Midnight Mass

 

Gene Wolfe, “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” (1970)

Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky today are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys.

Swiss ammo straps

 

80

 

Pyramids of Giza Walking Tour

The Brisbane line: An episode in capital history

Grand Cathay

 

Aristotle, On the art of poetry; translated by Ingram Bywater

Lego Titanic

 

Freedom!

 

Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature

 https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/milman-parry-collection-of-oral-literature

Borg Defence

 

Far Cry 6

 

Spring Night, Delighting in Rain

春夜喜雨 chūn yè xǐ yǔ



好雨知時節 Hǎo yǔ zhī shí jié,

當春乃發生 Dāng chūn nǎi fā shēng.

隨風潛入夜 Suí fēng qián rù yè,

潤物細無聲 Rùn wù xì wú shēng.

野徑雲俱黑 Yě jìng yún jù hēi,

江船火獨明 Jiāng chuán huǒ dú míng.

曉看紅濕處 Xiǎo kàn hóng shī chù,

花重錦官城 Huā zhòng jǐn guān chéng.







Spring Night, Delighting in Rain - Du Fu



The good rain knows when to fall,

stirring new growth the moment spring arrives.

Wind-borne, it steals softly into the night,

nourishing, enriching, delicate, and soundless.

Country paths black as the clouds above them;

on a river boat a lone torch flares.

Come dawn we'll see a landscape moist and pink,

blossoms heavy over the City of Brocade.




Watson, Burton The Selected Poems of Du Fu (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002)

Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz playing chess (1963)

 

20 Sites, n Years

Going for a Beer By Robert Coover

He finds himself sitting in the neighborhood bar drinking a beer at about the same time that he began to think about going there for one. In fact, he has finished it. Perhaps he’ll have a second one, he thinks, as he downs it and asks for a third. There is a young woman sitting not far from him who is not exactly good-looking but good-looking enough, and probably good in bed, as indeed she is. Did he finish his beer? Can’t remember. What really matters is: Did he enjoy his orgasm? Or even have one? This he is wondering on his way home through the foggy night streets from the young woman’s apartment. Which was full of Kewpie dolls, the sort won at carnivals, and they made a date, as he recalls, to go to one. Where she wins another—she has a knack for it. Whereupon they’re in her apartment again, taking their clothes off, she excitedly cuddling her new doll in a bed heaped with them. He can’t remember when he last slept, and he’s no longer sure, as he staggers through the night streets, still foggy, where his own apartment is, his orgasm, if he had one, already fading from memory. Maybe he should take her back to the carnival, he thinks, where she wins another Kewpie doll (this is at least their second date, maybe their fourth), and this time they go for a romantic nightcap at the bar where they first met. Where a brawny dude starts hassling her. He intervenes and she turns up at his hospital bed, bringing him one of her Kewpie dolls to keep him company. Which is her way of expressing the bond between them, or so he supposes, as he leaves the hospital on crutches, uncertain what part of town he is in. Or what part of the year. He decides that it’s time to call the affair off—she’s driving him crazy—but then the brawny dude turns up at their wedding and apologizes for the pounding he gave him. He didn’t realize, he says, how serious they were. The guy’s wedding present is a gift certificate for two free drinks at the bar where they met and a pair of white satin ribbons for his crutches. During the ceremony, they both carry Kewpie dolls that probably have some barely hidden significance, and indeed do. The child she bears him, his or another’s, reminds him, as if he needed reminding, that time is fast moving on. He has responsibilities now and he decides to check whether he still has the job that he had when he first met her. He does. His absence, if he has been absent, is not remarked on, but he is not congratulated on his marriage, either, no doubt because—it comes back to him now—before he met his wife he was engaged to one of his colleagues and their co-workers had already thrown them an engagement party, so they must resent the money they spent on gifts. It’s embarrassing and the atmosphere is somewhat hostile, but he has a child in kindergarten and another on the way, so what can he do? Well, he still hasn’t cashed in the gift certificate, so, for one thing, what the hell, he can go for a beer, two, in fact, and he can afford a third. There’s a young woman sitting near him who looks like she’s probably good in bed, but she’s not his wife and he has no desire to commit adultery, or so he tells himself, as he sits on the edge of her bed with his pants around his ankles. Is he taking them off or putting them on? He’s not sure, but now he pulls them on and limps home, having left his beribboned crutches somewhere. On arrival, he finds all the Kewpie dolls, which were put on a shelf when the babies started coming, now scattered about the apartment, beheaded and with their limbs amputated. One of the babies is crying, so, while he warms up a bottle of milk on the stove, he goes into its room to give it a pacifier and discovers a note from his wife pinned to its pajamas, which says that she has gone off to the hospital to have another baby and she’d better not find him here when she gets back, because if she does she’ll kill him. He believes her, so he’s soon out on the streets again, wondering if he ever gave that bottle to the baby, or if it’s still boiling away on the stove. He passes the old neighborhood bar and is tempted but decides that he has had enough trouble for one lifetime and is about to walk on when he is stopped by that hulk who beat him up and who now gives him a cigar because he’s just become a father and drags him into the bar for a celebratory drink, or, rather, several, he has lost count. The celebrations are already over, however, and the new father, who has married the same woman who threw him out, is crying in his beer about the miseries of married life and congratulating him on being well out of it, a lucky man. But he doesn’t feel lucky, especially when he sees a young woman sitting near them who looks like she’s probably good in bed and decides to suggest that they go to her place, but too late—she’s already out the door with the guy who beat him up and stole his wife. So he has another beer, wondering where he’s supposed to live now, and realizing—it’s the bartender who so remarks while offering him another on the house—that life is short and brutal and before he knows it he’ll be dead. He’s right. After a few more beers and orgasms, some vaguely remembered, most not, one of his sons, now a racecar driver and the president of the company he used to work for, comes to visit him on his deathbed and, apologizing for arriving so late (I went for a beer, Dad, things happened), says he’s going to miss him but it’s probably for the best. For the best what? he asks, but his son is gone, if he was ever there in the first place. Well . . . you know . . . life, he says to the nurse who has come to pull the sheet over his face and wheel him away. ♦

Get Back

 

Yuanyang

https://www.tasteatlas.com/yuanyang





Yuanyang is a drink that combines coffee and tea. It typically consists of three parts coffee and seven parts black milk tea—a combination of water, black tea leaves, and either sweetened condensed milk or evaporated milk and sugar.


This coffee-tea combination originated in Hong Kong, where it is commonly sold by street vendors. Each vendor usually has a signature recipe that may differ in the choice of coffee and the proportions of both beverages. The name yuanyang (which refers to mandarin ducks) was given as a poetic reference because the ducks represent a symbol of conjugal love in which opposites attract.
It is said that this particular name was coined because it also shows how opposites, in this case, coffee and tea, attract and can function well together. The drink can be enjoyed hot or iced.

Happy Birthday Jimmy Carter!

Shy Albatross

Shy albatross return to the same place to mate and nest every year and will lay one single egg, which they watch over and nurture. Sadly, increased air temperature and rainfall on the island during the incubation and chick rearing period mean fewer are surviving to adulthood - putting future populations at risk.
To protect the species, WWF-Australia is collaborating with the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (DPIPWE), Tasmanian Albatross Fund, and the CSIRO to install artificial nests in an effort to increase the number of surviving chicks.

https://www.wwf.org.au/news/blogs/in-photos-saving-the-shy-albatross#gs.bv4m7d

SunSun's Street Map of Hong Kong (ca. 1969)

 

Mars Ca. 1638. Oil on canvas.

The first documentation of Diego Velazquez´s Mars is from 1701-03, when it appeared in the inventory of paintings at the Torre de la Parada, the royal hunting pavilion on the outskirts of Madrid. The painting is cited along with Velázquez´s Aesop c.1638 (P01206) and Menippus 1639-40 (P01207). The three paintings have similar dimensions, and each are as tall as the Heraclitus, Democritus and other images based on mythology and Greco-Roman literature that Peter Paul Rubens executed in 1636-38 as decorations for the pavilion. Any attempt at interpreting the origin and meaning of the present painting must take into account that context. As is habitual in Velázquez´s oeuvre, in Mars there is a paradoxical treatment of the mythological subject matter, for which, in this case, the arms and other military attributes play a fundamental role. On the one hand, these elements allow us to identify the character as the Roman god of war, yet, on the other, the manner in which these elements are displayed situates the image in an ambiguous terrain. Of the various pieces of armour, the god only wears his helmet, and, rather than brandishing his general´s staff, he supports it indolently against the floor. His shield, sword and the rest of his armour lie at the feet of a soft, unmade bed on which the god himself is seated, resting in a lazy pose, and wearing a melancholy expression. The references to arms and martial objects, which are scattered about or piled on the floor, enjoyed a long tradition in both figurative arts and literature, and this painting clearly evokes that convention. Typically, the motif refers to the defeat of arms and, often, to the concept that love conquers all, a theme that was expressed frequently in emblemata and strikingly portrayed in the well-known painting by Caravaggio Amor vincit omnia 1601–02 (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). The bedclothes, with their richly coloured sheets, do not belong to a soldier´s cot but, rather, to a luxurious bed much more suited to amorous struggle than for restoring the fighter´s strength after combat on the battlefield. In that contrast between what we would typically expect of Mars and his relaxed, melancholic state in this image, is where we are most likely to discover the painting´s meaning. In Mars, the tension between reality and story is also established by the formal construction of the image. Much has been made of this painting´s relationship with two splendid sculptures that were very familiar to artists in the seventeenth century: the so-called Ludovisi Ares (a Roman copy of a Greek original, which once belonged to the Ludovisi collection and is now in the Palazzo Altemps, Rome) and one of Michelangelo´s sculptures for the Medici chapel in the Church of San Lorenzo, Florence, known as Il pensieroso (The thinker). However, Velázquez´s painting betrays a clear desire to represent living flesh with blood coursing through its veins, rather than to imitate sculpted stone. Thus, the painter has constructed his figure fundamentally on the basis of colour rather than line, with free and generous brushwork producing wonderfully diffuse outlines. The figure is animated by the very instability that its intentionally imprecise contours provide. That sensation of liveliness and verisimilitude is reinforced by the expression on the god´s face. Though we do not know whether the image is based on a live model, what is certain is that the painting reveals the artist´s expertise in visually describing human anatomy, and an explicit interest in making it clear to the viewer that he has attempted to explore his subject not with artistic tradition as his point of departure but, rather, starting from his own personal observations.

Merchant Royal

Salvage companies have spent years looking for the wreck of the MERCHANT ROYAL, known as the "Eldorado of the seas´, which sank in bad weather near the Isles of Scilly in 1641. Odyssey´s Marines court filings include latitude and longitude coordinates. 

The find is thought to be centered around 49°25´N and 6°00´W with a radius of 5 nautical miles. 

HISTORY Of The MERCHANT ROYAL The 700-ton MERCHANT ROYAL was built in Deptford, London, in 1627. She was owned by English merchants when she set sail from the Spanish colonies of San Domingo, in the West Indies, captained by John Limbrey. In January 1637, armed with 32 bronze canons, she arrived successfully in Cadiz, southern Spain, where she rested until 1640. But during that time she began to leak badly and underwent extensive repairs. The following summer, a ship employed to transport Spain´s colonial loot - silver coins, ingots and gold - caught fire. The bullion had been put aside to pay for Spain´s 30,000 strong army, which were stationed at the time in Flanders. Captain Limbrey volunteered to take the gold to Antwerp, on his way back to London. The MERCHANT ROYAL set sail in late August 1641, trailed by her sister ship, the Dover Merchant. But during the journey she began to leak and rescuers were unable reach her in time. Eighteen men drowned and 40 crew, including Capt Limbrey, had to be rescued by the Dover Merchant. The loss of the treasure made headlines. Back in 1641, the ship´s hold was equivalent to one-third of the national exchequer. Samuel Pepys refers to the event in his diary and proceedings in the House of Commons were interrupted for the news to be announced. Several salvage teams have sought to recover her treasure over the years but all have failed until now. There was confusion as to where she had actually gone down, with conflicting eyewitness reports. Original papers relating to her final resting place state that witnesses on another ship calculated that it sank ten leagues (around 35 miles) from Land´s End. Odyssey Marine hunters have already recovered 17 tons of 17th-century gold and silver coins from the wreck - codenamed the Black Swan - worth at least £250million Read more at wrecksite: https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?14252

The Battle for Ceylon

https://www.armouredcarriers.com/battle-for-ceylon-hms-indomitable-formidable



Just two months before the decisive battle of Midway, the Indian Ocean was the scene of a face-down between the fleets of Britain and Japan. Their carrier forces came within just 100 miles - and a reciprocal bearing - of a clash that could have changed the course of the war.



The most dangerous moment of the war, and the one which caused me the greatest alarm, was when the Japanese fleet was heading for Ceylon and the naval base there. The capture of Ceylon, the consequent control of the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring and the future would have been black.— Prime Minister Winston Churchill