Little wonders

If I've featured these tilt-shift, time-lapse plums by Berlin-based filmmaker Joerg Daibe in the past, it's time for an encore in the present because there are new episodes to marvel at!

This is our world, sweetie darlings, yours and mine, to enjoy and explore, to cherish and protect.

Happy Earth Day, wherever you are. 🌍🌏🌎

Stop! In the name of love

So. Monday. Another Mayday. I'm sad to report that the carnival weekend in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, ended in tears. Torrential rain, more than twice the monthly average in just 24 hours, led to landslides, mudslides and flooding. Lives lost, homes destroyed, the climate crisis in devastating action.

For the love of whatever you value most, abandon all hope. I'm not joking. Let's stop hoping someone or something saves us from ourselves. Let's hope less and do more. None of us will fix all of this but we can all do something. Considering everything we are (as mammals), everything that surrounds us, everything we eat, wear, live in, work with and build with and otherwise consume comes from nature, every choice we make affects nature.

There is no disconnect, no distinction, although the fossil fuel industry for one would like you to not notice that fact. Well, screw that and screw you; you broke it, you bought it, now clean up after yourselves at your own expense because you damn well should.

Hell yes I'm angry. Aren't you? I love this planet of ours; I love it so very much; it's fascinating and full of beauty; it gave us life and what do we do in return? I am sorry for all the ways in which I may have harmed her, and I am sad for all the ways in which we keep harming her, this system that sustains us.

Love your mother. Make good, smart choices whenever possible. Vote conscientiously. Demand answers and demand action. Brook no bullshit.

It's your world. Honor it.

So now what?

Temperature: on the rise. #COP26 #WhatGretaSaid #AndSimonKofe

Drinking: Would some Beaujolais nouveau help? What do you mean it’s only Wednesday?

Eating: gingerbread. I made the first batch over the weekend. Lo and behold, Ebenezer and the Grinches had no problem helping themselves to a few and then some.

Watching: catastrophe movies and other artistic endeavors of the same genre come to life. This is an emergency, sweetie darlings, and we are all on call.

Listening: Don’t tell a soul but I’ve been listening to some Christmas-y tunes. Not like a full-blown playlist, just a favorite song here and there to lift spirits and help with the baking and other pre-Xmas chores. Oh, don’t shake your head, I warned you I’m going Stealth Elf. And I have. Sure, my cover is blown at home, but who’s gonna stop me? I would like to see them try. *pulls out a candy cane shaped and colored lightsaber*

Reading: Grand Hotel Europa by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer. Read it if you’re European. Read it even if you aren’t. Available in several languages.

Writing: a letter to Santa asking him to bring me a candy cane shaped and colored lightsaber, if there’s a sustainable way to manufacture one, because that would be awesome.

Thinking: After the diluted outcome of COP26, there are reasons to be hopeful and cheerful, and there are reasons to be fearful and doubtful. I wish we had more of the former and less of the latter.

Feeling: like I let my children down, like we all let every single child on the planet down, when my youngest said that he hopes he lives to be a hundred because he wants to see how this ends. Sweet baby Jesus, sweetie darlings! And he didn’t sound as despondent as I feel, he sounded almost curious, as if he knows full well what’s coming in the not-so-distant future, but since he doesn’t know how and when he’ll truly start feeling the effects in earnest there’s no sense in panicking just yet. Oh but they see and hear everything, dearest denizens. And this is how we’ll be remembered. What do you think some future or alien species will make of our dogged self-destruction?

“Were they stupid? Was it an accident?”
“Doesn’t look like one. Looks like a 500-year-old long con they called capitalism got out of hand.”
“Hmm. It had its pros, it seems.”
“But they couldn’t contain the cons, apparently. Or wouldn’t.”
“So, we’re going with stupid with marks of greed and arrogance?”
“Well, no fully developed species does this. The other lifeforms seem to be thriving, though.”
“I’ll make a note of that. Okay, next sector then. Lunch first? I know a superb place near Tau Ceti. Far off, I know, but worth it.”
“Let’s go. Shame though. It looks kind of beautiful.”

Love your Mother 🌱

The Possibilists

Temperature: a nippy -5/23 degrees

Eating: Alas, the holiday treats are gone. Salad it is.

Drinking: Alas, the wine is gone. Water it is.

Watching: still working my way through GoT. (April is coming.)

Listening: to this year’s sambas de enredo. Carnaval is coming, and because of the stupid ankle injury I suffered in Singapore, no dancing for me in 2018. Try stopping me this time around, I dare you, fate! (Not really, no, please let me dance, please please please.)

Reading: the Roslings

Thinking: What happens to nature happens to us. When did we get so blind, so arrogant, that we forgot about Gaia, how everything is connected?

Feeling: Shouldn’t we welcome the new year like a child does, ready to learn and explore and be wowed, not full of self-involved gumption but humility? Well, as much as I’d like for us to welcome the new year as that child does, I think this baby needs to hit the ground running. You can’t pretend you’re not aware of climate change/breakdown or what it means. Yes, I know it’s easier than ever to mislead and be misled. It’s also easier than ever to get to the bottom of things, if you really want to. And why wouldn’t you? You don’t want to be misled, a tool, a puppet, do you, dearest denizens? No, you want to fight the powers that feed you muck and malarkey. Because you won’t be lied to, or lie to yourself. Because you know what is possible when you really put your mind to and back into something. Because, unless you’re E.T., you do have a horse in this race, skin in this game, insert your favorite idiom depicting being up to your eyeballs, no, your hairline, in this; you are, after all, a living, breathing, sentient being on planet Earth. Part of the problem but, more importantly, part of the solution.

Dance, dance otherwise we are lost*

The Big Chill is upon us and  I  a m  f r e e z i n g  so it's best to keep moving. Plus the deathly pallor of our barren scenery is making me a bit ... melancholy. Nature is a study in the beauty of simplicity, silence and serenity right now, but it's hard not to overdose on melatonin during the dark winter days so you gotta fight it, sweetie darlings, and dancing ... dancing makes everything better. Take it from someone for whom dancing once was, still is, always will be a system of survival. But that's just how I feel. That's just how I feel, that's just how I feel, trying to reach the things that I can't see.

Come on, you need a break. Oh yes you do. We both do. Come here. Don't look at your feet, don't look at the ceiling, or the walls, look at me.  That's it. Shall we dance?

ENVY - AM I WRONG from Kavar Singh on Vimeo.

*Pina Bausch

Anything to declare?

Don't leave home.