just u.n. me or who is john galt?

In the tradition of On the Beach, Reds and other poignant but socially ambitious and uncomfortable cinematic works, my mother referred us to a long buried film made for television to which much talent was again given freely under the scripting of Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone fame, called A Carol for Another Christmas.

The story is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and champions the work of the United Nations over the contemporary stance of American foreign policy of selective isolation and demonization, retelling the consequences of hum-bug through an embittered industrialist who lost a son, killed in action, and has abandoned all hope for international cooperation or reconciliation. The Ghost of Christmas Future shows the father how prevailing attitudes will lead to a nuclear apocalypse not too far from the present. Written during the Vietnam War and Bay-of-Pigs invasion, it was hardly a time for inspiring optimism and going against the grain or scare and accommodating optimism, like those other forgotten but timely examples did, it was never aired again until this last Christmas. In times of sabre-rattling, I wonder if it was some sense of national pride or aversion to the sombreness that made these movies go away without honours and what statements rallied behind say about a civilisation.

mixed metaphor

A brilliant and succinct commentary from Harvard Business Review is a sober reminder that a country and a corporation are not one in the same, just like with people. Bankruptcy is not something without precedence on a national level, as for businesses and households, but stretching, spindling the analogy, this neologism serves no good purpose. Instead the work of civics and the advocacy of the state becomes a nuisance to the metrics of recovery. Debts can be sovereign and governments are stewards of their people’s money and futures and not without exemption, but arrears do not accrue for a whole populace under the same model.

geselle, gestalt

Walking around the gorgeous neighbourhoods, I notice certain placards and think Notar, a notary-public, might be a good career-path for me since they always live in really posh places, it seems.

It made me think of a tale I heard once about a multi-lingual town in the former Sudetenland, explaining that a notary in Czech is called a notář and an emergency surgeon (ein Notarzt) was rendered the same way—pronounced like “note-arsch,” something essential but possibly not the wisest of job choices. Of course, a lot of other professionals have impressive, high-rent haunts. A new, maybe a trendy example that I came across was a practice specializing in oranisational—corporate psychology. It was a prime location to hang one’s sign and I really liked the symbolism. I wonder if this icon is a standard sign-post for such a collective and whom this practice consults for.

hypnos

While I fully believe that there are many abiding mysteries, I don’t often heed my own dreams. Forgettable brilliance is just that—I reason, and probably indicative of the dose of self-therapy, the stepping back that one needs or doesn’t need at the time and conducted in a nebulous way, behind the scenes. I indulged a strange succession of dreams, however, recently, relaxed and running some onerous administrative tasks on my computer, including defragmenting the hard-drive.

Though I was not exactly upset to let the process run its course, I recall a complicated heap of dreams, trying to sort out priorities and reassignments and quickly worked out what was really important. Maybe I was in danger of losing sight of the bigger picture. The next evening, I also retired early, but was surprised to experience a continuation, after a fashion. The affinity and epiphany, of course, fades, but it did seem the very antithesis of the prior night’s frenetic categorization, including former landlords, alternate routes hither and thither (with a strange déjà vu that only occurs in dream-time—best recalling dreams within dreams) and the realization that I do sometimes dream in German—not my native language, as evinced by a talking dog, who spoke in English and wanted to monopolize the conservation or at least make it worth the effort. I wonder if practicing self-hypnosis (though it is more like just being aware that it exists), however imperfectly and lazily, has anything to do with the vividness and memory. I want this unusually intrusive unconsciousness to carry on as more than just an administrative task.