street art

No Alternative (Unless Imaginary)

September 15, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “I came to the festival for love,” by user id-iom on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). This is a photo of a work of street art, one of a so-called “mixtape project”: the artist (who is the photographer) has created various images on rectangles of slate — to the back of each of which s/he has mounted a CD of a mixtape of one sort or another. When finished, the artworks are (were?) simply placed out in public settings, where they may be freely collected by any passerby who wants them. See the complete album here. For a little more information, see the project’s Facebook page, which (I think!) is publicly accessible.]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

Rapids

Fall’s leaves are redder than
spring’s flowers, have no pollen,
and also sometimes fly, as the wind
schools them out or down in shoals
or droves: though I
have not been here long, I can
look up at the sky at night and tell
how things are likely to go for
the next hundred million years:
the universe will probably not find
a way to vanish nor I
in all that time reappear.

(A. R. Ammons [source])

…and:

…unfortunately, it’s true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter.

(Charles Yu [source])

…and:

On the Outskirts of Work

In the middle of work
we start longing fiercely for wild greenery,
for the Wilderness itself, penetrated only
by the thin civilization of the telephone wires.

*

The moon of leisure circles the planet Work
with its mass and weight.—That’s how they want it.
When we are on the way home the ground pricks up its ears.
The underground listens to us via the grassblades.

*

Even in this working day there is a private calm.
As in a smoky inland area where a canal flows:
THE BOAT appears unexpectedly in the traffic
or glides out behind the factory, a white vagabond.

*

One Sunday I walk past an unpainted new building
that stands in front of a grey wet surface.
It is half finished. The wood has the same light color
as the skin on someone bathing.

*

Outside the lamps the September night is totally dark.
When the eyes adjust, there is faint light
over the ground where large snails glide out
and the mushrooms are as numerous as the stars.

(Tomas Tranströmer [source])

[Read more…]

At Sea

June 6, 2014 by John 3 Comments

[Image: “It Wasn’t Unfulfillment, But Rather Conscious Decisions on Their Path to Happiness,”
a photo by user “skrubu” (Pekka Nikrus) on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons license.
For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then one of them looks over at the other and says, “What the hell is water?”

(David Foster Wallace [source])

…and (same link as above):

If the multiverse idea is correct, then the historic mission of physics to explain all the properties of our universe in terms of fundamental principles — to explain why the properties of our universe must necessarily be what they are — is futile, a beautiful philosophical dream that simply isn’t true. Our universe is what it is simply because we are here. The situation can be likened to that of a group of intelligent fish who one day begin wondering why their world is completely filled with water. Many of the fish, the theorists, hope to prove that the cosmos necessarily has to be filled with water. For years, they put their minds to the task but can never quite seem to prove their assertion. Then a wizened group of fish postulates that maybe they are fooling themselves. Maybe, they suggest, there are many other worlds, some of them completely dry, some wet, and everything in between.

Some of the fish grudgingly accept this explanation. Some feel relieved. Some feel like their lifelong ruminations have been pointless. And some remain deeply concerned. Because there is no way they can prove this conjecture. That same uncertainty disturbs many physicists who are adjusting to the idea of the multiverse. Not only must we accept that basic properties of our universe are accidental and uncalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes. But we have no conceivable way of observing these other universes and cannot prove their existence. Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove.

(Alan Lightman [source])

…and (italicized portion):

Early one morning words were missing. Before that, words were not. Facts were, faces were. In a good story, Aristotle tells us, everything that happens is pushed by something else. Ond day someone noticed there were stars but no words, why? I’ve asked a lot of people, I think it is a good question. Three old women were bending in the fields. What use is it to question us? they said. Well it shortly became clear that they knew everything there is to know about the snowy fields and the bluegreen shoots and the plant called ‘audacity’ that poets mistake for violets. I began to copy out everything that was said. The marks construct an instant of nature gradually, without the boredom of a story. I emphasize this. I will do anything to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.

(Anne Carson [source, but quoted here and elsewhere])

[Read more…]

Just (at First) Beyond the Edge of Understanding

October 2, 2012 by John 1 Comment

Apropos of nothing, except that it’s very cool, here’s the project known as MÖBIUS, a “stop-motion sculpture” set up in Federation Square, Melbourne, in May 2011. They describe it this way:

MÖBIUS is a sculpture that can be configured into many cyclical patterns and behave as though it is eating itself, whilst sinking into the ground.

If you’re curious how it works, see the Web site of its builder,”an award winning art and design practice” named ENESS. (There’s a “making-of” video a little over halfway down the page.)