Travels in My Homeland (Almeida Garrett)

Excerpts from: Almeida Garrett, Travels in My Homeland (Viagens na minha terra, 1846)

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No – go to the Devil, you generation of steam and pottery; macadamize roads; make railways; build flying machines, like Icarus, to cover faster and faster the numbered hours of this material, coarse and humdrum life that you have made of the one God gave us, which was so different from the way we live today. Go on, money-grubbers, go on! Reduce everything to figures, reduce all the considerations of this world to equations of material interest: buy, sell, speculate. At the end of it all, what profit will there have been for the human species? A few dozen more rich men. I ask the political economists and the moralists if they have calculated the number of individuals who must be condemned to misery, to excessive labour, to depravity, to villainy, to wanton ignorance, to insurmountable wretchedness, to absolute poverty, in order to produce one rich man. The British parliament should be able to tell them, after so many commissions of inquiry there, they must have computed the number of souls that must be sold to the Devil and the number of bodies that must be delivered before their time to the cemetery to make a wealthy, noble textile manufacturer like Sir Robert Peel, or a mine-owner, a banker, a gentleman farmer or whatever: every rich, well-to-do man costs hundreds of unhappy wretches.

Therefore the happiest nation is not the wealthiest. ...

I has long been said that honour and profit are not good bedfellows ... (ch. III)

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Because the story of this world is the story of the house that Jack built. Here is the dog that bit the cat that killed the rat that gnawed the rope, etc. etc: it keeps going on like this. (ch. XIII)

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Joaninha’s eyes are a vast book, written in moving characters whose infinite combinations are beyond my comprehension.

What are your eyes saying, Joaninha?

What language do they speak?

Oh, why do you have to have green eyes, Joaninha?

The lily and the jasmin are white; red the rose; the rosemary blue . . .

The violet purple and the jonquil gold.

But all nature’s colours come from one alone, green.

Green is the origin and first type of all beauty.

The other colours make up green; in green is the whole, the unity of created beauty.

The eyes of the first man must have been green.

The sky is blue . . .

The night is black . . .

The earth and the sea are green . . .

The night is black, but beautiful. Your eyes, Soledade, were black and beautiful as the night.

The stars that shine in the depths of night are beautiful, but who does not sigh for day at the end of a long night?

And for the stars to disappear, to go away, at last! . . .

Comes the day. . . . The sky is blue and beautiful, but one’s eyes weary of looking at it.

Oh, the sky is blue like your eyes, Georgina! . . .

But the earth is green and the eyes find it restful, never tiring of the infinite variety of its pleasant hues.

The sea is green and rises and falls. . . . But oh, it is as sad as the earth is joyful.

Life is made up of joys and sadness . . .

Green is sad and joyful, like the joys of life itself!

Joaninha, Joaninha, why do you have to have green eyes? (ch. XXIII)

[cf. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939), pages 611–612]

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I hate philosophy and I hate reason, and I sincerely believe that in such a topsy-turvy world as this, a society which is so false, an existence as absurd as this one is made by its laws, customs, institutions and conventions, to affect in words the accuracy, the logic and integrity that does not exist in things themselves, is the worst and most pernicious incoherence there is.

Let us say no more about this, because it is not good for one, and let us end the chapter here. (ch. XXXVIII)

The end of the previous chapter is, I know, a terrible document in support of the charge of scepticism that has been brought against me by certain unlettered moralists, at whom I have the audacity to laugh, at them, their indictment and their accusation, at the same time protesting that I shall neither seek redress nor appeal, nor ask for any reversal of the wondrous judgement their most excellent hypocrisies may deign to pronounce against me.
After this solemn declaration, let us proceed.

And as for you, benevolent reader, to whom I wish to give only pleasure, if these fantasies still weary you, I advise you to turn over this obnoxious page, because the reflections in the last chapter are as out of place in my book as most things are in this world. Go to sleep, then, and wake not from the fine ideal of your logic.

It is a discovery of mine, of which I am vain and conceited, this idea that logic and punctuality in life’s affairs are much more a dream and an ideal than the most fantastic dream and the most exquisite ideal in poetry. (ch. XXXIX)

Lyme disease: natural prevention, first aid, and treatment

Sojourns Community Health Clinic in Westminster, Vt., provides herbal and "integrative" treatment of Lyme disease, with a couple of their naturopaths being "tick experts". The following is from their handout on prevention and first aid.

• Use "Tick Shield" by Cedarcide as a repellant. It's safe for medium-size and large dogs, too, not for cats.
• After possible exposure, put your clothes in the dryer on high for 15 minutes. Check your body, especially the warm moist areas. They also recommend some (rather expensive) herbal support regimens to take "during" possible tick exposure.
• If you've been bit, get the tick tested. Note the date, and watch for symptoms over the next 30 days. Treat the bite topically with Andrographis tincture. If worried (before any symptoms), start a course of herbal antibiotics.

And the following outlines their integrative treatment regimen.

• Antibiotics: Ceftin (cefuroxime axetil) or doxycycline
• Nystatin (antifungal) and probiotics to mitigate the effects of the antibiotics
• Serrapeptase to expose the bacteria by breaking down their protective biofilm
• Their own "Tick Bite Formula" of cat's claw (Uncaria tomentosa), Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum), cryptolepis (Cryptolepis sanguinolenta), and houttuynia (Houttuynia cordata)
  Note:  In addition to the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, ticks may carry a Babesia parasite (B. microti, now classified as Theileria microti) and Bartonella bacteria. Cat's claw and Japanese knotweed target Borrelia, cryptolepis acts on the Babesia, and houttuynia is for the Bartonella.
• — all of the above for at least 2 months
• After the Tick Bite Formula, "A-L Formula" (Byron White) for immune support for 1 month.

Their herbal-only option is just the Tick Bite Formula and Serrapeptase. A child-friendly option is Samento (Nutramedix; cat's claw) and Serrapeptase.

You can order the herbal medicines from the Sojourns apothecary.

Note:  Dosages have been deliberately left out here; you should consult your own Lyme-literate integrative naturopath or holistic practitioner. Alexis Chesney of Sojourns has written a book, "Living Tick-Free: Preventing Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease", that is available electronically.

The dangerous madness of “antifa”

Statement by Gainesville Antifascists:

The method of "opposing" fascism that calls for ignoring the genocidal ideology and its supporters and strict non-violence (in lieu of self/community defense) is often an attempt to abdicate responsibility by the advocate.

However, this spectacle of claiming the moral high ground actually exposes the speaker's ignorance and privilege. Only someone unaware of and temporarily safe from the immediate threat of fascism would claim this is a viable solution.

A diversity of tactics is always welcome and needed, but singing hymns and holding 'peace' signs is not a direct way to defend your community against fascism. It may help bridge solidarity amongst participants -- and this is needed. But the antifascists will be the ones risking life and limb to oppose the fascist violence.

If your preferred tactic is nonviolence and/or you personally choose to "ignore" fascist recruitment, at the very least, you are morally bound to avoid denouncing the only historically successful tactic of organized antifascist community defense.

Comments:

Paragraph 1. Who has called for ignoring genocidal ideology? Did Martin Luther King or Mohandas Gandhi thus "abdicate responsibility" in their adherence to nonviolent resistance? Self-defense and community defense beyond nonviolent demonstration requires an actual physical attack. Gatherings of the Weekend Wehrmacht that are not actually violent themselves, however inherently provocative, are not actual attacks requiring violent defense.

Paragraph 2. Again, what communities are actually facing a fascist takeover (beyond what Americans have already inured themselves to for decades)? And again, where is the actual concerted physical fascist violence that needs to be opposed?

Paragraph 3. Again with the straw man that nonviolence means "ignoring" something. And again with the fantasy of community defense.

In short, if you don't agree with the tactics (or grasp of reality) of this self-described antifascist group, you are by definition fascist yourself. And as a fascist, you represent an "immediate threat" of genocide et cetera and must be met with decisive violence ("fire and fury", eg).

This sounds exactly like every hate group in history.

This group is particularly dangerous, however, because, unlike the marginal and marginalized who misdirect their rage into hateful white identitarianism, the anti-white identitarians are egged on by elitists, mainstream media, and even politicians. Their eagerness for violence and vandalism is backed by the powers of the state. They are agents of the regime change being pursued by those who cannot accept the results of the 2016 election. They are making the US a banana republic. This is, in fact, fascism in action.