La garúa de la primavera

There is a continuous fog over the city, but it is Springtime in Lima and the new is sprouting visibly. I confess that the climate is a bit chilly for my liking, but the area I live in is lovely, parks and boulevards and bustling outdoor cafés and attractive women and clean streets and a wealthy ambiance to say the least.

I feel like I'm becoming green around the edges. I think that's a good thing.

The pic. is of a tree next to my balcony.

Dag's Last Jag

I'm getting old. I am old. I am on my last trip, this one maybe taking me to the very end of this life. I'm living for now in Peru, one stop on a long trip to the end of time. There's no going back for me now, mainly because there was never anywhere to go back to, only forward, that road being eternal.


The sun is finally out in Lima, the first time in weeks, this place being overcast due to the Humboldt Current that brings a cold breeze and grey skies. But it's not very cold, not very grey. It's my living, and this is living la vida loca. For an old guy on the road it's acceptable. I have work to do here and not a lot of time for the sun anyway.

I am writing a five volume book on the idea of individuality and individualism, how that is better than fear of loneliness and a flight to collectivism. I have 12 duotangs of hand-written pages, each folder about 100 pages long, some more. I am a terrible typist, and it takes me 12-16 hours per day to make ten pages, often fewer. I am through the first folder now, and working on the second, that being volume one of this effort. I had hoped to live here in Lima for the year I think this will take me to complete, but I think now that I'll travel around some, looking for that one place that will be what I had hoped for when I originally planned to do all this in Vientiane, Laos, that before I couldn't get a proper visa and decided to come instead to South America. Here I am, and for a while here I stay, writing and getting nervous.

It's no fun for me to write this part of a book. I have to type and get it more or less right, which is difficult for me because I type so badly. Worse, I have to confront each and every word I type at least three times, once to type it, once to correct the typos, and once more to ensure that I got the typos fixed. It depresses me and makes me disgusted by the copy I produce and the ideas I have. It gets so bad that, yesterday, for example, I considered jumping off the roof or hanging myself because it seems that nothing I'm doing is working out well. I call this suffering for my art. I get over it by going for a walk and having coffee. I feel better now. The writing continues. I know from years of experience that this stage of writing is the worst, and that the best comes when I have a whole manuscript typed and in my hands so I can work at making the words sing. I'm not going to be there for a long time yet. This is the time to suffer.

My blogging here has been close to non-existent since I arrived in Lima, but I have done a huge amount of typing, for me. I have over one half of volume one done, and and am doing as much as I can to finish this off quickly as I can. I don't know how long this will take me, but once I feel that I have some genuine progress here I will make a better effort to get out and blog and try to be interesting and informative about Peru as I experience it. For now, for a week or more yet, blogging will continue to be light. But be patient. I will return. There's nowhere else to go, really, but forward, wherever that leads me. Hope you will join me in some way as I make my way toward South Sudan and maybe beyond over the coming year and more. till then, back to books.

There's so much to learn, and it's so hard to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhlkEDY_O84

Lima in Springtime.

I'm in Lima, Peru, and though it is a huge and interesting city of exotic delights, I find myself engaged in the purpose that brought me here, to sit and type my large stack of notes into what should be a five volume History of Ideas, A Genealogy of Left Dhimmi Fascism. I'm not getting out much to see the city and its sites.

I work to a deadline here for each month, Oct. being the first month, and I will, according to my deadline, finish typing, revising, and editing the first of the 12 binders that make up the five volumes. The first binder is 108 pages of my own indecipherable handwriting. I had a head start, of course, and am now on page 28, a mere 70 to go before I revise and edit. I have 27,375 words typed so far. That head startis looking pretty necessary.

I'm not getting out much, but I have a lovely place in Mira Flores to keep me. I'm sitting in the courtyard typing now, the sun coming out, the day looking pretty good. Will find some time, soon I hope, to go out and make some better case of my life at this blog. Stay tuned.

Vive France Libre

Our friend Tiberge gives us this; thanks to CGW for finding it and sending it.

http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2010/12/requiem-for-france.html

3:10 to Lima

I arrived in Lima, Peru a few days ago to spend some time in South America where I will be writing a five volume work on the history of ideas, A Genealogy of Left Dhimmi Fascism.

This is my chair where I say writing today. Will have more later as I settle in. If you are in Lima, please let me know and perhaps we can meet for lunch in Mira Flores.

Till next day or so,

Yalladios, Dag

Ten Years After

Ten Years After, "Good morning little school girl," Ssssh, (1969)

That song came out when I was in high school, a time when my passions were far different from those I have now. Passions, still. "Baby, wanna ball you-- all night long!" I have my passions, but now they run to blood and fire.

I don't have to say more than 9-11. People know. What they mostly make of it is so far from what I would expect that now, ten years after, I find myself often enough incapable of conversation. There's no need to talk any more. Shssss.

****

There is nothing to say because all that should be said is buried in the public sphere and studiously ignored as it seeps out and enshrouds us all, poisoning the atmosphere of our public life. We lie. We speak and we lie to all around us and to ourselves: that there is nothing to say. Lies, more lies, and continuous lies to come.

****

9Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongues: for I have seen violence and strife in the city.

10Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof: mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it.

11Wickedness is in the midst thereof: deceit and guile depart not from her streets.

KJV, Psalms 55: 9-11

****

The moral infrastructure is all rotten. The West is rotten because it's moral infrastructure is build of moral vegetable matter. It didn't last. It's turned to slime and stink. Snakes love it because rats feast, mice don't care, and other small rodents take what is as is and slide through till death takes them, nervous and twitchy. The moral has collapsed in a rotten heap, and the snakes fatten. Shhhh.

That's not the whole story. For some of us there's more. This is the evening of the tenth anniversary of 9-11. For some of us, there's a kind of hush all over the world. There's a passion left that goes beyond ones wild youth and cold-hearted old age. There's that lingering love of the good that one knows was and might again be. Night has fallen. Hush.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6FniOt4AV8

****

Now, at the end of 9-11-11 I'm signing off for the night. I leave us all with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHTPufEA6yw

CNN: the most laughable news on earth

This is too good to pass up. CNN has a graphic that PJM gives us a chance to laugh at. Better entertainment on TV cannot be found.

Why they can't find Ghadaffi. Wrong continent!

Machine Gun Preacher Theatrical Trailer

This is a follow-up to the documentary trailer I posted here recently on the Machine Gun Preacher. I love this stuff. Hope it has some impact on you, too. I think so.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T48oq-WlIGc

I'll be in South America for the coming year, but after that, if you're not too busy, let's meet in South Sudan!

Yalla, Dag

The Rest

I was having coffee one evening at a small diner in Mexico City when I was joined by a young German fellow who asked me if I know the city well. I said yes, that I'd lived there for a year and knew it well enough. He put a Lonely Planet Guide to Mexico on the table, opened it to Mexico City, and took out a pen, ready to strike. He showed me all the yellow high-lighter marks, showed me what he had "done" so far in his trip to the city, and asked if there were places of interest he had missed.

Well, yes, he'd missed a lot of things of interest. I know of little gates that lead to courtyards that reveal things only someone determined to explore without fear would find. I know a lot of things about the mega-city that most people, locals or no, would not know of. But I don't know about the myopic pursuit of every detail in a guide book as travel. He had me beat there. I know of a sheet metal mural of charging horses, of a tavern for famous mariachis, I know things I don't speak of. I know of libraries and map stores and police equipment shops on the sly. But I don't know about the rigid determination to see it all in order and program. I know of up-and-coming wrestlers at the gym, of the derelict Communist Party meetings, hack journalists, torch singers, of the European exiles and the Asian trapped and the South American hopeful. I know a lot. But I don't know the book. I told him he'd done just fine and that I was impressed. He was relieved.

Michael is a computer guy here. He knows the book. He knows technology inside out and is picky and cranky about it. He loses his temper when one misses the point of chemistry of beer-making. He is upset when one is not taken with 1950s radio diagrams. He's like that. He's like that even in describing the disease that is killing him as I write. I somehow missed a step in the process of him decaying and dying, and he was furious. How can I be so stupid as to confuse this with that? I dunno. I just am. I don't really care.

But I like Michael. I went to see him after a frantic message from the aether, and found him collapsed on the floor. I considered picking him up till I had my arms around him and realised that picking him up just might break all of his ribs. His mind is strong, when one looks at his successful applications of technology to the working world. But his mind is badly broken, too. He is very likely insane in a mild if corrosively destructive way. He's gone now. I think of him as someone I liked, someone I pity, someone who blew it all. But it's not my place to criticise what he missed in his mad endeavours to do it all. No one can do everything. No one can get it right to the satisfaction of another. We all fall short, of their expectations, of yours, of mine, of our own expectations. Then we weaken. Then we die.

I'm going out for coffee and some wandering and pondering. I leave my friend to his fate. Adios. Shine on, you crazy diamond.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLKiMbC6s2k

Cheering, Leering, Veering

Maybe it's the juvenile in me. Comments veered of course. Well, of course.

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Dozens of women bared their breasts Sunday in a protest for gender equality that attracted so many gawkers that traffic on city streets slowed to a crawl.

[....]

Comments have veered off course and are now turned off.

See full story on The Asheville Citizen-Times.