"¿Hay mensajeros? Sí,
cuerpo tatuado de señaleses
el espacio, el aire es invisible
tejido de llamadas y respuestas.
Animales y cosas se hacen lenguas,
a través de nosotros habla consigo mismo
el universo. Somos un fragmento
-pero cabal en su inacabamiento-
de su discurso. Solipsismo
coherente y vacío:
desde el principio del principio
¿qué dice? Dice que nos dice.
Se lo dice a sí mismo. Oh madness of discourse,
that cause sets up with and against itself!"

-- Extract from Octavio Paz's "Pasado En Claro" (A draft of shadows)



[Are there messengers? Yes,
space is a body tattooed with signs, the air
an invisible web of calls and answers
Animals and things make languages,
through us the universe talks with itself.
We are a fragment --
accomplished in our unaccomplishment --
of its discourse. A coherent
and empty solipsism:
since the beginning of the beginning
what does it say? It says that it says us.
It says it to itself. Oh madness of discourse,
that cause sets up with and against itself!

-- Translated by Eliot Weinberger ]


(The Deepak Chopra type mood is unintended)

Beating a dead cliche

Gregory Stock: To upgrade is human

Tales of Mere Existence

Procrastination
Conversation
How To Cope With Depression
Saturday
I Have To Get Ready
...Take Shoes Off?
A Typical Conversation With My Mom

Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Body and Soul: 1,2,3,4,5,6
Born Equal?: 1,2,3,4,5,6
Birth and Death: 1,2,3,4,5,6

Germaine Greer on women creating art

René Magritte. La Condition humaine. 1933. Oil on canvas.

"In front of a window seen from inside a room, I placed a painting representing exactly that portion of the landscape covered by the painting. Thus, the tree in the picture hid the tree behind it, outside the room. For the spectator, it was both inside the room within the painting and outside in the real landscape.

...
This is how we see the world. We see it outside ourselves, and at the same time we only have a representation of it in ourselves. In the same way, we sometimes situate in the past that which is happening in the present. Time and space thus loose the vulgar meaning that only daily experience takes into account"