Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Now the Party's Over ..

Every ingredient grown or raised within a hundred metres of the table

Autumn Leaves

Have a happy New Year, and Mutlu Yillar .. A few final thoughts through this Blogging medium, accompanied by some photos from the past year, including Phaselis and Saklikent, New Year’s Eve and birthdays, Cappadocia and Antalya, Konya and Dalayan, Lycian cliff carvings, the beach, the mountains, old towns and modern cities, autumn evenings and summer nights, spring days and winter mornings .. thanks to those who shared them with me ..

The first autumnal leaves
Thanks for having followed this journey .. having now completed the additional teaching qualifications I’ve been working on another prospect has suggested itself – whether I move on or stay put is yet to be decided, however with time so short I really don’t know when I’ll pass this way again, though expect me anytime .. so, meanwhile, enjoy life and sprinkle some sunshine on your route so that others might follow the light you leave behind ..

Can you see the above photo in the distance?
Don’t demand that others change to receive your affection, release your anger and regret, open your heart to possibility, free your mind from obstacles to love, for no one knows which way the roads lead when we arrive at a crossroads .. and one day, perhaps, if it’s meant to be ..

Early morning balloons over the fairy mountains
A new year; a new day, a new place, renewed hope, news travels. Seasons change with the weather, minds change decisions, passions change relations, hearts exchange love, yet while autumn leaves reluctantly in a defiant show of colour, winter seeps in through cracks of time to chill us with memories of the past as the fire in our spirit warms us with anticipation for the opportunities of the future.

And here comes the festival of winter blurring truth in its snow-blind promotion of the acquisition of contemporary commodities. As the Santa of capital gains slides down dirty chimneys a few brave souls can be caught staring into the flurrying snow to seek the secret of design within every flake that glistens like an angel on its journey to earth.

The 200 km wide mountain wall between Fethiye and Antalya
As I embark on a new phase of life, challenging and altering my perspective with travel and different people to work with, I continue to question my need to transform and improve my own existence in light of the over-simplification of a complicated world by those who inform us of reality; a world where snow is a hazard to business rather than a joyful celebration of earth’s makeover in frozen splendour.

While the band played
The reconfiguration of the world in the image of global trade as means to develop social relations and the inevitable complicity in environmental and social harm has altered the paradigm of our time; we now live in a world truly self-absorbed in its vision of successful living – the mirror reflecting an image of a photograph of a painting of a bowl of wax fruit.

Networking to promote individual career steps passes as honest friendship, conversations that are open to public interpretation take place 'in real time',

Jo doubling up
while records of every move we make are gathered through phone and computer signals to direct advertising and facilitate government accounting. Every day, on social network sites and blogs, in newspapers and on television, I read and hear people asking so many questions about religion and patriotism, about war and the principles of ethics, about peace and honesty, the meaning of capitalism for the future and the lack of help for the starving. So many people lost in confusion and searching for answers in this chaotic world and it seems that few have learned from the experiences of the old days when they were new years.

I know that look
History and learned wisdom, in the contemporary collective conscious as presented in the forums of the media pageant, has become a passé reference to the obsolete,

as if each generation simply created anew the world about them from the blank slate of personal experience; yet they look around in bewilderment at each passing day and the tragedies that accompany the rising sun and the morning papers, or rather after a glance at the soundbites of internet and television, and wonder what’s wrong.

The answers have always been available to those who seek, and there are many who trod this path before us; the questions haven’t changed, the obstacles haven’t changed simply because we’ve shifted from analogue to digital, they’ve only become more obfuscated by the messages that compete for our attention.

As Rumi said ..
Yet, those in the vanguard of political leadership show little vision or strength of opinion to make the real changes that could guide the world from economic and environmental crisis to contentment and peace. 

A present washes up on the beach
This is a time of great upheaval in the world, from the so-called Arab Spring uprising to the continual bombardment of innocents in places with unusual names, from the consolidation of unimaginable amounts of wealth by a shadowy minority to the incredible overuse of chemicals in the food purveyed by our local supermarket chain.

Lycian cliff dwellings - very old!
The cult of celebrity is a bizarre phenomenon that insinuates its way into every aspect of modern life. These people, many of whom have never created anything other than an image of themselves never mind contributed to culture or society, clutter our media outlets with their latest acquisitions, be they clothes, cars, houses, husbands or fatherless children.

Dalayan and the Lycian cliff dwellings
Somehow these celebrity names and faces bring comfort in the security of constant change to those with little fanfare in their own sheltered lives: do you really need to know or even care who which reality show contestant married which basketball player this week? Will another year of the ever-quickening media chase bring to us anything that means something to our collective human character?

Renowned for drunken bashes and inane twitter comments the ‘darlings of the media’ have become an integral part of the kaleidoscopic community that serves up and feeds on artificially exaggerated controversy designed to instil confusion into an already ethically polluted public sphere. You know the names: reality shows winners, silver spoon princesses, former athletes, pop stars and fashion icons, kissing and telling in cheap supermarket tabloids which act as pimps for these minor figures in the grand parade of history.

A night out with the boys
Every day we turn on the news to be faced with alleged acts of terror and a continued tightening of legislation on personal freedom in the name of security or the interests of regulation against corporate infringement. What future is a world managed by competing committees of executives for whom the idea of pleasure is acquiring property and resources at the expense of those who can offer no resistance to the megalomaniacs and their limitless power?

Cody chillin' with the turtles
To fool the public with the usual bread and circus events these high-ranking citizens offer tokens of participation to the world through the media outlets they own and the sporting clubs and entertainment franchises they control. They offer up ‘stars’ in designer clothes claiming to use organic drinks or eat pork to stay slim and glowing with health.

At the pub
Vast amounts of money are paid to produce spy thrillers that expose the dark underbelly of modern government or make animated films whose underlying message is to treat the earth with care without mentioning the resources used to create these wonders of artistic expression.

Hundreds of millions of people dine on meat flown in daily from an ever-decreasing rain forest turned cattle yard and use materials created from minerals stripped from South American mines by hungry peasants whose only appearance on the big screen will be in the film about their suffocating death below the Andean surface, but how else will we feed the world and still have silicon chips for our modern wizardry?
 
A view too stunning to pass by
Earth Day is an example of the insanity of collusion these people offer. For one hour on a certain day once a year an international conglomerate in a sprawling and wealthy Middle Eastern nation will turn off the lights on the fountain in a public square to show solidarity with the environmental movement. Wow! An impressive gesture that does absolutely nothing to affect the problems associated with the drainage of their oil fields or their sewage tanks into the blue Gulf water.

Gabriel visits the valley of mushrooms that inspired St Basil's in Moscow
A huge city in the Far East will shut down the external coloured spotlights on a famous building for one hour to show unity of purpose with those who seek a reduction in energy usage, while a hundred thousand office buildings continue to direct a neon blaze into the night sky obliterating the stars from sight. Again, wow!

Ataturk watches over Antalya
A rich Western nation whose people tremble in their loafers at the idea of paying an extra dollar for a tank of gasoline is going to ask business to put their computers on stand-by for an hour at night to lessen the impact of global warming. Wow! The Earth thanks you for the inconvenience.

River Duden below the falls
Hypocrisy is the name of the game in global business and no more so than in the headquarters of the conglomerates that control the international market. While making grand gestures through worldwide conferences with overt references to renewing commitment to preserving the natural resources of this beautiful planet these multinational corporations strip away all life-sustaining organisms to create ever-higher profits for the few with the blessing of those invested with the trust of ordinary people to investigate this continued crime against nature. [no comma in sight, just read 3 or 4 words at a time]

We even made the papers
I sit watching the BBC World News channel, a ‘public trust’ corporation paid for by the license fees of taxpayers in the UK, and every 10 minutes I’m being bombarded by advertisements for bio-technological agricultural seed manufacturers, petrochemical refinery corporations, first-class airlines and computer-based business investment banks. Yet, we are led to believe by the government and the board members of this global organisation in the independence and integrity of their news administration.

Another birthday
Yes, we are being led through the abundant fertile garden of earthly delights into the history-barren wasteland of an ever changing tomorrow and will deserve the future we arrive at in our gas-guzzling corporate cars. Unfortunately, we will all pay eventually for our own greed and complacency in the face of this acceptance of a world managed by those whose vision is limited by the prophets of consumption and the latest tweeted trend as if these disposable communications held genuine profundity.

A walk in the forest of Olympus
Or possibly, people are just tired of significance and sense and simply want to escape the dystopian depression presented by the new world order wherein we have found ourselves lost in an overabundance of culture and communication.

Perhaps, if hope survives the present, we’ll meet again in a better tomorrow, a space where the need to achieve success will be measured by the hearts we touch with love rather than the toys we gather around us.

Love that white raw silk jacket
Perhaps in the future there will be a great nothing, void of memory and vision, or, if enough people reach out in optimism, from heart to mind, we’ll touch thoughts across the universe between to realise the dream of union in a confident spirit with a green and pleasant tomorrow on this tiny spinning blue planet with its new year of revolution around our silent sun.

A friend's daughter made a home for Froggie
So, enjoy life and sprinkle some sunshine on your route so that others might follow the light you leave behind .. don’t demand that others change to receive your friendship, open your heart to possibility, free your mind from obstacles to love, for no one knows which way the roads lead when we arrive at the crossroads .. and one day, perhaps, if it’s meant to be .. SEE YA .. Görüşürüz .. {;o)

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