lifecycle replacement or persistence of memory

The whole time I was enjoying Doug Dorst’s frame novel S, I did not realise that the subtitle, The Ship of Theseus, was itself a reference to a rather famous philosophical model.

Paradoxically, the ship of the legendary founder of Athens was maintained in a seaworthy state for generations after his death, according to a pledge to honour his memory, but with time and tide, rotten planks had to be replaced at regular intervals. Eventually, none of the original material would have remained, begging the question, posed by many quizzical minds, is the Ship of Theseus still the same ship if 99%, 90%, 50%, 5% or none of the parts were original and all had been replaced. Some argue yes and some no. Now understanding this allusion, the connection becomes quite apparent to the story. Though debatably, one cannot step into the same stream twice, Heraclitus believed that persistence, through the element, medium of time, projects identity outward, even if all the component parts—our bodies included, are continuously eroding and being replaced. What do you think? Is that rescued and refurbished jalopy the same classic car? Is it still Lenin who’s visited in his mausoleum, or now, as he lies in state, even more reliably and fixedly the man?

five-by-five

one ring to bind them: wonderfully geeky and romantic science-fiction inspired jewellery

swim-lanes: a vintage timeline of human history

dollies: beautiful lace patterns created out of newspaper collages

[edit]: audio landscape of revisions, additions to Wikipedia

ampelmännchen: in the run up to EuroVision, Vienna installs same sex couple cross-walk lights

der natur auf der spur oder welcome to the monkey-house

Over the weekend, H and I had the chance to take a safari through the storied and thoroughly progressive zoological gardens of Leipzig, about time too as we have been coming to the city regularly for year now.
Founded for the indemnifying of the public in 1878, the menagerie has expanded immensely in the last couple of decades as has the zoo’s mission for conservation and education.

Within the vastness of the traditional range (though there is nothing mundane about the innovative enclosures) that recreates the habitat of the happy captives as best as possible, there is an indoors core called Gondwanaland that captured the primordial supercontinent in a hot-house environment host to an amazing botanical, hanging garden home to free-range monkeys and birds and dozens of aquaria, madials and terrariums that represent the sort of evolutionary survivors, malingerers that might have populated the pre-tectonic world.
There was also expertly and exotically landscaped lagoons of flamingos, an expansive serengeti, a temple for elephants and many other installations (including ones featuring biomes closer to home) with amenities and little intrusion from those who come to gawk.
The zoo was no amusement park ride, nor side-show attraction but rather a powerful, interactive lesson in diversity and amazing adaptability of life that really confronts one with the vulnerability of our quirkiest, most-specialised cousins.
One of the most popular daily soap operas in Germany profiles resident animals and their caretakers and is broadcast from here every afternoon.  The whole day was hardly long enough for a proper visit and hope to come back soon to learn more.

sunday-drive: bel étage oder free-parking

Taking advantage of the fine weather, on my way back to my workweek apartment, I took a slight detour and saw a bit more of Hanau. Taking refuge at the first open and non-challenging parking space, which turned out—happily—very out of the way and had me trudging from one end of the city to the other and back again, I found myself across from the Frankfurter Tor and admired a collection of ancient headstones that were preserved in the front lawn of the municipal justice building.
The original cemetery grounds had been claimed by the Industrial Revolution when the city saw exponential growth but had had a life-span from the early 1600s to 1840, and it was curious that my next destination (I’d done a little research but didn’t exactly have an itinerary) was a modern graveyard built atop an even more ancient site: the foundations of a Roman bath whose schema illustrated how hot-water was harnessed and circulated—a feature of the plumbing of antiquity that the occident took a long time to rediscover. Coming to where the river Kinzig empties into the Main, I toured the grounds of splendid summer residence of the House of Hanau in the district of Kesselstadt.
The corps de logis is done in a Renaissance revival style and overlooks a huge, undulating garden.
Returning to my car afterwards, I realised that I had parked (rather inadvertently) just on the western perimeter of Hanau’s Altstadt—or what remained after the bombing during WWII, and took a look around the Marktplatz as well. Before one of the few restored structures, the “new” Rathaus, is a fine sculpture celebrating two of the city’s native sons, the Brothers Grimm—although a lot of other places claim this famous pair as well. Most of the rest of the city was laid out in a practical manner, utilitarian, with space allocated for housing and building new in the rubble, as opposed to curating what was lost.
I always feel keenly self-conscious when confronted with an urban environment whose past has been levelled and washed away and wonder if the juxtaposition of a few showcases (as opposed to the sentiment of an entirely restored look and feel) is enough to jar the memory and whether history can be encapsulated in any sort of ensemble. I wonder what the Grimms would have made of such enchanted remnants. I am glad that I had the long stroll and gallery of impressions to think on.

brototyp, archetype

I spied this corner bakery the other day with the clever yet not immediate (to my mind at least) tag line of “Brotagonist,” meaning like with
a protagonist, bread is the focal-point of this little Brotzeit (afternoon snack) narrative. The anti-hero or underdog in me did not go for the obvious pun, however, and I wondered why a bakery would want to antigonise its customers, perhaps with the villainy of gluten.