Anchoritism

In Pursuit of Trivial Failures

July 5, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I checked my Fitbit today. A watch that spies on me. A gift. I’ve been happy to have it because it counts my steps, monitors my sleep patterns and tracks my average resting heart rate. It even provides the time of day on demand. Which isn’t that often because I have an internal clock that’s reliable to within a few minutes.

I’ve been confidently supplying my bio-data to the Fitbit corporation since December 2018. They used to be known as Healthy Metrics Research Inc which tells you what they set out to do.

This day 2015 – The Butterfly Garden, Vannes © Simon Robinson

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A Novel or is it?

June 29, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

The past is done. I can’t change the fact the first president of Israel was born in Ireland. No more than I change that he was born on the island of Ireland as distinct from being born in a unified nation of Ireland that does not exist. He appears to have taken troubles with him, created by a mitosis that produced two daughter troubles.

The future may not be done but it seems that while the die is cast, those who will die are never finalised. I cannot change the fact that Israel will annex more Palestinian lands from the West Bank this week. Teflon Netanyahu has vowed it. Entrepreneur Trump supports it. Some agencies have warned that this is a war crime. Is a war crime wilful if such opinions are ignored? Is a crime during time of war different to an act of war?

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Alamo

June 27, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Once upon a time I felt like a surrealist sitting in front of The Alamo. The grackles were coming to roost in the live oaks, squawking and whistling and chirping. The crepuscular light also brought hordes of bats who appeared from the west and I wondered why no one worried about a rain of droppings.

I missed the photo of a lifetime. A woman walked past in a full black hijab over an iridescent blue burka. She crossed the street in front of an illuminated Cinderella-themed wedding carriage drawn by two white horses driven by a mock lonesome cowboy.

A Twighlight Blurry Storm Coming Cinderella Lonesome Cowboy snap on my phone

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Bolivia III

June 26, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

The lake has gone. And with it, an oral culture that lasted thousands of years has evaporated too. Lake Poopó is no more. 3680 metres above sea level, 1000 sq km of water has become a story of evaporation, desiccation and devastation.

A lasting memory is the shimmering pink line at the furthest edges of my sight. The heat haze rising from the salar distorted the lines of flamingoes diligently feeding on crustaceans whose pigmented carotenoids tinted their feathers pink. An earthly aurora andinus is gone. So too is the oral culture of honking birds that pre-dated the arrival of the humans that silenced them.

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Plenty of Times II

June 24, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Gamma ray bursts are flashes of gamma rays that hit our planet quite regularly. They can last for fractions of seconds or minutes. They can be detected from enormous cosmic distances.

Back in April 2010, a satellite detected a 10 second GRB burst. That’s ten seconds of gamma rays that we now know travelled 13 .7 billion years to reach us from a supernova in a galaxy that occurred about 630 million years after the Big Bang.

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Locked-Out, Locked-In

June 23, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

As of 2016, we’d produced over 320 million tonnes of plastic and there was estimated to be 165 million tonnes of plastic circulating in seas and oceans. Not good considering plastics have only been around since 1950. Imagine how bad it will be if 320 has become 600 million tonnes by 2030. Will the seas then hold as much plastic as we have ever produced today? Will we be locked-out of sterile seas, lakes, rivers and canals?

Wapping River Slime.
Compelling scene found while walking the Thames in 2019.

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Anchoritism

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