A Valentine’s Lament of Early 2013

This will not be the most upbeat of my updates. We are in the Midi, and although it has been cold – especially at night, it is still incredibly beautiful, days are often sparkling with sunshine, and the people here are lovely. And as far as the frigid temperatures are concerned, as the locals say, “Après tout, c'est encore hiver.” But this is a unique oasis – a dream surrounded by nightmare. Coupling this with the recent loss of our dear John (http://michaelyork.co.uk/Domus/Travel-Logs/johnwilson-19.html), it is the state of the world that is providing an overriding despondency.

It is one thing that we have civil war in Syria and virtually in Afghanistan, that the Middle Eastern countries of Bahrain, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia could explode at any moment, that Mexico and Columbia are rife with endless violence, that the internecine conflicts of Corsica have raised the murder rate to well-above the norm, that militants plague both Thailand and The Philippines, and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains hopelessly mired in deadlock. Even without these despicable and senseless wastes, our so-called bastion of Western civilisation is not only wanting but has become something so unrecognisable from what we thought it was in the earlier days of my youth. It is just for a starter George Orwell’s world of Big Brother and more. Perhaps it was always this way, though I think there was still an innocence decades ago – at least as compared to the machinations, theft and greed that prevails in our electronically surveillanced times as they have become.

What all this comes down to is the contamination of the very foods that we consume and on so many fronts. The mega-corporations like Monsanto seem to be largely unstoppable. I received the following website in a posting from Rix: http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/health/disease/news.php?q=1360685649. Not only are we finding in our food supply and water such things as fluoride, chlorine/PCBs, pesticides and neuro-toxic additives, but GMO corn, soya, sugar, dairy, canola, zucchini, etc. presumably accelerate the race to a “Cancer Epidemic and 'Leaky Gut Syndrome'.” We might as well add in our mercury-laced vaccines as well. Meanwhile, from Nancy, I have received http://www.rodale.com/food-ingredients-avoid that lists fourteen foods that we should avoid, namely, swordfish (let alone imported catfish, caviar, Atlantic cod, American eel, imported shrimp, Atlantic flatfish, Atlantic salmon, imported king crab, shark, orange roughy, Atlantic bluefish tuna and Chilean sea bass for reasons of overharvesting/stock depletion and contaminations from antibiotics, parasites, E. coli, chemical residues and above all mercury: http://www.rodale.com/12-fish-you-should-never-eat?page=1), nonorganic strawberries, diet soda, anything from McDonalds, canned tomatoes, bread (white, whole wheat, whole grain, sprouted, organic, French, etc.), industrially produced hamburgers, corn, white chocolate, artificial sweetners, sprouts, butter-flavoured microwave popcorn, food dyes and chain-restaurant ice cream sundaes. When one reads the reasoning behind the suggested prohibition on such items, what is most amazing is how much the consuming public is kept in the dark about potential harm and harmful compromise. And what we are being asked to avoid is ubiquitous.

If these were not enough, Stephen posted me a video along with the email subject line that read “je ne mangerai plus de viande!!!!”: http://player.vimeo.com/video/57126054#at=0. This last, on the mechanical production of meat today, is truly horrifying. I do not recommend for anyone to watch it, and I doubt if it will remain long available in any event to be viewed. It seems like something out of Terrance Gilliam’s Brazil, although it is not a movie for entertainment. It is instead a document of today’s horrifying reality. Perhaps with the constantly accelerating world population and the sheer number of people to feed, assembly-line production of our sustenance is inevitable. This is the future. Richard and I figure we might have at best around another twenty years to live, so our frustrated investment in any of this is lessened, but we think of our children and our children’s children and the generations ahead for which such a nightmare scenario will be par for the course. I applaud people like Patrick Beck (http://www.newenglandgrassfed.com/) and farmers’ markets. Yes, these goods are more expensive than what we can find in supermarkets and Walmarts, etc., but for one, do we need to eat as much as we do? – and, secondly, is not the difference in price worth it?

Our world has changed. There are still remarkable beauties to found within it – vistas, landscapes, mountains, forests, jungles, oceans, seas and coastlines. And even with our current horsemeat and bute scandal, I am grateful essentially for being in Britain and the UK. There appears to be a modicum at least of greater sense here than in the land where fracking occurs and corporations have become ‘persons’. Returning to humanity as a whole, some of our technological achievements are simply staggering – jet propulsion, outer space exploration, particle detection, medical innovations, even our computers, internet and cyber worlds. Music from singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee to composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Bartok and Stravinsky is a glorious and wondrous achievement to be celebrated along with skyscrapers, ocean liners, the Pantheon, New Orleans, the collections of the Louvre, Prado, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and Chicago Art Institute, cinema, musicals, cabaret and theatre – an endless list in all. What fantastic accomplishment so much of this is – all worthy of celebration and human pride. Our creative side along with our propensity for charity, service and even altruism is beautiful, and as a pagan I continue to honour the divine, sublime and awe-inspiring forces that inform our world and cosmos. But so incommensurate with eco-harmony and the imaginal of supernal transcendence is “la surconsummation” and corporate blindness or mono-vision, that I am wailing in despair and for the loss of a global and humane community.