“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”
~ Oscar Wilde
Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World...
One of the predicaments that comes with living in a city like Buenos Aires, where your editor spends roughly half the year, is inspiration... no matter where one turns, it’s impossible to escape!
You meander to the seemingly innocuous ecoparque nearby, cranium blissfully empty, determined to indulge in none but the most flippant of reverie... only to discover a legion of classical-era statues gazing down their long Roman noses at you, eyes set in timeless stone, inviting you to recall the plight of the Vestal Virgins, the birth and eternal allure of Aphrodite, the Byzantine ruins brought from Trieste...
Even the bronze plaques carry the initials S.P.Q...B.A!
Still determined to while away a thoroughly thoughtless afternoon, devoid of gravitas and serious contemplation, you exit the park in disgust and, ignoring the magnificent equestrian statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, riding high above Plaza Italia, make a beeline for closeby Jardin Botánico de Carlos Thays (unaware, alas, that the eponymous French-Argentine was a student of the famous French landscape architect Édouard André.)
Uh, oh...
Art… For Goodness Sake
Barely have you wandered a dozen passūs down the proverbial garden path and your aspiration to intellectual idleness is again mercilessly thwarted, first by Ernesto Biondi’s magnificent Saturnalia in bronze... then Los Primeros Fríos by the Catalan sculptor Miguel Blay y Fábregas...and then Lola Mora’s Figura de mujer.
Shaken and somewhat perturbed, you make haste for the egress... only to encounter one of the five stunning Art Nouveau winter houses, or the spectacular greenhouse in glass and wrought iron... then you stumble on the Indicador Meteorológico (Weather Indicator) monument, designed by José Markovich and presented by the Austro-Hungarian Empire community for the Exposición Internacional del Centenario in 1910... and finally the Thays’ family residence, a grand, English style mansion built a generation before that.
Sweet Submission
Exasperated at last, you plonk your overwrought corpus on a nearby bench, hoping to rid your mind of all things Truth and Beauty related. You even try whistling a pop jingle or recalling a vacuous “joke” from Late Night television, but to no avail. Just then, your dear wife wanders over and, apparently oblivious to your miserable plight, casually muses aloud...
“Amazing to think that these trees, here in the garden’s Roman section, were the very same that Pliny the Younger had planted in his villa in the Apennine mountains... cypresses, poplars, and laurels…”
And then, breathing freely of the cool, fresh air, “Isn’t it just... inspiring?”
Observing her sweet countenance in the fading afternoon light, you finally submit to the harsh reality at hand.
“Yes, my dear. It truly is.”
And that, patient reader, brings us to this week’s Notes From the End of the World... in which we examine a Tale of Two Republics (including Javier Milei's 10-Point Plan for the liberation of Argentina) and how long-suffering citizens, from South America to Europe, are rising up against the Unequal Pigs that lord over them.
Please enjoy...
There’s plenty more to say about what we’ve been calling “The Greatest Political Experiment of Our Time”… especially now that the spark of liberty appears to have caught on across The West.
Tune in for more Notes From the End of the World, next week…
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
P.S. As always, a very special thanks to our Notes Members, whose generous support inspires the work you find in these very pages.
If you’re enjoying our content, but not already a member, please consider joining our growing community of contrarians, ne’re-do-wells and apolitical fringe-dwellers, right here…
In Pursuit of Idleness