“Pretty soon my five years in the Senate will be coming to an end. On a trip to Mexico, the U.S. Ambassador was introducing the Senator and said, “Everything of any significance to the life of our nation goes through the eye of the needle of the Senate. So, it’s my honor to say we have a Senator in the house.” That was the moment when I think I first realized who the Senators really are — they are the guardians of our republic. Caretakers…” Read the rest here.
The Tuareg are deep desert Berbers, who live in the Sahara. They have been there since pre-history, probably from days when the Sahara was green and lush. They believe that they are the original Egyptians who built the pyramids, pushed out by the Arabs to first build their Garamantian empire and then take refuge in the desert. They are matriarchal; the men are veiled. The tomb of Tin Hinan, their great queen, from the 400s, was “found” by the French in Algeria. She united the clans into the first great Tuareg kingdom. Their language is Afro-Asiatic, (the mother of six language groups, including the Semitic) and might even be the original. Their alphabet is ancient Phoenician. https://www.artpal.com/joeldhirst?i=319328-36
I also wrote a novel about the Tuareg and the 2012 civil war (which has since restarted). If you buy the painting, I’ll throw in a signed copy of the novel:
Be honest sometimes you feel like this. You can purchase it here, if you want: https://www.artpal.com/joeldhirst/?i=319328-41
The center of Timbuktu is a flat sandy area called Sankore Place, under the Sankore Mosque which used to host the famous Sankore University 700 years ago. There, 20,000 people came from all over the Muslim world to study using the Socratic method. They have an epic library, 500,000 manuscripts from philosophers and medicine and astronomy to cooking and religious books. It is said that once a famous Islamic scholar came to Timbuktu to teach, but couldn’t pass the entrance exam to be a teacher and had to go to Fez in Morocco for four years of remedial studies before being allowed to return.
Timbuktu is now again besieged by jihadis, as it has been off and on for centuries. It is a perilous place to go, and very, very poor. But if you have your histories and your stories, you are never totally destitute.
You can buy it here, if you want: https://www.artpal.com/joeldhirst
OK, some thoughts on a Sunday morning in Spring: here goes. I’m returning this site to public viewing. Mostly as another place for people to find my novels, books, and paintings, or to give updates. I took all my previous posts and pushed them to drafts, for now — save my two most viral (found below): The Suicide of Venezuela and There Once Was a Dream That Was Rome: because Venezuela’s suicide continues in its 3rd iteration and our dream of Rome goes on. Some day I may republish my other stuff, or not: I wanted something fresh. I don’t plan to write much; I don’t really have a lot else to say. If my words were going to change the world, after 15+ years of writing, they would have.
I did finish my memoirs. They aren’t published yet, but they will be eventually (I’ve started looking for a publisher, if you have any ideas or are interested message me). I’ve titled them “Uneven Roads”. They are my stories about epic battles against foes in the dark places mired in misery, hic sunt dracones. About my motivations. About what it was like to work at the height of the American world order, and why it failed.
I am still painting a lot, the colors bring me great joy. You can see them on the paintings page. You can buy them on the artpal link — if you want one but can’t afford it message me and we’ll work something out. Same with books. Those, I think, are my lasting works. When everything returns to dust and people have forgotten my name, somebody will stumble across a colorful old painting at a swap meet or a novel about West Africa or Armenia in an old used bookstore, thick with dust, and will think to themselves, “I wonder who did this?” And that will have to be enough.
I am taking a break from writing. I’ve been focusing on painting; the world is drowning in words. I want to see if some colors can make anything any better. My last painting was one of Chicago, trying to capture the Wells Street Canyon. Since then, I have gone silent. But here they are, for posterity:
Still not writing much. But here’s some paintings:
Last time I saw MCM was in Rosario, Argentina during a Freedom Foundation event with Nobel Prize winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. Who would have thought MCM would go on to win her own prize. It was very nice to see her again, congratulate her for her award and give her the painting I painted for her, for encouragement, while she was in exile. She uses it a backdrop now for events and interviews — it hangs in the place where her golden Nobel medal should, which is both an honor and sad at the same time.
“There was once a dream that was Rome, you could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish.” Marcus Aurelius, ‘The Gladiator’.
Republics are funny things. They are resilient; not brittle or sclerotic like we are told but bending and morphing amazingly without breaking and shattering upon the winds of invention and the changing tides of culture. Our marvelous spontaneous order, millions of free people making free decisions, responding not to the question “Who will let me?” but instead “Who will stop me?” They are hard to control, too decentralized for those who seek power to find that sacred fulcrum which would allow them to seize the state, maneuvering the ship by enslaving the citizens-become-oarsmen. “If you are facing in the right direction, all you have to do is keep on walking in order to reach your dreams,” we are often told, music playing softly in the background. Unless we are being marched to the gulag. “Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood; we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we…” as Jean Rostand said.
Which is what make our republics also tremendously weak; people crave authority and tend to think in collectivities; part of our DNA perhaps, where we consider often the ‘pack’ and seek protection in numbers from our predators. Or we ourselves strive to become the predators in humanity’s endless efforts to impose our own ‘sacred values’ upon others. And this becomes existential when the pillars of our republic stop serving the purpose for which they were created, losing themselves in their passions as they align their interests with others ‘because it’s an emergency’ – cue our famed fourth estate.
Perhaps this is why republics have never lasted long: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage,” said Alexander Tytler. It’s a sad irony that a true democracy, a true republic generates such tremendous prosperity in excess that it produces a natural ‘spillover’ (usually in the form of entitlements through taxation) which allows the idiots to conspire and the miscreants to concoct great acts of national sabotage.
“There once was a dream that was Rome.” I often return to the Gladiator – the story always gives me chills; “A general who becomes a slave. A slave who becomes a gladiator. A gladiator who defies an emperor”. A story of sacrifice and honor and suffering. There’s something rebellious about Americans; something which does not suffer too great authority nor allow ourselves to be told, “It is not your place to challenge”. Because challenge we will – and we do. Product perhaps of our wide open spaces, our ancient history of revolt, and the knowledge that returns on life will be as great or as small as the efforts we invest.
But I am also wary. Hugo Chavez in an interview, back when he was still among us, was asked to identify his favorite movie. “The Gladiator,” he responded, much to my shock and dismay. Proving that the desire to authority often takes many paths both straight and torturous, and those who can do the greatest harm rarely see themselves as their own republic’s ‘Commodus’.
Joel D. Hirst's Blog 