Well, I followed my New Year's plan. Right before the clock struck twelve I went outside and breathed in the cold night air of the New Year. After that, I posted the rather whimsical little musical video, which was more positive than the more somber post that preceded it. While I was outside, I did more than stand there and breathe in and out as I wished myself a Happy New Year. I practically cast a circle around my home, starting at the north, in back. I guess you could say I took stock of my life.
While at the north, I found myself focused on the illusory nature of health and prosperity, which can vanish as easily as it appears. At the east, I found myself at first caught up in a plan to add more pleasurable surroundings to the old estate, such as it is, before I realized it would be even better to recognize the need to see more clearly through the facade thrown up by certain individuals-to say nothing of myself. It was while at the south that I found myself somewhat at a loss. My spiritual energies have been much too monopolized in the expenditure towards a kind of psychic self-defense towards perceived encroachments, fighting a shadow war based on false perceptions and misapprehensions. Far better to expend such energies in reaching out, as opposed to withdrawing inside a fortress of solitude. It was while at the west, however, that I really had a moment of enlightenment. I came face to face with the fact that I have been in the grip of an emotional fear that is so encompassing, you learn to live with it and adapt to it, without necessarily dealing with the causes, and their effects. I could feel it and almost taste it, as though it were a tangible thing. And in that one brief instant-I walked away from it in haste.
Yes, I have some ways to go yet. But the New Year beckons. It's been somewhat tedious the last few days. Also very hectic. I started to post something last night, but my browser, or something, wasn't responding. I kept trying to go back to something to edit, after I had posted several paragraphs. I clicked and clicked and clicked, and cursed and cursed and cursed, until, suddenly, for no apparent reason-everything I had composed just magically disappeared. It didn't take too long for me to figure out I wasn't going to be able to pull it back.
That's pretty much the way life is, isn't it? For something that seems so tangible and solid, it really is all so-I think the right word might be ephemeral.
It was a post about China, incidentally, the first of a series I was going to do about subjects to watch for over the course of the coming year based on important events that transpired during or close to the Winter Solstice.
I think I'll get around to doing that too, hopefully before the year is half over. This post has been brought to you by a need to let you know I'm still around, just kind of overwhelmed the last few days.
Peace out.
5 comments:
This year China will be one of the main topics on my blog. Some on the left believe China is still socialist, and the capitalism we see is part of a program similar to Lenin's NEP. That is not my view.
If you are wrong in analyzing China, the country that has the largest industrial working class in the world, you're wrong on everything else.
It is certainly a subject worth keeping up on. They only own like 800 billion dollars of US debt, which is insane. That's something I mainly hold Bush responsible for.
Subtract the trade deficit from the "debt to China" and tell us what we really owe, or rather, what China owes us.
Any way you slice it, selling Chinese products is around 15 - 20% of our GDP, and our purchasing China's products makes for around 75 - 80% of China's GDP.
We trade with China because slavery is illegal in the United States, but the Chinese ain't dumb. They know who signs their paychecks.
Beamish-
So we are bribing China to fund our debt, or China is bribing us to build their economy, or maybe a little bit of both?
That situation is unhealthy because it's dependent on too many unforeseeable contingencies. I would think that it also adds exponentially to that portion of the federal budget that goes to paying down the debt, or more precisely to the yearly amount of interest we pay on the debt.
That might be good for a few bankers and Wall Street speculators, but not much else. I'm not even sure it's good for them in the long term.
What happens if our economy absolutely goes to hell here in the next few years, or months? It would be devastating for both countries, but I'm sure China would weather the adversity better.
Or more to the point, the CCP would weather the adversity better.
I don't think we'd see an economic collapse in the United States.
All debts paid ($13+ Trillion) the US still has $53 Trillion dollars in assets.
Well, rather, the American people have $53 Trillion in assets, to be confiscated by the spendthrift government by taxes.
China can't say the same.
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