“Everybody got problems buddy, I got mine”

I woke up at about 4am (to pee I suppose). When I went back to bed I looked out the window and the whole sky was lit up in pale orange. I’m supposing it was the almost full moon through water vapour overcast. But it was simply divine. And eerie.
I really miss staying up all night and wish I still could. Much like when I was a toddler I resent having to sleep and try to do it as little as possible. I try to stick at no more than 7 hours. I prefer 6. It’s a conflict because I am so in love with my dreams. I dream lots and very vividly. It’s like surrealist movies all night every night. I spent the ages of 11 to 13 sleeping 14 hours a day because my dreams were so much more compelling than (alleged) reality.

I really miss being a creature of the night. Watching the sky revolve, the stars wheeling through their cycle, seeing moonrise and moonset. All the magical, slithery changes things undergo when shadow and light play over them. And those completely unexpected and rare events like purple rain or pale orange snow. That first tinge of dawn which relaxes the primitive watcher at the back of the brain. The gorgeous fears of the darkness. The idea that anything, anything at all could be out there just outside of your field of vision.
“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled”

It ain't Burroughs but....

“Suddenly I felt bleak, oddly depressed. It took a moment for me to realize that one of Meyer’s recent lectures on international standards of living was all too well remembered.”

“... so divide everything into two hundred million equal parts . Everything in this country that is fabricated. Steel mills, speedboats, cross country power lines, scalpels, watch bands, fish rods, ski poles, plywood, storage batteries, everything. Break it down into basic raw materials and then compute the power requirements and the fossil fuels needed to make everybody’s share in this country. Know what happens if you apply that formula to all the peoples of all the other nations of the world?”
“You come up with a bleak fact Travis. There is not enough material on and in the planet to ever give them what we’re used to. The emerging nations are not going to emerge - not into our pattern at least. Not ever. We’ve hogged it all. Technology won’t come up with a way to crowd the Yangtze River with (sleek, high powered speedboats).
“It was OK Travis, when the world couldn’t see us consuming and consuming. Or hear us. Or taste some of our wares. But communication by cinema, satellite, radio, television tape, these have been like a light coming on slowly, being turned up like a rheostat control in a dark cellar where all of mankind used to live. Now it is blinding bright, cruelly bright. And they can all look over into our corner and see us gorging ourselves and playing with our bright pretty toys. And so they want theirs now. Just like ours, God help them. And what is the only thing we can say? ‘Sorry, You’re a little too late. We used it all up all except what we need to keep our toys in repair and running and to replace them when they wear out. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.’ What comes after that? Barbarism, an interregnum, a new dark ages, and another start a a thousand years from now with a few million people on the planet? Our myth has been that our standard of living would become available to all the peoples of the world. Myths wear thin. We have a visceral appreciation of the truth. That truth, which we don’t dare announce to the world, is what gives us the guilt and shame and the despair. Nobody in the world will ever live as well materially, as we once did. And now as our materialism begins to sicken us, it is precisely what the emerging nations want for themselves. And can never have. Brazil might manage it. But no one else.”
John MacDonald “The Scarlet Ruse” 1973

Oh happy, happy XMAS.

Another favourite quote

“The treacherous are ever distrustful”

Gandalf the Grey

My favourite quote from the news today

“the chances of such a freak being fossilized are so slim.”

Timeless truths

But behold, it is to get gain, to be praised of men, yea, and that ye might get gold and silver. And ye have set your hearts upon the riches and the vain things of this world, for the which ye do murder, and plunder, and steal, and bear false witness against your neighbor, and do all manner of iniquity.
THE BOOK OF HELAMAN