Bambazonki

No More Books

2012-01-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

I'm back with another New Year's resolution, namely to do at least one post a week (hopefully more) focused on ideas rather than images. What got me going was thinking about some old texts that I studied years ago. Lots of things struck me, one in particular being the fact that the physical texts no longer matter to me. My wife and I have moved continents 5 times dragging 3 or 4 thousand books along with us until we finally got rid of most of them somewhere in California. They seemed so important back then, now the books don't matter, but I have rediscovered, much to my delight, that the ideas really do matter. More anon.

2011-01-23T18:50:00.000-08:00

Pews

It's Sunday. Something from Robert Louis Stevenson, though the pews in the picture are above the alter in a Catholic church, scene to some different temptations perhaps.

YOU looked so tempting in the pew,

You looked so sly and calm -

My trembling fingers played with yours

As both looked out the Psalm.

Your heart beat hard against my arm,

My foot to yours was set,

Your loosened ringlet burned my cheek

Whenever they two met.

O little, little we hearkened, dear,

And little, little cared,

Although the parson sermonised,

The congregation stared.

2011-01-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

Celebration in a rear view window

2011-01-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

Landscape catching the light

2011-01-19T14:52:00.000-08:00

I often wondered where Hieronymous Bosch got his ideas for the Garden of Earthly Delights. I think this is it!

There's something about the colors, the odd proportions of the bodies and especially the mindless, restless, questing in the mud that irresistibly reminds me of Bosch's bizarre vision.

2011-01-18T15:21:00.000-08:00

Cloudy day, looking down, not up.

The background is water, not clouds.

2011-01-17T15:40:00.000-08:00

In another bird's image.

There is something very satisfyingly ambivalent about the picture. At least to my eye, the bird in the air looks as though it is right over the one in the water. Actually, if you look at the reflections, it seems as though the bird in the air is much closer.

2011-01-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

White egret in the pink

The pink is a Roseate Spoonbill, a remarkably ugly bird (on the face of it) with a wonderful scientific designation of Ajaja ajaja (genus species). The egret is a Great White Egret, somewhat nondescriptly known as Ardea alba.

2011-01-15T15:06:00.000-08:00

Landscape with lines

2011-01-14T15:51:00.000-08:00

A woven landscape

2011-01-13T15:45:00.000-08:00

Beasts in a landscape

But lazy vapours round the region fly,

Perpetual twilight, and a doubtful sky:

No crowing cock does there his wings display,

Nor with his horny bill provoke the day;

Nor watchful dogs, nor the more wakeful geese,

Disturb with nightly noise the sacred peace;

Nor beast of Nature, nor the tame are nigh,

Nor trees with tempests rock'd, nor human cry;

But safe repose without an air of breath

Dwells here, and a dumb quiet next to death.

Ovid - Metamorphoses: Book The Eleventh

2011-01-12T17:48:00.000-08:00

Highlighted hills

2011-01-11T15:51:00.000-08:00

Cloudy mountains

Is there a catalog of cloud shapes? These are "clouds masquerading as mountains".

2011-01-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

A landscape of butts

Or maybe it's just me, then again maybe it's just me off to Orlando again. Very amusing - rather elegant butts really.

2011-01-09T17:02:00.001-08:00

Flowers catching the light

2011-01-08T20:38:00.000-08:00

Long and winding road

Actually it's a path on a certain Redmond Corporate campus that can remain nameless.

2011-01-07T22:02:00.000-08:00

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,

From up and down, and still somehow,

It's cloud illusions I recall,

I really don't know clouds, at all.

Joni Mitchell

2011-01-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

Christmas lights - where's the tree?

2011-01-05T18:59:00.000-08:00

Christmas ornament, there is a darker side.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

From Yeats, The Second Coming, responding to World War I perhaps.

2011-01-03T17:51:00.000-08:00

Surly cherub

2011-01-02T19:40:00.000-08:00

Reflections

A certain soldier
   had to fire a cannon at six o’clock sharp every evening.
   Being a soldier he did so. When his accuracy was
   investigated he explained:

I go by
   the absolutely accurate chronometer in the window
   of the clockmaker down in the city. Every day at seventeen
   forty-five I set my watch by it and
   climb the hill where my cannon stands ready.
   At seventeen fifty-nine precisely I step up to the cannon
   and at eighteen hours sharp I fire.

And it was clear
   that this method of firing was absolutely accurate.
   All that was left was to check that chronometer. So
   the clockmaker down in the city was questioned about
   his instrument’s accuracy.

Oh, said the clockmaker,
   this is one of the most accurate instruments ever. Just imagine,
   for many years now a cannon has been fired at six o’clock sharp.
   And every day I look at this chronometer
   and always it shows exactly six.

Chronometers tick and cannon boom.

Miroslav Holub

2011-01-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

Cell-phone Christmas

2010-12-31T17:59:00.000-08:00

Puget Sound at sunset, near Golden Gardens

It's hard to imagine a better light.

2010-12-30T21:48:00.000-08:00

Courtyard in the rain

I lingered, naturally, on the sentence: "I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths." Almost instantly, I understood: `the garden of forking paths' was the chaotic novel; the phrase `the various futures (not to all)' suggested to me the forking in time, not in space. A broad rereading of the work confirmed the theory. In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pen, he chooses simultaneously-all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork. Here, then, is the explanation of the novel's contradictions. Fang, let us say, has a secret; a stranger calls at his door; Fang resolves to kill him. Naturally, there are several possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth. In the work of Ts'ui Pen, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend.

Jorge Luis Borges - Garden of Forking Paths

2010-12-29T22:52:00.000-08:00

Down by the Salley Gardens
W.B.Yeats

DOWN by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;

She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.