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Sunday, June 20th, 2010
There is something special about Borges' stories which are set in Argentina and Uruguay, particularly I'm thinking of the stories like "The South", "The Dead Man", "Funes", and of the stories in Brodie's Report -- I get a similar feeling from reading these stories as from watching Westerns -- the same sort of longing for cultural identity, construction and description of a cultural identity. In "The Dead Man" we see Borges addressing the reader directly, it takes me by surprise every time I read it. BenjamÃn Otálora has fled a murder charge in Buenos Aires and is working as a gaucho in Tacuarembó:
Here began, for Otálora, a different life; a life of vast dawns, days smelling of horses. This life is new to him, sometimes harsh, but it is already in his blood; just as men of other nations worship and fear the sea, we (and also the man who is interweaving these symbols) long for the infinite pampas echoing with hoofbeats.
We! Also the man who is interweaving these symbols! I don't think Borges refers so clearly and unambiguously to himself in any of his other fictions (leaving aside those pieces like "Borges and I" and "The Other" which are specifically introspective) -- that parenthesis seems to me designed to clear away all the levels of confusion about who is saying "we".
posted morning of June 20th, 2010: Respond ➳ More posts about The Aleph
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Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
At Shorpy, Dave has posted a picture of New York's Little Italy from 1900 that is one of the nicest images of that iconic time and place I've seen: Be sure to look at the full-resolution copy of the picture -- the level of detail is fantastic.
Also: Around the corner on Pell St. ...and one block east on Mott St.
posted afternoon of January 19th, 2010: Respond ➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures
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Thursday, January 14th, 2010
At Discover Magazine's Bad Astronomy blog, I find new pictures of Mars from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Thanks for the link, cleek!) The pictures of Martian sand dunes make a beautiful desktop background, so think I: (To a first order approximation, this is formations produced by the interaction between sand storms and frozen CO2.)
(Clicking on the "Full image (grayscale, non-map projected)" to the right under "JPEG Products" will give you a very large image file which you can crop at your leisure...)
posted evening of January 14th, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, September second, 2008
I've fallen in love with mural-blog The Wooster Collective -- every day tons of clever, striking images of graffiti on streets and buildings around the world. Today they link to an NRK article on Urban kunst midt i ødemarka, which shows many walls by Norwegian artists Dolk and Pøbel. This is a site you should add to your daily rounds if you're interested in public art. Flybane/fluesopp by the by, is also Little My's preferred fungus -- I've forgotten which Moomin book it is that has the family sorting mushrooms they've gathered, all of Little My's are poisonous and/or psychoactive.
Update: I made "Pike med fluesopp" my desktop wallpaper. I love this image! Here are a couple more photos, with higher resolution.
posted afternoon of September second, 2008: 1 response
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