You have to walk without me today, since I am busy tackling the jungle of weeds that pretends to be my garden. But my very happy dog will keep you company on your sojourn along the beaches and coast of the Pacific around the Southern border of Oregon and Northern parts of California.

The coast never fails to impress with its reminders of the power of nature – the swells, the dangerous rocks,

the provision of food if you know where to find it (and who to share it with.)

Vulture and gulls working on a big fish….

Nor does it hesitate to impress with its beauty – the colorization alone of rocks and oceans, scotch broom in bloom on the surrounding hills, the shades of water at different depths.

People, as always, can’t help but leave signs of their existence.

Geese, on the other hand, are forever on the lookout for the existence of others – thus their role as guardians of the gates during the Roman empire.

One lonely goose on top….

Which brings me to today’s poem that I had linked to in an overly optimistic blog not so long ago. For today, the association between the Barbarians at the gates and the guardian geese prompted me to offer it again, in its full sarcastic splendor. How it currently applies to all of us, needs, I fear, no further elaboration.

Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.


Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.


Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.


Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.


Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.


Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.


Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

by C.P. Cavafy

Here is some fitting Debussy.