scare-quotes

If you’re gullible enough to believe the so-called experts in their Ivory Towers, Oxford dictionaries has pronounced “post-truth” as the international word of the year. 

The formal definition for the adjective that beat out the terms alt-right, Brexiteer, and hygge and the polar opposite of last year’s honouring of an emoji reads “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Though seemingly born of the moment, post-truth has been in parlance since 1992 essay addressing the Iran-Contra Affair and the first Gulf War.

dead letter office or dashing off to the post

Listening to an editor bemoaning the lost art of correspondence whilst trying to turn his readership’s interest to the epistolary novel—or rather the collected letters of a particular personality, I agreed that there’d be little merit in or love for a compendium of tweets or the bulk of emails—although there’s plenty of room for sentiment and composure there that I imagine has as much to do with legacy as the fact that one’s retrospective isn’t immediately served up with each engagement.
I did, however, find myself contending the assertion that the letter is wholly unassailable. Not because there are notable exceptions in our untaxing communications landscape since it’s always a personal choice whether or not to devote more or less energy in sharing a story, but rather due to another format for whom the rumours of death are at least slightly premature strikes me as proof that the art form is not yet moribund, and I’m given to wonder if the lowly blog isn’t somehow the successor to sending out missives. Not quite journalism and not quite a diary, maybe this hybrid, a bit abused and sometimes the subject of ridicule for being outmoded and without the audience shares of other social media, is letter writing transmogrified. The updates and outreach of that the retired format is of course not the exclusive reserve of blogging but I think that maybe the notion behind crafting something—hopefully thoughtful and worthwhile for both author and audience—well compliments the deferred satisfaction of reaching across time in penning a letter, even one that goes undelivered.

don’t know much geology, don’t know much psychology

In Chichibu Japan there is a lovingly curated collection of stones that resemble faces—and not just your usual run-of-the-mill pareidolia either but specific celebrities—amassed over a half a century.
I know that the forces that shape evolution and stuff that looks like things is very different and human agency is limited—though bias is magnified—in both, but taking a brief tour of this museum made me think of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and his particularly convincing though gentle as one arrives at the conclusion all on one’s own of the fishermen and the samurai crabs of the Heike clan. Haunted by superstition and ancient lore, people were compelled to toss back any of their catch whose shell resembled a human face and over the centuries, human intervention helped select for this trait. What do you think? It’s interesting how we will automatically prise out patterns.

first we take manhattan, then we take berlin

The Local’s Spanish edition has a nice tribute for Leonard Cohen that explores the extent to which Spanish poetry and music influenced his own.
Radical futurist poet and playwright (Salvador Dalí was his set designer) Federico García Lorca who was executed for sedition at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War lends Cohen’s daughter her given name and made a strong, lasting impression on the artist. Seminal so too was Cohen’s fated encounter with a flamenco guitarist in Montreal who taught him a few chords and awakened something inside. Be sure to visit the link above for more of the story and see Cohen honoured with the prestigious Prince Asturias Award for literature in 2011.

sic transit gloria mundi

Avid photographer and friendly neighbourhood paramedic Chris Porsz of Cambridge- shire sampled much of the local colour nearly four decades hence and framed a sizable collection of stunningly candid images of the people he’d encounter. Amazingly, in these last few years, Porsz has started tracking down his subjects from way back then and convinced them to pose one more time for a new anthology that bridges the intervening decades called “Reunions.”

pill-bug

Via the Awesomer, we learn about this delightfully, rollie-pollie pedestrian bridge installed in Paddington back in 2004. Distinct from a draw-bridge, the design is called a rolling one technically though it looks more like curling. The perhaps unnecessary but wonderful articulation makes me think of the Paternostra elevators I’ve yet to ride in. The footbridge was designed by Thomas Heatherwick, who is also working to realise the “garden bridge” to brook the Thames.

wewelsburg oder brennpunkt

I still find myself reeling with the same feeling of creeping disbelief that I first encountered not so long ago in finding that the exploits and the ambitions of the followers of the Nazi party in regards to the esoteric (as portrayed in the Indiana Jones franchise) was not wholly a Hollywood conceit and much of the occult practises to this day rather defy popular portrayal.
On our way back from a trip to Amsterdam (more on this experience to come), H and I stopped at the enigmatic castle of Wewelsburg by Paderborn in Nordrhein-Westfalen. The uniquely triangular Renaissance structure was leased in perpetuity after 1933 by Schutzstaffel—abbreviated with the stylised runes SS—leader Heinrich Himmler as a school-house for cadets but was soon convinced by mystic Karl Maria Wiligut who conflated an otherwise ordinary piece of real estate due to its proximity to the Battle of the Teutoburger Wald to declare and expand this site as the centre of the world, specifically radiating from the norther tower, reconstructed with forced labour from a dedicated concentration camp as a crypt below and meeting hall above for the upper echelons of instructors and mentors.  Neither chamber was used to purpose.
Although no records exist that speak to the exact plans and use and proctors ordered the castle’s demolition at the end of the war, the tower for the most part remained intact (due to the reinforcement during reconstruction), the inlaid of dark green marble that represents black sun, the wheel of the sun—a triad of swastikas that form the months of the year and which may or may not have historical provenance beyond the Nazis.
The power of the symbol was defused by a collection of bean-bags and reading material that told of the more distant architectural history of Wewelsburg, and this is perhaps as it should be, though the fount of inspiration and mystery beyond romance is disdained completely at the peril of future generations, whom can be hosteled here too.