This weekend, Ailsa, an Irish blogger who inspires with her words and photos, wrote the following:
“No matter where you are in the world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the cesspit of filth currently masquerading as a presidential election in the US. It is downright depressing to be bombarded daily with examples of how low mankind can sink, and frankly bewildering that such a base, unevolved, malignant individual has been allowed access to a world stage from which to disseminate and normalize his poisonous views. I have of late found myself drifting towards cynicism of humanity at large, guilty by association by simply belonging to a species capable of producing such monsters. To counteract this bleakness, I have resolved to actively seek out all that is enlightened, noble and beautiful about being human – and that’s what this week’s travel theme is about. I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the joy of the human condition”
Following this sensational rant about the sad state of American politics, which I share wholeheartedly, Ailsa includes many joyous photos of dance and celebration, of innocent children and messages of love, of life enlightened and invites others to add their own.
Before I add a few special photos, I must share my favourite poem with you. Many will know it. Written by W. B Yeats in 1920, these words resonate loudly in these strange times. What rough beast heads towards the presidency of the USA, and what rough times will be inflicted on the world should he succeed? Mere Anarchy?
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? W. B. Yeats
Children sleep, a picture of innocence, trust and love.You can read this literally or metaphorically. I love to plant seeds of all sorts.A sign outside a Yoga School in Sanur, Bali
Moving Meditation. Enlightened practitioner of Tai Chi in Chengdu, China
Day 9 and the cough has become a terrorist. Rasping, lung aching cough, violently rocking the rib cage, reconstructing thought and memory, randomly re-ordering the day’s events. Robber of time, stealer of sleep. Ask me a question I’ll give you a Saint Vitus Dance answer, a voiceless croak or maybe a sign. I don’t know, please don’t talk to me now. A toilet roll trail of debris, the tissues and hankies now long gone, catches the phlegm of one lucky cough, but not of that dry one, not the Dostoevsky special, that searches and scratches and delves deep within then leaves for a minute, hands out a headache, and returns for another gut wrenching go. Stationary diversions blur together as writing, reading and foreign films join into one continuous heated dream as cruel cough moves in for the night, making sleep a permanent nightmare, vitality spilling from every pore and orifice, as dreams become more lurid, aberrant, repetitive. Each cough causes a Candy Crush spill, with long rows of colourful gems flashing in my sleeping mind’s eye, idiotic patterns, reminders of imminent madness, but now Riccardo Scamarcio arrives with his Botticelli stare and I am momentarily transfixed; it’s 1968 and the students are revolting, but then I see that other man’s ugly penis lying inert on a bed, a scene from a repulsive French movie where all the men are bastards. I skip to my book, and the tripe cauldron rises, the overflowing pot steaming with stomach lining and calves’ feet, and I’m trapped in medieval Florence, when suddenly Chris Uhlmann’s interloping fat head appears on the TV screen, intruder in a boring election debate, put him in the tripe vat, will someone say something real now? The cough returns, and the Candy Crush gems explode purple, shattering my dream, and it replays over and over again.
dreaming in patterns
I write posts to keep the terrorist at bay, stories of domesticity, of cakes and travel. They are as fanciful as my dreams.
ALMOST ITALIAN 