№ 461. "Cynicism is Sanity"*

The news greets me in the morning with this:

"As the coronavirus has spread around the world, so has misinformation about the disease. Technology giants have touted the steps they are taking to combat coronavirus misinformation, but these efforts have failed to help the Benassis. The family's suffering highlights the potential for blatant falsehoods to be rewarded and amplified by social media platforms. It also serves as a powerful reminder that misinformation online, however wild or obviously untrue it may seem, can have real and lasting consequences offline."

The pandemic has surely become an open door of opportunities. Regimes, business interests, churches, pundits and many groups of various persuasions have begun to wager on these opportunities. The discourse on television and particularly on cyberspace, no doubt, has become a Pandora's asylum for both the tamed and the malevolent, and even for the fence-sitters in between.

Meme Crunch

№ 460. Lonely Planet

Khao San Road

Ajahn Buddhadasa, a famous Thai monk who passed away in 1993, once told me, "You know why you like to travel? Everywhere you go, nothing belongs to you. When you're home surrounded by your possessions, you're weighed down."

I think he was right; it's liberating being stripped down to one suitcase, which is how I still travel, in the original Lonely Planet style.

№ 459. The Guest House

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

---Rumi

№ 458. Manila Extract 2 (ECQ)

Gutenberg

You are a quandary.
Fugitives spilled from lockdowns
streaming on my walls.

You are febrile.
A torrid kiss
left by the contagion on my lips

You are Manila.
A transient seasoned by plague
stirring rust in my blood.

№ 457. Carpe Diem

Tulsa World

“I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
― Joan Didion

№ 456. The 2020 & the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics

Yes, a Japanese song topped the US charts in 1963. This nostalgic song was also featured in a recent Ghibli film set in that post World War 2 Showa Era.

№ 455. Photography 101 B

Houston Style Magazine

When I asked Robert Frank about Sick of Goodby’s, he said that, after his daughter’s death, his work had “shifted from being about what I saw to what I felt”. He added, “I was really destroying the picture. I didn’t believe in the beauty of a photograph anymore.” Perhaps, though, he never really had and that is where the real and enduring power of The Americans resides – in the cold, hard truth of his outsider’s gaze. Or as Kerouac put it back then, “To Robert Frank, I now give this message: You got eyes.”

№ 454. Photography 101

An artist is a person who seeks new structures in which to order and simplify the sense of the reality of life. --- John Szarkowski. Introduction to The Photographer’s Eye. The Museum of Modern Art, 1966, 9-41.

№ 453. Paris 2012

№ 452. Venice 2012

 

№ 451. Nations of the World, Unite!

The Week

But the weakness of Washington should not prevent the brain trust of the developed world — the think tanks, news media, universities and nongovernmental organizations — from focusing on a strategy for the next and possibly most brutal front in the struggle against the scourge of the coronavirus. Many organizations have already begun to do so, recognizing that this may be the defining struggle of our era, and that if ever the world demanded a global response, this is it.

№ 450. Travel & Uncertainty 2

It takes a special kind of idiot to attempt to travel overland to Morocco from the north of England with barely $100 in their pocket.

In the summer of 1995, I was that idiot.

№ 449. Travel & Uncertainty

"Uncertainty is where things happen. It is where the opportunities — for success, for happiness, for really living — are waiting." --- Oliver Burkeman

Planning the next trip. We need a lot of insider tips.

Here's one funny, wise guy who loves to travel and monetized it. He plays the piano, too.

№ 448. A Bucket List for an Extended Lockdown

The plague has the real world on lockdown. Thankfully, not the "Westworld."

Whittier Daily News

Here's a list of things to do during our extended free time:

1. Get involved in the community. Red Cross.

2. Visit museums.

3. Tour libraries, borrow and read books.

4. Plan the next trip. Pre-Visit or travel to countries and cities: Moscow Metro; Along Dusty Roads; and, Cool Hunting.

5. There's still free television, cable TV, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming services.

6. Brush up on or, at least, keep up with the unfolding current events. The pandemic will pass sooner or later. But we need to hit the ground running. We lost an entire month already. Ah yes, I faintly remember the concept of deadlines and conferences. Yup.

7. Keep in touch, stroll, curate the world, troll and stalk on social media. We could do this so well before the plague. There's so much more time to waste now.

8. House chores, laundry and sundry. Clean out the ref., that butter looks green.