merry christmas.

philly murals.

this picture is taken from here. i love the colours of the murals, their allegorical nature and their large claim to non-commercial public space. i like philly but i kind of want to go back to europe right now.

un estruendo (paul celan)

Un estruendo: la verdad

misma ha comparecido

avanzando entre los

hombres,

hacia el centro

del torbellino de metáforas.

cockaigne/cocaine.

Meaning: 1. Paradise, utopia, an imaginary land of luxury. 2 (Facetiously) The land of the Cockneys, which is to say, the East End of London.

Notes: Today’s Good Word has nothing to do with cocaine, despite the resemblance in spelling and meaning. Cocaine originates in the Quechua word for the coca plant, kúka. The first syllable of today’s word is [kah], not [ko].

In Play: In Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco wrote, “Everyone was seeking renewal, a golden century, a Cockaigne of the spirit.” Aren’t you glad the translator didn’t use the English slang equivalent, la-la-land? The second sense of today’s word refers (humorously) to the land of Eliza Doolittle, in whose Cockney accent Henry Higgins becomes ‘Enry ‘Iggins. This leads to the possibility of saying, in the right company, “Reliable carpenters in this area are as rare as Hs in Cockaigne.”

Word History: Today’s Good Word is capitalized since it is supposed to be a proper geographical name referring to a country. It is based on the Old French phrase pais de cokaigne “land of cakes” (Modern French pays de cocagne), referring to a country where good fortune abounds. The word takes on its current meaning in the Old French phrase trouver cocaigne “find a land where good things drop from the sky”. The word for “cake” at the root of cocaigne was probably borrowed from German Kuchen “cake”, a word sharing a source with English cook and kitchen.

Must re-read Foucault’s Pendulum at some point.

Apparently the word ‘cockaigne’ is not related at all to ‘cocaine’.  that was my reason for looking it up in the first place. disappointing, really, though i am glad anaesthetics have moved on since the 1870s…

1874, from Fr. cocaine (1856), coined by Albert Niemann of Gottingen University from coca (from Quechua cuca) + -ine, arbitrary use of L. -inus, -ina for noun ending. A medical coinage, the drug was used 1870s as a local anaesthetic for eye surgery, etc.

antonio negri.

Affective labor is itself and directly the constitution of communities and collective subjectivities. The productive circuit of affect and value has thus seemed in many respects as an autonomous circuit for the constitutions of subjectivity, alternative to the processes of capitalist valorization. Theoretical frameworks that have brought together Marx and Freud have conceived of affective labor using terms such as desiring production and more significantly numerous feminist investigations analyzing the potentials within what has been designated traditionally as women’s work have grasped affective labor with terms such as kin work and caring labor. Each of these analyses reveal the processes whereby our laboring practices produce collective subjectivities, produce sociality, and ultimately produce society itself.

read the whole essay here.

yes, perhaps?

the sock monster, a great cartoon series rippled from here. i suggest you read it from time to time.

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.