kālchakra

We find ourselves indebted to Kottke once again for referring us back to this lovingly curated Wikipedia page that invites us to meditate on cosmological scales, whose events that science projects are portrayed in this excellently produced and scored video journey from John Boswell that takes us on a romp, exponentially faster, towards the end of time. Though the Earth doesn’t endure past the first three minutes do stay with the video to its conclusion and invocation.

στην πόλη

The Turkish government on this day in 1930 changed the name of its largest city from Constantinople to İstanbul—the ancient metropolis having formerly been known as New Rome, Augusta Antonina, Byzantium and originally Lygos—and recall us to contemporary name changes we’ve encountered recently.
Whereas the reflagging of İstanbul strips it of historical associations, the people of Kyrgyz are considering renaming its capital from Bishkek to Manas, a legendary warrior whose exploits are sung in an epic poem that contains half a million verses and is a cultural touchstone for Kyrgyz identity. Some speculate that this debate was sparked by adjacent Kazakhstan’s decision to rename its capital Astana (formerly Tselinograd and founded as Akmoly) to Nur-Sultan in honour of long-serving president Nursultan Äbishuly Nazarbayev on the occasion of his retirement.

divine wind

I learned a historic detail about cherry blossoms that is a bit morose and melancholy from the excellent podcast series Short-Cuts, in the flowering trees’ association with kamikaze pilots during World War II. A parable was told young aviators that they were to aspire to be fearless and unflinching in their sacrifice like the cherry blossoms who live a short but glorious life and fall from the branches without clinging. Women would wave farewell to departing Zeros with cherry blossom branches and “volunteer” pilots composed long elaborate death poem—following the tradition of the samurai and ritual seppuku. Now go here for some happier, meditative traditions connected to this time of year.

it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism

In his The Disorder of Things, philosopher Fredric Jameson made the above observation with the public beaten down by endless rhetoric that there is no alternative to liberal market economies and that green movements are unrealistic.
Now that the US Senate has cynically (and in a cringe-worthy fashion—sh*tposting the chamber with a deliberate, aggressively ironic provocation of minimal effort that derailed any possibility of meaningful debate) rejected moving forward on comprehensive climate legislation, we globally are lurched a step closer to experiencing both scenarios. Such squabbling minimises the urgency for radical action and leaves us with less time to affect change before time runs out.

unterwegs

Taken while driving home last week—if you look closely in the centre of the image, there’s a hot air balloon in the distance directly under the end of the vapour trail in the sky.

sakoku

Within a couple decades after Commodore Perry compelled Japan to open its doors to the West with the Treaty of Shimoda, Japanese society was beginning to relax its taboos against the consumption of meat other than seafood signalled by Emperor Mutsuhito’s 1872 New Year’s repast of beef—which caused much consternation among devout Buddhists who had helped cultivate the prohibition for over twelve centuries.
The Meiji administration changed its policy of isolation and was eager to adopt Western ways and technologies, effectively rescinding a decree from Emperor Tenmu in the seventh century not to eat useful animals during the farming season, which came to be a general avoidance (a heavy penance was put in place or transgression) for practical reasons as well as the belief in transmigration of the soul and the chance that would could be reincarnated as a cow or boar.