers to Greek and Roman literature, which includes of course the drama of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes, Plautus and Terence, not to mention the poetry of Sappho, Virgil, Ovid, Homer and others. Lack of emotion? I guess you just have to shrink the spectrum of history to ignore everything before 1000CE to make her argument work. And then there are non-Western works, such as plays by Kalidasa or Sudraka. I guess she's trying to make a point, but by excluding a huge chunk of literary history, I'm not sure what it is ...

The never-ending stream of news linking Trump to Putin and Russian influence just never stops - yet the right in this country, right which used to adamantly oppose foreign influence, continues to go through any mental contortion necessary to construct a denialist mentality, just as they do with climate change. Why? Is the truth that threatening, that Trump, whose financial dealings with Russian oligarchs, Central Asian ex-Soviet oligarchs, and the Russian mob are well documented and go back decades, is in knee-deep with Russia, and must do their bidding or face a dumping of records which detail his dealings and indebted to Russia, to money-laundering, to dealing with some of the most unscrupulous individuals on the planet?

This is why Trump is fighting subpoenas for Deutsche Bank's records tooth and nail, as they were the only bank that would lend him the hundreds of millions of dollars he needed for various projects - loans which he then reneged upon, and sued the bank. The German bank, as documented by various reporters including for the NYTimes, was keen to make it big on the Street, and engaged in dubious activities in order to build a portfolio and presence on the street - a bank which, by the way, funded construction of Nazi concentration camps, sold gold taken from prisoners' teeth, funded the aryanization of Germany, and other atrocities. The mob presence in Trump's condos in NY and Florida has been well documented as probably money laundering schemes as well - individuals from Russia, Kazakhstan and elsewhere from what used to be "behind the Iron Curtain"  -  who paid way over the asking price for condos, many times over, with the reasonable belief that having paid these over-inflated sum, they then would get the condo, have the excess returned to them in US dollars (minus a Trump service fee) and then have a presence in the US, and dollars in the bank - dirty money turned into real estate, a bank account, and an ongoing relationship with Trump. And as usual in US real estate, no questions asked, or needed, about where the money comes from.  If the Supreme Court upholds the right of the House to have these records, which they should, then that will begin the process of revealing Trump's shady and sleazy past, and how Russia helped him into office.

And now we have the outgoing director of intelligence warning that Putin and Russia are meddling in the elections again - removed because he made this announcement. Anyone who doesn't think that Russia is doing whatever they can, wherever they can, to disrupt American politics and keep their puppet in office is naive, and in many ways, aiding and abetting this ongoing foreign influence and keeping the most corrupt president in US history in office. John Brennan just today warned again about Russian influence, and already the right-wing trolls are online, harping about Hillary and Podesta, overlooking the fact that they have been investigated and cleared, and also ignoring the president's clear connections to Putin.

It's a disgusting political moment we find ourselves in, and with Trump's continuing attacks on anything remotely progressive or public-minded, further reminder that fascism begins when you have a gullible and inactive public.

It's not just a steady drip, drip of bad news - things seem to be getting cataclysmic-ally,  epoch ending bad. No witnesses, corona-virus - now a quarantined cruise ship with at least 10 infected - the daily worsening of the climate crisis, Brexit finalized, the Niners blow the Super Bowl, Rush Limbaugh getting the Presidential Medal of something or other, the homeless epidemic in SF, and on and on. But really, Rush Limbaugh getting a Presidential Medal? For what? Being a bloated bag of bile? Clogging up America's airways for decades?  And then there's the Shadow App ... some days its better just to never even log on ...

Fun to watch the very public spat - though initially it was only a snit from one side of the argument - going on between Martin Scorcese and directors like James Gunn from the Marvel series of kids' films.  Scorcese, whose "The Irishman" I cannot wait to see, stated that Marvel films aren't cinema: they're like a trip to the theme park. By which he means entertaining, eye-catching with all sorts of flashing lights, loud noises and unhealthy food, based on simple ideas, offering little of substance. Is he being elitist? Francis Ford Coppola joined the fray, calling them "despicable."  James Gunn shot back that they are both "out of touch." Who is right?

Anyone who knows me, knows (if we talk about film) that I have been saying the same thing for a long time - though I place the blame on the "Star Wars" franchise which in comparison to Marvel films, feel like "The Godfather" in terms of content. Let me put it to you this way: when you stack up the three Godfather films and "Apocalypse Now", and the best of Scorcese: "Taxi Drive", "Raging Bull", "Good Fellas" and "Casino" against the best of Marvel Studio's "oeuvre", since 2008 or so, what is the outcome?

It's like pitting men against boys. When Gunn claimed the two were "out of touch", you have to ask if this alleged "director" has ever been in touch with the possibilities of film, its history, the great directors. and the real idea of film as a visual and aural language capable of expressing the human experience. Even Scorcese's secondary efforts - "The Last Temptation of Christ" or "Kundun," the latter of which I thought was a fantastic movie - tower over "Iron Man" or "The Avengers." It feels a bit ridiculous to even have to say that. Ior the lives of Christ, or the Dalai Lama, no more compelling than fictitious characters whose main achievements center upon wearing armor, flying, having stereotypical love interests, and churning through melodramatic, predictable plots in the service of special effects?

Gunn is being less than sincere when he says that not everyone will be able to "appreciate then" (referring to superhero movies). Its like saying not everyone will be able to appreciate an Incredible Burger: sure it's meatless, pseudo-PC and very au courant, but its still also just junk food, which is what the Marvel series is. essentially: gaudy junk food.

In a series of tweets late Sunday night, President Trump claimed he is going to "re-legalize" cannibalism through an Executive Order. Trump stated that he would do so as "many people go hungry, yet have large families. Waste of natural resources. Sad." When he thought cannibalism was previously legal is unclear, though in his visit to Paradise, California last year to view the devastation caused by the Paradise Fire, he referred obliquely to the "Dinner Party," apparently thinking of the Donner Party, though that reference went unquestioned by those present. Perhaps he is simply trying to do literally what he has been doing via what passes for policy since elected: legalize the rich consuming the poor.

Darwin's first camping experience, so we just spent two nights next to this 7700 foot elevation lake in the Western Sierras, part of a group of man-made lakes (Shaver, Florence and Huntington) owned by SoCal Dept of Water and Electricity. Edison is the last of the lakes, connected by Highway 168, which ends near Huntington and then turns into the Kaiser Pass road, a bumpy one-lane paved road which goes over Kaiser Pass (9200 feet). No sign of Wilhelm.  So the campgrounds were pretty empty, due also to traveling during the week. Lots of great trails out of the lake: there is also a ferry across the lake for backpackers doing the JMT, as many use Vermilion Resort, a small general store with cabins and a restaurant as a refueling point. And, Mono Hot Springs is close by. A spot to spend a lot more time at: Dev proposed spending at least a week next year up in the high country, camping and hiking, though it might be a good idea to rent a small camper-wagon.

The last two photos are from Shaver Lake, 2200 feet lower, the first lake you encounter on heading into the Sierras east from beautiful Fresno, and with a lot more people, cabins, burger joints and all the other necessary accoutrements of Western Sierra living....

I'm lucky that in living in the Bay Area I'm so close to something like nature - not wilderness, which I've only truly encountered a few times in my life (and I'm going to make a podcast about one of these adventures in Dolpo, Nepal), but still someplace where flora and fauna predominate, and we humans go there to, at least for a little bit, get away from the noise, cement, and electronics, though they're never far away.

Nature doesn't care about you. But that being said, the birds and insects, even the occasional mammal in Quarry Lakes park, are interested - they notice you more than you notice them. The geese just shit and warily walk around you; sparrows curious, hop nearby and then dart into the bushes or up high on tree branches; ground squirrels perch on their hind legs and gaze at you with their big black eyes, always ready to dart into their burrows; dragonflies hover around, often stopping to hover just in front of you, just as hummingbirds often do.  If you stop and let them. A month ago or so I saw a red-tail hawk, with a freshly caught rattlesnake in its beak, perched on a tree branch maybe two feet off the ground - uncommonly low for hawks, who prefer to espy their surrounding from on high. Nature will talk to you, if you have the time and awareness to listen. And if you keep your ear buds out. I've climbed, hiked, backpacked and trekked all over the world for decades; never once have I done so with earbuds, or earphones on. I prefer the sounds of my surroundings.

At any rate, the idea "nature" is simply a human construct; there is nothing natural about it.  Just like "organic" food; its a shared idea, or not-so-shared, a series of subjective ideas about a space, which satisfy some objective criteria: no concrete? Check. No gardeners or leaf blowers? Check. Are the animals and plants winning? Uhm ... looks like it.  If you live in the city, Quarry Lakes looks natural. If you've just come back from a back-country trip to the Sierras, its very much an urban park.

I respect the animal's and plant's rights to existence, and that they are equal to my claim.