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• 30 Oct 2009 13:27

  Wapping 1909 (ca) Alvin Langdon Coburn

  October 30, 2009 Moods of the Sea Slavko Vorkapich and John Hoffman Felix Mendelssohn (1941)10-min. ubuweb _______________________ The Graveyard By The Sea Paul Valéry Translated by C. Day Lewis This quiet roof, where dove-sails saunter by, Between the pines, the tombs, throbs visibly. Impartial noon patterns the sea in flame -- That sea forever starting and re-starting. When thought has had its hour, oh how rewarding Are the long vistas of celestial calm! What grace of light, what pure toil goes to form The manifold diamond of the elusive foam! What peace I feel begotten at that source! When sunlight rests upon a profound sea, Time's air is sparkling, dream is certainty -- Pure artifice both of an eternal Cause. (....) I am the only medium for your fears. My penitence, my doubts, my baulked desires -- These are the flaw within your diamond pride . . . But in their heavy night, cumbered with marble, Under the roots of trees a shadow people Has slowly now come over to your side. (....) The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live! The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave Dares to explode out of the rocks in reeking Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages! Break, waves! Break up with your rejoicing surges This quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking. ...(more) Paul Valéry October 30, 1871 - July 20, 1945 "God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through."   -  Paul Valéry Selected Writings of Paul Valery google books Paul Valéry on Poetry in Translation translated by Denise Folliot Crisis of the Mind Paul Valéry (1919) ...in the same disorder of mind, at the summons of the same anguish, all cultivated Europe underwent the rapid revival of her innumerable ways of thought: dogmas, philosophies, heterogeneous ideals; the three hundred ways of explaining the World, the thousand and one versions of Christianity, the two dozen kinds of positivism; the whole spectrum of intellectual light spread out its incompatible colors, illuminating with a strange and contradictory glow the death agony of the European soul. While inventors were feverishly searching their imaginations and the annals of former wars for the means of doing away with barbed wire, of outwitting submarines or paralyzing the flight of airplanes, her soul was intoning at the same time all the incantations it ever knew, and giving serious consideration to the most bizarre prophecies; she sought refuge, guidance, consolation throughout the whole register of her memories, past acts, and ancestral attitudes. Such are the known effects of anxiety, the disordered behavior of mind fleeing from reality to nightmare and from nightmare back to reality, terrified, like a rat caught in a trap. (...) . . The military crisis may be over. The economic crisis is still with us in all its force. But the intellectual crisis, being more subtle and, by it nature, assuming the most deceptive appearances (since it takes place in the very realm of dissimulation)...this crisis will hardly allow us to grasp its true extent, its phase....(more) _______________________ Meta-currency: a step towards the Rheonomy Eric Harris-Braun In her beautifully insightful book, The Nature of Economies, Jane Jacobs suggests that we must broaden our understanding of economics in the context of the flow processes of the natural world. Near the end of the book one of her characters asks the question, “What are economies for?” One of the other characters answers: “… To enable us to partake, in our own fashion, in a great universal flow” Another character answers with “Economies have a lot in common with language… like language, economic life permits us to develop cultures and multitudes of purposes… that’s its function which is most meaningful for us.” What do we mean by economy when we say “the economy is strong/weak/growing/shrinking/healthy/in crisis.” We mean something social, an aggregate of many people interacting. But it’s not just individuals, it’s groups of people in the form of businesses, governments, unions, non-profits, etc. also interacting with each other and with individual people. We know, however, that we aren’t necessarily talking about the entire social organism for when the economy falters, other aspects of the social organism, i.e. its arts-culture may thrive. Or, the economy may flourish while we experience a marked drop in “civility” or an increase in other so called “social problems”. “Economy”, it seems, specifically refers to the body of the social organism — its “corporeal” aspect. This includes moving stuff around, building houses, growing food, transforming nature to its bodily needs, etc. Using this analogy, we might say that the mind of the social organism is everything else — its cultures, religions, arts, politics, and so on. However, it would be a mistake to project this mind/body dualism onto our nascent understanding of the social organism, thereby forming a dis-integrative framework from the start. So it’s not just that the economy is disintegrating around us, it’s that the very word and concept of economy is disintegrative! Here, the two answers given by Jacob’s characters are so powerful. First, they help us shift our imaginations toward thinking from the point of view of the social organism; toward seeing that the “us” that partakes in the great universal flow, and the “us” that develops cultures and multitudes of purposes is not the individuals of the social organism, but rather the social organism itself. Second, they suggest a perspective from which to perceive the organism as a unity: as a participant in the “great universal flow.” Third, they suggest to how this participation is achieved: through language and expressive capacity. ...(more) via Gift Hub _______________________ Ancient Music Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm. Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm. Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver, Damn you, sing: Goddamm. Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm, So 'gainst the winter's balm. Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm. Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.   -  Ezra Pound Ezra Pound October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972 Vortograph Alvin Langdon Coburn 1882 - 1966 ABC of reading Ezra Pound google books The cantos of Ezra Pound google books Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound google books Masks Ezra Pound These tales of old disguisings, are they not Strange myths of souls that found themselves among Unwonted folk that spake an hostile tongue, Some soul from all the rest who'd not forgot The star-span acres of a former lot Where boundless mid the clouds his course he swung, Or carnate with his elder brothers sung Ere ballad-makers lisped of Camelot? Old singers half-forgetful of their tunes, Old painters color-blind come back once more, Old poets skill-less in the wind-heart runes, Old wizards lacking in their wonder-lore: All they that with strange sadness in their eyes Ponder in silence o'er earth's queynt devyse? - _______________________ St Paul's Cathedral and Cog Alvin Langdon Coburn 1905 Alvin Langdon Coburn - Yosemite Series Alvin Langdon Coburn - Edinburgh Series 135 Images George Eastman House _______________________ Three Poems Jett McAlister conjunctions The Silent Days 1 Hunt and peck, hunt and peck the air here Would that I were a river or a man of fewer words than this Go to the fields they smell of bergamot and the mud cold and ankle-deep Beyond all this, there is a wall beyond which the dark Watch the day smoke from the heather Let the wall stand until I cannot climb 2 The tea-kettle boils the crow in the neighbor’s yard another brushstroke, another turn Sky veers yellow first petal falling from the magnolia tree 3 What wind there was whipped my hair and face I waited out the hours in the dark I waited underneath We hope for ourselves, for the grasses and the trees Follow this to the west Have you tasted it, this ash that fills the air the thrush Still life on a table: a book, my glasses, my watch, upended 4 These days, it’s all splayed out for us looped and relooped ...(more) permanent link

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