My lilies...

Dinky, you're going to have to put yourself on hold for this post, if you don't like the.. associative way that I write....

This post is a response to Hell's response to my response in the jungle.

Well, really, only partly, because I intended to write this post anyway, but Hell's response can be tied right into this post, and I am counting on HIM (at least...) to understand why.

This morning I went out into the garden and started poking around a little bit. (I am a dilettante gardener at the very best. Thank God (lol) that I don't have to feed my family with the garden because we just MIGHT starve to death if we had to depend on my gardening skills...)

Two days ago the earth smelled that humous smell of things waking up seriously. Mother Earth shaking off the winter definitely. The ball has stopped twitching. It has gained momentum. It is.. rolling well now.

And I took a close look at that flower bed when, on a cold day in November, I carefully dug 15 holes (hard work...) and lovingly placed 15 rather large sized lily bulbs in place, taking care to replace the soil above them so there would be no air bubbles, no useless space. And then I stuck dried leaves over the bed to protect my.. babies from the cold winter that was coming up, and watered them.

They stayed cosy warm (for bulbs) under there in the earth for more than four months, and... I didn't resort to sophisticated technology, or sonars to make sure that they were doing fine.

I just... TRUSTED that those little bulbs knew their stuff, and that whatever allowed those little bulbs to know their stuff (no names, now, please...) was looking out for them ok. (Some people would say that they KNEW those bulbs would come up, but... that is rather.. PRESUMPTIOUS in my book, saying that you KNOW, when really it is a question of FAITH.)

And guess what ? After 4 months now of cold, and quiet, the first shoots have broken the soil !!

Talk about a miracle.

Boy... am I ever a proud mother of those bulbs !! Isn't it great to see a miracle at work ??

In case you were wondering... That was a parable.

It is a parable for the metaphysical underpinnings of investment.

You know, that operation whereby OVER TIME, something that you have put into the ground, NOT KNOWING WHETHER IT WOULD PAN OUT OR NOT, but that you WORKED FOR, that you WATERED AND NURTURED, OVER TIME would PRODUCE.

Sounds pretty corny in our slick world, doesn't it ?

But...

Buyer beware. Those are just WORDS above. But THOSE WORDS are firmly anchored to ancestral processes that inscribe us in NATURE AND TIME, as LIVING BEINGS.

This, by the way, is what the Ancien Regime was founded on.

YOU may think that the Ancien Regime was a pile of shit that enslaved the citizens.

But... the Ancien Regime was ALSO a complex theological and metaphysical system that had carefully thought out man's place AND his RELATION to his environment, nature.

And this SYSTEM gave us... a particular idea of time, duration, (for Thai, the time that is modeled on the processes of pregnancy and digestion).

Something which the relative destruction of the Ancien Regime HAS NOT GIVEN US.

And that is why this CRISIS before us is a crisis, NOT JUST OF FIAT MONEY.

It is a METAPHYSICAL CRISIS, which interrogates our TIME, our PLACE, WHO WE ARE.

Don't get me wrong. There is no tragedy involved. Because we have become TOO BOURGEOIS for tragedy. (That may change rapidly, as the middle class disappears from the scene...)

Where are you, Joe ?

YOU should be reading me here. I think you understand this...