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What the Summer Breeze Said

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Published : July 24th, 2012
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Category : Editorials

 

 

 

 

Europe is giving new meaning to the term "bootstrapping," the age-old (virtuous) idea of picking oneself up off the floor after some blow or reversal of fortune has laid you low. The new method might be called "skyhooking" in which a massive rescue apparatus secured at some mysterious point unseen in the clouds lifts whole exhausted nations from their knees in order get them to summer vacation. Hence: the interesting spectacle of an entire continent headed for vacation despite facing utter financial ruin, revolution, and civil war.


No one who has been to Europe in our time can doubt that it is a lovely place to stage human existence. The towns and cities are in immaculate condition, even the ones bombed to gravel in the receding unpleasantness of the 1940s. The trains, trams, and subways run cleanly and on-time. The citizens, though well-fed, maintain normal physiognomies and wear dignified adult costumes out in public. Everything along the streets broadcasts the notion, central to civilization, that grace and beauty matter -- even the handwriting on the bistro chalkboards. What a wonderful place. I'd like to go back. But events suggest that this sweet period of history is drawing to a close and whatever happens there next will be less like Midnight in Paris and more like Riot in Cellblock D meets Quest for Fire.


This skyhooking procedure has been both fun and sickening to watch, like any great public stunt of seemingly impossible derring-do. Here you have a whole bundle of nations, all up to their chins in the quicksand of debt, pretending to catch lifelines of new credit dropped mysteriously from the clouds by hidden central bank airships, only to find that the lifelines are a kind of collective hallucination coming over them like a fever dream in their hour of desperation. Seems rather cruel, actually. Especially since they have lately sunk deeper in the quicksand from their chins to their eyeballs.


No one on the scene -- or watching from a remove for that matter -- can conceive a happy ending to this chapter of history, which might be remembered on some distant clear-skied day yet to come as the age of government-by-check-kiting. Or the Chinese fire drill banking model -- no offense to that great nation of diligent workpersons. Yet, reports from even the most anguished Euro nation du jour (Spain) say that the restaurants are bustling and there is no shortage of nearly naked nubile beauties along the beaches of the Costa Brava. And over in Italy, of course, a squirrel could make the journey from Monterotondo to Lago Maggiore by leaping from one outdoor luncheon table to the next with its knobby little knuckles never touching the ground.


The question is: what happens when the recognition finally hits that the money just isn't there? That the whole circus of alphabet soup bailouts and skyhook rescue operations was a fraud? Well, my guess is that things fracture and splinter and there commences a great scramble for the table scraps of the incredible banquet that this congeries of nations put on its Master Charge card. And when the table scraps are all gone, the members of some nations, or regions within nations, set out pillaging around the place where their neighbor sat at the banquet, and pretty soon you get such a disorderly scene in the lovely old banquet hall of Europe that even diligent Chinese tourists will not venture there for a while.


None of this is to say that the action I describe is not following similar lines in other corners of our sore beset planet. For instance, those diligent Chinese I aver to have been running a set of banking rackets at least as shoddy, careless, and plumb crazy as the Eurolanders. And don't get me started on the Anglo-American clusterfuck, which has left the rest-of-the-west with a future as ingeniously booby-trapped as the Aurora cineplex shooter's apartment (and to a strikingly similar note of destructive insanity).


But in these dog days of summer (and the horse latitudes of the spirit), isn't it easier to just mix another vodka and tonic, kick off your flip-flops, and enjoy the feeling of cool sand between your toes? Rest up all y'all. Events will be pinging around the reality-scape good and hard in a few weeks. Me: well, I'm just keeping the fruit trees watered out back for now.


Enjoy your vacation.







Kayakers on the Battenkill, July 2012


 

 

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James Howard Kunstler has worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis. His nonfiction book, "The Long Emergency," describes the changes that American society faces in the 21st century. Discerning an imminent future of protracted socioeconomic crisis, Kunstler foresees the progressive dilapidation of subdivisions and strip malls, the depopulation of the American Southwest, and, amid a world at war over oil, military invasions of the West Coast; when the convulsion subsides, Americans will live in smaller places and eat locally grown food.
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Quite a good painting there. I would like to see a touch more of that sky blue on the bottom right hand corner to balance and lift the scene. 9.5/10

SW, Dip. Fine Arts. NAS Sydney 1992

Summer breeze, makes me feel fine.....

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I'm curious what you have said to warrant 10 negative comments SW? (I didn't rate you on this post.) Art brightens lives. Go figure.
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Offering an opinion is a lot like sticking one of your paintings on a wall at an exhibition.
It's open to criticism.
Having spent 3 great years at the National Art School I can tell you that exhibiting your art is almost terrifying.

So hat tip to JHK whose posts I read, and assuming its one of his paintings, a hat tip there too for sticking it up.
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Unfortunately, I concur. I'm considering going into the fan shit removal business because a lot is due to hit.
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I suspect Kunstler, having nothing to add this week to his usual idiotic rants about the world coming to an end, just thumbed through the dictionary - like a kid picking jellybeans - and selected the most incompatible combination of words to create this Frankenstein of an article.

At least he had mercy and denied us the glorious image of future man in a thatched hut slapping away flies from his shaggy head -- or future woman scratching her ass and contemplating the wonderfullness of Gaia.
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As usual, Jim C has nothing to say that’s relevant to the topic but never the less reminds us yet again that he has a major hate for JHK. And, as usual, like a Jack Russell Terrier, he can't stop obsessing. In this case it’s about what JHK supposedly mused over, a world where life is simpler, something that would require putting Jim out of his technology comfort bubble.

Get a life Jim, get back on the meds, do something but stop whining about the same thing and while you’re at it, get rid of the hate already. You look more and more like a small child that's had his ice cream taken away by a boogey man.
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Kunstler's elegance has Made My Monday again. I've learned a lot here. It's rained three GOOD rains since last Monday; so I'm SKYHOOKING some Fall Crops (turnips, carrots, beets, cabbage, maybe snow peas) with a little hope. Who knows ~ come Spring next year (if there IS a next year) I might be pulling myself up by my bootstraps.
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Latest comment posted for this article
Offering an opinion is a lot like sticking one of your paintings on a wall at an exhibition. It's open to criticism. Having spent 3 great years at the National Art School I can tell you that exhibiting your art is almost terrifying. So hat tip to JHK wh  Read more
S W. - 7/24/2012 at 8:11 PM GMT
Rating :  10  2
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