licht aus

Tonight, anywhere and everywhere, at 20:30 (8:30 p.m.) local time is Earth Hour (EN/DE). Switching what off one can for the hour, and then maybe considering what can stay off before turning it back on, shows support and solidarity for climate-change awareness and conservation. This is another one of those annual observances with a short turn-around time, but the lesson and intent of this symbolic act can be applied far beyond just these sixty minutes. Considering that the environmental catastrophes recently perpetrated, the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the shipwrecked nuclear industry all the thousand daily insults were all about the demand to deliver massive amounts of energy on budget—not to mention the vacillating attitudes on stability in the Middle East, perhaps this small but wide-spread sign and changing practices and habits has even more urgency.

portemonnaie or a hole in your pocket

In German it is called a Taschen- leerer--this giant wooden hand, or vide- poche--more elegantly in French--both meaning "empty pockets," and is an end-of-the-day catch-all. After stumbling across an engrossing gallery of such studies called Everyday Carry, I decided to arrange a similar still-life with wallet. I would not be brave enough, however, to contribute there, since I don't have a small gun and a big knife. Here are the daily contents of my man-purse ("little bag")--excluding the camera, of course. Compared to the cleverly presented and compact and gritty, utilitarian collections that seem like an insight, in some cases, into the quivers--not personal but rather vulnerable, somehow--of post-apocalyptic urban survivalists, my clutter and equipage seems pretty tame. Asking people around the world to turn out their pockets, a global purse dump, would be an interesting anthropological exercise.

ego ideal or black narcissus

Though I do not believe that this an entirely fair criticism and appraisal, since there are scads of most-preferred forums and venues out there of varying quality and prominence and utility and some accords ring truer and clearer than others, I though that this analysis of one social network, one mantra was something to ruminate on. Maybe the topic only struck me--caught my attention because I have such predilections that I'd prefer not to highlight, save here, though probably readily apparent everywhere else. Maybe the creative urge, to publish, to politic or to ponificate, has been sublimated into the evanesent idea of community, though no appeal to metapsychiatry of recovery and nostagia--something undermining, devious or luddite, intended.

nokorimono ni wa fuku ga aru

Translation: Luck is in the leftovers (Glück ist in den Resten). Through all this theater and smoke and mirrors--projected fears, Japan is rebuilding and persevering, but one should not forget the scope, nebulous vagaries for future climates on a global, national and neighbourhood scale, and intensely personal in terms of loss and aplomb. Though taxed with an array of concerns, the world's thoughts are with the people of Japan. Nanakorobi yaoki. Translation: Stumbling seven times but recovering eight (Sieben mal zu stolpern jedoch zu aufstehen acht).

the calypso caper

It is difficult to discern what the involuntary consortium of Western powers, be they the UN, the US, NATO or some mandate or protectorate, are trying to accomplish in the Levant. They act against the vocal and tacit advice of many, including regional powers’ limited approval. To estimate the situation in Libya the same as other recent revolutions, with names spicy and colourful, may be over-simplifying and unflattering to call it imitation. America, feigning reluctance, is pushing forward and, I believe, clearing following a tragically predictable playbook. I wonder where is this war’s Curveball, the Iraq informant and agitator who fed the intelligence agencies and hawkish minds exactly what they wanted to hear. Or is there no such figure this time around, only the irresistible siren song of battle and Balkanization by dividing the region?

new metrics or libya the tattooed lady

Continuing incidents in this lead up to Spring have proved to be incommensurate with the conventional public systems of measurement and we are all being educated with new units of dread and hope and ways to gauge the appropriateness or irrationality of one's reactions. In addition to the millisievert, the gray, and the rad, conditions are described in terms of chest x-rays per hour or airport naked body scanner-equivalency. It is like speaking of budget short-falls and economic hobbling in terms of trillions of whatever denomination one chooses, as inflation's impossibly big numbers is a great equalizer--or telescoping figures of personal loss and devastation across whole regions.

At odds with these metrics, impoverished ambitions, beggaring their neighbours and sending mixed messages about thrift, restraint and dissolute decadence though money can always be found for making war, each tomahawk missile launched is equal to the average annual salaries of twelve civil servants. Such abstract connections are held up to the spectre of a forced-furlough and US government shut-down--like the low-hanging austerities threatening other nations. Given the level of control over each situation and the real risk associated with it, the response seems inverted: there is no panic and whirlwind of blame and litigiousness despite the dire conditions--the Japanese remain civil, continue to recycle their trash and in some areas what utilities remain are powered by wind-mills that weathered the earthquake and tsunami intact. In contrast, there is delineated anarchy over Tripoli with no nation wanting to take the leadership role and arguments about strategy and goals. However much divergence there is between causes and corollary, it seems that both have root in human miserliness and greed and growing demand for cheap energy.

unwater or solvent green

Holidays by fiat are something different than awareness months. Designating a day, setting it aside, can generate understanding as well as giving one the chance to focus on a certain theme, with some needed pressure to set summits and not to allow it to be elided over. It's the same kind of tinge of regret for missing "Talk like a Pirate Day" or Pi-Approximation Day or committing some environmental heresy on Earth Day or buying festive candy when it goes on sale the day afterwards--because after all, one has been in training all year for such things. Avast ye there, aarg! The United Nations has declared a whole calendar of special days for social, cultural and environmental issues and celebrations.

This year's observance of World Water Day brings attention to urban resource management.  Nothing else is quite so plastic, varied but also forgiving and abused, profligate as a universal solvent, diluting all of our poisons and what we'd like to hide away--not to mention the floodgate, magic carpet, weather and landscape and landscaper. Eventually what we are hoping to become so rarified and impalpable does, soapy or irradiated, however, become part of the rain and the beach.