Take care of yourself first

ToiletteDelicious

“I went to collect the few personal belongings which…I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.” Colette

“The world is very lovely, and it’s very horrible–and it doesn’t care about your life or mine or anything else.”
Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

“He’d never seen anything in a cat’s face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest” Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“After the attrition of thirty humdrum years, he no longer loved her for her human qualities. He still found her attractive because she was as self-possessed as a cat. Observed or unobserved, wherever she was, she behaved the same, with the same rhythm and attention to detail, a graceful selfishness, true to herself, if not to him.

He was as absorbed in her as she was in herself. Watching her brushing her hair, applying ineffable creams to her face and body, swiping her tablet as if it were a mirror to her other, secret selves, or eating her small helpings of balanced meals at the same table as him without once looking at him, he felt he barely existed. He was not offended. He admired her independence and indifference to other people’s petty jealousies. When she came home in the small hours, without telling him where she had been, he knew better than to ask. She was her ‘own damned cat.'”
Noëlle Mackay, Human Rites

“Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect” George Sand, Indiana

Self-isolation? No problem

The Cardboard Throne photograph by Martin Hübscher ©2018

The Power of Loneliness or The Loneliness of Power? I think it’s the former.

There’s a value in social distance and self-reflection that we humans have been overlooking.

We are not all herd animals, and the pressure to conform has been damaging.

Self-isolation is the least of our national problems at the moment.

This cat is king, and he’s not getting palliated by any crackpot, incompetent, nihilistic human government.

He will live and die as he wants. A free cat.

 

Silent, upon a peak in Darien

LFT on steps2020-03-01 at 14.44.31

photo © 2020 Martin Hübscher Photography

Despite his soul-piercing look of reproach, hope springs eternal while King Cat surveys
the ruins of his kingdom left by human occupation.

Destiny of the People


Photo by Martin Hübscher [EU National resident and paying taxes in GB]
© 2018 MHPhotography

Cat © 2018 CAT Citizen of Nowhere/Everywhere

The Levee of the Great High King

The Universe, O my brothers, is flinging wide its portals for the Levee of the GREAT HIGH KING.
Thomas Carlyle, THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

After the attrition of thirty humdrum years, he no longer loved her for her human qualities. He still found her attractive because she was as self-possessed as a cat. Observed or unobserved, wherever she was, she behaved the same, with the same rhythm and attention, a graceful selfishness, true to herself, if not to him.

He was as absorbed in her as she was in herself. Watching her brushing her hair, applying ineffable creams to her face and body, swiping her tablet as if it were a mirror to her other, secret selves, or eating her small helpings of balanced meals at the same table as him without once looking at him, he felt he barely existed. He was not offended. He admired her independence and indifference to other people’s petty jealousies. When she came home in the small hours, without telling him where she had been, he knew better than to ask.
She was her own damned cat.

On balance, he suspected that she wasn’t having sex with anyone else. She felt entitled to go where she pleased and would despise him for thinking badly of her.
Honi soit qui mal y pense. Showing his age, he thought of the ancient chivalric motto as translated by Sellar and Yeatman in his grandfather’s bent and faded paperback copy of
1066 And All That. He murmured it aloud: “Honey, your silk stocking’s hanging down”.
Though she barely listened to a word he said at the best of times,
allusions and non sequiturs, messages from the spaces in between, were catnip to her,  and she smiled at him.
Noëlle Mackay, HUMAN RITES

….anything self-conscious is lousy.
You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.
Ray Bradbury

Well, it all comes to this, there’s no use trying to live in other people’s opinions. The only thing to do is to live in our own.
L.M. Montgomery, EMILY CLIMBS

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF KING CAT

The Loneliness of Power/The Power of Loneliness

Loneliness of Power

Photo © Martin Hübscher Photography

via The Cardboard Throne

The photographer is an EU National, married to a British citizen, residing and working in the barely United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and wondering every day if he is going to be deported.
He also love cats.
The cat has Freedom of Movement that no mere human can take away.
#BrexitHostileEnvironment

The unspeakable in full pursuit of the untenable

Stealing-Off-Gillray
Stealing off;—or—prudent Secesion by James Gillray, etching, 1798.
Image source: Wikipedia

OR

Unreasonable Withdrawal; –  A Brexit minister realizes that the EU Withdrawal Bill
is a mistake, 2017

The problem for a Government on the run screaming FAKE NEWS is the inherent danger of self-incrimination. As politics is all about presentation, using the FN plea is an admission of incompetence, at best.

In this meta-weary world, we have got used to the duality of Truth in the modern democratic State. The wonder of Trump is not that a lying, racist, pussy-grabbing bully was elected, but that so many people don’t care that the leader of western democracy is a lying, racist, pussy-grabbing bully.  The panto villain and the demagogue are indistinguishable.

The confusion in the UK over animal sentience confirms that Fake News, not Real News, is the radar for Zeitgeist – it reveals the conscious and unconscious fears of both the public and its rulers.

It is unreasonable to argue, as Zac Goldsmith did, that there is no need to integrate the EU’s specific recognition of animal sentience into English law on the grounds that “self-evidently animals are sentient”. Self-evident truths are not legally binding. Like unalienable human rights, they need protection in law.

The first indisputable fact is that MPs voted to exclude the clause regarding animal sentience from the EU Withdrawal Bill.

The second fact is that, for a couple of days, Leavers and Remainers, including Conservative voters, were united in believing that the Brexit Government was capable of denying that animals feel pain and emotion. We were shocked, but not surprised. That’s not a vote of confidence in either the Government or Brexit. We believed that we were seeing the unspeakable in full pursuit of the untenable.

Self-evidence is distressingly nebular, too often confused with subjective truth. It is not self-evident to everyone that Brexit, and specifically this Government, is against the national interest.

The problem for resolute Remainers is to prove the link between the Government’s incoherence and the sinister consequences of Brexit itself. Certain unalienable rights are already under threat. The damage to the economy and quality of life of the average working person is in plain sight.

We marvel at the desperation of asylum seekers risking their futures in unseaworthy boats – and that is exactly what the prosperous UK is doing by getting on board unfeasible Brexit. Self-evidently, leaving the EU is wasting money better spent on NHS, housing and education; it will not solve our deteriorating social problems, or strengthen workers’ rights, any more than it will improve animal welfare.

Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa 1818-1819 Musée du Louvre, Paris. Image source: WGA

In the Brexit shipwreck there are still absolute truths to cling to, but we are running out of time. The Referendum result is not binding. Article 50 is reversible.

We should be uniting against a Government that is betraying the ideals of Leavers, and surpassing the worst fears of Remainers, a Government so incompetent that it cannot control its own wrecking ball.

Truthfully, Brexit must be stopped, for the Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness of everyone in our country.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti Bad Government and the Effects of Bad Government on the City Life 1338-40
Fresco, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Image source: Wikipedia