Barbarians

Just a brief post tonight. First, to send you to a new website, lilypoint.org, where you can read more about what is going to become a dominant topic in the life of Point Roberts: The Stanton Development. That, and a poem.

This is the kind of development that shows up everywhere. And those who are most affected but are not going to be making (or potentially making) money from it are likely to be very unhappy about it. Nevertheless, it is hard to stop developments of this kind if there is sufficient money behind them. Which is not to say that there is bribery or chicanery of any kind...just that money does tend to make the world go round when it comes to property development.

In addition, there is an element of NIMBYism about it all. If people need million dollar houses at the beach, they should go to some other beach. OUR beach is too precious for such living. Even though there are plenty of million dollar houses that have been built in the last decade on or in sight of our Boundary Bay or our Georgia Strait. Not a hundred, certainly, but maybe fifty. And if fifty, why not a hundred?

If they ask me, I'll vote no. But so far, I'm not at all sure that I could defend that position. It can't be enough just to say that I don't like it, don't think it is change for the better, or even to say that this will somehow destroy the environment when all that went before may have been equally dubious. More to learn as we go. And now for the poem:

Waiting for the Barbarians
By Constantine Cavafy (1864-1933), translated by Edmund Keeley

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

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

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete 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,
and 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 come forward 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 restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.