what is ‘development’ for again?

i found this here, from Bill Easterly’s Can the West Save Africa. fascinating stuff.

sleep (rumi).

I am part of the load Not rightly balanced I drop off in the grass, like the old Cave-sleepers, to browse wherever I fall. For hundreds of thousands of years I have been dust-grains floating and flying in the will of the air, often forgetting ever being in that state, but in sleep I migrate back. I spring loose from the four-branched, time -and-space cross, this waiting room. I walk into a huge pasture I nurse the milk of millennia Everyone does this in different ways. Knowing that conscious decisions and personal memory are much too small a place to live, every human being streams at night into the loving nowhere, or during the day, in some absorbing work.

(Mathnawi, VI 216-227) Rumi, ‘We Are Three’

phew.

my yearning today is at least as great as when i was fifteen. it takes no effort at all, but my head is wobbly and i cannot make decisions or work properly. i am accompanied by that song ‘desireless’ by eagle-eye cherry that i once categorised as the sexiest song ever. i’m not so sure about that now, but it’s an awesome song.

i want to laugh about it all.

deliverance. now. yes. please

constantin and elena.

if you have the chance to see this film by andrei dascalescu, don’t miss it. it’s sweet and funny and moving. great cinematography and protagonists.

i think it might have been my favourite at astra sibu.

photo taken from here where you will also find lots of information on the making of.

progress.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana (1863 – 1952, Madrid) Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense (1905)

image: alexander cozens

baby baby baby.

i found this back today and loved it as much as i did when i first read it. perhaps. i’m not gonna think about that statment too long, so as to avoid it being broken. it’s autumn, it makes me wonder about the past and the future.

it’s by Friederike Roth.

Wir beide

Draussen bei den stillen, den schönen
Lippenblütlern, ach dieses Wort
(weisst du noch die alte Mühle?)
hab ich von dir, Lippenblütler
sagen gelernt. Du hast
was weiss ich
erzählt von blassen von ins Traurigzart
getauchten Farben.

Ich hab nicht zugehört.
Bloss deine Lippen mir
die weichen angesehen
so dünnhäutig damals so zart
ach, wie denn
verschwindet warum
so eine Lippenkleinigkeit?

Geh nicht fort.
Ich find dir den Ort.

Geschichten hast du erzählt
von Wolken vom herabgefallenen Monday
vom alleinigen Wind
und von der Kraft der Wörter der Töne der Farben.

Dann waren
wie denn verschwinden warum
eingezogen die Lippen ein Schnitt.

Hier steh ich. Hier
neben dir
erloschenem Bündel aus Narben.

Beide lachen wir
Lange schon nicht mehr über die Kraft
der Farben.

knowledge.

Do we, as anthropologists, have anything specific to offer to help humankind understand the varieties of its experience of the world? Can the style of knowledge that we have developed over time be transposed beyond the particular circumstances that have presided over its birth and the culturespecific concepts that we have inherited from this historical genesis? Are we reluctant imperialists riding the waves of globalisation and trying to peddle half-heartedly our used wares to people who have no real need for them, or do we still have a contribution to make to a non-ethnocentric understanding of the human condition? I think we do.

Philippe Descola 2005. On anthropological knowledge.

it is quite early and i woke up much before the dawn, quite unable to get back to sleep. i like the quiet of the night and the way in which it makes my heart beat less wildly.

leaving scotland.

Leaving Scotland before the driech of November is difficult. I have come to love the crisp clarity of early autumn that many writers have taken as all that is most beautiful before it dies, all that is ripe before it is decaying. It is the point of balance that we all want to capture at its peak and prolong to infinity. We are desperate to learn about how the apex of maturity forms and builds up. We are less keen on experiencing how the coating on the shiny, tough edges start to peel. As rust builds underneath the surface, we may pass off the minor changes in skin texture as mere tiredness.

I miss you too much and the autumn mornings cannot soothe.

miranda (w.h. auden)

My dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely,
As the poor and sad are real to the good king,
And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

Up jumped the Black Man behind the elder tree,
Turned a somersault and ran away waving;
My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.

The Witch gave a squawk; her venomous body
Melted into light as water leaves a spring,
And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

At his crossroads, too, the Ancient prayed for me,
Down his wasted cheeks tears of joy were running:
My dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely.

He kissed me awake, and no one was sorry;
The sun shone on sails, eyes, pebbles, anything,
And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

So to remember our changing garden, we
Are linked as children in a circle dancing:
My dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely,
And the high, green hill sits always by the sea.

	-- W. H. Auden

the man who planted hope. (jean giono)

About forty years ago I was taking a long trip on foot over mountain heights quite unknown to tourists in that region where the Alps thrust down into Provence. Nothing grew there but wild lavender. I was crossing the area at its widest point and, after three days’ walking, found myself in the midst of unparalleled desolation. I camped near the vestiges of an abandoned village. I had run out of water the day before and had to find some. These clustered houses, although in ruins, like an old wasps’ nest, suggested that there must once have been a spring or well here. There was, indeed, a spring, but it was dry. The five or six houses, roofless, gnawed by wind and rain, the tiny chapel with its crumbling steeple, stood about like the houses and chapels in living villages, but all life had vanished. After five hours’ walking I had still not found water and there was nothing to give me any hope of finding any. All about me was the same dryness, the same coarse grasses. I thought I glimpsed in the distance a small black silhouette, upright, and took it for the trunk of a solitary tree. In any case, I started towards it. It was a shepherd. Thirty sheep lying about him on the baking earth. He gave me a drink from his water-gourd and, a little later, took me to his cottage in a fold of the plain. He drew his water – excellent water – from a very deep natural well above which he had constructed a primitive winch. The man spoke little. This is the way of those who live alone, but one felt that he was sure of himself, and confident in his assurance. That was unexpected in this barren country. He lived, not in a cabin, but in a real house built of stone that bore plain evidence of how his own efforts had reclaimed the ruin he had found there on his arrival. His roof was strong and sound, the wind on the tiles made the sound of the sea upon its shores.

read the rest of the story here.