No Ado About Something

Nothing Neither Way

LakeSlake

René Magritte, Hegel's Holiday, 1958

When going to bed, I used to have a glass of water on the bedside table in case I got thirsty, and one glass without water in case I didn't.  

Now I'll have one 3/4s full when I'm feeling lucky, Punk, and 1/3 empty when I've given into my pessimiStreak.

* * * * *

Last night I dreamt I was Emma Peel from The Avengers.  I'd bought a large house in Oxford, which was being remodelled in parts.  My mission involved hiding a micro-camera under the umbrella (similar to the one in the painting), attached to one of the metal bits in the frame, go out on a specific rainy day, & meet the object of my underhanded, spying, ways.  

The builders who were working on the house, however, started to move the bed where the microcamera was hidden, and I could no longer find it.

Why can't it rain in lake form, instead of millions of drops everywhere?  The rain in lake form would last a few seconds and no umbrella would be needed.  But that'd mean no Magritte paintings featuring an umbrella.

Remorse Code

Salvador Dalì, Remorse or Sunken Sphinx, 1931

W.B. Yeats

Breasal the Fisherman 

Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords,
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.

Before & After

René Magritte, The Lovers, 1928

Bonnard, L'homme et la femme, 1900

NamEmanate

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, Paracelsus

Many books mentioning Paracelsus also cite him as the origin of the word "bombastic"* to describe his often arrogant speaking style, which the following passage illustrates:

I am Theophrastus, and greater than those to whom you liken me; I am Theophrastus, and in addition I am monarcha medicorum and I can prove to you what you cannot prove...I need not don a coat of mail or a buckler against you, for you are not learned or experienced enough to refute even a word of mine...As for you, you can defend your kingdom with belly-crawling and flattery. How long do you think this will last?...Let me tell you this: every little hair on my neck knows more than you and all your scribes, and my shoe buckles are more learned than your Galen and Avicenna, and my beard has more experience than all your high colleges.

— Paracelsus, Selected Writings

*Boring accuracy:  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origin of the word "bombastic" is "bombast", an old term for cotton stuffing, rather than a play on Paracelsus's middle name, Bombastus.~~Wikipedia

Toyen With Idea(l)s

Marie Čermínová Toyen, Messages de la forêt, 1936

This actually happened to me once, but because I am not so wise and not so near a real forest, instead of an owl I had a pigeon dive onto my head and dig its claws into my skull, as I walked home from the Champ de Mars, still walking on the gravelly paths, but so near the pavement.

A few days before that happened, I dreamt an eagle or hawk or another menacing flying predator was about to attack my face, coming in the living room window as I slept.

So when I saw this painting for the first time in the Dark Romanticism exhibit in the Orsay (l'Ange du Bizarre), I knew the feeling it conveyed and the idea Toyen played with in it.

Quite apart from that, the painting itself is pretty exceptional, the contrast of this shade of blue, usually so soothing and here suddenly menacing, in the dark background... the disembodied head of a woman, head claimed by nature's "wisdom".

I like it loadsly.    

I looked up Toyen's paintings/drawings after I saw this one, was v impressed by some of them, and wondered why she's not mentioned in the same breath as Miro' and Dalì and Ernst, Tanguy and Picasso.  Well, she is now.

Apt

Technopark, Winterthur, Switzerland

After months away, I've no excuse other than I had nothing interesting to write about.  Rather, I did, but couldn't find a voice to give to it.  I had time, but not enough; I had ideas, but not good enough. And today, as my bathroom gets stripped bare, its walls grated, its tiles replaced, I have time, but no silence.

Some things are things unto themselves: ideas or events.

The ones which are in-between, those which are woven into the mediocrity of daily life are harder to treat by 99.999999999999% of people who make an attempt. 

Graters, hammers, sanding paper, repetitive movements, a weak cloud of thin dust.  

I have heard many people say it isn't what one writes about, but how one does it.  "Style," said Céline, "comes once or twice a century, if that.  Everyone has a story, but can everyone tell it in an interesting way?"  I wonder how many writers could write about having their bathroom redone and keep the reader turning the pages.  I wonder if this can be done at all in a way that doesn't quickly become pompous and overdescriptive, that doesn't turn into a badly written caricaturish "remake" of Proust?

Because at some point, fairly early in a text about a topic such as this, one would have to go entirely into metaphorical language, or it'd turn into a manual, or a text in some DIY remodelling publication.

If I wanted to do it, the first thing I'd have to do would be to learn the vocabulary of tools and machines, of substances that end up on walls and tiles, and the different verbs to signal this or that action.  That, alone, would require more time than it'd take me to write the text itself, most likely.

DocuMentality

Adam Curtis - All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace 2/3 - The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts - Subs Español Span from avefenix1954 on Vimeo.

Adam Curtis - All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace 2/3 - The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts

I've been watching his documentaries recently and finding them all of exceptional quality.  This episode is specially relevant.

Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere!

Raze, Reza

 (Edu Lobo / Ruy Guerra / Norman Gimbel)

GlobalEyes

Filho de imigrantes russos casado na Argentina com uma pintora judia, 

casou-se pela segunda vez com uma princesa africana no México.

Música hindú contrabandeada por ciganos poloneses faz sucesso no interior da Bolívia.

Zebras africanas e cangurus australianos no zoológico de Londres.

Múmias egípcias e artefatos incas no museu de Nova York.

Lanternas japonesas e chicletes americanos nos bazares coreanos de São Paulo.

Imagens de um vulcão nas Filipinas passam na rede de televisão em Moçambique.

~~

Armênios naturalizados no Chile procuram familiares na Etiópia.

Casas pré-fabricadas canadenses feitas com madeira colombiana. 

Multinacionais japonesas instalam empresas em Hong-Kong 

e produzem com matéria prima brasileira para competir no mercado americano.

Literatura grega adaptada para crianças chinesas da comunidade européia.

~

Relógios suíços falsificados no Paraguai vendidos por camelôs no bairro mexicano de Los Angeles.

Turista francesa fotografada semi-nua com o namorado árabe na baixada fluminense.

Filmes italianos dublados em inglês com legendas em espanhol nos cinemas da Turquia.

Pilhas americanas alimentam eletrodomésticos ingleses na Nova Guiné.

Gasolina árabe alimenta automóveis americanos na África do Sul.

Pizza italiana alimenta italianos na Itália.

Crianças iraquianas 

fugidas da guerra não obtém visto no consulado americano do Egito 

para entrarem na Disneylândia.

Titãs

Titanomaquia

1993

#Disneylândia

Idle Speculation

"Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. (…) Inertia comes from the Latin word, iners, meaning idle, or lazy." 

Thinking of this brought another word to mind, and I wondered about its possible correlation to the concept of negligence, not only in its legal definition but also in its broader application in social life.

I Am You...

Ricky Gervais

… tomorrow

Tony Haygarth as Ted Brooks, Inspector Morse, 1996