The hour-glass whispers to the lion’s paw, The clock-towers tell the gardens day and night, How many errors Time has patience for, How wrong they are in being always right.
Yet Time, however loud its chimes or deep, However fast its falling torrent flows, Has never put the lion off his leap Nor shaken the assurance of the rose.
For they, it seems, care only for success: While we choose words according to their sound And judge a problem by its awkwardness;
And Time with us was always popular. When have we not preferred some going round To going straight to where we are?
black and gray drowns out the blue oceans full of plastic poison in our water virus in the air deserts are dryer water in the streets glasers are melting forests are burning times are changing
I don’t fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach.
Rio de Janeiro Favela (2001) — Abstract Art by kenne
In the Favelas
‘Slum tourism’ sneered a moralising friend.
I thought of this as our small group trekked through alleys, deep in the favelas, climbed interminable steep small stairs, gazed curiously at faces that stared back indifferently.
Their world, ruled by drug lords, Crime bosses, poverty and need … How do these people of Rocinha, see us, the dilettante tourists, stepping carefully on broken ground? Don’t wear your rings or watches! Leave your wallets back at the hotel! Cautiously, we pick our way, cameras snapping at the sight of tangled wires for stolen power, of deep canals that take the sewerage to the sea, of grinding cycles of a poverty that no one can escape.
And we who walk among them, do we have the right to drive away, return to luxury hotels, download our photos for display to friends back home, while shaking heads in wonder that anyone can live like this?
My friend was right, for we have been, to our eternal shame, ‘Slum tourists!’
This art is from a photograph of a canyon wall and like all things, it is living and has intelligence. But, we like to think that it’s just a bunch of rocks and minerals, therefore not alive. When I took the photograph I saw a wall alive, no different than a saguaro cactus, and in the moment its being. By doing so, I brought my experience to the picture, adding color, light, and contrast enhancing the natural beauty of the world around us. It is alive and has intelligence.
I always wonder what they think the niggers are doing while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China, nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile, from blowing up that earth which they have already blasphemed into dung: the gentle, wide-eyed, cheerful ladies, and their men, nostalgic for the noble cause of Vietnam, nostalgic for noble causes, aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages— ah—! Uncas shall never leave the reservation, except to purchase whisky at the State Liquor Store. The Panama Canal shall remain forever locked: there is a way around every treaty. We will turn the tides of the restless Caribbean, the sun will rise, and set on our hotel balconies as we see fit. The natives will have nothing to complain about, indeed, they will begin to be grateful, will be better off than ever before. They will learn to defer gratification and save up for things, like we do.
Oh, yes. They will. We have only to make an offer they cannot refuse.
