Birds of Two Feathers

Here we are, at the edge of our nest, both.

You: The free spirit. Flapping your wings with eager impatience.
Curious, expectant, full of anticipation towards the unknown ahead.
You'd rather fly today than tomorrow. In fact, you'd rather have stretched out your wings yesterday.
Not that you don't have your share of fear and doubts.
But you see more chance in venturing into the unknown than in circling old familiar paths.

Me: The altricial bird. Anxiously clawing to the nest, attempting to hold on to the familiar.
Craven, doubtful, worried about the unknown ahead.
I'd rather fly tomorrow than today. In fact, why leave this comfy nest at all?
Not that I don't see the limits of holding on, and the chance within change.
But that which is familiar comes with a - however treacherous - sense of security, something to hold on to.
And ...

You kick me off the nest's edge. I shriek and tumble.
Then, much to my own astonishment, I discover my wings and start to fly.
Wobbly at first, but still.
Then your time has come at last. You take off, soaring into the sky.
A leap in the dark. No more limits, no more boundaries.

Photography by magekin

Winter Sun

Milky light under a blue sky, partially covered by a smear of muddy clouds. The sun's light hits in a shallow angle, dazzling the eye which seems no longer adapted to this sort of brightness. Long shadows cast an erie premonition of long hours of darkness. You can almost see the cold. Short hours of sunshine before the clouds take over again, seamlessly merging into dusk and a night which seems to fall far too early. Coming in comes a lot easier than going out.

And yet ... Inhaling the cool, fresh air, heavy with a whiff of foreshadowed snowfall. Crisp, icy snow crunching under feet. Children laughing and clamouring as they happily skid down even the smallest slopes on sledges in carefree happiness. The warm light of a candle. The sound of Mozart's symphony no. 25. Cookies and a steaming pot of tea. Somehow, I am beginning to realize, there is light and warmth in every moment.

Coffeehouse

Just thinking of a coffeehouse immediately conjures up a whole array of senses: The smell of freshly ground coffee-beans. The sound of coffee being ground. The sound of milk being steamed. The sense of anticipation, intensified by the combination of alluring smells and sounds. The very antagonisms which create the coffeehouse's uniqueness: The sound of music, discreet, yet stimulating. The hustle-bustle behind the bar contrasting with the laid-back atmosphere at the tables, mirroring the black-white polarity of coffee and milk. An atmosphere of busy, almost hectic activity, which curiously and miraculously complements the effect of virtually meditative calm.

The unique combination awakens and stimulates all senses. Everyone becomes an artist of sorts. Students doing their homework, people talking, laughing, thinking, perhaps even writing or drawing.Guests, as barkeepers, are, in equal parts, spectators and actors, each thriving on and contributing to the coffeehouse's unique feel. Perhaps many of the best ideas were conceived, answers and solutions found, in a coffeehouse.

Here, No Matter Where

When I awoke
you had left
but you were still here.

I saw
your smiling face
and heard
your talk and laughter reverberating.

I felt
the warmth of your skin
and the tenderness
of your touch.

The taste of you
lingered vividly
as did the breeze
of your fragrance.

But most of all
there was the marvellous feeling
of your love
all around me.

I feel you!

Speechless

My head is spinning and it seems like there is too much going on to digest, let alone formulate something at least akin to a clear thought.

A couple of personal issues have been keeping my mind in check. Nothing bad, just a lot of petty things piling up seemingly at the same time, so I just was not in the right frame of mind to sit down and sort out my thoughts, not to mention writing anything down which was not completely senseless gobbledygook. Come to think of it, I probably wasn't even in the right mindset for senseless gobbledygook.

But what is going on in my own small world is nothing compared to what is unfolding on a larger scale.

The unfolding and development of events have also left me speechless.

As British and US forces are now drawn into the battle for Basra, the rising daily death count in Iraq is still being sold to the public as ample prove of how successful "the surge" is going. (If the amount of civilian deaths is the measure of success, well, yeah, you can probably subscribe to the Bush administration's claim.)

Never mind the fact that many Americans (although the numbers are steadily declining; yes, there is hope) still seem to believe the fairytale that this shameful war, which was based on bullshitting and lies to begin with and has been going on for five years now, is fought in the name of democracy and freedom, and is part of the global fight agains terrorism.

Hint: There were no WMDs, aka weapons of mass destruction (only the weapons of mass deception used by the honorable administrations in the US of A, and in the UK), and, no, Saddam Hussein had no connections to Al Quaida, and hence had nothing to do with 9/11 - even the Pentagon has recently been forced to acknowledge this.

Pssst! In his "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World", published in September 2007, Alan Greenspan, the former Fed-head, claimed that the Iraq war wasn't about freedom and democracy for the USA, or for Iraq for that matter, but it was really about ... oil! Not that Greenspan had any problem with this; he was mainly "saddened" about the fact that it is politically inconvenient to publicly acknowledge this fact.

Needless to say that the disclaimers are never touted with quite as much fanfare as the false claims. But then the latter are part and parcel of the marketing package to sell this entire mess to the public as a justified war, whereas the former would, perhaps, raise questions rather left unasked.

Closer to home, the subprime mess, aka credit crunch, aka credit crisis, seems to be reaching a new climax - or should I say nadir? - every week.

And it has lead to a - perhaps not entirely new, but nevertheless weird - kind of socialism, where profits are privatized, whereas losses are socialized. As in the Bailout of the Month, aka Operation Enduring Moneypress, or "Save the Bear" (Stearns, that is):

"The Fed spent the weekend [of March 15-16] putting together a plan to be announced Sunday evening, regardless of the outcome of Bear's negotiations, that would enable all Wall Street banks to borrow from the central bank. Mr. Bernanke called the Fed's five governors together for a vote Sunday afternoon. All five voted in favor, using for the second time since Friday the Fed's authority to lend to nonbanks.

The steps were announced at the same time the Fed agreed to lend $30 billion to J.P. Morgan to complete its acquisition of Bear Stearns. The loans will be secured solely by difficult-to-value assets inherited from Bear Stearns. If the assets decline in value, the Fed -- and therefore the U.S. taxpayer -- will bear the cost." (Wall Street Journal).

The initial JPMorgan Chase offer of 0.054-and-then-some shares in exchange for a share of Bear Stearns, which at that time amounted to about 2$ per Bear Stearns share (the closing price on March 14 had been 30$; one week earlier, Bear Stearns had traded for around 70$), was raised some days later, to amount to around 10$ a share. This was, perhaps, JPM's easter egg.

N.B.: On Tuesday, March 25, former Bear Stearns CEO Cayne "cashed out", selling his entire stake (5.6 million shares) for 10.84 apiece. This became known to the public on Thursday -- after market close. At which BSC shares took another plunge; but, as a small consolace for the possibly-soon-to-be-ex-Bear-Stearns employees who had their entire retirement money cut to around a tenth to what it was worth at the end of last year, BSC are still trading above 10$. For now. As of market close on March 28, 2008.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, federal banks are also rushing to the rescue of beleaguered financial institutions. Take, for instance, last year's attempt by the Bank of England to rescue Northern Rock.

It turns out that the rescue attempt failed due to the sheer scale of Northern Rock's troubles -- it had to borrow 25 billion pounds from the bank of England --, and the bank now has had to be nationalized. Which, in essence, amounts to the taxpayer picking up the bill.

By 2011, Northern Rock will throw out about 2000 employees -- excuse me: It will cut about a third of its jobs, "as part of a restructuring program aimed at eventually returning the bank to the private sector." Read: After the taxpayer has payed the bill (=socializing the costs), the bank will then, after returning to profitability with the aid of "We, the people", happily privatize the profits.

The German version of "Save Our Souls", er, banks, runs along a similar vein. Different stage, part of the same drama, similar outcome (i.e., "We, the people" are left to pay the bill). And it is not only the IKB, but all of Germany's Landesbanken, who find themselves deep in the sh--er, swamps. Heaven forbid that anyone discusses the political implications of state-owned banks running into trouble, whose bill has to be picked up by the -- you guessed it! -- taxpayer.

And in a new twist in the story of Compassionate Capitalism (no state intervention, please! Unless, of course, things are starting to go awry -- for corporations), Deutsche Bank chief Josef Ackermann had the incredible chuzpe -- again something to leave me speechless -- to go screaming "State! Please! Help!", when he suddenly realized that "the natural market behavior wouldn't be enough to correct the unfolding global crisis."

A week and a half after this touching cry for help, Deutsche Bank revealed that it might not meet its profit goal, due to challenging market conditions which might/could/will "adversely affect our ability to chieve our pretax profitability objective."

Looks like Ackermann's earlier statement was a kind of pre-warning to the profitwarning. (Darn! Had I only interpreted the signs correctly and bought put-options on Deutsche Bank! Then again, on March 17th, DB had just hit a new multi-year low, and has since been rising steadily, so perhaps going short at that point was not such a great idea, after all.)

But lo and behold, before you are shedding too many tears for Mr. Ackermann: Despite the challenging conditions, he was able to collect 13.98 million Euros in compensation for 2007. Unless he spent it all at once (or invested all of it in one of those troubled SIVs, which I am pretty sure he didn't), he should be able to make ends meet for a while. After all, this amount represented a rise of 5.8 percent from his 2006 compensation of 13.2 million Euros.

"Why," my sweetheart asked after summing up our discussion, "isn't everyone up on the barricades, storming the bastilles?"

His question, of course, was of merely rhetorical character.

Top graphic: speechless, by maximatic

Moody Blues

Picture (adapted) from DeviantArt Laetyboy

SHE:

DON´T touch me, I´m feeling touchy!

HE:

Ok ...

(A little later)

SHE:

Hey! Why Don´t you touch me? Don´t You love me anymore???

Uhm ... yes, this, more or less, sums up these very female emotional swings.

These fits of moodiness that women have the questionable pleasure to experience are a total bitch, honestly!

Not that they happen that often, but once in a while is enough to be a real mood-killer for my most precious surroundings. And myself.

Out of the blue, my mind is darkened by horrible clouds of I´m-not-even-sure-what, and I start to be irritable, to say the very least. As I am watching myself bitching at my sweetheart (of course, it´s gotta be the beloved one who is invariably the victim of these fits), I know exactly that I am being unfair at that particular point, and I know that it´s not a discussion which promises a fruitful outcome.

So why on earth can´t I just stop? Or, more to the point, why do I have to start quibbling to begin with?

This weekend was a perfect example. It started so promising: The weather and feeling were almost spring-like: sunshine, twittering birds, a good cuddle (a VERY good one!) with my sweetheart to begin the day, an extended breakfast, and no tidbit stuff to do. In short, it started in a great, almost euphoric mood, and everything could have worked out perfect.

Could. If it hadn´t been for one of those ... fits.

So all of this changed as we set out for our long-expected walk. For no apparent reason, I started snapping and bitching at my love and managed to ruin the mood in no time.

OK, I was slightly hung-over from the night before (I had been out drinking with a friend who just passed his test to obtain his driver´s license), but the worst symptoms (i.e., a major headache) had long since receded. My head was not entirely clear (but when is it ever?), but there was really no particular reason to be moody, let alone leash out at someone who I care for.

I may also have been experiencing a slight hint of PMS. Not that that should be any excuse, because I think that as civilized beings with a couple of years of evolution behind us (not to mention the age of enlightenment and psychoanalysis), we cannot blame everything on animalic instincts. For a reasonable being (yes, I consider myself as such, despite being a woman), these primal traits should be controllable.

They are not. Come to think of it, I am not quite sure that these sudden mood swings are something limited to women. However, from what my male friends are telling me, I certainly do get that impression. And what they are telling me reassures me that I am not alone with these inexplicable emotional roller-coaster rides, and that, therefore, I am not a total psycho. (Phew! At least there´s some relief in that!)

Most of the men I know (and that includes my swetheart - never mind that we have been together for almost two decades) are just baffled and left wondering at these abrupt mood changes. I mean, all can be fluffy-flurry sunshine one moment, only to turn into tears the next, and back again to smiles and laughter, as if nothing had happened.

It might not be much of a consolace, but be assured, my male friends, we are just as confused as you are when we´re back to normal.

Which leaves me to conclude that as long as we XX-s don´t get a grip on what´s going on inside of us, how can we ever expect a man to understand us?

Perhaps testosterone would be a solution. But then we´d have to shave our faces, too.

Disorders

There is a certain beauty to chaos, and very likely a system behind it that fails to meet the eye at first glance. The construction of the trabucci , found around the Italian Gargano, are a case in point: They look like a mixture of planks, nets and ropes, which seem to have been assembled totally at random.

Which, perhaps, they are.

In any case, they are very well working devices for catching fish. (Unlike my own random system of non-order, which does not always work when it comes to deliver the catch of the day.)

For as long as I can think, I have been suffering from various types of disorder. Not disorders in the sense of some bodily or emotional or mental function which might be described as disorder.

I do, however, experience serious attacks of stupidity intolerance, authority intolerance, bigotry intolerance, not to mention very regular attacks of racism intolerance. Most of them might, in fact, be called chronic conditions.

But then these intolerances are nothing I would call "disorders". In fact, I think they are totally healthy, necessary, and in order. Which, in turn, is probably an expression of my state of mind, and a propensity to refuse certain types of order.

In any case, "suffering" is probably the wrong word, so I shall reformulate: I am a very disorderly person. Not only when it comes to authorities, but also in a more basic sense.

The other day, I had to sort some stuff for our tax advisor. Needless to say, due to my cardbox-filing (un)systematic, I had hours of fun getting all the documents into some kind of decent order. It was as if some evil ghost had taken them prior to my going through them and shuffled them like a deck of cards, so there were practically no two documents that were filed (or thrown into the box) in a (chrono)logical order. But of course, there was no ghost I could blame other than my own disorder spirit.

On second thought, "suffering" might be the right word after all, because this lack of order sometimes is a source of stress. Or at least one of inconvenience.

But I am getting better. Today, my sweetheart was looking for some tool. Now, we don´t have a toolbox in the classical sense, since none of us is very much of a homeworker/handicraft type of person. But we do have a cardbord box (yes!) where we collect most of our tools. So I dug through it and - tata! - much to my own surprise, I found the tool in question.

"There seems to be," I said, "some systematic developing in our system of disorderliness. We might throw everything into cardbord boxes, but increasingly, there seems to be some sort of logic behind it. We actually start finding things we are looking for, without having to plow everything under."

"Should I start getting worried now?" my sweetheart asked.

"About what - our imminent gentrification?" I asked back.

"Yes, exactly," he replied.

Personally, I think it is to early to start worrying, as long as questions beginning with "Do you have any idea where I might find ....?", followed by shoulder-shrugging, swearing, and, ultimately, giggling, are part of our daily experience.

And the day when above intolerances recede or stop ... that would be the day to start worrying.

The Knight Will Lift You From Darkness

Some day, he will come along, take you by the hand and lift you up on his horse to take you with him, to a better place, to a better world. He will take you with him, to lands unknown, where milk and honey flow. Or where you won´t have to deal with the drags of ordinary everyday life, anyway. And you´ll live sorrow-free and happily ever after.

Don´t believe it! Reality is not a fairy-tale, and, yes, sometimes, it just flat-out sucks.

Perhaps you are still fairly young, or perhaps you are anything above 40. You have been working most of your life, and very likely, you don´t particularly enjoy what you are doing. But, after all, one has to make a living. Your relationship may have lost is magic, and you may be living side by side with one another, rather than with one another.

Perhaps you have stopped exchanging tendernesses, and you don´t really remember when you last had sex. But you probably don´t even miss it. In fact, you may even have seperate bed rooms and be content with this. In short, your life may not particularly exciting, but on the other hand, it is not particularly nasty, and it seems to be pretty much the same with everyone around you. And, somehow, you have grown used to this routine.

Chances are, you don´t think too much about these things anyway, because in your daily routine of getting up early, downing your coffee, rushing to work, working, getting home in the evening, having dinner, taking care of the kids, before dropping off to bed, only to get ready for the next day, you don´t have too much time to reflect upon anything beyond the daily routine. In case any questioning of this status quo should ever creep up, there are always ways to numb your mind by little escapes, such as TV shows or legal drugs.

Until one day ...

It may be a movie you have been watching. Or something you have been reading. Or an encounter you have recently had, perhaps a total stranger who looked at you with a certain glance, or perhaps someone you have stumbled across in a virtual environment.

This encounter suddenly threatens to disturb the world you have grown accustomed to live in. Suddenly you wonder whose life it is you have been living for the past you-don´t-remember-how-many years; it is, in any case, not the life you have actively chosen to live, but somehow you ended up in it. You did not so much define it than were defined by ... what? Circumstance? Necessity? Things you got used to?

Suddenly you realize that there is something inside you that you have long since forgotten, having been tucked away so safely by you. You may start wondering what happened to your passion, your dreams, your love. Worst of all, you realize that all of this which has been buried inside you has been there all along, all these years.

And you wonder if this is actually it. Is your life over before it has actually begun? You have 30, maybe 40 or 50 more years ahead of you, and you doubt that you´ll want to carry on like this.

Then you start contemplating your options: Should you follow the newly discovered path and leave your somewhat bleak routine? This would mean, on the other hand, to swap the relative comfort and security of the "known" against the big unknown. What would happen if you tried to shake up your partner and re-awaken that which brought you together in the first place, a (perhaps not so) long time ago? Would s/he even react, understand what you´re trying to say? Would s/he care? Or would s/he just look at you and wonder what has gotten into you now, hoping for the storm to pass? And ... what would you do then? Draw the line? Leave her/him?

Perhaps it would be safer to try and numb the nagging of your recently awoken mind, so you can at least stick to what you have become used to, and don´t risk to lose the comfy routine of it all, including your partner.

But that nagging just won´t go away, now that this string of thoughts has finally made its way from your sub- to your consciousness. And you feel like a character from "Desperate Housewives" as you meander between madness and depression.

You look for an escape. More to the point, you look for someone to take you by the hand and rescue you: The knight (or knightess) on the white horse (or black, depending on your orientation, state of mind, and preference). A strong, independent soul who will make everything allright. Undemanding, ever respectful, and yet protective.

OK, now let me tell you something: Forget it! Stop waiting for a miracle, and stop waiting for a saviour. There is no knight, neither a white one, nor a black one. YOU and you alone have to drag yourself out of this swamp-hole that you have gotten (yourself) into. Stop wallowing in self-pity and stop indulging in the blame-game, or projecting your hopes upon some vague fantasy of an even vaguer saviour. And don´t believe in that crap of someone coming along with the sole purpose and intention of rescuing you.

Get your act together and do whatever it takes to make this life your life.

To put it with the (admittedly: somewhat dated and no longer en vogue) lyrics of "The International":

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear

The decision to act is yours. This is not decided for you, and it is not done for you.You have to take it in your own hands.

It is your life!

PropagandArt

We´ve all heard the story about the Iranian speedboat recently threatening American vessels in the Gulf´s strait of Hormuz.

We´ve also all heard the ominous threat muttered - supposedly - by someone of the Iranian speedboat´s crew, muttering (in, I might add, a Schwarzeneggerian tone of voice reminiscent of "Terminator I") "I am coming at you. You will explode after a few minutes."

The supposed incident was, of course, immediately taken up by the US administration which found itself in a hurry to reaffirm what a big threat Iran is for stability in the reagion, world peace, and probably chocolate chipped cookies; and how this is another proof of their aggressive intentions, and reason enough why Iran should never ever be allowed to enter the nuclear game (not that I am a friend of this nuclear game - as far as I´m concerned, none of us, including the US of A, should be playing around with this kind of fire).

Well, turns out that the ominous threat was added to the video, posthumously, so to speak (wouldn´t be surprising if it turned out to actually have been text spoken by Arnie, would it?). It was, according to the BBC, in fact "a radio recording made seperately".

Monday´s (January 07, 2008) incident bears an erie similarity with a similar scenario which lead to the shooting down of an Iranian airliner in 1988 by a US vessel, killing all 290 people aboard the Airbus:

It has worrying similarities with the incident in 1988 when, in the same Strait of Hormuz, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, having failed to monitor the radio traffic properly.

The crew of the Vincennes became wrongly convinced that the airliner, an Airbus with 290 people on board, all of whom died, was an Iranian fighter jet.

[...]

What is clear is that there are grave doubts about who uttered the warning picked up by the US ships. A deep voice was heard to say: "I am coming at you. You will explode after a few minutes."

The video released by the US implied that the warning was part of a series of transmissions to the ships from the Iranian craft.

It turns out that the warning was added onto the video. It was a radio recording made separately.

Experts say it could have come from another ship in the area or from a radio transmitter on shore. The channel used by the Iranian vessels to make their inquiries is an open one.

Iranian version

The Iranians later issued their own video, in which one of their sailors, in a much higher and quite different voice from the one which issued the "warning", asks the US ships who they are and what course they are on.

He gets a dusty reply that the US vessels are in international waters.

Thank goodness that the BBC leaves no doubt about who are the true masters of propaganda:

This goes beyond the back and forth of a propaganda battle, in which once again the Iranians show themselves to be masters.

Uh-huh. The Iranians. Of course. Oh, not that their government are not artists at that.

BUT, I´d say this latest incident can be fully booked under the label "propaganda to serve our means". Not that we shouldn´t have gotten used to that meanwhile.

Who can seriously believe anything anymore this administration in particular, and our governments, and our media in general, are proclaming?

Read the full article at the BBC´s website.