Pussy Riot & Tsar Valdimir

Tsar takes the salute

Picture source

Today I received an invitation from AVAAZ to sign a petition in support of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot whose members have been quite outrageously sentenced to two years' imprisonment for a protest made in a church.

Apparently there have been proposals in the European Parliament (that oh so unimpressive body) that sanctions be applied to the Russian elite; not a bad idea they appear to be a pretty dubious lot one way and the other - BP, never averse to making money gave up the Russian scheme as a bad job and I suppose that there may well have been many others who have experienced that peculiar poker-faced obstructionism that seems to flourish there.

Anyway Tsar Valdimir has continued to support the appalling Bashar Assad offering weasel words about "a political settlement" which puts him beyond the pale as far as this writer is concerned.

Here's a link if you feel inclined to offer your support to Pussy Riot.

Enemies of the State: Pussy Riot

Picture Source

Until the next time

THURSDAY

30/29

In Chester Burnett's words: "I'm sitting on top of the world"

Until the next time

I Wish I Could Write

Today, a very good friend telephoned and expressed the view that I really should cease my depressive outpourings here and indeed, remove those already written.

I explained that these diatribes or cries of anguish and angst serve as an "outlet" and that therefore they will remain.  Attentive regulars (bless you for your patience!) will have noticed that certain posts have actually been removed...

Matthew Arnold, son of the redoubtable Thomas of Rugby (see Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians) could certainly write - and understand; witness his poem Longing:

Longing

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,

A messenger from radiant climes,

And smile on thy new world, and be

As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,

Come now, and let me dream it truth,

And part my hair, and kiss my brow,

And say, My love why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

A man who could write I think.

Like Robert Frost in Reluctance; the last verse expresses my feelings very well:

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

  

Until the next time.

Love the Unfamiliar Name

[52/29/28]

Well, like all anniversaries, it had to come, and now it's here: what last year was the happy and glorious 11th; no more

The next miserable anniversary will be 30th August (i.e. T + 366).  All Thursdays remain as a weekly and poignant reminder of what was and what should have been.

I am grateful to the late Rosamond Lehmann who included the following two pieces in her autobiographical The Swan in the Evening.

"She turned away from me, and she went through the Fair;

And fondly I watched her move here and move there;

And she went on her way, with one star awake,

As the Swan in the evening moves over the lake."

                                                    (Trad.)

"Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove."

                                    (T.S.Eliot)

Poetry in this case is no comfort - just perhaps a little sympatique.

Edit: the exact anniversary in fact occurs at 01 26 on 12th August, but given the rest of what transpired a year ago, 11th is good enough.  I AM a pedant.

Until the next time

Killing a Few Minutes

In four minutes it will be 11th August 2012.

I have another depressing post already prepared for this tragic date; just waiting until midnight; I can then post the message and with luck, the pills will have begun to work.

This is no kind of life, no kind of life at all.

Sorry.

Ah! Just one minute to go...

Until the next time.

Anniversary Looms

29/28

Saturday is 11th August; how happy I was that day last year.

Thursday is, and will be, horrid.

Until the next time

Relativity

No, not the sort of relativity that Albert Einstein "invented" and which, despite numerous attempts at explanation (including by the brilliant T) I completely fail to comprehend.

The relativity I have in mind this evening concerns cost.

Space News reported that the cost of NASA's current Mars programme has reached $2.5 billions.

Peanuts.

I say "peanuts" because of the staggering achievement of transporting a vehicle of astounding versatility, not to say complexity, weighing about a ton, about 352 million miles, and delivering it to a point just 2km from its target on the surface of the Red Planet.  And the amazing vehicle, so capable, has arrived undamaged and has already started its work.

Peanuts again.

Meanwhile, in London a sporting competition has been put on.  It is a very large sporting competition, including top-class sportsmen and women from all around the world.  The goings-on have dominated the news media and caused havoc in terms of traffic congestion; also many businesses have suffered loss of trade in consequence.

Cost? about £13 billions - and that's just what we have been told about; I suspect that there will be a substantial financial hangover afterwards as has been the case in other countries foolish enough to claim the glory of presenting the Olympic Games.

Not peanuts; not peanuts at all.

Until the nest time.

[28/27]

A Tangled Web

[28/27]

There is no shortage of blogs in the so-called "blogosphere" - how many?  Does anyone know?  Yes of course; Wikipedia knows - over 156,000,000 last year.

Well I came across one the other day; brand-new and something about it appeals - not least the name adopted by the owner: Daintycorpse.  Goes well with STYX I think, and so I have included the blog in my list of links: O What a Tangled Web We Weave

Please visit and give Daintycorpse your full support.

Until the next time.

Another Thursday Passes

28/27


And, now that we are already in August, more depression looms as soon some significant anniversaries will arrive:  11th August, 30th August, with more to come in September.


It only gets worse.


Forget any other bollocks that I have written here; I love her, pure and simple.


Until the next time