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Spira dear,

A strange day today, the weather hot and heavy as ever my childhood drought-days were, except I am displaced, nowhere near my native soil, and parched as hell. What is New York City to some small town (pretender to a city) called Benoni? (Son of my Sorrow: I remember learning the dread meaning of this epithet. Who in god’s name would call a place by such a name and expect to thrive, to celebrate life and propagation of life?)

This time last year, I had just left Buenos Aires — Recoleta is a memory now, this image taken in the cemetery there: this whispering woman, silencing us all as tears escape her. She embodies silent suffering; stoical loss. There is something very Afrikaans in that. Whatever happened to keening, mourning that can be heard across land and sea? Do the dead not deserve such a loud eulogy? And I wonder: what is her story?

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One looks down from the Brooklyn Bridge on a spot of foam or a little lake of gasoline or a broken splinter or an empty scow; the world goes by upside down with pain and light devouring the innards, the sides of flesh bursting, the spears pressing in against the cartilage, the very armature of the body floating off into nothingness.

– Black Spring, Henry Miller

Info

Images taken on May 24, 2008, on the 125th anniversary of the bridge’s opening in 1883.

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WELL NOW. If you’re in the market for new wheels you have some tough choices: regular gas guzzler or healthy hybrid? SUV or one size down? Free gas for a year, or fixed-price gas for three years? Chrysler, for example, offers a gas card that sets your gas price at $2.99 /gallon for those three years.

(And what if the price comes back down? Not a hope in hell, I hear you cry! Once the US public is used to paying prices higher than they have ever paid, the government will just go with it…)

Gas or gun?

But here’s a real doozy: $250 free gas, or a certificate to pick up your spanking-new handgun? This is a deal being offered in Butler, Missouri. Here’s the scary thing. Walter Moore, from Max Motors, claims 80% of the buyers are turning down the free gas and taking the gun instead. It’s all ok of course: those certificate-holders are subject to the routine background check that’s done on all applicants for small arms licenses. And look how well that’s gone, aside from the odd school massacre…

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THIS morning, from stuntprogrammer: “Doesn’t anyone do the Right Thing anymore?”

The bigger the issue, the more money and politics and human lives it involves, it seems to me, the less the chances are of the Right Thing being done.

Some background to the conversation: everyone (sane) is up in arms about no aid being allowed into Myanmar by its powers-that-be. Official figures released by that military government on Friday were 78,000 dead, 55,917 missing and 19,359 injured. On May 6, 2008, the Burma government representation in New York formally asked the United Nations for help. But the junta seems to be keeping what aid does reach those shores, for itself.

Where’s the big stick?

Contrary to what one would imagine, no-one is getting out the big guns and forcing the military leaders to allow aid to the Burmese people. No. It seems that’s only done for oil and gas. On the subject of which, the US and France could potentially have some leverage directly against the junta, if only they would use it:

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RECENTLY The Economist reported on another spate of suicides in Japan: in April this year alone, 60 people took their own lives, following a recipe found on a website for creating a deadly gas, hydrogen-sulphide.

Last year, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, the sitting Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan hanged himself on 28 May 2007, hours before he was to face questioning in the Diet over a series of scandals in his political career.

In the late 1980s after the economic bubble burst, the suicide rate among the working age population rose sharply. There was a further surge in 1998, and despite recent economic recovery, more than 30,000 people a year are killing themselves in Japan. Excessive pressure and bullying at school, unemployment, illness and bankruptcy are cited as some of the major causes.

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Dearest Spira

It’s a ragged morning. I am thinking of Chinatown, San Francisco, with you, that oriental connection that drums us. Today the pounding is deafening, echoing from across the Himalayas. Any minute I think the day may quake, fold in on itself. How can it not, when there are thousands upon thousands swallowed by the ground, broken, lost? All our pillage and plunder of this Earth’s gifts demands a price: the sins of the parents are not particular over which culture they cast their shadows. We should not be surprised.

Gaia is not alone in keeping account; all the guardians of soil and sea and sky have their tallies. Beware, the Dragon Kings are stirring over China; there is a drenching afoot to fill the fresh chasms. Already Burma is drowning her children in the tears of so many deities. Now it is the turn of Tu Di Gong to charge us for our sins. The siblingless have been taken in a country where the Only Child is born by government decree. A man, a woman come together for love (perhaps), and procreate. They have one chance.

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This morning is sun-drenched,
buildings afire with orange light.
New York city is peaceful beneath clear skies,
the hum and thrum of daily life
just beginning.

Here, we are not dying
by the thousand.

On the other side of the world
corpses lie rotting on river banks.
Ten days ago
entire villages were wiped out by Cyclone Nargis.

Who is left to bury the dead?

This is Burma,
Myanmar,
Deathtrap.

Ten days on
the Burmese (military) government
hoards supplies meant to save the survivors.

After all the floods,
there is no water to keep them alive.
More rain is coming; death
still sits in the skies.

Ten days on
the Burmese (military) government
still gags and blinds media, blocks aid, closes ranks.

They do not care to see the unburied dead.
It is believed that the government
does not grasp the extent
of the crisis.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
by Mark Haddon (from amazon.com)

MARK HADDON did not start out to write a book about autism or Asperger’s Syndrome. In fact, nowhere in the story is Asperger’s mentioned: the only references to the condition are usually found in the blurb on the back of the novel. Haddon says he would just as soon have no label attached to the story.

The principle character, 15-year-old Christopher, tells readers everything they need to draw their own conclusions — and those conclusions can vary widely. One of Haddon’s most treasured (if somewhat naive) reactions from a publisher (who did not end up publishing the book) was, “Oh, I didn’t realise there was anything wrong with Christopher.”

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THE best of London. The worst of London. For the love of London. Nostalgia, dysfunctional families, mysticism of Clerkenwell, and horrible