European Tribune - Comments - Arrivederci ET

i have decided for a new year's resolution to stop posting and rating here for a month.

Looking forward to seeing you in a month! I always enjoyed your pictoresce comments, would miss them. :-)

I read what you read; and I read what you wrote. From where I sat, the thread held the fascination of an evolving car wreck. All in all, though, I rate your responses as wonderfully wrought and as valid as everyone else's.

And I know what you mean about the seductive qualities of this site. Immersion is OK, if we have an air-line and 8 days a week. (Right now, Top Hat is on the TV, so I have to take a few minutes to watch Fred and Ginger 'dancing cheek-to-cheek'. I guess that proves that I do have other things to do with my life.)

At any rate I am glad that you will lurk, as I'm working on the Winter garden diary that you requested. Wouldn't want you to miss it. Plus - co-op stuff coming up soon after. Ciao.

paul spencer

Happy new year!

Giss a call!  We had a wonderful New Year's Eve party--and do you know the exact moment when the new year came to Brighton?  We had six different clocks, fireworks starting, strange shouts from outside and then TEN, NINE, EIGHT, SEVEN, SIX...FAYVE, QUATTRO!  TRE!  DUE!  UNO!  

HA-PPY NEW YEAR!

And then you yank the wire out of the wall, push the OFF switch, stretch your legs, prepare...gird your loins!  Let 'em dangle!  Gird, dangle, gird, dangle!  Ahhhh!  Cinghiali snuffling, winter in the north, snow on its way--bad craziness!

I'm not sure how it all affects the integrity of ET--it's clearly a blog about energy, finance, politics, and whatever else appears in diaries and people gather round and chat--solving the world's problems again, and yeah, we learn and yeah--you got piled on and some things, you need drums and a piano, a violin and some geetars--words don't work the same way--and a month--the moon is young, you get to see the night sky (I get to see the night lights instead), and a friend of mine last night told me that he saw The Northern Lights while camping just north of Uckfield!

And those cocaine jitters---eeeee leck tricity!

It'll take a while to load...but hey, Captain Beefheart!

And---and....all these words to say, yeah!  Let the moon circle, if I could I'd fly over so's we could go down to those hot springs, walk over those hills, big hugs!  Laughter!  

Last night another friend was telling me about the elements (I've been studying the periodic table--learning my science ABCs).  Turns out that our sun isn't hot enough to produce the elements around us now.  Not only, but the sun before this one--the one whose explosion led to ours--that one wasn't hot enough either.  So we have to imagine another sun, one so huge and hot that it could create the elements making up the earth--and what makes up us, our carbon strip lifespace with all that we find here, is billions of years old waste products...and our sun will carry on....

LEP: Life is a fountain!

Ah--!

And long posts--DeAnander writes long comments, and I enjoy them.  And I'm a ramblin' man!  (See above!)

Plus the exclamation marks!

!!!

;)

Right, okay.  Moving sideways, around, come over!  Just pull the plug, the image turns to a dot and...wow...okay.  Eyes open wide, here's the world--ready and waiting!

Ach, you see I just cannae get it into words so all of the above to say, Happy New Year!  See you back at ET in a month?  With a wonderful diary!  Whoosh!

That card really got to me the first time I looked through the tarot, I was trying to memorise them all, telling myself the story, and there it was--the heart pierced by the swords.  And the four has the man alseep (it may be a tomb, but) I like to think the fourth sword--the sword of basic rationality--the one the king holds--is the next step: the man finally gets to hang those three swords on his wall--no more heart piercing!

Enjoy!  Good luck!  Bon Voyage!  See you soon!

(Reminds me of another conversation last night, about nomadic tribes meeting up after months of journeying, all the introductions--all the catching up to do!  And the pleasure of travel and moving on...and maybe in large circles, or helixes, or some incredibly complicated dances...heh!)  

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

I've even been that errant bacterium......

As Solveig says, an ET "groupthink" can take over, as with any other group.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

The Wounds are Real and there is "NO shame in feeling" them, but I know they take time and ´magic, personal rituals and potions´.  Please send me some.  The issues are Real, IMO serious too and obviously my blood can boil and run cold, but it´s too precious to spill.  Everyone´s blood is worth protecting!, so I will keep trying from my best stubbornness.  (Ooops.  Forgot that quality in my apology!  (;  )

It´s a long month, --you could have picked February--but if you must... you´d better check in by the 29th at midnight!

I toasted to you and those that are hurt and excluded last night, which, ironically, covers everyone at ET, in some way!

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.

Thank goodness you're coming back (you better!!!!!!!), and I'll miss you while you're gone.

Come back rested :-)

Today, diary at the top of the list. Oh, no ...

I'm sorry for the conditions that have lead to your need for a break, but understand the reasons.

Looking forward to your next, inimitably straightforward, kind, creative contributions.

Baci. Happy new year.

i am very sentimental, and you know who you are.

i shall delete this diary tomorrow morning, so any more weirdness or happiness anyone wants to share, get on it!

i didn't come here just to be loved, but to study humanity and its evolution through this new medium.

i've learned what i came to learn.

i'll close with a lovely quote i found today from one of my heroes, einstein.

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." 

my leaving will do its part, addio!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

I believe you began chivalrously as always, but found yourself in a frustrating crossfire that you took too personally. I believe this because I have experienced the same myself. As I have pointed out many times (and which has been rightly tossed back at me), the failure of a message to be understood is always the fault of the sender. When these failures are compounded by all senders, it might appear conspiratorial, when it is in fact a dynamic of the system and thus the fault of no individual or group of individuals.

It is no bad choice to be away for a while. Step back. Your heart is good and will recover with rest. I wish you would come back soon - not on some timetable - but when your true strength is again centred in the right place. Peace, brother.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Melo, I hope you do come back, but i've seen people do this before, and then be too embarassed to come back after they've spoken, hurt, in the heat of the moment.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Return is the movement of the Tao
Yielding is the way of the Tao
All things are born of being.
Being is born of non-being.

Tao Te Ching
Stephen Mitchell version.

Hey, Grandma Moses started late!

I wasn't around for the flames and spats so I really don't know what the hell pushed you to this decision. I found out through the hidden comments where I did reply to Mr. Freeze's taunt by mega-trolling him where I found his comments of that tenure.

I almost never troll-rate as a matter of plain courtesy and for a practical reason: It not only eliminates the shitty comment but everything written on that thread, which at times is well worth keeping.

As for your personal issue with some people here I have difficulty piecing it together since there are no links supplied. Much has been compromised by the disappearance of entire threads. I can empathize but am not privy to why you're apparently pissed off at Dodo.

I don't consider myself as part of some elite inner club, nor feel that I'm supposed to have some cop role to enforce. I can't agree that there's institutionalized behaviour towards neophytes or newcomers. Sure, we know the ropes and are familiar with each other, hell, even some bonding going on. But Freeze's comments in general, the self-cancellation of his reportedly very good diary, his gratuitous insults and badgering are, to say the least, disruptive.

Disruptive? In group therapy at times there is a person bent on breaking up the setting. It is catalyzing but is often sterile just as any dia-bolic acting out is. A hell of a lot of dynamics come out both in the group and on an individual level, often brutal and aggressive. And it's up to the leaders or trainers to channelize the energy, to harness it, never leaving a single participant out in the cold. But all that goes on in a precise setting, the framework of a group that is doing therapy.

ET is not a therapy session. If anyone is into spilling their personal hang-ups, their relational problems, out in a disruptive manner, regardless of their noteworthy qualifications, I suggest they go elsewhere. The written format is far too easily misinterpreted. There's no tone of voice, pauses, hesitations or emphasis of a particular word to go by. There's no skin tone, eye movement, posture or gestures to go by. There are proper settings for that, and it's definitely not out here in the ether.

So the rules of the game are a modicum of courtesy and an effort to clarifying any misunderstanding. A caveat of troll-rating here is to explain why. And as far as I've seen that's been done.

Beyond that, I sympathize with your other points. A really good site is inspiring. I too have had long sleepless nights and have often got to that "hey, wait a minute" point when it over-compromised my meat-world edition. So I'll miss your presence and comments, even though I feel you'll still be around enjoying silently the great stuff everybody contributes here, you included.

Enjoy your vacation!

Perhaps the heated words of song
shall sound again
and people, free,
will die the death they choose
and I will tell the wanderings of
the sacred muse
and bring all those thoughts back to me.

'We reported back to hearts
what we had seen
and told our footsteps all about
where we had been'.


Index of Frank's Diaries