The Olympic Spectacle

PROS:
-a sense of positivity, cohesion and inclusion among and within people, families, nations..

-a festival-like and exitement/celebration oriented atmosphere is created (because positive vibes can make a difference!)

CONS (just a few):
-a capitalist model of extreme competitiveness and commercialization of the event through sponsors, consumer products and commercials themselves we are exposed to inevitably in any form of olympic coverage

-an opening ceremony that had not been executed as such COULD have otherwise paid for so many better causes on a provincial, national, or international level i don't feel the need to list them...

-an elaborate presentation and artistic depiction of the birth of the world (the continental shift) was beautiful but oblivious to the multiple forms of decoposition, decay and death that is a direct effect of misplaced values and disconnectedness among human beings today (and therefore ironic)

-a light show of a stunning forest display when those dollars could have been spent on reforestation

-the advanced technology that came from valuable research dollars enabled the dazzling light display. This is yet more evidence of the "myth of progress" which has so poignantly been described in Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress.

-a total disregard of Vancouver's recent push to ban bottled water:

"Millions of bottles of water will be consumed during the Games in February, despite a vote last year by council to encourage use of municipal water and discourage the sale of bottled water, considered by the city to be a detriment to the environment."

-Vancouver Sun

So as I reflect on all of this after sharing the experience of watching the opening ceremony with others, spending a moment in our history together, I saw all of the honour, respect and energy being transferred. Not long ago my aunt was one of the olympic touch carriers near my hometown and we all gathered for a big family celebration I will never forget. I'm not anti-togetherness! but instead embracing unity while suggesting a very organic and different, humanitarian and eco-friendly approach to the olympics. It has such a massive potential to be alchemized into a force that does good on all fronts! Non? I noticed that this poem expresses some of the sentiment I an attempting to share!

Philosophia Perennis

by Anne Waldman

I turned: quivering yellow stars in blackness
I wept: how speech may save a woman
The picture changes & promises the heroine
That nighttime & meditation are a mirage
To discuss pro & contra here is mute
Do I not love you, day?
A pure output of teleological intentions
& she babbles, developing a picture-theory of language
Do I not play the delicate game of language?
yes, & it is antecedent to the affairs of the world:
The dish, the mop, the stove, the bed, the marriage
& surges forth the world in which I love
I and I and I and I and I and I, infinitely reversible
Yet never secure in the long morning texture
A poor existing woman-being, accept her broken heart
& yet the earth is divinity, the sky is divinity
The nomads walk & walk.