some words & graphics shit from school, school, school.
The Envoy of Mr. Cogito
(Trans: The Last of Mr. I Think)
Go where those others went to the dark boundary
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize
go upright among those who are on their knees
among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust
you were saved not in order to live
you have little time you must give testimony
be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous
in the final account only this is important
and let your helpless Anger be like the sea
whenever your hear the voice of the insulted and beaten
let your sister Scorn not leave you
for the informers executioners cowards - they will win
they will go to your funeral with relief will throw a lump of earth
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography
and do not forgive truly it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn
beware however of unnecessary pride
keep looking at your clown's face in the mirror
repeat: I was called - weren't there better ones than I
beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring
the bird with an unknown name the winter oak
light on a wall the splendour of the sky
they don't need your warm breath
they are there to say: no one will console you
be vigilant - when the light on the mountains gives the sign- arise and go
as long as blood turns in the breast your dark star
repeat old incantations of humanity fables and legends
because this is how you will attain the good you will not attain
repeat great words repeat them stubbornly
like those crossing the desert who perished in the sand
and they will reward you with what they have at hand
with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap
go because only in this way you will be admitted to the company of cold skulls
to the company of your ancestors: Gilgamesh Hector Roland
the defenders of the kingdom without limit and the city of ashes
Be faithful Go
-- Zbigniew Herbert
* margin note/teacher quote: "Your skull will be among theirs: a true prize. What a prize."
“Building Dwelling Thinking
Gathering or assembly, by an ancient word of our language, is called "thing." The bridge is a thing--and, indeed, it is such as the gathering of the fourfold which we have described. To be sure, people think of the bridge as primarily and really merely a bridge; after that, and occasionally, it might possibly express much else besides; and as such an expression it would become a symbol, for instance a symbol of those things we mentioned before. But the bridge, if it is a true bridge, is never first of all a mere bride and then afterward a symbol. And just as little is the bridge in the first place exclusively a symbol, in the sense that it expresses something that strictly speaking does not belong to it. If we take the bridge strictly as such, it never appears as an expression. The bridge is a thing and only that. Only? As this thing it gathers the fourfold [earth, sky, humanness, and divinity].
Our thinking has of course long been accustomed to understate the essence of the thing. The consequence, in the course of Western thought, has been that thing is represented as an unknown X to which perceptible properties are attached. From this point of view, everything that already belongs to the gathering essence of this thing does, of course, appear as something that is afterward read into it. Yet the bridge would never be a mere bridge if it were not a thing.
-- Martin Heidegger”
“The New Yorker: Rewriting Nature
... A new book, "Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-Enchantment of the World," by George Levine, a professor emeritus of English at Rutgers University, tries to vindicate Darwin for students of literature by emphasizing his modest "sense of wonder," the almost mystical awe at the sheer existence of life in the universe; Darwin disenchanted believers in Heaven, but he reënchanted lovers of Earth. Levine’s book is one of the most appealing and subtle attempts to bridge biology and the humanities. It proposes an "enchanted secularity"; because Darwin robs mankind of place and purpose, he gave us a chance to love and revere nature "precisely in its refusal to be like us."
Levine is always on the side of the angels. But sometimes he is on the side of the angels when he ought to be on the side of the apes. If Darwin offers us a disenchanted universe-a universe drained of magic and of meaning-what would it be like to live in an enchanted one? Religious faith, after all, often sees itself as bedevilled and beleaguered even when it reigns more or less unchallenged. Conversely, the soulless materialism of the Darwinian universe can be a comfort: one wishes that a Darwinian could have been by Dr. Johnson’s deathbed as he sank into desperate fear of eternal damnation for having lusted after actresses in his youth. He would have found solace in the idea that there was nothing out there save oblivion, and that the world would remember the things that he had said on Earth.
Although we can deduce from Darwin a new doctrine of "enchanted secularism"-or, indeed, Edward O. Wilson’s proposal of a "scientific humanism"-we don’t need to add to him to love what he says about life. For Darwinism has never been a threat to humanism; it is humanism, in flight. By humanism, we can mean two things. One is that man is the measure of all things; the other, that all things can be measured by man. The first view, essentially religious in origin, inspires Renaissance painting and the Sistine ceiling and Vitruvian proportions. The second view-that what makes people uniquely interesting is their capacity for gauging their environment and changing it; that the more we measure, the more accurately we see what things are actually like-has been what we have meant by humanism since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, and Darwin is one of its greatest exponents and examples.
Reading Darwin as a natural novelist shows us a Darwin as complex as good writers should be. He ended as a skeptical materialist who had proved that the forms of life were shaped by history, not by a supervising mind. But reading him also shows us that no emotion we would fear losing is lost in the transformation. The hardest Darwinian view of all is still roomy enough for ordinary love to breathe in. Darwin was a Darwinian fundamentalist. But he was not a Darwinian absolutist. He knew that what feels to us like soul or spirit-the flash of understanding at an infant’s smile or grief at a child’s death-can never be argued away. He thought that he had found the secret of life. But he knew that nothing could solve the problems of living. That takes all the time we have.
-- Adam Gopnik”
&this is how i waste my life in ps:
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first composite, original concept, and overall design by Miah's player @ XMYB
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Edit: Actually to make this post marginally less worthless let me know if there's any specific image you'd like to see tips, on Photoshop effects or other 'how-to's. I don't know if I have the time for comprehensive/full-length tutorials, but at the very least I can offer my amateur insights.
Edit2: Of course there were more stock/composted images involved than I posted above; I didn't have the time to go back and hunt down every stock photo I'd used again.
Edit3: most of the credit for ocean.jpg goes to Miah's player on XMYB, as she came up with the concept, selected the images, and put everything together, and she still isn't done finalizing the image -- the final will be published elsewhere. I just gave a zillion filters a try by myself and posted in case anyone wants to try something similar.