The Collapse

[pan]

OK, I'm an idiot - how do you upload video?

Watch this

[Mouse]

That business in Vietnam, eventually two people were removed from the wreckage, not bodies, people. One of them is alive today, she got out and sat with other survivors, all badly injured. She didn't see my brother.
It took eleven months to recover his body, sent to Holland and buried in another man's grave. He had been embalmed a few hours after his death.
His legs were broken, and a couple of ribs.
He'd been waiting a week. A Roman Catholic Buddhist Existentialist with tremendous stamina and speed, a real mountain goat. Just 38.

His wife is thought to have been killed instantly, beside him. Her remains were cremated and the ashes sent to her parents in France.

It's so cold I cannot bring myself to go out and look around the back garden, north facing on a fairly steep slope, the wind today is an easterly, but the sun is shining now and then.

There were officials, there are always officials, enough of them to tip the world over. Yes, that's how I found out that the world didn't work the way I thought it did, that international trade interests were far more important to the bureacrats than people, ethics, decency, humanity, truth.

So when I saw Balkan women scrabbling in the soil on the hillside
I understood that it was real, and their howls were their hearts strung out in the branches of the trees above the bones, the scraps of rotten cloth remembered whole and bright with living.
All the arguments left unfinished. The understandings not arrived at.

My mother and both her sisters had died of cancer the previous year, all gone within three months. All the women standing between me and the end of the line. It felt as though our family was being wiped out. And politics felt much more personal, it was easier to imagine what it felt like when I saw someone bereaved and powerless. Beset by lies and indifference.

When my brother passed his driving test at 18 and bought his first car he drove from Crowmarsh to Reading to get the insurance sorted, a few miles. On the way back, coming through the outskirts of Reading while listening to Bob Dylan, his car left the road, went through someone's hedge, coming to rest on its side just where a boat had been parked half an hour before.
He found himself partially suspended, held in place by his seat belt, listening to Bob Dylan singing "sitting in my mobile with the Memphis blues again....." which pleased him and makes me laugh still.

[Mouse]

Now look what you've done Waldo, ask a question and I always have to answer you, however slowly. You and Bo are especially good at that. But I woke up in the middle of last night thinking how can I go blathering on when you are having such a rough time in this buckling present with that very special brain of yours and your beautiful big heart.

How are you now?

[waldopaper]

...pondering on the poetry of your answer as always, Em! As McSorely said, "...we are holding our own."

[waldopaper]

The yazbuts...

Today I'm running up a white flag in my head. That's right, I give up. The yazbuts have won. They're the ones who initially respond to criticism (of business strategy, education, life... it doesn't matter) with, "...yazbut, you never offer anything "positive."" And so you try... we can do this... "yazbut..." we can do that... "yazbut..." we can do chikken fat... "yazbut..." Then there are all the reasons it (whatever it is) can't be done. Well, how about this: fuck it. I give up. That's right... now I'm a shirker, lollygagger, lazy-good-for-nothing. We are deep in this hole with a bunch of shovels... in deep angst about being caught in a hole... and being positive take-charge folks that we are... we gotta keep "busy" and keep digging... on the BOTTOM of the hole. Deeper! Deeper! Oh- how are we ever going to get out of here???

Now it seems really fucking simple to me... dig on the SIDE of the hole... make a ramp... we can all walk out of here. "yazbut... the wall might collapse" Well, that's exactly... oh never mind. So I have been content to hack at the side of the hole all by myself... but noooooo... that gets dirt on the bottom of the hole where everybody is "working." OK- fuck this metaphor. You get the idea. I'm used to it... have been for years... outside the home. Now everybody's down with the idea of "growing our own." But the square-foot permaculture idea has been drowned out in the argument of whether to buy or rent a rototiller. Just a small extended-family argument... but it's starting to look like everything else: what we're doing isn't working so well... so that means we have to do it HARDER.

Well, how about something completely (or even slightly) different? "Yazbut..." OK- well, fuck it... I see where this is going. Same place it usually goes: keep doing what we're doing until it crashes. And the last thing ON EARTH you want to say is, "I told you so." Here comes the blame-game: whose "fault" it is... Usually mine for not digging hard enough (oh wait- abandoned that metaphor- sorry). I envy the Hubberts who came up with the answer... but have gone beyont. Even more so the McDonoughs who are still here and are at least making a (decent) "living." My own Memetics in Literature and Composition is going to get lost in the triplicate orders for toilet paper.

Well, I'm going back to smoking and drinking in great quantities... which the docs say will certainly kill me. Yeah, but not soon enough... and not fast enough. Especially fast- I really don't want to be a drooling vegetable that lingers for years like some fucking boat-anchor that everybody feels obligated to keep "alive." And I really don't want to "eat the gun" and leave a nasty fucking mess for somebody to clean up (probably an underpaid "immigrant"). On a "bright" note... the 'answers' are OUT THERE... they're everywhere... and are so simple and brilliant they can't HELP but being implemented, but (the "dark" note)... only after everything is completely crashed, burned and fucked. The reason it will have to degenerate to this state is mostly due to the "yazbut" in all of us. Well, fuck it. The Yazbuts (formally known as "conservatives") win.

For now...

[littleoldme]

When the whole world goes to shit, which we're pretty certain it's going to, a few well placed "I told you so's" might just be good for the soul.

[waldopaper]

"well-placed" is the key. I have no idea where that might be... yeah, good for MY soul... sort of like taking a satisfying dump... but you have to eat enough food to produce waste. Not likely to happen in the predator future-world... unless you're willing to become a predator.

Easy enough... there will be a whole lot of pudgies who will fall prey to "what's-tht-on-your-shoe" sucker-punch. Then what? After the pudgies are eaten, it's on to the rich fatties and their armed serfs. Does the Culture of Looting simply have to run its course until there is nothing left to loot?

"I told you so" will be a hollow "victory."

[littleoldme]

I was trying to make ya feel better. Sorry.

[curt]

mary, you made me feel better. always have. thanks for that.

[curt]

the Yazbuts won't win, nobody will. The world as we know it is going to pot, fer sher but not tomorrow and likely not next week. Changes in our course of actions and/or train or thought are necessary from time to time. We have to "give up" on a stuggle in order to gain real ground. You go ahead and do what pleases you even if it kills you. There are worse things than death. Drinking yourself to death is something that can be done. I've seen it before. That doesn't stop me from doing the same thing at a slightly slower pace with a less potent mixture. But that's basically what I do, day in, day out. Working toward the day I die so it can all be over with and hopefully peace will set in. Is there a shrink in the house? I think a good majority of us all end up this way. Each man has his poison of choice. Alk is a potent one. It literally destroys a man. Talk about a quick death. A bottle of Jack a day will do it. It may take a few years but it works. Pretty expensive too and the goddamn bottles stack up outside the house. Like I said, I've seen it before. Screwed up big time a couple of seconds in my life. Both had to do with a decision to .......select a poison. One was gasoline, the other is called "H". Once you get near death, you taste how sweet it is and you long for it for the rest of your miserable life. I'm struggling to prolong my life until the right time comes, and I won't be the one to decide that. I'm not afraid of death and I won't induce it. It must come to me. Until it does, I walk the line and I influence people. Why? Hell, I dunno.

Prosst my friend!

[curt]

of course, some things are more expensive than a bottle of Jack. Some are even healthy in small quantities while they still do the trick.

[BO]

You're a brilliant man, Waldo, but me thinks throwing a tantrum over not being able to buy a rototiller doesn't become you. So, now you're gonna kill yerself? Waahh.

Fogettaboutit. We need you around.

Go give your wife a hug and tell her you're sorry. She loves you. That obligates you to keep trying.

You need a spanking.

(I watched the 'Paper Chase' the other night. I'm not afraid of you anymore Mr. Kingsfield)

[Mouse]

Didn't make it to the punch line. Overcome by emotion, copious tears, dreadful wheezing, gasping for breath.
The last communication from the doomed ship

Well, the post doesn't seem to be getting through

Now you're all really making me laugh.

I find some excellent friends and what do I find you talking about in the small hours...
Gave up drink over 25 years ago, it always made me suicidal. Joined AA for 3 years, did the trick.

Hang on a minute while I smoke this... and post a picture, still can't put one here...