The Space of Time

Now there is

so much light

you could

The Singing of the Birds The song of the birds of prey from leaf to leaf, and the fragrant wind through the flowers, and the clearing of the lucid liquors, that make our sight more harmonious, are because Nature and Heaven second her, who wants the world to fall in love; so of sweet voices and sweet odors the air, the earth is already filled and the wave. Wherever she steps she moves on turns her face, flaming a spirit so alive with love that before the season the heat leads. At her sweet look, at her sweet laughter the grass comes green and colorful the flower, and the sea be calm and the sky be clear.

— Matteo Maria Boiardo

“Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be erased by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

- Politics aren't rational, you know? It's emotional, it appeals to instinct, to our animal side. But I think that's difficult to accept for people who tend to be more analytical and intellectual. And just as in the USA, there's a small class of billionaires who are deeply invested in maintaining the government that benefits them; they don't care whether it's left-wing or right-wing. One of the senators here said that the oil companies knew more about the attack in Venezuela before Congress did. What comes before capitalism? Mercantilism. The Latin American nations are younger nations; the formation of democratic republics is still relatively new. After about 175 years, they are now caught in the churn, along with all the other democratic nations — the restless tides of the ocean of civilizations. Monarchies have their problems, but at least they are stable, paternalistic, and eternal. With republics, you get caught in the pendulum swing of the generations—the word revolution comes from the root "to revolve." If the previous generation was authoritarian, the next generation will want to lean to the left. In the USA, if their parents were liberal (like the hippie parents from the baby boomer generation), young people will want to lean to the right, they will be attracted to fascism. That's exactly what's happening in USA now. As my German History professor always pointed out, young people tend to adopt the radical position, but they're not always on the left.

O quizás hay una raíz más profunda del autoritarismo, los padres, independientemente del partido. Existe este anhelo de regresar a un Edén perdido, a una inocencia… Tengo un amigo en Colombia, tenemos un grupo de lectura; cada semana leemos un capítulo de una de las novelas de Gabriel García Márquez para practicar. Él habla de estos temas, del contexto, y es muy interesante. Dice que hay que comprender la geografía de Colombia, los bosques, las colinas y los valles, para entender cómo cada pequeño pueblo tiene su propia clase de soledad mágica. Puedo ver puntos en común entre las culturas de toda la región, la región hmm bolivariana. Dice que con la llegada de las repúblicas, la gente abandonan el flujo interminable del tiempo. Antes de eso, vivían en un estado atemporal.

Your life ahead unaware of the obvious truths you're messing around

— Issa

I read recently in The Pillow Book that the Japanese have a word for those who can early sense the coming of the next season before the current one is elapsed. Every season in life contains the seeds of the next.

Which pixels are good, and which are bad? Which true, and untrue?

A lotus flower Inside the glass Doesn't have dew

星こぼす天の河原の寒さかな hoshi kobosu ama no kawata no samusa kana The stars spill from a dry river bed winter cold — Shiki

Quest’aria Quest’aria gelida non è aria, vive nella fede di un’origine che ritorna sotto forma di neve e ora dopo ora non arriva che alla narrazione di un fiocco, come un cenno di amore che mai si smembra. Questi rami a florilegio della perdizione non sono rami, tramutano da secoli il comandamento della carne di giacere solo con il silenzio, come il perdono che intravisto in un volto mai si perde. **

This icy air is not air, it lives in the faith of an origin that returns in the form of snow and hour after hour only reaches the narration of a flake, like a nod of love that never dismembers.

— It's like there is a threshold for specificity, and quantity, of litmus tests that one person (or subculture) can have. After which there is an inflexion point at which the society starts to decohere — the Tower of Babel.

I've seen the divisive effect this behavior has in my own country. Every tribe has shibboleths, there's nothing new about that. But the proliferation of individuated technology like smartphones and social media have allowed that tribe to shrink until it's so specific and nuanced that it's a tribe of one.

—  I agree. There are now strong ideological silo effects via online propaganda. Sometimes mixing religion, confusion, fear, ignorance and racism in explosive cultural engineering cocktails. Resentment and frustration are strong in populations. It will have consequences and perhaps again take destructive forms before constructive ones in the future.

Someone else walks past me again autumn dusk — Issa

The reed-tangled mud makes a beguiling surface but hidden there below the unexpected water lies like hidden feelings of the heart — Anonymous (Kokin rokujo, 1688)

Summer is the culmination, the full release of light, sun, and energy into all forms. The four seasons are like one vast breath that the earth takes through every form in its biosphere, manifesting every potentiality. In winter the sleep, in spring the germination, in summer the full ripening, in the fall it dies again.

In spring the Kydonian apple trees, watered by flowing streams there where the Maidens have their unravished garden, and vine buds, growing under the shadowy branches of the vines, bloom and flourish. For me, however, love is at rest in no season but like the Thracian north wind, ablaze with lightning, rushing from Aphrodite with scorching fits of madness, dark and unrestrained, it forcibly convulses from their very roots my mind and heart. —Ibycus of Reghium