This, precisely, is what I meant by my post of 7/20

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Talking to Phil in Germany last night,

He wants me to visit him for a couple of weeks at the end of October, which I am agreeable to, though it rather skews my travel plans--I am thinking now, if indeed my expected insurance settlement will admit of an end-of-life European Grand Tour,  of flying first to St. Petersburgh in September (hopefully before they turn the water off in the fountains at Peterhof), then flying or going by train to Prague--Phil advises me that air travel is very cheap in Europe these days, so flying--then perhaps to Vienna, and from Vienna to Madrid and the Escorial (I must must see the Prado).  Then Lisbon and Queluz.

Just talked to Kirsten, told her my plans, and to keep practising, because I hope in the first weeks of September to be playing Haydn symphonies on her piano with her.

No, I will NOT delete the last two posts, and I DO insist that the horrific reality they represent is, damn it all, factually REAL--

The realer in fact because the abomination they address, the wanton murder of children by the Powers That Are, is so unnecessary (not unlike Torture in its sheer gratuitousness)--Yet I hope these maimed, wounded and butchered innocents will forgive me if I digress for a moment to imagine a way in which their injuries might be avenged, and the injustice of the World Order, which has inflicted such outrage, punished, abolished and replaced by a governance of tolerance, compassion and beneficence.  

That way, it seems to me, is already at hand in the existence of the Internet.  All that is needed is for the legislatures of the state governments, of those states which have already so far liberated themselves as to declare themselves independent of the Federal Empire's drug-prohibition "security" agencies, to issue laws establishing and regulating the direct participation, via the Internet, of the states' citizens in the governance of their states.  When the duly qualified citizens of free states begin spending, say, an hour a week at their computers, or smart phones, participating in, and conducting, and being remunerated for, the governing of their own states, then the bloated, secretive hydra of the national government will find no purchase among them--except irrational, predatory violence.  And irrational, predatory violence (I might remind students of 19th century Indian history particularly) can be evaded, resisted and retaliated against.  We may dream of Hillary Clinton, les mains liées, like a modern day Hypatia or Princesse de Lamballe, delivered to a mob of Libyans armed with oyster shells and pocket knives.

Inside Yemen (full film) | FRONTLINE

God damn us, god damn us, god damn us.

Afghanistan: Injured children recount horror from hospital beds after al...

And ¿Need I say? God damn the United States of America and its murderous mercenary armies to fucking hell!

Readers, if any, or "Viewers," will kindly refer to the blog entry for the 15th of October, 2015.

Ken Wilber

My friend Richard has sent me, via email, advertising promos and blurbs of Ken Wilber's books, saying he finds them all--but especially The Religion of Tomorrow--eminently persuasive.  And, judging by the blurbs and testimonials, so probably will I, if and when I come to read them.  But I want to cry halt, for just a moment, to the notion that religion (as ordinarily defined) has a future. The latest generation of young adults, whom we call Millennials, seem quite consciously to deny the likelihood of religion's having a future--and if the next generation after them continues the trend, as seems likely, I think that another fifteen or twenty years should find the whole business of unsubstantiated belief systems--not so much disbelieved-in as--utterly forgotten-about in First World countries: curious relics in the ashcan of history, alongside such monstrous chimeras as Mesmerism, Phrenology and Viennese "depth psychology."  Such at least would be the fitting end of the morbid, cruel and barbaric "Abrahamic" religions.  

Continuing on (doing what I like to do the way that I like doing it)

I watched another wonderful Indian movie today (thank you, Netflix), Sarkar, not because it was Indian, but because it sounded well made and exciting. And it was.  Starring, rather, co-starring two men (with but peripheral women in domestic scenes): Amitabh Bachnan and his (and one Jaya Bachnan's) son Abhishek; both, in their several ways, superb actors and perfect in their respective rôles of a Mumbai-based, extra-legal Poderoso (not to say gangster chieftain) and his son.  Their chemistry, as they like to call it in Hollywood, was sublimely realistic, understated and deeply moving.  They do love one another these Indian family members, are tender (and respectful) with their children, and just hate it when they have to kill one another (as brothers sometimes must do).

Well, Rosie, I'm back....

Shortly after the blog-entry of May 17th, my computer died--and kept dying through the next two months, until finally, at the instance of the pretty young nerds (Millennials), some of whom are of Italian extraction, at the Apple Store in the Ala Moana shopping center, on the first of this month (SSI pay day), I replaced the internal hard drive and bought a new external hard drive--buying the most capacious, and expensive hard drives, that Buy Rite had in stock.  And all seemed well (except of course that I was broke).  But all was not well, because Google no longer recognized my password, which had been for eight years (for fairly obvious reasons to anyone who knows that in my rare, ingenuous moments of utter sincerity I call Anatole France "mon cher maître.") And so I could neither blog nor access my email.  And so I did, what is almost impossible to do, and I contacted Google by email--and they sent me instructions on how to reset my password.  Which I did.  Et me voilà!  Or voici!  I'm back.  As Sam notably said to his wife Rosie.

Having been away, as one is prone to say, of such interstitial, lenten times as those when one's computer is dead or dying.  And yet throughout the long, dark night I pretty much always had Netflix--and watched all 54 episodes of the life of Buddha, which as told, seemingly, by Hindus, actually did buoy me up and carry me through.  And last night I watched Lion, about a little Indian boy who gets lost, and is adopted by a Tasmanian couple (and a beautiful place Hobart is shown to be); but who eventually finds his way (through Google Earth) back, after twenty-five years, to his Hindu mother.  I cried all the way through it.  Wept, that is.  No sobbing, but the tears kept flowing and the nose running.  What an adorable, brave little boy.  What a lovely man.