I am reading "East West Street" by Philippe Sands, recommended by H, about two Jewish lawyers from Lemberg/Lviv/Lvov, in Galicia, now part of Ukraine, at times in the 20th Century Polish, Russian, Austrian, German. All their families were murdered, more or less directly by Hans Frank, Hitler's head of the German Government General, responsible for that part of Poland incorporated into the Third Reich. Lauterpacht beleives in the rights of the individual ("crimes against humanity") to be protected from a tyrannical state. Lemkin believes in the protection of groups ("genocide"). Sands' own family also came from Lvov, and most of them were killed as well. His grandfather Leon and grandmother Rita escaped with their daughter, Sands' mother, from Austria to Paris. They survived. Noone else did, apart from a couple of cousins who hid out in cellars in Zolkiew, near Lviv, for two years, until they were liberated by the Russians. Somehow, by telling the story through the individual members of his family, Sands makes it real and believable in a way that most of the horrors of the Holocaust are not. A little like Etty Hillesum's story in Holland. The wicked irony that two of the judges in the Nuremburg trial are Soviet officers, from a country where Stalin presided over the deaths of at least 20 million people before the war had even begun.
F rings and we talk about babies and skiing holidays and mid life crises and my dramas about moving the caravan to Bonnevaux and moving in to the almshouse.
I do feel much better this morning. And it's mild and warm and sunny and the snow has almost disappeared. F is slipping and sliding across frozen rain in some field in Somerset.
I must go into Fram today, need supplies.
Funny, talking to F about skiing being my next experiment (as in, sans alcool). As she said, I've tried quite a few so far. Only cooking game pie was a bit of a failure (not the pie, but the cooking sherry). I think, ooer, a skiing holiday without beers and gluwein and whisky and wine and stock, as if these were the only pleasures and reasons for going skiing. And then I think of what I really love about skiing, and skiing with the family, and how little any of the real joys of skiing have to do with boozing. My day on the Marmolada with F on our own, just going up and skiing down that black run, all to ourselves, in the flow. Walking outside at night, the snow sparkling, the stars pin bright, the air crackling in the frost, that lovely crunch of frozen snow under your boots, the mountains in the moonlight.
I'm worried about Stuart's last two chapters, seems to be losing the narrative drive. Rather too much drivel about John and Charlotte's sex life, feels flabby and self indulgent. Wait to see what the concluding chapters are like. May have to be ruthless / rude. I do hope he has a plot.
Funny how meditation has been, with a houseful of Lauras downstairs, yet still the small silent spot, the point where my breath goes in and out at the bridge of my nose - a point of infinite space, and nothing at all, not even a hazelnut, pure emptiness, just the breath passing over a piece of cartilage. No desire, no fear, no up or down. Several times I've fallen asleep, or thought I'd fallen asleep. And then someone on Jeff Salzman's podcast talks about states - the causal, day to day, ordinary life state - an illusion we share with everyone - the dream state, our own illusion, clearly an illusion, then deep dreamlesss sleep - which he described as pure consciousness - no illusion at all, but no awareness either. And I've read / heard others say the same thing - you cannot describe it or explain it, because there is nothing to describe. But it's liberating, and somehow at the heart of everything, literally the still point at the centre of the hurricane.
VR helps us see through "reality" - it's just a very high res super realistic illusion projected onto pure awareness (like Plato's shadows). On the other hand, VR is an escape from the squalor and disappointments of our "real" lives. Corey de Vos says Apple's Augmented Reality is better - adding stuff to our normal perceptions, like an overlay. Then he gives an example of how this works - we wear our AR glasses, and when we look at something it tells us how much it costs, which of our friends has one, and then rings our friend so we can ask them about this wonderful thing. As Jeff Salzman said at this point, I'm ready to die now. Me too. Don't run away from squalor (because it ain't squalid, or disappointing) whether that's into a VR headset or a bottle. Be here now. And I thought again about skiing - I never went skiing because I was looking forward to getting hammered in the stuber every night - in fact, that started becoming a reason for not going skiing, because I was afraid of how ill getting hammered at altitude made me feel.
Esme looks completely drained by her full on performance weekend. Dark bags under her eyes, watching Peppa Pig speaking Italian. Laura says Diana lost it last night and had to be taken away for a talking to by Jess. Otherwise they all seem a remarkably calm and nice extended family. Very little drink taken, except (they said) when they all trogged off to the White Horse.
Instead of worrying about burkas and niquabs we should be worrying about anonymity on the internet. If I ruled the world, I would force everyone to have a proper ID on the web - your name, picture, location (not actual address), officially / legally authenticated, like a passport. And you cannot interact with the internet without it, or leave a comment, or like something, or join a twitter storm of hate and stupids. And if you don't like that, just watch movies and boxed sets, in your darkened room, like some sad Japanese twenty-something.
I've just emptied my wpb. A bagful of snotty bloody kitchen towels.
Time to meditate.
TNT have just delivered my Hobbit stove and two amazingly heavy batteries. All I need now is the spare wheel. Got the wheels back on the van - they turn backwards, but not forwards, which might be an issue. Also I've discovered that the floor seems to be disappearing up into body of the van. Could the sides just fall off?
F rings and we talk about babies and skiing holidays and mid life crises and my dramas about moving the caravan to Bonnevaux and moving in to the almshouse.
I do feel much better this morning. And it's mild and warm and sunny and the snow has almost disappeared. F is slipping and sliding across frozen rain in some field in Somerset.
I must go into Fram today, need supplies.
Funny, talking to F about skiing being my next experiment (as in, sans alcool). As she said, I've tried quite a few so far. Only cooking game pie was a bit of a failure (not the pie, but the cooking sherry). I think, ooer, a skiing holiday without beers and gluwein and whisky and wine and stock, as if these were the only pleasures and reasons for going skiing. And then I think of what I really love about skiing, and skiing with the family, and how little any of the real joys of skiing have to do with boozing. My day on the Marmolada with F on our own, just going up and skiing down that black run, all to ourselves, in the flow. Walking outside at night, the snow sparkling, the stars pin bright, the air crackling in the frost, that lovely crunch of frozen snow under your boots, the mountains in the moonlight.
I'm worried about Stuart's last two chapters, seems to be losing the narrative drive. Rather too much drivel about John and Charlotte's sex life, feels flabby and self indulgent. Wait to see what the concluding chapters are like. May have to be ruthless / rude. I do hope he has a plot.
Funny how meditation has been, with a houseful of Lauras downstairs, yet still the small silent spot, the point where my breath goes in and out at the bridge of my nose - a point of infinite space, and nothing at all, not even a hazelnut, pure emptiness, just the breath passing over a piece of cartilage. No desire, no fear, no up or down. Several times I've fallen asleep, or thought I'd fallen asleep. And then someone on Jeff Salzman's podcast talks about states - the causal, day to day, ordinary life state - an illusion we share with everyone - the dream state, our own illusion, clearly an illusion, then deep dreamlesss sleep - which he described as pure consciousness - no illusion at all, but no awareness either. And I've read / heard others say the same thing - you cannot describe it or explain it, because there is nothing to describe. But it's liberating, and somehow at the heart of everything, literally the still point at the centre of the hurricane.
VR helps us see through "reality" - it's just a very high res super realistic illusion projected onto pure awareness (like Plato's shadows). On the other hand, VR is an escape from the squalor and disappointments of our "real" lives. Corey de Vos says Apple's Augmented Reality is better - adding stuff to our normal perceptions, like an overlay. Then he gives an example of how this works - we wear our AR glasses, and when we look at something it tells us how much it costs, which of our friends has one, and then rings our friend so we can ask them about this wonderful thing. As Jeff Salzman said at this point, I'm ready to die now. Me too. Don't run away from squalor (because it ain't squalid, or disappointing) whether that's into a VR headset or a bottle. Be here now. And I thought again about skiing - I never went skiing because I was looking forward to getting hammered in the stuber every night - in fact, that started becoming a reason for not going skiing, because I was afraid of how ill getting hammered at altitude made me feel.
Esme looks completely drained by her full on performance weekend. Dark bags under her eyes, watching Peppa Pig speaking Italian. Laura says Diana lost it last night and had to be taken away for a talking to by Jess. Otherwise they all seem a remarkably calm and nice extended family. Very little drink taken, except (they said) when they all trogged off to the White Horse.
Instead of worrying about burkas and niquabs we should be worrying about anonymity on the internet. If I ruled the world, I would force everyone to have a proper ID on the web - your name, picture, location (not actual address), officially / legally authenticated, like a passport. And you cannot interact with the internet without it, or leave a comment, or like something, or join a twitter storm of hate and stupids. And if you don't like that, just watch movies and boxed sets, in your darkened room, like some sad Japanese twenty-something.
I've just emptied my wpb. A bagful of snotty bloody kitchen towels.
Time to meditate.
TNT have just delivered my Hobbit stove and two amazingly heavy batteries. All I need now is the spare wheel. Got the wheels back on the van - they turn backwards, but not forwards, which might be an issue. Also I've discovered that the floor seems to be disappearing up into body of the van. Could the sides just fall off?
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