Vicky3 at last

 

Ovid

The Metamorphoses is a long poem in 15 books written in hexameter verse and totaling nearly 12,000 lines. It is a collection of mythological and legendary stories in which metamorphosis (transformation) plays some part, however minor. The stories are told in chronological order from the creation of the universe (the first metamorphosis, of chaos into order) to the death and deification of Julius Caesar (the culminating metamorphosis, again of chaos—that is, the Civil War—into order—that is, the Augustan Peace). In many of the stories, mythical characters are used to illustrate examples of obedience or disobedience toward the gods, and for their actions are either rewarded or punished by a final transformation into some animal, vegetable, or astronomical form. The importance of metamorphosis is more apparent than real, however; the essential theme of the poem is passion (pathos), and that gives it more unity than all the ingenious linking and framing devices the poet uses. The erotic emphasis that had dominated Ovid’s earlier poetry is broadened and deepened into an exploration of nearly every variety of human emotion—for his gods are nothing if not human. That undertaking brought out, as his earlier work had not, Ovid’s full powers: his wit and rhetorical brilliance, his mythological learning, and the peculiar qualities of his fertile imagination. The vast quantities of verse in both Greek and Latin that Ovid had read and assimilated are transformed, through a process of creative adaptation, into original and unforeseen guises. By his genius for narrative and vivid description, Ovid gave to scores of Greek legends, some of them little known before, their definitive form for subsequent generations. No single work of literature has done more to transmit the riches of the Greek imagination to posterity. By 8 CE the Metamorphoses was complete, if not yet formally published; and it was at that moment, when Ovid seemed securely placed on a pinnacle of successful achievement, that he was banished to Tomis by the emperor.

Ovid arrived at his place of exile in the spring of 9 CE. Tomis was a semi-Hellenized port exposed to periodic attacks by surrounding peoples. Books and high society were lacking; little Latin was spoken; and the climate was severe. In his solitude and depression, Ovid turned again to poetry, now of a more personal and introspective sort. The Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto were written and sent to Rome at the rate of about a book a year from 9 CE on. They consist of letters to the emperor and to Ovid’s wife and friends describing his miseries and appealing for clemency. For all his depression and self-pity, Ovid never retreats from the one position with which his self-respect was identified—his status as a poet. That is particularly evident in his ironical defense of the Ars in Book ii of the Tristia.

US Antarctica Research Program

 

Bonaparte's 20 days

 

Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine

https://vvpoetry.com/

Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine is a Hong Kong-based print poetry publication. In each issue, we publish Chinese-language poems and critique pieces on poetry. We also have a section of English-language poems.

https://issuu.com/musicalstone/docs/voice_verse67-eversion

Portrait of Georg Gisze (1532) by Hans Holbein the Younger.

 

Ikkyu Having Once Paused

Ikkyu Having Once Paused. The solitary poet “opens up”—the notes cite Li Bo’s elaborate furyu image of white dew on jade steps voiced by a court lady. Ikkyu’s reconfiguration of Li Bo’s T’ang furyu suffers nothing by comparison.

GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library

GDAL is a translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats

https://gdal.org/

Restoring Vintage Bicycles from the Hand Built Era

 https://restoringvintagebicycles.com/

1060 West Addison

 

bad day - bukowski

 

I Remember Babylon

A mildly science fictional short story by Arthur C. Clarke. First published in Playboy, April 1960. Clarke dryly discusses his part in the real and fictional moral breakdown of the United States, and elsewhere, caused by satellite TV via an encounter with the fictional* Gene Hartford.

The story starts with the narrator introducing himself as Arthur C. Clarke. This is, I believe, the only time Clarke has directly featured in one of his own stories. Clarke goes on to explain that in 1945 he “had the only original idea” of his life - a network of satellites in geostationary orbit carrying TV transmitters. For those of you who have not read the node, sometimes called Clarke orbit, is an orbit 33,810 km (22,300 miles) above the Equator that takes one day to complete. This means that an object in geosynchronous orbit will stay directly over the same point on the Earth’s surface all the time. Satellite TV transmitters are, as Clarke suggested back then, in this orbit.

The story then introduces Gene Hartford, a young American TV network executive, who wants to thank Clarke for inspiring him. So that Clarke can discover what he has inspired, they arrange to meet the next day.

At the meeting Hartford reveals that he is about to create the first coast-to-coast satellite TV network. Then Hartford reveals what it is that he intends to show on his new universally-available channel. He starts by showing Clarke a “documentary”** film of the Temple of the Sun in Konarak entitled “Aspects of thirteenth-century tantric sculpture”. You know the Indian temples adorned with erotic sculpture that “leaves nothing to the imagination - any imagination”? This is that. After showing this “orgasm on celluloid”, Hartford explains that his aim is to show everything in Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Then he mentions the “sensation aspect”, a series called Washington Confidential. Then, as his pièce de résistance, he reveals the “Can You Take It?” series. “Can You Take It” will show uncensored violence etc, that every “red-blooded American” man will watch out of pure machismo.

Hartford, it is revealed, wants to brainwash, then destroy the US.

“History is on our side. We’ll be using America’s own decadence as a weapon against her, and it’s a weapon for which there is no defence.” 

Hartford leaves to be about his business, and the story ends with Clarke’s thoughts:

“ 'History is on our side.’ I cannot get those words out of my head. Land of Lincoln and Franklin and Melville, I love you and wish you well. But into my heart blows a cold wind from the past; for I remember Babylon. ”

* Probably fictional in the real world, and he may have been lying in the story anyway.
** Inverted commas used to denote scepticism.

Seneca's morals of a happy life, benefits, anger and clemancy

Oedipus the King - 1968

WotW

 

Hank Aaron

Terror from the Void

 

Selden Map of China 1685

 

Speak for Yersel

 https://speakforyersel.ac.uk/

John Atkinson Grimshaw

 

Les Rallizes Dénudés

 

Noctes Atticae

Cinelli frames

 https://cinelli.it/en/

Metamorphoses By Ovid

http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.1.first.html



Metamorphoses

By Ovid

Written 1 A.C.E.

Translated by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al




Table of Contents

Book the First



The Creation of the World

Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And Heav'n's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam'd.
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
Nor pois'd, did on her own foundations lye:
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water's dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confus'd, and each disturb'd the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fixt;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.

But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end:
Then earth from air, and seas from earth were driv'n,
And grosser air sunk from aetherial Heav'n.
Thus disembroil'd, they take their proper place;
The next of kin, contiguously embrace;
And foes are sunder'd, by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky:
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire;
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a num'rous throng
Of pondrous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
About her coasts, unruly waters roar;
And rising, on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the God, whatever God was he,
Had form'd the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded Earth into a spacious round:
Then with a breath, he gave the winds to blow;
And bad the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs, and standing lakes;
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some part, in Earth are swallow'd up, the most
In ample oceans, disembogu'd, are lost.
He shades the woods, the vallies he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.

And as five zones th' aetherial regions bind,
Five, correspondent, are to Earth assign'd:
The sun with rays, directly darting down,
Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone:
The two beneath the distant poles, complain
Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.
Betwixt th' extreams, two happier climates hold
The temper that partakes of hot, and cold.
The fields of liquid air, inclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:
The lighter parts lye next the fires above;
The grosser near the watry surface move:
Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there,
And thunder's voice, which wretched mortals fear,
And winds that on their wings cold winter bear.
Nor were those blustring brethren left at large,
On seas, and shores, their fury to discharge:
Bound as they are, and circumscrib'd in place,
They rend the world, resistless, where they pass;
And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.
First Eurus to the rising morn is sent
(The regions of the balmy continent);
And Eastern realms, where early Persians run,
To greet the blest appearance of the sun.
Westward, the wanton Zephyr wings his flight;
Pleas'd with the remnants of departing light:
Fierce Boreas, with his off-spring, issues forth
T' invade the frozen waggon of the North.
While frowning Auster seeks the Southern sphere;
And rots, with endless rain, th' unwholsom year.

High o'er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
The God a clearer space for Heav'n design'd;
Where fields of light, and liquid aether flow;
Purg'd from the pondrous dregs of Earth below.

Scarce had the Pow'r distinguish'd these, when streight
The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
Exert their heads, from underneath the mass;
And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass,
And with diffusive light adorn their heav'nly place.
Then, every void of Nature to supply,
With forms of Gods he fills the vacant sky:
New herds of beasts he sends, the plains to share:
New colonies of birds, to people air:
And to their oozy beds, the finny fish repair.

A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd:
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
Whether with particles of heav'nly fire
The God of Nature did his soul inspire,
Or Earth, but new divided from the sky,
And, pliant, still retain'd th' aetherial energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast.

Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
From such rude principles our form began;
And earth was metamorphos'd into Man.

From the Ground Up

https://frogbear.org/








It is vital that we advance our understanding of the religions and cultures of East Asia as the economic and political importance of this region surges. As vehicles carrying multiple layers of meaning, apotropaic devices, and objects of devotion in their own right, texts have played a critical role in the interconnected religious, economic, artistic, and scientific life of East Asia. Thanks to discoveries of texts and artifacts and to increased opportunities for ethnographic observation, scholarship over the past decade has enriched our understanding of both historical and contemporary religious phenomena and life in East Asia. Despite these advances, most research in this field still remains divided by boundaries that separate communities and practices by national borders, academic disciplines, and sectarian lines. As a result, new evidence is unearthed but not shared or disseminated widely. Historical connections between seemingly disparate times and places remain obscure. This project of research seeks to break through these barriers by bringing together scholars and sources that are rarely in productive dialogue or discourse. Creating a global network of institutions and scholars will allow us to access, record, and interpret material in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

Our team will collect textual and related evidence and make it available to the public via an open access digital database and museum housed at the University of British Columbia (UBC). The collection will act as the basis for scholarly symposia, conferences, and a rotating exhibition, all of which will establish UBC as a leading centre for the study of East Asian religions and cultures.

The phenomena this program investigates, including examples that show how technological advances in media shape religion and vice versa, as well as orthodoxy, canonicity and canon formation have significant parallels in religious traditions and cultures throughout the world. Patterns of interaction between different media of religious writing and between texts and artifacts are extensive. By addressing these topics through an innovative methodological framework, our researchers will arrive at conclusions that will stimulate scholars working both inside and outside the field of East Asian religions to approach their own research in novel ways.

Underlying the project is an ambitious model for research and training adapted to technological and operational prospects that did not exist even in recent years. Our project aims to create an institutional collaboration that melds fieldwork with textual scholarship and integrates original research with archive creation. Among the projected outcomes is the example it will provide for future scholarly endeavors, particularly those involving cooperation among a diverse set of academics at institutions and within diverse fields from around the world. As we work through the challenges this process will inevitably entail, this innovative approach will lead by example and make it easier for other groups to undertake similarly complex programs. Our project will also promote Canada to the forefront of scholarly exchange and research, and encourage cultural ties that promote fruitful collaboration in other arenas.

Beyond multiple benefits to academic research, the project will prove vital for educators, policy makers, and business interests who promote deeper and more sustained economic and cultural ties to East Asia within an increasingly Pacific-orientated Canada. Cutting edge, 21st century Asian studies research enhances the reputation Canada has already begun to establish as the premier North American gateway to Asia, not only for Canadians but also for international students from across the globe.

This international and interdisciplinary project has been made possible with a $2.5 million grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), with over $20 million in matching contributions from UBC (host institution), and nearly two dozen Canadian and international partner institutions and other contributors.