What I found particularly interesting was the speculation that the event caused long term climate change. The writer says the 1250 to 1400 timeframe saw the collapse of three major South East Asian states: Pagan in Burma, Angkor in Cambodia and Dai Viet in Vietnam. The implication being that climate change led to famine and economic and social collapse. This is not something you will find in most of the history books, but it seems to me that it would not be difficult to find archeological and textual evidence that would support the theory.
There is also the probability that a South East Asian Pompei lies beneath the lava on Lombok: in fact it is likely that there are one or two scattered along the Ring of Fire.
So many opportunities and I'm too poor and too old to persue them.
Damn!
There was something on the news about loneliness this morning. A topic that Douglas Coupland says clears a room faster than religion or politics.
The Government is going to put a stop to it. God help us!
What was interesting was that older people living alone in Sweden were less lonely that those in Southern Europe living with their families.
I suppose that confirms what many of us already know, that we are at our loneliest when with other people, and one can only truly appreciate life when on one's own, or in retrospect. Sociability is mostly about creation and competition, and if you are not united making something, concrete or abstract, then conflict seems almost inevitable.
With the development of the internet it seems there is little cause for lonliness, because loneliness arises mainly out of boredom and today there is no excuse for boredom; unless it is the enforced boredom of work, school or societal pliering.
I was reminded of E M Forster's The Machine Stops, a rather lame reply to the stories of H G Wells. There is something puritanical in its fear of technology, the idea that the 'real' world is somehow better than a virtual or imagined world.
Not that I do not enjoy the experience of moving through nature, forests, mountains, deserts and coral reefs, great cities with all their crowds and culture.
No, it is only that solitude offers the only way to escape the everyday, the mundane, that bruised waking up, day after day.
Surprisingly Henry Rollins said,
Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.
Torch carrier for the Beat Generation perhaps he was thinking of the Cold Mountain poems
or, less likely, of Rilke;
What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside of yourself and meet no one for hours -- that is what you must be able to attain.
Well, I have rabbit curry to eat, books to read, films to watch, countless ideas to explore online, no whisky but two cigarettes left.
On a grey autumn evening its good to be alone.