moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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(and my Wish List)

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Living in a rectilinear Klein Bottle  
May I draw readers' attention to one of this year's winners of the Australian Institute of Architecture awards, the Klein Bottle beach house on the Mornington Peninsula, outside Melbourne (Victoria). It's described here [Sydney-Melbourne rivalry? Phfft! Nah. Doesn't happen these days.] as “some metallic fungi-form zeppelin flung from outer space” (I'd interpolate 'geometric' or 'rectilinear' somewhere, not many curves; nor, in fact, my image of a Klein bottle. Memorable, however.)

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 3:21 pm

 
Songs of Love & Death  

From SubVerse, February 6, 2006
St. James Infirmary Blues
www.subverse.org/ 2006/ 02/ 06/ st-james-infirmary

This is a haunting song. … It’s a song about death. It’s about a man seeing the woman he loves stretched out dead on the hospital slab. But those horns rising and rising…. It’s a song about release. A song about acceptance. A song about drinking life in deeply, in all its pain and unfairness. … there are many covers of this song — a good 33 different versions … from Oing Boingo to Joe Cocker to The Dirty Dozen Brass Band …

Several mp3 links are on the linked page. The words & music slip, slide, merge & meld from person to person. It's entered the bloodstream of humanity's music, adapting.

Labels: mourning, mp3, music

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 12:32 pm

 
A Birthday Poem for the Dead; Testament  
From Bluejo's Journal, 14th October 2008:

She dances golden, in a drift of leaves,
she dances stark, skeletal, in the dark,
she dances in a cloud of solid green,
she dances with her branch and leaf and bark.

She dances with the birds, the wind, the street,
with child in stroller, with a hurrying nun,
with gardners, shoppers, lovers as they meet,
she dances, as we dance, around the sun.>

My late father's birthday. He now is "Rolled round in earths diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees".
Made my Last Will & Testament today. At least a first best draft of it (signed, sealed, witnessed). Avoiding for once my besetting sin of Making The Perfedt The Enemy of The Good, I settled for a simple, cut-down version which at least gives a start, and will avoid for my survivors the hideous mess I was landed in by Chris' death intestate.

Labels: anniversaries, legalities, mourning, poetry

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 1:40 am

 
In the Spiral of History  
From Lawyers, Guns & Money, on Israel, the USA and the Roman Republic:
Simply because something must happen does not mean that it will happen.
Settlements, Bailouts, and the Roman Republic
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
lefarkins.blogspot.com/ 2008/ 09/ simply-because-something-must-happen.html

The Roman Republic faced a series of internal crises that were evident to all and that desperately required political solution; moreover, the contours of such solution were evident to most of the relevant political players, and in the abstract were achievable ... The institutions of the Roman Republic, solid enough for five hundred years, were insufficient to actually achieving the necessary solutions. In the face of crises that demanded solution, the Roman Republic crumbled, because the institutional structure created vested interests and veto points that prevented the achievement of any solution. The Republic could not save itself because its very structure prevented it from doing the things that were necessary to reform. Almost no one wanted this outcome, but no one could stop it from happening. It's not that people are stupid (although many are) or dishonest (although many are); its that the institutions make certain outcomes difficult to achieve.

and in the comments

Rob good post and good summation of the political situation in the Roman Republic in its last years. One interpretation of Julius Caesar's motives for bringing down the Republic, was that he didn't believe the existing political system could continue administering the Roman provinces. A good part of his career was spent in various postings in different provinces, in Bithnyia, Spain, northern Italy, and of course Gaul. So he had a better grasp of what the situation was like in the provinces than his political opponents, many of whom (like Cicero) hardly ever set foot outside of Rome their whole lives.
Henry | 09.30.08 - 11:49 pm | #

You might also make an analogy to August 1914. The Great Men of Europe certainly knew what should have happened and they knew how to make it happen. But it did not happen.

James E. Powell | 10.01.08 - 12:25 am

Labels: history, politics

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 1:25 pm

 
Poem: Right there on edge on mountain lip see cloud  
From Making Light's anecdotal thread, Pearls of great price, not to be devalued #268:

Right there on edge on mountain lip see cloud
swift move through sky, through steady clearest blue,
with every second become something new;
voices within declare you have been cowed
not knowing yet the force that is allowed
nor proper motion ready for its cue.
On neither side is the eternal view
but every sound right here is sharp and loud.
So you were eager then to find a space
just for yourself, and had so much to prove
and so much time; or so it was you thought
being a fool. Now there is little grace
for you to get into the rightful groove
and the robed judge has come into the court.

Fragano Ledgister October 05, 2008, 01:35 PM:
nielsenhayden.com/ makinglight/ archives/010613.html#298677

Labels: poems

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 12:39 pm

 
Life in a Temperate Climate: Autumn  
From Little Blog In The Big Woods :
The Last Dance (Wed, 24th Sep, 2008)
littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/ 2008/ 09/ last-dance.html

The turn of the year
There's a special autumn event I look for every year. It doesn't have a name.

Actually, I've never met anyone else who has seen it, or heard of it. A fact that makes me think, and wonder if that should worry me. Us.

It's quite a spectacular thing, when it happens. Spectacular as it is, though, it goes unnoticed; partly because at the best, it can only last for a half an hour. No more. And it doesn't happen every year, either.

It used to happen most years, at least in part. Now it happens less. That worries me, too ...

Repeated from 17-Sep-2007 (ittlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/ 2007/ 09/ turn-of-year.html)

Labels: nature, writing

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 1:17 pm