9-11-12: Mr. Breivik has left the room . (Part One.)

All peace, as Chairman Mao puts it, grows out of the barrel of gun.

When one is done with the killing, then it pays to pay off the
survivors, giving them double reason for loving the peace. One without
the other is a waste. And most people won't involve themselves in
either pursuit, violence or money, without money being involved.
Hence, peace is a rare occupation. War generally doesn't pay so well.
Right-thinkin' folk do get it: Make violence pay. Give violence a
religious core of any sort, and on the road to peace we be. First we
win the war, and then the killing starts.

Peace is a good thing, and to have it one must rid oneself of those
who would make violence against the Order. Butt Butt Butt, then we
would be just like our enemies, they say with a scowl and a frown and
dramatically knitted brows, the 'look' practiced in the mirror after
watching 50s gladiator movies, the "really concentrating hard look"
just so we all know by the signs they're serious about their deep
intellectual analysis. Butt. Quite seriously, take a page from the
Algerian War and kill the wankers first. All "moderates" must die if
we are to have peace. Clear the board for the serious players to win or
lose the game and become the Order of Peace. Who cares who wins so
long as it's us. We don't want to be as bad as they are, we want to be
far worse so we win and they, who cares who they are, will be so
devastated by our violence they will not be capable of fighting us
further, and they will be so disillusioned with their previous beliefs
that they will flock to the new Order because it is demonstrably
stronger and therefore better and it pays cash money. This is peace.
We can talk democracy and perhaps morality later, but peace first.

Kill, kill, kill, and kill face-to-face so the enemy can see the men
killing them and have faces to fear and live to fear forever. Machines
don't do that job. Killing that isn't personal, man to stronger man,
is just accident. There is hope in 'death by machine', and that hope is
in getting better machines than the enemy has. There's no fear in
death by machine, only the resentment that lesser men have better toys
to kill with. Kill for peace face-to-face and the losers will long to
be on the side of the triumphant, switching sides to be a winner,
becoming "one of us" against their worthless own. Then there is peace.

Maintain peace by paying and letting the people make money. Kill those
who disrupt the peace of the people. Peace is money and terror.
Because we must kill in grander ways to make a lasting impression,
let's then forget the sentimentalities of terror and look at real
peace, what I am happy to call "Horrorism." Kill till the set clay of
culture is turned to dust, and then remold the work of man into a new
figure according to ones liking, the peaceful man. To the dust of the
pulverized defeated add the water of cash. One can create the peaceful
man therefrom. Smash, smash, smash till all that was the Good is now
the Horror. Then let the survivors become us and make a peaceful life
of making money.

Why do any such good thing for the world? No reason at all if it doesn't pay.
So make it pay. Kill for money. Make lots of money killing the enemy,
and then there will be perhaps even an excess of killing. But better
too much peace than too little. Peace is a good thing, and it is
especially good if one can make a living at it. One needn't count on
another's good heartedness, one can simply go out and make good money,
the Good coming from the happenstance of Horror.

Islam will be the religion of peace when we have destroyed the Muslim
will to live as they do now. That is, exercise Horrorism. Make money
by being masters of horror who bring a longer peace. Some might call
it murder. I say, "Off with their heads, these monsters who would
prolong the violence." Kill till the enemy is so sick of blood they
just can't take it anymore. St. Augustine argues roughly that, and I
find myself becoming happy about Christianity in the thinking about
it. Massacre is pity. Slaughter is mercy. Killing is charity. Why
bother? Because it should make one rich as well. And then the world
will also have some peace, including the world of Islam. Peace is a
good thing, and those who are against it, no matter what they say,
should be killed. Killing is sometimes a good thing, and really good
if it pays well, too.

The sentimentalist is a monster who must be slain. The true
humanitarian is a butcher. Make it pay and butchers will come a
running. Then there will be long peace till we have to do it all over
again. Peace. I love peace. Kill our enemies and we will have peace.
Kill them all and we will have lasting peace. Long live peace.

***

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Death in the concrete jungle

I'm bugs about the Amazon!

In Lima most afternoons downtown one finds a sad looking fellow sitting amidst scenes of death so beautiful one could weep.

.

 This man sells butterflies and beetles and other Amazonian bug in wood and glass display cases to the locals, most or probably all of his collection being illegal in Europe and North America. Perhaps some things he has are rare, but most likely not. There seem to be a billion of everything anywhere one looks in the jungle; but sense is not an issue for those Europeans and Americans who are intent on Saving the Amazon Rainforest. For the sad man, it's some extra money after work. He sells art, wildlife now deceased and preserved under glass. We should be so lucky as Lenin.

I think I prefer the painted wooden butterflies on display at tourist joints ubiquitous, but maybe if I lived here I too would be thrilled to look at my walls decorated with specimens of my environment mounted for me to see as I would. I think I'd rather have a painting sentimental, but maybe not. I might like dead bugs. I like looking at them on the street corner in Lima. I might like it even more if I saw them on my living room wall.It's a question I won't have to answer now. I'm satisfied with pictures from the street.

These bugs are exceptionally pretty, and one sees them in flight in the jungle, though they rarely land close enough for me to get a good photo.Until I get to the butterfly farm in Iquitos, this will have to do. And for those who will never come to the Amazon one might hope this is good enough as well.

I have, I confess, seem more beautiful and more dramatic butterflies in wilder jungles than the Amazon, but there is nothing less about this beauty for its lack of drama. The butterflies here are as beautiful as any, different, to be sure, but as lovely as a woman one from another. Yes, there are some ex-wives and girlfriends I would prefer to have under glass, but that's not hardly my poetic point here. I'm on about bugs of a different sort.

Let's forget about that for now and concentrate on life as beauty in the world and the earth, two very different places. Here, bugs are of the world. 

The jungle is so wild here that one needs a local expert to guide one in and out. One sees what one sees, of course, but what one sees is from the world as one is of the earth. Few of us from outside the jungle know it as anything other than pretty, if dangerous. We are of the world. Those things of the Earth look pretty to us, but they are otherwise in Nature. They kill. And they die. Just like us.

Some years ago I nearly died from a spider bite, and during my recovery I still came close to losing my arm. I have some deep fear of the wild things. But I love the beauty. I love it as much in the wild as I do when it's preserved harmless and dead under glass. Beauty, death, longing for eternity, maybe the man is sad about something trivial that we don't know of. Or maybe he knows he's a butterfly and he can't wake up.

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Iquitos, Peru: San Juan Market, Part Three (of 3)

I came to Iquitos by boat, first from Pucallpa up the Ucayali River and then from Columbia down the Amazon. In all cases I missed the aeroport. That made it easy for me to miss the San Juan Market, which might be geared toward those who fly in and out and buy up stuff without really entering the heart of the city. For me, mostly centred in the middle of town, the San Juan Market, way out by the aeroport, is easy to miss as is missing Belen Market for the upscale tourist.

Happily for me I can do it all if I can know about it and then find it. The San Juan Market is simple to find, one just has to know to look for it. There are things there I haven't seen elsewhere, and things that I have but didn't notice at all. Unlike the market stalls down the Malecon by the river I had my time mostly to myself at the San Juan Market, wandering freely and browsing at my leisure, taking photos without people demanding that I buy something. In fact, I did buy something, and I am definitely going back to get the swinging monkeys on a hoop. Lots of stuff that one won't see elsewhere at this market, but mostly it is peaceful, if one can think of shopping as anything other than a matter of nagging worry over the promise of stuff fading into the reality of possession and regret and fear of loss. If I had a bottle with a genie inside and could make three wishes, I don't think I'd wish for anything stuff-like at all. But,  no genie means I might actually put some money into buying a cool bottle a genie might like to live in. Maybe I'd buy a chair and just sit and think about things of no real importance, like saving the earth.

I'd want a nice chair to sit in to goof off for all of my days. As is, it won't fit in my pack, so I must pass for now and hope someday I have a place to call my own and to put my own chair into. I could then sit. I could sit for a long time.

I could lounge around in a hammock, but I really don't like them. I always fear the rope will break and I will fall and cripple myself. I am now working in the second hammock of this trip, as well as my sith pair of shoes. I could lie down for a while, but I walk around and see things instead, not having a cool chair to sit in.

A hammock, though, is easy to cram into my pack, and I have one stored in Canada, a beautiful thing I got years ago in Nicaragua. It's decorative. I really don't want to have another one. A bunch of photos of hammocks, though, works well indeed.

There are a lot of ex-pat businessmen in Iquitos who are swimming in money due to the aeroport bringing in tourists with tons on cash to spend of souveniers. I like a lot of what I see, and if I had the cash and a place to put everything I like, I might well go for some boat oars painted pretty and I would hang them on a wall and think of the fishermen I've seen who use the same design, though without the fancy paint jobs. Many ex-pat business put such stuff on their walls, and it works. It looks fine and the locals make a bit from it as well. Well, maybe not so much from me. There is the aeroport, though.

I assume there is even a market segment of minimalist tourist who wants a pair of working paddles. Or maybe a pair unpainted simply await the buyers design.

It's not all store-bought stuff retailed at stalls in the market. There are people who make what they sell in their stalls. It sometimes doesn't look so romantic as it would at home on display. Part of the beauty of it is that one might see something being made on the spot. It becomes real, in a sense, the work of a person rather than the product of machinery.

Machines are good, in my opinion, allowing us all to have something rather than nothing while the rich have it all in its highest.I settle for plastic when I must. Wood is better. I am even better than wood, I like to think so.

So we chatted between the walls till the moss grew up and covered up our lips. But no, that would be Emily Dickenson. We, my neighbour and I, talked with craftsmen and vendors and folks at the market, people who were nice to us and happy to chat. Truth, beauty, stuff, people, it's all a good day.

Well, rattle my skulls, it came time to move along, and in the moving I got some stuff after all. Chances are the chances are I'll sneak back sometime and splurge on those swinging monkeys, me being a philistine of no good taste at all. maybe some birds, fish, and some butterflies. Love that stuff.

And when I'm gone things will continue as they do all the time, men and women living the life of the market day to day in the Amazon, no news at all, just a day in the life.

 http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/09/iquitos-san-juan-market.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/09/iquitos-peru-san-juan-market-part-two.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/09/iquitos-peru-san-juan-market-part-three.html

 A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Iquitos, Peru: San Juan Market, Part Two (of 3)

I'd usually avoid a place that gets a cheesy blurb like the one below, but I was there before I found this. And in truth, I probably would have gone anyway, but with a chip on my shoulder, thinking I was being manipulated by a p.r. scammer paid to make a place seem better than it could be. That attitude could easily have stayed with me during the course of my visit, poisoning my time there. And I would have been the worse for it. I loved this little market and its silly stuff for sale. Some things there, like wooden bowls, are genuinely exquisite. Other things are just plain fun to have and to hold. Birds and butterflies and little wooden monkeys and fish and rattles and hums. If one can't love it, one should stay home and drink, me thinks.

For local handicrafts at their very best, the Mercado de Artesania San
Juan is the place to head. Located on the Avenida Quinones road
leading to Iquitos Airport, this lively market is easy to reach by
either bus or taxi, and offers plenty of gift shopping, with stall
holders often being the actual craftspeople themselves. However, do
bear in mind that many items made from animal skins may be illegal in
your home country.
http://www.iquitos.world-guides.com/iquitos_shopping.html

The place was empty of tourists the time we spent there, we not being "tourists" at all but world travelers with serious minds and duties. Buying cool stuff, it's not really tourist activity, it's helping the local economy or something significant like that.

My ceiling in the last apartment I had was a mess of hanging parrots, one of which pissed off my last girlfriend by knocking her head every time she walked under him and forgot where he was. He used to say to her, "Watch it, dummy." I swear he could talk. I used to hear him say exactly that and other things like it. No, really, it wasn't me. It was him. My home was filled with colourful birds and fish and butterflies. They often originated in such places as Peru.

Yes, I am keen too on butterflies, and my fridge was covered with them, they being hungry, I assume, and patient. If I had a lot of money, who knows where I would stop. I might have a forest full of butterflies in my kitchen.

I'd have big ones, too.

And I would have a lot more birds.

My bathroom was swimming with fish, but none so real and these, sorry to say. Well, I do have a sea snake in plastic wrap in a box, a beast I got from Africa one fine afternoon, a toothy monster I love to show to guests. I could find room for more....

Fish, that is.

I have some excellent can openers, antiques of various sorts, and one pretty thing from India that has never come close to a bottle cap in my time. Sometimes a can opener is just a can opener. Some times it's a bit more. It's like a cigar, for example.

Yes, I even have a lot of embroidery on tables and desks. I have no examples of Shipibo work to date. I might work on that.

I am at the cutting edge of knives, I say, but mine are functional rather than so prettily covered as those above. I might like to have a knife in a carved sheath that just sits and collects dust. I might come to like all that.

And anything that covers the pig-tail light bulbs the Electricity Fascists who barged into my place one morning to install as I stood in stupified anger, well, enough of that.

I have, now that I think back on it, more masks that I would have thought. I like them for a number of reasons, especially for nights of kinky sex.

And to have over the bed a collection of swinging wooden monkeys....

WOW! I'm going back for those.

I lived in the hellish city of Vancouver, Canada for too long, i.e. more than a week in the temperate rainforest, and in my hallway I had an umbrella stand. I had a Chinese plaster ugly thing that i didn't like much. I would like, now that I live in a better place, a stand for jungle rattles and arrows and spears and stuff I don't know what the hell it is.

For now I settled for a bowl full of rattles. I'll rattle and roll onto the next part of our visit to the market next up.

 http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/09/iquitos-san-juan-market.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/09/iquitos-peru-san-juan-market-part-two.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/09/iquitos-peru-san-juan-market-part-three.html

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Iquitos, Peru: San Juan Market, Part One (of 3)

For a perennially homeless man I am dead keen on amassing cool stuff for the house I never quite get around to buying and living in. If I had a house it would be filled top to bottom and including the yard and garage with stuff from all over the world that I have picked up because it's such great stuff, the excellent work of the minds of people who have a love of beauty.I love stuff. It's a problem for me in that my backpack is limited in space, and the post costs more for shipping than I would likely pay for what I would like to have. So I look at things, take some photos, and dream of that long away day when I open the door of my home and gaze in wonder and contentment at how nicely I live in such a pretty place. Till then, it's window shopping for this guy. Join me as I wander in the market on the outskirts of Iquitos, Peru.

I have any number of tin boxes on shelves overflowing with books, and the tins are filled with old coins that migrated to the bottom of my pack as I moved from one place to the next, the coins too worthless to fish out and cash in as I left. So they become memories of long-ago visits to far way lands. I have more coins now, and I would be very happy to put them into lovely wooden bowls from the Peruvian Amazon. Or, I might leave the bowls empty and just gaze at the beauty of them.

I would if I could have more than one, of course, more than two, and probably as many as a minimum of four, more than a set, if not quite a collection, enough to create a collection, to give a sense of context, to create a depth of wooden bowls one could liken to the other, a way of seeing a pattern of wooden bowl beauty. As is, I splurged at the Belen Market and bought a smallish bowl I have no room for anywhere in my life at this time. I fear I might go so far as to buy other, bigger, heavier, lovelier bowls at the San Juan Market and then figure out what to do with them later.

These bowls do represent the work of logging in the Amazon Rain Forest, which as we are all aware is the Lungs of the Earth. If one cuts down a tree in the Amazon, then the planet will suffocate because of science stuff and stuff. But I don't care. I am a fascist. I love these beautiful bowls, and choke on that, hippie girls in California, I just might buy some.

Although I am a huge supporter of almost all things plastic, that is due to my love of democracy: In plastic one might, in spite of poverty beyond bearing, own a replica of the Throne of the Sun King. Almost everything is available to almost everyone if one is willing to settle for such in plastic. I would prefer, of course, a wooden bowl to a plastic one.

To have and to have not, bowls of grace.

I would prefer many wooden bowls, big and lovely, to one wooden  bowl. But life allows for so much less sometimes. I have a little bowl, and it is a joy. A big joy.

Here´s a bit about: ´´wooden bowls and carvings made from bloodwood, a hard wood with a beautiful dark red glow. Bloodwood (Brosimum rubescens) [palo sangre] is a member of the fig family, and is relatively common in the Peruvian Amazon.´´
http://www.amazon-ecotours.com/subpage/agency%20info/responsible%20ecotourism.htm

I chatted with a fellow who swings his machete over and over a block of wood till he has at last the rough outline of his latest work, at which time his box of fine tools comes out to turn a rough block into a work of art, perhaps a dolphin in wood, perhaps a naked white man lurking in the back of his shop. The dolphin is more to my liking...

But the carver can do it all-- if one asks.

The painters, too, can do it all, rendering into the now the snakes and such of the immediate environment, making all things safe and beautiful and personal.

The dangerous and powerful anaconda can rest eternally on ones wall without ever being a threat to world order, a matter instead of peace with the world of snakes and harm. Snakes made lovely for a man at home.

One seen snake can provide an artist with a life time of inspiration that he can render real for the masses, giving the image of a long ago snake in a far away jungle a cosmic twist to express a longing and a positive statement of hope of unity with the earth and its powers and dangerous elements. All in paint and safety.

In the security of ones home, at ones leisure, alone to contemplate ones success in the world, one might look up at ones walls and see colour beyond imagination of ones own to find oneself surrounded by jungle and beauty right here, right now. Thanks to a man who paints it for the likes of those of us who admire it.

One might go so far as to mount a moment of an image of Belen Market in ones home, likely a home so different from the poverty of the original that there is simply no reasonable comparison to make. Sentimental, si, pero, it is beautiful and moreso in vivid colour, sin stench and buzzards. Art takes away the ugly that is in the beauty. 

I'd fill my place with beautiful bowls and hang a painting of the poverty of Belen somewhere to see with ease.

I might go so far as to hang a painting of the streets of the city in their colourful chaos, rendered van Gogh for the moment that lasts in mind and on canvas for all to admire.

Had I a house so large as my imagination, I might buy a couple of drums to summon all of my friends for a visit to look at and like my happy home.

Bang, bang, bang. Boom, boom, boom. My happy home, somewhere over that Amazonian rainbow.

 http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/09/iquitos-san-juan-market.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/09/iquitos-peru-san-juan-market-part-two.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/09/iquitos-peru-san-juan-market-part-three.html

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html