Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

Just waiting to see how the show on the other side of the Atlantic pans out. I obvs. hope that Tr*mp is out of office by the end of this. Being a Latin-American I don't harbour many illusions about how good or beneficial any president of the USA may be to our countries, but if Biden would be a continuation of all that came before, with much evil coming from the 'leaders of the free world', Tr*mp is, I believe, the most dangerous thing happening in the world right now. The world needs him out. I hope this comes to happen now. Climate change, political instability in many parts of the world, the many horrid internal and external issues aggravated by the erratic, egomaniac, volatile style of Tr*mp need a change of course and with the 'other guy' at least there might be a possibility.

The schools I teach at are now covered in posters indicating the procedure to follow in case an infection with coronavirus is confirmed -or suspected. The Guildhall School of Music is closed for several weeks now as one case there was confirmed. I'm still not at all sure about all this. The virus exists, it is a problem but it wouldn't seem to be the pandemic that will carry off a quarter of the world's population. The way I see it reported in the media would make one think that this was imminent, The Black Plague v2.0. Also a couple of ancillary phenomena make me scratch my head. Hard. One is that brexiteers are already blaming the virus for any shortages and supply problems coming our way as a result of br*x*t. Another one is how, again in a similar way to br*x*t, it seems to have legitimised a sort of casual racism, most certainly in Italy where members of my family were reposting a radio feature by a politician where he was claiming that 'of course the Chinese would be carriers of disease, they are diseased and filthy, eat unnatural things and live like ants under that communist regime'. But also here, as seen in the media, where people are shunning Chinese restaurants owned by people who never have actually been to China and there have been reports of attacks on public transport, etc. This is very worrying.

The public measures to contain it are perhaps inevitable but, as a self-employed music teacher working in two schools (where I am not a 'real' employee but only get paid for the lessons that actually take place) I dread them far more than the virus -close schools for a month and I'll be on the brink if not actually bankrupt.

Well, I s'pose we'll have to wait and see how it all plays out.

A couple of birthdays, many lessons cancelled (need to get more pupils..) a club at which I stayed less than two hours.... and a little walk across Central London with at least a million people. Not sure anything will come out of that but, hey, it had to be done.

I haven't got a lot of faith in petitions in general or in particular in ones that are asking these politicians trapped in a web of their own making to backtrack in a way that most likely seems impossible and undesirable to them, but nonetheless, one has to try:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/223729

"Rescind Art.50 if Vote Leave has broken Electoral Laws regarding 2016 referendum"



Article 50.1 of the Lisbon Treaty sets out that a member can leave by " Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."

Also, Article 10.3 of the Lisbon Treaty, "Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen."

The flu, or whatever it was, lasted only four days. Or rather, the shaking, fever and constant coughing plus extreme tiredness did. I'm still coughing and I'm still tired all the time, two weeks on. Not looking forward to the beginning of term next week.

Things that've happened in these two weeks: the short answer is 'not a lot'. I did go to Oxford to meet a friend there last Saturday, tramped around town, ate street food at a street market (there was a Venezuelan food stand but I only realised after we'd ordered at some other place so missed on that but did make contact with them). Went to the Ashmolean Museum and went upstairs and downstairs many many times to have a close look at pretty much every single exhibit... I'm making it sound bad and it wasn't, it was a lovely day but I was still in the aftermath of that flu (or whatever it was) and it drained me completely.

Having finished the book for this month's Bibliogoth ('Wanderers' by Meg Howrey, which I enjoyed but didn't take me as much as I anticipated it would) and in spite of having another three books on the go, I decided to re-read 'Anathem' by Neal Stephenson. And straight away I found myself submerged in that world and its people. I'm in a tiny minority on that one (check the scathing Amazon reviews) but I love that book and it is perhaps the one that has made the biggest impression of the books I've read for a long long time.

Not much energy for proper guitar practice so I've been reading some music that I'd played many years ago and some new music (if you can call 'new' something written in 1588 or thereabouts).

On the whole, then, flavioworld is quiet this week and it is good that it is so, I need to gather and recover my energy for the many things awaiting ahead. The world outside sounds more and more alarming by the minute, one almost feels the screaming, swivel-eyed hordes with torches ramming the gates of the castle. But the world was always like that, perhaps and we just didn't know. Of course you didn't have a megalomanic narcissistic fascist at the helm of the most powerful nation on earth and the country I've lived in for the last 30 years wasn't questioning my right to be here before. And my original country wasn't yet being ravaged by a combination of astronomical incompetence, all encompassing corruption and a blinkered view of the world that admits no mistakes and no wrong on the part of the people leading it.

Re-watching Season 3 of Babylon 5 because, well, outlandish and improbable Sci-Fi where the President is a crook and a nutjob and is in alliance with dark evil forces, could never happen... oh, wait...

Breakfast -an arepa with cheese, coffee, orange juice. It's the summer holiday so got up quite late and taking my time. Put the TV on to watch the news. Scan BBC (can they possibly still be building up br*x*t?), CNN (annoying but for their amusing ongoing feud with Trump), Al-Jazeera and finally Euronews (where their 'No Comment' feature has street riots in familiar places, the streets of my home-town, police shooting tear gas at demonstrators, people being arrested in the night, tyre bonfires on the street).

The overwhelming feeling, as the news from the world (particularly my original part of the world, Venezuela) scroll past, that I've woken up in a wrong strand of the multiverse, one where everything went wrong and not at all how it was supposed to happen.

'She's a dead woman walking / she's living on borrowed time' this could be set to music -Chicago blues, a la Muddy Waters, perhaps? :D



* (yes, I'd already said this on FB...) still..

There is a very Strong smell of Stables here.... 

This Ars Technica story could be more, long lasting bad news, as it is part of a deliberate policy by the current US administration -they seem to have decreed that climate change does not exist. Echoes of King Canute...


https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/epa-purges-climate-change-information-as-part-of-website-updates/