"We no longer have roots, we have aerials." ~ McKenzie Wark

Read Ernie Cline's Ready Player One this weekend. Hugely enjoyable geeky fun!

London Street Art. All photos taken today or yesterday.

I have listented to nothing else today. I wish I had been at one those MOMA events.

"The map is not the territory" ~ Alfred Korzybski

"The description is not the described; I can describe the mountain, but the description is not the mountain, and if you are caught up in the description, as most people are, then you will never see the mountain." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Henryk Górecki, Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"

A photo of the 2008 Serpentine Pavilion, designed by architect Frank Gehry, taken on a bright Summer day. I took it with an old Nokia N95 smartphone.

"Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind." ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

 
    Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

    Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
    Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
    Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
    And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
    Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
    But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
    Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
    Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

    Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
    Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
    But someone still was yelling out and stumbling.
    And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
    Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
    As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

    In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
    He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

    If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
    Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
    And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
    His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
    If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
    Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
    Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
    Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
    My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
    To children ardent for some desperate glory,
    The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
    Pro patria mori.

 

I would definitely rate this Erving Goffman book as one of the most influential non-fiction books I have read in my life.