The Project: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

the tale was told
as show and tell

hissing on

steadily uncertain

energy-

its lack

energy-

curtain

backstage

hands readied an Other

bound to enforce causality

Image of Image

There was a time, and that time was now. Swish past it, passed it and this continued, continues. Trying to make sense of it all, tenses abound, continuing the past, perfecting the future, offering little but variation in perspective. The point that is closest to being, just being in the moment is the moment. This is not a pleasant read, this is not simple. More often than not, an abstract is associated with a concrete, or a material with a colour, when it comes to describing something that exceeds the limits of normality. Pitch black, red hot, silence that can be cut with a knife. Futile similes and pointless metaphors. Silence that can be cut? Such are the times, and such are the parallels drawn. Silence, get this, is not dissimilar to bread. Following that logic, time is sushi – chopped up into digestible bits, wrapped up and rolled into small portions and menu-carded into calendars and clocks to be sold. This is not skepticism, this is cliché and thereby, fact: time is money.

But there is a certain area, with bubbles of sharp jagged rock and cold uninviting snow, floating way above industrial city and modern town. In this place, commercialism tries to live and make its home, but finds that it can never have more than just a house, a temporary residence. In this place: mountains. Great beings of stone power, aged beyond one's capacity to measure time, for whom time means nothing but a few centimeters up or down. Over the centuries, Tibetan lamas, European explorers, Nepali Sherpas and other miscellany have climbed mountains, walking unmade paths, feeling awe while learning humility and this one fact: mountains defy metaphors. Every time that a description has been attempted, all that is left to show for it is utter failure.

Mountains are like…
The view from the summit seemed as though…

No, nothing could come of it. For how is something quantified, that does not relate to numeric values? Where time does not apply, neither does timelessness. The mountains don’t offer much but disappointment for those who go there hoping to gain. Relinquishing the self in that place is not sacrifice; the mountains couldn’t care less. Traveling there is always a pilgrimage – done out of choice though it takes several and then some trips to realize why the choice was made at all. Peace, quiet, solitude, are adjectives that the mountains might evoke, but do not contain within themselves.

Somewhere in the mountains, a climber proceeds, knowing that even as day becomes night and though the watches on a billion wrists tick on, all that may be found there is a photograph -

Semblance of timelessness.

The Project: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I sought sanctuary

in a tale

the cause of which

was poetic
effect

The Project: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

the world deconstructed

around me

sounds signified

but only for me

phrases kept familiar

so I would hear

making sense allowed for

holding together

on

the journey down

meanings of fall considered

concrete made contact

the shell smashed

I breathed in amnesty

mnemonics helped reorient

stories began

The Project: Chapter 1

These are poems. This is a project. Work is in progress.
--------------------------------------------------------

Chapter One

1.

I begin

Where beginnings are

at the end
of an other

2.

in continuing
this tale
I must raise
issues

3.

cathedrals
wastelands
Valhalla
London
Bombay
a mansion
a cottage

this one time
these two times
those times

of rhymes but
no reason

4.

time passed
or I passed it
as time stood
perfectly still

either way there
was motion
sickness

5.

post
modern medicine

complications arose
the patient
etherized on a table’s

condition became un-
stable and
Dr. Professor tried

so Eliot survived
while the love song

Process: a photo essay

Each of these photographs indicates a stage of human life. I have left the photo-essay open-ended, because there hasn't been, and still isn't any consensus, the world over, regarding what comes after the conclusion of this process we call Life. You will note that while there is an 'Exit', there isn't any 'End' in the following essay:

        

$4.25 billion pledged for fight against climate change. Is it sufficient?

A Reuters article from Wednesday, 12 May 2010 stated that donor countries had pledged a sum of $4.25 billion towards combating the phenomenon of global climate change. This has been the largest amount ever pledged since 1991, the year of inception of the Global Environment Facility which, according to the article is "the world's largest public green fund that helps developing countries tackle climate change".

The largest amount since 1991. No doubt, $4.25 bln is a lot, but the question here is whether it's really enough.

The argument could, of course, be made that it is a beginning. But if $4.25 bln is, I quote, "a 52 percent increase in new resources for the facility", then can you imagine the paltry amount that must have been dedicated to remedying climate change before the Copenhagen Summit? To quote from the article again, "The GEF has been replenished four times since its inception in 1991 starting with $2.02 billion in 1994, $2.75 billion in 1998, $2.92 billion in 2002 and $3.13 billion in 2006."

The latter part of the article discusses how "this initial support will be increased to $100 billion a year by 2020, in particular by introducing new and innovative sources of funding." A hundred billion dollars a year, ten years from now. Let's put that figure into perspective.

According to the document 'The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11' by Amy Belasco, Specialist in U.S. Defense Policy and Budget, "The FY2010 war request totals $139 billion including $130 billion for DOD for both wars...If the Administration’s FY2010 war request is enacted, total war-related funding would reach $1.08 trillion, including $748 billion for Iraq, $300 billion for Afghanistan, $29 billion for enhanced security, and $5 billion that cannot be allocated."

So we're talking about an incremental increase in funding for the Global Environment Facility till it reaches $100 billion in 2020. And in 2010, a whole decade before that proposed target, the United States of America's war-related expenses is expected to amount to $1.08 trillion. That's one, followed by 12 zeros. 1,000,000,000,000.

If this is America's projected military expenditure in 2010, can you imagine what the world's total military expenditure would be this year? How many more zeros would you have to add? And if this mind-boggling figure is from this year, can you then imagine what the world's military expenses might be, ten years from now, in 2020? Someone please remind me again, how much the Global Environment Facility is expected to receive from donor nations in 2020.

The disasters we make ourselves are the ones we spend all our money on, trying to avert their onset. In doing so, we often cause the onset of certain natural disasters and then we complain about it.

Isn't it ironic, the way we spend trillions on destruction in the name of defense and offense, but spend less than a fraction of that on conservation and protection of the environment that sustains life on this planet?

So why should we be concerned? Because while pollution and damage caused to the environment might be a local phenomenon from place to place, the effects of such damage are experienced globally. It doesn't matter whether you live in a posh hi-rise apartment in New York City or a slum in an Indian or Pakistani city. We're all seated in a broken roller coaster carriage that can go off the rails at any time. We're all in for the ride. And unless we do something soon, it's not going to be a pleasant one at all.