shrinkflation, skimpflation, it’s hard not to feel like we are living in troubled times. despite technological advances, we seem to be continually told we need to work harder, and for longer, and that we should expect less.
while the stock market rallies….
inequality makes me sad. there is so much suffering in the world. i hope we can find a better way to do things. but modern technology can be pretty great. the access we have to music now is quite incredible. almost like magic.
i was just having a beer and feeling nice and relaxed on the balcony. sunbathing behind a wind blocker. feeling chilled out and at one with the world, listening to leonard cohen.
we went to a resaurant on top of a hill and nearly blew away. i could feel my sliders blowing off my feet as i trudged up and down the sand dune. i think the food was alright though.
#gastronomy
santa lucia, bocadillo con queso, cortardo y cerveza it’s great to be back
pretty self explanatory. a cheap and good cafe. half way up or down a hill. roll and cheese and a milky coffee on the way up. ice cream and a shandy on the way down.
we walked to the next town across for lunch one day. went to a pretty average/crap cafe. it was a longish walk back. an hour or so. i needed to pee so snuck behind a screen at an abandoned construction site. accidentally stood on a plastic jug of dark oil. who knows what it was but it got all over me. ruined my brand new shoes. the only pair i brought with me! traumatic.
and when we got back home, it turned out the restaurant we went to was a chain. and there was another one right next to our apartment. the only half decent restaurant in town as well.
haha my pal did an effort cyclng up the hill, i think he was going for a 20 minute test, i was just holding his wheel. we didn’t get that far before he bailed on the effort – the wind was insane and controlling the bike was hard enough, never mind a fitness test. going back down the hill, i was pedalling while braking to try and keep the wheels pointing forwards.
i arrived on the desert island for the much needed cycling holiday but was disappointed to be greeted by absurd gusts and breezes that made cycling feel bizarre. through treacle in one direction, like a missile in another, and a sort of bucking bronco phenomenon otherwise. we made the most of it.
on the plane, an elderly in absurd esoteric dress, insisted on trying to make everyone else on the flight quite ill. this brought to mind the old mask mandates of the pandemic. and all the unprocessed feelings – we were for a while a global village, in community, in isolation together.
i was feeling frustrated by bureaucracy. check-box office politics. i made a mild protest against the meaninglessness of it all. and was soundly ignored. fortunately, i had a holiday booked.
back to the theme of insecurity. uncertainty. agency. what is it to be one of eight billion? what does it mean to live at the whim of vladimir putin’s nuclear arsenal? what is the best way to live in a universe we do not and can not understand? i feel in the circumstances, the only way forward it with a hint of irony. if you don’t accede to universal doubt, my theorem is that maybe you don’t understand just how much you don’t understand.
#puzzle #insecurity #agency #nuclearwar
the love epochal. n.n. benn 