Parisian crash course

Paris, about fifty years ago.
After working in Amsterdam for three years, I wanted to go to Paris. As an artist illustrator I needed freelance experience. I also wanted to improve my French. I believe I left Holland in the winter of 1970, but I’m not sure. I was still in a sort of dream..

At that time I had a blue Fiat 850 coupé, (they seem to have since become extinct). It was cold and late in the day as I drove south.
In Belgium the roads were then cobbled in certain places. There was verglas. At one point the car slid hard against a high curb and the shock broke the front right disc brake. I could no longer use the foot brake and it was too late to have repairs done. In any case my budget was very tight. I therefore thought I had no other choice but to continue, and had to rely on the hand brake only. I was scared stiff, but fortunately at that time there was not a lot of traffic, so I succeeded in carefully getting down to Paris.

One of my sisters lived in the 16ème and kindly put up with me until I found and rented a small, virtually unfurnished pied-à-terre near le Bois de Bologne. (500 francs a month. Can you imagine!) I can’t remember buying any furniture so it must at least have had a bed. As there wasn’t a table, and I didn’t have a desk, I began by carrying out my illustrations, commissions for book covers, page illustrations and even film posters, on my square, black, suit-case on the floor!

In the mornings, for apparently a long enough period, I went to the Alliance Français for my French lessons. ‘Officially’ I was a student. I had no work permit or titre de séjour. But in those days, if a young man, (même un étranger) was caught with a girlfriend in a public park after it was closed late in the evening (for example) the police would, tongue in cheek, reprimand the young couple. They might not even demand identification papers. At least that was the case for me at one sweet time..
At the Alliance Française there was a canteen where one could eat quite well for very little cost then.
But in Saint-Germain-des-Prés one could order a menu of steak, frites, salad, a glass of red, sliced baguette and desert for about 10 francs, or plausibly it was even less. It probably was if, during that frugal period I could sometimes afford it.
Apart from that I regularly ate evening meals of sardine and tomato sandwiches.

Trying to get appointments for work was often frustrating as one had to use jetons to telephone in those days. Invariably one was kept waiting by a casual receptionist, (maybe varnishing her nails) so precious jeton time was too often used up fruitlessly.

At one time during this Parisian crash-course (that I would have recommended for all young people) I was quite ill. I had caught a severe throat infection. Eating became extremely painful. Tomatoes especially cause excruciating pain. I had a high fever but was lucid enough to know that I had to do something about it without delay. To this day I don’t know where I went, how I managed to find a doctor, or who he was, but miraculously, this was what occurred. I must have knocked on his door. As soon as he saw me he ushered me into his house. But I remember nothing. Blank. All I remember is that he cured me and expected nothing in return. NaturalIy I shall never forget that. A God sent saviour. Bless him, whoever he was.

Driving in Paris, round the Arc de Triomphe, for example, was a joy in August when most of the Parisians would have migrated south. One feels one has the whole city to oneself. And Paris was beautiful, very special then.

Work wise in Paris, as no doubt in all European cities, there were good people and less good people. The latter took advantage, and the former helped. It was thanks to those who understood and helped, that I was able to take my next step in life. But that’s another, very long, illusive, but certainly more creative chapter.

Text © Mirino. Top Photo with thanks to Coralie, line drawing/letter, with thanks to 'Nathalie'. June, 2021

‘Metical’ change

‘Metical’ is Mozambican money. Its origin, to quote, is Portuguese, based on Arabic miṯqāl, from ṯaqala ‘to weigh’. It has absolutely nothing to do with the following, apart from being an anagram of ‘climate’... 

Climate change. A fascinating subject. kaleidoscopic. Each day is different, unique, and this has been the case since the birth of planet Earth 4.543 billion years ago, give or take a year or two, a month, a week, a minute, a second. Even the last measure is important because if, for example, in a certain location one anticipates a spectacular sunrise or sunset, and wishes to capture it with photography, seconds are of momentous importance. It would be inopportune to then decide to change a lens or filter. 

Today we are blest with sophisticated means to forecast the weather. Observer satellites that film the movements and the build up of cloud formations, means of anticipating and calculating atmospheric pressure, humidity rates, levels of pollution, wind force, and wind direction changes. Marvellous computer technology. Yet, despite all that, the meteorologists often get their forecasts quite wrong. For an example, in the location where I am now, as I write this, only two days ago the weather was forecast to be 100% rain today. Nevertheless, this morning we were blest with clear blue sky. At 13h this was still the case. The forecast was naturally changed to accord. The change forecast that it would rain here 40% at 15h. Later this was changed yet again to 40% rain at 19h. Now it has been changed to 30% rain at 21h this evening, and so it goes on. Climate change... Doesn’t this mean that universal laws are often unpredictable, like life itself? Certainly, and it’s just as well. 

The climatic history of the Earth is incredible. There was a geologic period  known as the Neoproterozoic (600 to 800 million years ago) when the Earth’s weather was exceedingly hot, which comparatively makes today’s ‘global warming’ theory, or scam, absurd. And naturally there were several exceedingly cold ice ages. Yet life obviously survived, certainly before mankind (and womankind) graced the Earth, beginning a mere 200,000 years ago. We have come a long way since then, despite gruesome periods of abstruse, social regression. 

The experts may get their forecasts wrong, but we must never try to contradict the idea that mankind, womankind, (and whatever of today’s dreamed up variant humankind) is responsible for ‘climate change’. Seemingly we are being fed this pretentious assertion which defies proof as well as natural logic, in order to try to render us guilt ridden and fearful. But the radical climatic changes of planet Earth that occurred many millions of years before human-beings mysteriously arrived or somehow evolved, make the experts’ ‘man-made climate change’ assertions appear pretentious and ridiculous. 

The experts have affirmed that the unusually cold spring weather in Europe, even in the south, is also due to global warming... They say that as the Arctic Circle is a few degrees warmer than it should be, it’s sending its cold air south. Why would it do that? Mind you, for some strange reason this year, this may well be true, but why did it not do the same thing in the spring of 2020 and the year before, etc? A year relative to universal time is a moment, a wink of an eye. 

Why use the term ‘global warming’ when it’s evident that such a phenomenon is certainly not global? Over thirty years ago I remember when it snowed in June in Southern Europe, but no one came up with incoherent theories. In my youth I remember fog (smog) in the outskirts of London so thick that one couldn’t see more than a metre in front of oneself. If prior to the descent of smog one had been driving one’s car, someone had to walk in front of the car waving a scarf or handkerchief to enable the driver to slowly crawl home, providing the motorist’s home was reasonably near by. Otherwise the car had to be abandoned. Whilst walking outside in such conditions one wore a handkerchief over one’s nose and mouth (although this was not a governmental law). Once home the part of the white handkerchief that theoretically ‘protected’ one’s lungs, was black from the smog. Yet no one panicked. It was not unusual at that epoch in cold, humid winters when coal was used to heat houses, in low atmospheric pressure, before so called ‘smokeless coal’ had been developed. 

The same scare tactics referred to above regarding ‘man-made climate change’ have certainly been used for the so called pandemic, seemingly for similar, lucrative, mercenary motives. Were fortunes made from the bubonic plague which lasted from 1346 to 1353 and which caused the death of possibly up to 200 million people in the world? If so it was nothing compared to the fortunes made from Covid-19 which is alleged to have caused the death of 3 million people in the world. The death of possibly up to 200,000,000 people in the fourteenth century was naturally far more significant than that of 3,000,000 people in relation to the world’s population count then and now. The number of alleged victims relative to the world’s population today should categorically cancel out Covid-19 as a pandemic. Yet we have been persuaded by the authorities and the complicit, constant televised reports, to dread the virus. One suspects that this is for reasons that have far less to do with how dreadful the virus really is. These ‘lucrative, mercenary motives’ must be very personal if certain authorities are even willing to ruin their national economies in the process of ‘protecting’ the population. 

To return to climate change. To pretend that man is responsible for whatever comparatively insignificant climate change that’s in the throes of taking place, is also suspicious, to say the least. And to rake off billions pretexting to counter whatever claimed ‘man made climate change’, is plain fraud if nothing effective is done to reduce pollution. The latter is the only possible factor that would have some negative influence. Paying to pollute is obviously not the solution. Dismissing nuclear energy and all progress in this field without bothering to invest in order to solve the problems, is incoherent. All more so when one is prepared to ruin the countrysides with ugly, expensive to maintain, comparatively inefficient, limited energy producing wind turbines. 

The seas and oceans cover 70% of planet Earth. Their energy producing potential is obviously enormous, but to my knowledge there is only one small, ingenious country in the world that has succeeded (over eleven years ago) in very effectively and ecologically tapping sea energy: Israel.  

 

Referring once more to this subject already alluded to here and here, is not necessarily repetition due to advanced age or obsession. If anything 'advanced age' gives one the advantage of having seen and experienced climate change phenomena long before, and in forms that were then accepted as fairly commonplace, but in fact they were far more harmful than what's considered harmful today. 

🌈 

Text © Mirino (images NASA with thanks) May, 2021

Polaritics

I used to believe that polarity, one of the essential forces that rules the universe, creates gravity, and makes the world go round, was intrinsic to nature, including human nature. That polarity also governed civilisation. That the balance between the East and West, for example, depended on social, economical, and political polarity. For the simple minded, like me, there may be a grain of truth in this. Since the end of the Soviet-Afghan war, however, when Soviet communism finally died in 1989, and the Berlin Wall was pulled down later that same year, this claimed balance has changed somewhat. It was natural that distrust between the East and West remained, at least for a reasonable period of time, but when the ‘big, bad Russian bear’ allows public and trade freedom, when it reaches out to the West only to be scornfully shunned, surely something must be wrong. 

This incoherency is emphasised by the fact that Russia has resuscitated its cultural identity and its Orthodox Christianity, Yet at the same time the western establishment monopolised by ideologists who ironically seem engrossed in espousing covert Marxism, feel the need to continue to treat Russia as the evil enemy, inventing all sorts of idiocies to reinforce this hostile attitude. It was, for example, particularly revealing that during the endless Syrian war, and not long even after the Ukrainian coup, a coup certainly encouraged by Obama with the complicity of the expansionist EU executive, Vladimir Putin reached out to the USA with the offer of cooperation to rid the world of ISIS. Naturally Obama refused the offer. Perhaps he was also still in the throes of covertly using ISIS, with the complicity of Erdogan, in order to try to bring down Assad. 

Since then we have had the opportunity to hear Assad express his point of view. After years of being led to believe he was an ogre capable of tearing young children apart and eating them, we were surprised to hear how reasonable and intelligent he is. We also note that today Russia is less inclined to manifest a close alliance with Iran. This so much so that Putin recognises Israel’s right to secure its borders, even to the extent of letting Israel destroy any Iranian military presence near its border with southern Syria. This, whereas Obama was virtually hostile towards Israel, and irresponsibly over generous and tolerant towards Iran. 

Surely Biden, assuming he will become US President, despite the fraudulent methods overtly used to achieve this function, will be manipulated to implement more or less the same foreign policy as Obama. And therefore naturally Biden will also be persuaded to open the flood gates to illegal immigration, even though the negative consequences of immigration in Europe should obviously discourage this ill-inspired idea. It should have been enough for Americans to realise the danger towards the end of Obama’s second mandate. So confident was the ex President that H. Clinton would be elected, that he began to spell it all out, in a sinister, enigmatic way. 

Such is the scenario. Whilst the West treats Russia as the dangerous foe, using unlikely incidents leading to incoherent accusations to try to justify the argument, it allows the real wolves into the sheep pens. Paradoxically the western establishment is still not discouraged from believing that ‘failed multiculturalism’ will pave the way to global Utopia. 

So where does polarity now figure in this strange tragicomedy turn of events? Does it mean that as Russia has had the courage to dismiss communism as a failed ideology, and resuscitate its true, rich, cultural heritage and identity, the West is going the opposite way by undermining its true, rich, cultural heritage and identity, its root religion and inherent values by obsessively pushing an agenda that falsely advocates equality and cultural (or rather cultureless) conformity, using virtually the same ideology that eventually, ineluctably proved a disastrous failure for Russia? 

 It certainly seems so, and would be an incredible admission of western stupidity. But then isn’t democracy itself eventually destined to become its own enemy? We saw this in Egypt. It could happen in Europe and the USA as well, if the status quo is allowed to continue indefinitely. 

It’s a sign of the times when one looks towards the East with hope, during an epoch when one feels that the very foundations of one’s own identity are no longer truly represented, supported and defended. And when fear is used to control and oppress the people during a concocted in China pandemic, that has had no negative impact whatsoever regarding trade relations with Beijing and ‘the People’s Republic’. 

The Sovereign Supreme Pontiff is also used to illustrate how ideology (and polarity, if not also bipolarity) can even influence the Vatican. ‘Fraternity’ and ‘Equality’ (including LGBTQIAWXYZ) at the expense of Liberty, Christianity and true faith.

🎴 

Text and image © Mirino. November, 2020

 

Bonne entente

 

I believe in miracles. Life itself is a miracle, and those who disagree, can only be regressive, loveless fools. Love is also a miraculous phenomena. It has amazing curing powers, and can even determine premonitions. I know this because I have personally experienced them. 

When I was about nineteen I had an important operation in my right ear. Due to an inherent physical ailment called Otospongiosis that my mother also suffered from through her life, it was necessary for me to undergo an operation called Stapedectomy. It consists of removing the stapes of the middle ear and replacing them with a very simple prosthesis. In the sixties this operation was relatively new, and I was fortunate enough to be operated on by a certain Dr. Wright (In Middlesex Hospital, London) who was later knighted for his excellent surgical achievements in this field. However, at that time there was less certainty that a similar operation should be carried out on both ears within a limited period of time. 

In any case, I had other ideas and wished to travel and work on the continent, which I did. In the process I neglected the eventual requirement regarding my left ear, and my hearing on that side deteriorated. 

Out of ignorance and blind faith I entrusted this care, probably too late in any case, and following the advice of my ex father-in-law (GP) to an aesthetic surgeon in France, who also claimed to be able to perform the operation of Stapedectomy (on the side). He failed and I suffer greatly from tinnitus from my left ear also as a result. Apparently, according to an otolaryngologist, there are about twelve such failed cases like mine in Nice caused by this individual. Consequently he no longer has the right to practice, and it’s just as well. 

Since then I have naturally adapted to my particular condition, and assume the responsibility as well as the consequences without any regrets. Indeed, apart from tinnitus, I consider that an important degree of deafness can be advantageous. My Scottish mother used to say that if you can’t hear what a person is saying to you, it’s generally never really important. This I too have found to be quite true. In other words if someone really wants to communicate, they will find the means and make the necessary effort to do so. 

Hearing aids are constantly improving, and I continue to get by better than I ever imagined, thanks essentially to the operation of Dr. Wright, performed so well, many years ago. Yet, after thirty years of marriage, and of the necessary constant wearing of various hearing aids, I separated from my former wife and was later destined to meet another woman. 

The person I was destined to meet accepts me and loves me as I am. This was in fact a brand new experience for me. I in turn accept her and love her as she is. When we first met, almost twenty years ago now, another miracle took place. For two years following our meeting I no longer needed to wear a hearing aid in my right ear. How is it possible that after so many years of being obliged to rely on a hearing aid, I was suddenly free of this obligation? That this incredible experience lasted two years is indeed a miracle, and is proof of the powers of love and well being (amor vincit omnia). That it didn’t last longer than two years in no way diminishes its importance and its miraculousness. 

I am fortunate enough to have therefore benefitted from miracles. They apply to me in other aspects as well, but it would take far too long to also refer to such history here. 

Recently I had an appointment with another ear specialist who believes that he might be able to perform a miracle regarding my insensitive left ear. I had promised to visit him, but deep down, despite a degree of curiosity, I had no illusions. What put me off was what could to some extent be interpreted as a threat. He said that there was no doubt, it was absolutely factual, that my right ear would get worse. He obviously has no personal knowledge of me or my life’s trajectory, and has no real interest. Why should he have? Naturally it will get worse, and eventually I won’t hear anything at all because I will be ‘elsewhere’. But even ‘elsewhere’ wherever that might be, I sometimes wonder if the deafening sounds that roar in my head will go on and on relentlessly, even after life... 

Nevertheless, Picasso was right. ‘It takes time to be young’. Perhaps this is even truer for those like me, far up in the clouds, who have no conception of time. Is it old age that makes me believe that I’m getting younger, or at least that I’m not getting any older? Isn’t this yet another miracle? I think it is. 

Alice too, is immortal. When one has nothing left to prove, apart from, to oneself, then surely one has time to be young. 

Text © Mirino. (Photo by Bruno). October, 2020

Corona

‘L’effondrement d’un monde’, the collapse of a world, certainly the Western European world, conditioned by incoherent ideology, inane politics, absurd economics, and make-believe unity, all of which nature’s insidious creation has also shown to be ridiculously false, and should also render null and void.

The same applies to the East, to China’s constant lying, vainly trying to project an image of the world’s most perfect, paradoxical system- capitalist communism. The culmination of made in China is the Coronavirus itself. It symbolises the rotten core of a nation that has prospered too long on slavery, exploitation and monopoly.

When danger is imminent, instinctively one’s first concern is for the family, for loved ones. The family never loses its essential importance, despite the establishment’s constant efforts in demeaning its value. The same applies to nations, which are extensions of the family, and reflect cultural identity forged by history.

How irrational to claim that nations and nationalism, which is fatherland and patriotism, are obsolete. How senseless for a head of State to declare to an interlocutor- ‘your problem is that you believe a father is necessarily male'...

This terrible virus reveals how lost humanity has become. It highlights humanity’s weakness, Europe’s lamentable lack of solidarity. The uselessness of the EU and its overpaid mediocrity. It throws even more light on how Turkey under Erdogan deludes itself in believing in a tyrant who can stoop so low as to deprive Italy from the most basic necessities at a terribly crucial time of need. It reveals more than ever the total irresponsibility of obsessively implementing the ideology of mass immigration.

This cruel, indiscriminate, and appropriately- made in China- virus, has shocked the world, and in doing so has inevitably brought home realities and values that matter most. It has reminded us of who we are, and of what life and death really mean.

⛎

Text and image © Mirino. March, 2020 

Dark, idle thoughts

based on good faith

It springs to mind that Greta and her family should take extra care not to contract the dreaded virus. It would run against the grain of their man-made, climate change, doomsday theory.
God, or Nature, who and which in many ways amount to the same Almighty Power, always has the last word, and seems to have a vast array of surprises in store for man, woman, and the ‘progressive’, ambiguous kind. Such power is never short of imaginative innovations that are not necessary helpful in paving the way for the future of humanity.
Because of this, one is inclined to believe that there must be a reason for these unanticipated events. There is, after all, a reason for everything.

Greed for wealth and power has beguiled and corrupted too many who claim to represent us, to the detriment of more positive, essential values. The world has profited from contemporary, oriental slavery. It relies on China for virtually everything. Has the Chinese bubble reached the stage where it could finally burst?

The controversial multibillionaire has invested billions of dollars in trying to initiate a new, conform, global, social order. His imagined, neo-Marxist lubie of ‘Utopia’, where culture would no longer have any reason of being, as it implies individuality and identity. Nations and borders would no longer exist, so cultural identity, sovereignty, patriotism and patrimony would also, in theory, have no more reason of being. The only exception to the rule would be Islam, which is more a bellicose, expansionist, disciplined, but obsolete ideology than a religion. Perhaps the ‘elite’ delude themselves in believing that it would be easier to globally govern a disciplined, Islamic society, than to govern a more democratic, culturally diverse society.

Imagine then for a moment that the open border idiocy backfires mainly because the imposed, uncontrolled, illegal immigration inanity, instead of being theoretically destined to act as the social catalyser, becomes the most effective means of making sure that the Coronavirus is spread equally throughout the world, creating disastrous, global disorder.

The desired social conformity would thus be limited to humanity being uniformly infected with a virus that in too many cases has already proved itself to be indiscriminately lethal.
Some might even think that this could be part of an insidious plot to reduce populations, but that would be totally incoherent.
Should the over-rich, cynic, the megalomaniac misanthrope, who could have done so much good for the world, be deprived of his final bonus years because of contracting this dire infection, God forbid, he wouldn’t even have time to reflect on the utter folly of his lifetime obsession.

They who take themselves for Gods often learn the hard way that only divinity (if not art) is immortal throughout recorded history of civilisation. Self-proclaimed gods who abuse financial, or theocratical power, only leave a wake of misery behind them. They are as ephemeral as autumn leaves, but autumn leaves are far more glorious and memorable.

Text and images © Mirino. March, 2020