dreamer_easy: (*cosmic code authority)
I've been troubled for years by the final lines in Australian poet Rosemary Dobson's poem Child of Our Time:

I see the wounded moon, I fear
The travelling star, the mushroom cloud,
Beneath the perilous universe
For you, for you, my head is bowed.

... why is the moon wounded? This has to be a reference to the Apollo moon landings, but aren't those something, well -- gather up all of your profound feelings about the great adventure -- holy?

It was only today, reading about the Navajo objections to human remains being deposited on the moon last year, that I got an idea of what Dobson might have had in mind. Buu Nygren, President of the Navajo nation:

"We view it as a part of our spiritual heritage, an object of reverence and respect. The act of depositing human remains and other materials, which could be perceived as discards in any other location, on the moon is tantamount to desecration of this sacred space."

There's garbage on the moon! Bits of spaceship and equipment -- golf balls -- literal bags of shit, piss, and vomit! To me, something like the left-behind lander or the bootprint has an overwhelmingly positive meaning -- but I can easily see how from someone else's perspective it might look like the sacred moon was used as a dump. Hell, I'm a Pagan, I can see that from my own perspective. It's a grinding of gears.

I don't know whether this is the angle from which Dobson was coming. Other lines in the poem suggest she wasn't anti-space exploration. She may have had in mind the potential exploitation of space as an arena for war. If we can put people onto the moon, what else can we put in space -- spy satellites, beams, bombs? This, too, is a grinding of gears for someone who became a space enthusiast last year, and amongst the science and the joy discovered the pollution, the exploitation, the grifting, the moral compromises. The beautiful Space Shuttle didn't just do science, it also worked for the Department of Defense.

Dobson places "the travelling star" -- a natural catastrophe that comes from outside, perhaps an asteroid hitting the Earth -- into the same category as the human-made mushroom cloud, a threat from the inside. Discarding the Outer Space Treaty and putting weaponry into orbit will put the human race into the same category as the travelling star. We will be pointing two guns at our own head in an already dangerous universe.


dreamer_easy: (Default)
Cory Doctorow: Rules for Writers (May 2020). On the Turkey City Lexicon and why those items are on that list.

Please Just Let Women Be Villains (Electric Lit, 2021). "From 'Wicked' to 'Cruella,' rehabilitated villainesses rely on outdated ideas of women's virtue."

Kill The Cat – The Awful Influence Of The World’s Worst Writing Guide (The Reprobate, 2021). The roller coaster analogy probably explains why I'm so bloody jaded.

Prayer Before Birth by Louis MacNeice. Found it!

Hurt Hawks by Robinson Jeffers
dreamer_easy: (Default)
Now I can fill in the details. I once heard "punk poet" John Cooper Scott read his poem "Eat Lead Clown" on the radio -- perhaps on Triple J? I never forgot the ending, or his remark afterwards: "You have either just heard or just missed John Cooper Scott reading..."
dreamer_easy: (Default)
In Ukraine reporting, Western press reveals grim bias toward 'people like us'. (LA Times, March 2022) Oh, shit.


Don't Be Ashamed to Mourn a Celebrity
(Rolling Stone, January 2018) "... it hurts that while they were able to be there for you when you needed it most, there was nothing you could do for them."

Squid Game and the real Korea

Q&A With Voice Artist on Why Dubbing Will Never Die (Sixth Tone, January 2017). Why Chinese TV series routinely dub the characters' voices.

So, Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent Printing As We Know It
(Literary Hub, June 2019) As well as inventing pop music, Korea invented moveable type -- a technology Gutenberg may have known about. | The Muslims of South Korea (Al Jazeera, November 2017)

The Full Meaning of DOKI-DOKI in Japanese (Linguablog, December 2018) Onomatopoeia for things that don't make a sound. (Korean has this too.)


A Well-Prepared Meal (The Two Doctors) (El Sandifer, TARDIS Eruditorum, May 2012)

The Town That Went Feral (The New Republic, October 2020). "When a group of libertarians set about scrapping their local government, chaos descended. And then the bears moved in." I can't help feeling like we're all living there. (This article could just go 'neener neener' but it looks more deeply than that.)

What do you say to a constantly tardy guest? 'Welcome! C'mon in!' (Washington Post, January 2021.) "Is etiquette important? Yes, emphatically so. It gives us a general idea of how to be considerate. It’s a blueprint for people who don’t want to give offense. But it stops being useful when it’s deployed instead as a blueprint for taking offense."

50 new genes for eye colour (King's College London, March 2021).

Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation
(Scientific American, 1 April 2021). Fun with mind-bending existential ideas, and an unexpected, poignant conclusion.
 

Twelve unfortunately comforting lies

I Know A Man by Robert Creeley





dreamer_easy: (Default)
Look what [livejournal.com profile] angriest found!!! Book. Book. Book. Earth book.

[livejournal.com profile] catsparx shows off knitted sushi made by [livejournal.com profile] girliejones.

A YouTube fat rant! Lots of fun.

Mr Lee has a CatCam.

Poems in macrospeak.

Finally, in honour of the forthcoming Potterdammerung, some fan art: Draco and Snape, just past Half-Blood Prince.
dreamer_easy: (Default)
From Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart (1722-1771). Written before his intense religious visions landed him in Bedlam.

Jeoffry )
dreamer_easy: (pex)
Going out shortly into the airconditioned embrace of the local library. But before I disappear, time to clean out some links:

People for Fair Trade, based in Melbourne, Australia. I buy lots of tea and coffee from them - I recommend their black tea/eucalyptus and black tea/peppermint blends.

The Anglican Dean of Sydney blows a brain cell. King's College Chapel is a "temple to paganism" and the Archbishop of Canterbury is a "theological prostitute". the Very Rev Philip Jensen probably fancies himself as a modern Jeremiah but frankly he sounds like a flying fruitloop.

ETA: Just listening to a radio report on this. Jensen reckons he's been misrepresented; other commentators are bewildered. I am delighted to learn there is a Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn.

[livejournal.com profile] timbus recommends this superb poem by [livejournal.com profile] 17catherines: Blanket Monster.

In my endless quest for Snape art for [livejournal.com profile] wondermaze, I stumbled across some superb art by Deviant Artist el-grimlock - check out Tzitzimimes. I wrote a less than brilliant story about these Aztec nightmares, which happily hasn't seen the light of publication.

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