W. H. Auden, "Fleet Visit"
The sailors come ashore Out of their hollow ships, Mild-looking middle-class boys Who read the comic strips; One baseball game is more To them than fifty Troys.
They look a bit lost, set down In this unamerican place Where natives pass with laws And futures of their own; They are not here because But only just-in-case.
The whore and ne’er-do-well Who pester them with junk In their grubby ways at least Are serving the Social Beast; They neither make nor sell — No wonder they get drunk.
But the ships on the dazzling blue Of the harbor actually gain From having nothing to do; Without a human will To tell them whom to kill Their structures are humane
And, far from looking lost, Look as if they were meant To be pure abstract design By some master of pattern and line, Certainly worth every cent Of the millions they must have cost.
Harrier, by Fiona Banner (via things)
Paris 1929, in color. Via @ellouis on Twitter.
We were woken by bright sunlight, needling through the cracks in the bamboo wall, and the sound of children’s voices. I pushed open the door of our hut, and gasped at the sheer beauty of our surroundings. After all the trauma of the previous night, we’d landed in paradise. There, just a few metres away, was a crescent of silver sand lapped by the crystal water of the lake. A couple of palm trees waved lazy branches against the sun.And, as in paradise, there were angels: a gaggle of ragged smiling children had gathered at our door, chattering excitedly. As I stepped out into the sunshine, they fell silent for a moment, then burst into a chorus: “Good afternoon. Good morning. How are you? Do you speak English? What is your name? Manchester United! Give me money!”
I smiled back and chatted for a while. Gradually more and more children arrived. There must have been at least 20 of them, staring curiously as I tried to wash and clean my teeth (the electric toothbrush drew squeals of delight) and following me to the hut that served as washroom and toilet.
“Please, that’s enough. Go away now,” I pleaded.
“Gowayno,” they echoed, smiling angelically.
I retreated into our hut and closed the door, hoping they would go away. They didn’t. Little hands pattered on the walls, and little voices outside persisted: “Do you speak English? What is your name? My name is David Beckham. Merry Christmas!”
Sometimes even angels can get a bit irritating.
So what we have created in the past twenty years is a theological anomaly which has insidiously been made to seem normal: a whole cadre of priests - a third of our priesthood now - who are supposedly intrinsically disabled from exercising the charisms of spiritual unity and authority historically associated with the episcopate. It is here that the main theological scandal still lies: the implicit creation and normalization of second-class priesthood. The terrible danger is that this may now be extended into second-class episcopacy….Twenty years ago our Church voted to ordain women. We have arrived at the point when all the indications are that the current theological anomaly of priests who cannot by definition be bishops has become an unacceptable skandalon to the Church’s life. This is not because of a capitulation to secular feminism; it is, as I’ve tried to demonstrate, because of a commitment to the historic nature of Christian ordained ministry and in particular to the distinctive theological principles of Anglicanism.
While I am fully committed to the attempt to find courteously-ordered arrangements for those who currently disagree, I am completely opposed to the introduction of new incoherences into the theological picture. It is truth that is at stake. And while truth can be two-eyed, it cannot be two-faced.
Martian dunes. Supposedly. Not sure what this looks like.
Growing up, assimilating the wisdom of the past, is in great part learning how to organize the sensorium productively for intellectual purposes. Man’s sensory perceptions are abundant and overwhelming. He cannot attend to them all at once. In great part a given culture teaches him one or another way of productive specialization. It brings him to organize his sensorium by attending to some types of perception more than others, by making an issue of certain ones while relatively neglecting other ones. The sensorium is a fascinating focus for cultural studies. Given sufficient knowledge of the sensorium exploited within a specific culture, one could probably define the culture as a whole in virtually all its aspects.
Main concourse of the old Penn Station in 1962
From A Telegraph story on how rubbish from Everest is being turned into art. The caption reads, “Edmund Hillary, Mount Everest, Nepal.” Probably it’s just me, but it sure looks like there are two people in that photo.