No Thing

Who's to say what is happening on those days where nothing seems to spark interest and no starting point is visible. It is gray and raining, a climate which usually inspires me. Today - gunmetal blue flat nothing comes to mind.

All of the laundry sits. The filing and shredding do not beckon. Weblinks remain broken. Books lie untouched. Food is unappetizing. Music off.

Perhaps it is an apt end to a weekend filled with time wasted. Perhaps it is that mysterious time when work is being done so far deep in a place that no conscious light can make ideas ready before their time. Maybe all of my energy is coiled too tight to move. Packed into inertia. So solid that no illumination can get through.

And maybe this is the time work is being done. Maybe deep underneath ideas are being sorted out and feelings dealt with and future action is being crafted. Maybe my inability to see what is happening does not mean that nothing is going on. Perhaps this nothing is a great something after all.

That is how change happens to me. It feels like a great darkness and emptiness. But in reality, deep down there is movement and growth. It is like the wintertime of soul. Cold and hard consciousness does not perceive the tiny little seed that is warming and roasting and toasting and growing and waiting to spring into life.

Patience is the only creative action which makes sense right now. Let nothing be and see what happens. In that way there is an anticipation of the action that is to come.

Creativity is like that, isn't it? The more I chase it the more it slips away. But sure footed waiting ... ah...keeping the stage empty for the show will go on and the lights will go up and the mood will change and out of this fallow darkness I will see all that I left alone unfold, fragrantly; rich, ripe and beautiful.

It is this dark day that breeds my faith. It is this rainy nothingness that quenches the thirst of a soul which is at work even if I cannot see it.

Rilke, as so often happens, comes to mind.

For in a week or a month or maybe in an hour or tomorrow something will flow out of me and I will think "Now I have done it," but that isn't the truth. The truth is that it was done in the time of quiet nothingness.

Quiet nothingness is not no thing at all. It is the merely time before seeing. Now it is done.

If 'tis the season to welcome change...

President Elect Obama should say NO to Summers

Dear President Elect Obama:

If this is the season for change you should say NO to Lawrence Summers. Please remember that Mr. Summers, when chief economist for the World Bank, was the author of the following memo in which he places US-centric concerns over the welfare of others.

This myopic world view, which embraces the selfish attitude of "its not my problem," is a rejection of your stated aim at sharing responsibilities. While Mr. Summers is surely an intelligent and capable economist, his willingness to propose morally reprehensible solutions for the sake of economic expediency preclude him from being qualified to lead this country in a new direction.

The Memo
DATE: December 12, 1991TO:
Distribution FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP 'Dirty' Industries:

Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.


Tiara Tip: http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html

You Meet the Nicest People...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EMcaQ3JJo4

November 1, 2008

Last night I may have witnessed the setting of the world record for most people dancing to "Thriller" together. I was on a roof looking down on the Halloween Parade in NYC. I was supposed to be walking in that parade, as puppeteer weilding a bat (sonar not aluminum.) But after the "it's not manditory" bake off at work, the whole finding of the dead father and meeting his widow and a general over subscription to taking on responsibilites that are not mine as well as those that are undeniably mine, I was tired.

So I stood watching a parade from a rooftop drinking red bull when what I really wanted was merlot. I drank 4 red bulls and then the taurine set in and I started leaking what felt like cat piss from my eyes and sweating so bad we had to get the hell out fast and head back to the Hook.

I was home in time for the end of the 10 oclock news. Shockingly, no mention was made of the "Thriller" record setting. Not on FOX or MY9 or any other local channel.

All of this is to say 2 things. 1. What I consider to be wildly important goes by basically unrecorded by most of the rest of mankind and 2. Despite my overdeveloped sense of responsibility, the parade certainly went on just fine without me.

What a relief!

Ed. Note: What I witnessed was not even close to the world record of "Thriller" dancers which leads me to believe that life is far better when facts are left unchecked. What I did witness was the World Record of the Most People Queenie's Daughter ever saw Dancing to "Thriller" together which is, in point of fact, good enough for me.