Hugh Miller
To love somebody
who doesn’t love you
is like going to a temple
and worshipping the ass
of a wooden statue
of a hungry devil.
– Lady Kasa
…is responsible for the beautiful, dynamic ice crystals that swirl around a bubble’s surface as it freezes. It is caused by a surface tension difference, which can be generated by a solute gradient, a chemical reaction or – as in this case – temperature variations
Joris Hoefnagel (1542, in Antwerp – 24 July 1601, in Vienna) was a Flemish painter, printmaker, miniaturist, draftsman, and merchant. He is noted for his illustrations of natural history subjects, topographical views, illuminations, and mythological works. He was one of the last manuscript illuminators.
Hoefnagel was a very versatile artist. He is known for his landscapes, emblems, miniatures, grotesques, topographical drawings, genre scenes, and mythological and allegorical drawings, and paintings.
His works exercised an important influence on the development of Dutch still life and naturalist art.
“Through all ages men have tried to fathom the meaning of life. They have realized that if some direction or meaning could be given to our actions, great human forces would be unleashed. So, very many answers must have been given to the question of the meaning of it all. But they have been of all different sorts, and the proponents of one answer have looked with horror at the actions of the believers in another. Horror, because from a disagreeing point of view all the great potentialities of the race were being channeled into a false and confining blind alley. In fact, it is from the history of the enormous monstrosities created by false belief that philosophers have realized the apparently infinite and wondrous capacities of human beings. The dream is to find the open channel.
What, then, is the meaning of it all? What can we say to dispel the mystery of existence?
If we take everything into account, not only what the ancients knew, but all of what we know today that they didn’t know, then I think that we must frankly admit that we do not know.
But, in admitting this, we have probably found the open channel.”
Richard Feynman
(for my Father, 2005)
It is the season of thud and mud,
a season of storms that wash away
everything fragile.
It’s good for me to be busy but everything is So. Much. Work.
Gravity has increased, the brakes are locked up.
The wheels are dragging.
I carry my heart like a boulder, sour, and angry.
My tears always nearby, undisciplined as a fart.
I am trying to be strong and positive for my son.
What do you tell a three-year-old about death,
when it’s not a goldfish or flattened bird?
How do you contain the stink of misery while living honestly in front of him?
How do you explain feeling so flat and sad?
My brother says:
“He’s in a better place than any of us.”
And I want to say
“How do you know? What place are you talking about?”
But I don’t say it.
I wake in the middle of the night, wind-whipped,
to find a wall missing from my house.
I stare at it, clutching my robe and squinting red eyes
but in the gap, I see no trees or grass
just the absence of anything at all,
it isn’t gray or foggy,
it is a hole, a negative. It is nothing described as something
to explain the actual missing something it replaced.
It is without qualities.
all I know is that
everything which isn’t
and can’t be
goes there to not be
It isn’t the half-lit, half-life of the ancients;
or sanctimonious Hell,
or sentimental Heaven.
It’s a lecture from a toothache.
It’s a dismal window, explained to me by my pain.
I stayed there before I was born
when I was busy not yet existing.
It’s where I will return when
I become busy existing no more.
Quotes from Carl Jung
Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
“On the Psychology of the Unconsciousness”, 1917
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The term “grey goo problem” was coined by nanotechnology pioneer K. Eric Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. It supposed a self-replicating nanobot going out of control and in a “sorcerer’s apprentice” way, recognizing NO stopping point for self-duplication. The Earth is left as a lifeless desert of “grey goo”, composed of the bodies of the nanobots.
This scenario joined the library of science fiction plots where it continues to appear. In 2004 he stated, “I wish I had never used the term ‘gray goo’.” He was probably conducting a form of due diligence by considering bad outcomes as well as good. As time has gone by, grey goo has been debunked as a concern in various ways (look it up if you are interested I’m not here to explore all that).
But there are other environments and other bots.
The Internet became a primary human environment at lightning speed, filling up with websites that represented more and more real societal institutions. Initially, they were mostly billboards for providing information. Gradually these online presences became interactive and even took over as the “real world”, the business end of everything. The isolation of solitary individuals running errands on the web protected society up to this point. That collapsed when we embraced social media and were reborn as mobs composed of socially isolated individuals. Continue reading
Lysimachus Tetradrachm. Byzantium, Posthumous. 190-110 BC. 16.18g.
Lysimachus was a Macedonian officer and successor of Alexander the Great, who became a King in 306 BC, ruling Thrace, Asia Minor, and Macedon. He began as a bodyguard to Alexander before becoming a trusted friend and rising through the ranks.
The coin is a tetradrachm, meaning that it was worth four drachmas; one drachma, in turn, was worth six obols. It is a high-value coin representing, in the mid-fifth century BC, four days’ pay for a skilled laborer or for a hoplite soldier, or two days’ pay for a sculptor working on a public building.
I love how sharp and clear it is. I wonder how many times, and for what exactly, it was passed from hand to hand.
I recently encountered the art of Eric Gill for the first time and was blown away. He was a draftsman, engraver, and designer of fonts (e.g. Gill Sans) of just incredible talent. I gathered these images to share with you. It’s unusual for me to not dig in quickly to learn the story of an artist who excites me but only as I added this gallery did I pause to learn more about him. Along with a lifetime of extraordinary accomplishments, including rafts of popular writing, he was a fucking freak. He was a lifelong hot mess of edgy sexual experimentation that went wholly beyond the pale. Look it up if you want. It isn’t pretty.
It raises the whole question of what we do with the monsters. What do we do with incomparable genius in monsters, and what do we do with the work they leave behind? Before I knew the story I was electrified by his work…five minutes later it’s just tainted and impossible to celebrate. I leave it here for what I thought it was then, and whatever the hell it is now, ten or so minutes later.