Robert's Notebook

Gorgeous pink and blue evening sky over South London

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:31:37 +0100

Gorgeous pink and blue evening sky over South London

@steishere: The internet has a different ambience when you see...

Tue, 07 May 2013 17:27:20 +0100

@steishere: The internet has a different ambience when you see lol as the jawline from the figure in Munch’s “The Scream”. lol

"He thinks, strive as I might, one day I will be gone and as this world goes it may not be long: what..."

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:53:03 +0000

““He thinks, strive as I might, one day I will be gone and as this world goes it may not be long: what though I am a man of firmness and vigour, fortune is mutable and either my enemies will do for me or my friends. When the time comes I may vanish before the ink is dry. I will leave behind me a great mountain of paper, and those who come after me – let us say it is Rafe, let us say it is Wriothesley, let us say it is Riche – they will sift through what remains and remark, here is an old deed, an old draft, an old letter from Thomas Cromwell’s time: they will turn the page over, and write on me.”.”

- Hilary Mantel, ‘Bring Up the Bodies’ (2012)

"First you’re taught to fear a phantom, a man in black, a man with a knife, a man who’ll pounce in..."

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:40:26 +0000

“First you’re taught to fear a phantom, a man in black, a man with a knife, a man who’ll pounce in dark alleys. Well-intentioned women—mothers, aunts, teachers—will train you to protect yourself: Don’t wear your hair in a ponytail; it’s easier to grab. Hold your keys in one hand; hold your pepper spray in the other. Avoid dark alleys. When you reach young adulthood, the lessons change. They acquire an undertone of disgust: Don’t drink so much. Don’t wear such short skirts. You’re sending mixed signals; you’re putting yourself at risk. If you follow the advice and it never happens—if you end up one of the three out of four—you can convince yourself that safety is a product of your own making, a reflection of inherent goodness. But if you’re paying attention, you realize something doesn’t add up. Because it keeps happening: to your sisters; to your friends; to little girls and grown women you’ll never meet, in places like Cleveland, Texas; Steubenville, Ohio; New Delhi. Good people, bad people, neutral. It keeps happening in TV shows and novels and movies—they open on the missing girl, the dead girl, the raped girl. If you’re paying attention, you begin to realize that it isn’t happening. It is being done. And you are not safe. You have never been safe. You were born with a bulls-eye on your back. All you have ever been is lucky.”

- The Female Gaze: SO MUCH PRETTY by Cara Hoffman - review Cara Hoffman’s really amazing, really important novel So Much Pretty at The Female Gaze this month. (via cocothinkshefancy)
So sad but so fucking true.
(via sonic-rat)

"I think of the innocent lives Of people in novels who know they’ll die But not that the novel will..."

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:20:14 +0000

“I think of the innocent lives
Of people in novels who know they’ll die
But not that the novel will end. How different they are
From us. Here, the moon stares dumbly down,
Through scattered clouds, onto the sleeping town,
And the wind rounds up the fallen leaves,
And somebody—namely me—deep in his chair,
Riffles the pages left, knowing there’s not
Much time for the man and woman in the rented room,
For the red light over the door, for the iris
Tossing its shadow against the wall; not much time
For the soldiers under the trees that line
The river, for the wounded being hauled away
To the cities of the interior where they will stay;
The war that raged for years will come to a close,
And so will everything else, except for a presence
Hard to define, a trace, like the scent of grass
After a night of rain or the remains of a voice
That lets us know without spelling it out
Not to despair; if the end is come, it too will pass.”

- Mark Strand

"I interact with John, the Texan, Heinz Formaggio and the rest of reality in the way that I do..."

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:40:15 +0000

“I interact with John, the Texan, Heinz Formaggio and the rest of reality in the way that I do because I am who I am. Why am I who I am? Because of the double helix of atoms coiled along my DNA. What is D N A engine of change? Subatomic particles colliding with its molecules. These particles are raining onto the earth now, resulting in mutations that have evolved the oldest single-celled life-forms through jellyfish to gorillas and us, Chairman Mao, Jesus, Nelson Mandela, His Serendipity, Hitler, you and I.
Evolution and history are the bagatelle of particle waves.”

- David Mitchell, Ghostwritten, p369

Palace of #Westminster as seen from Arts Council HQ (at Arts...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 23:56:16 +0000

Palace of #Westminster as seen from Arts Council HQ (at Arts Council of England)

"Most sports are metaphors for combat. The team games – soccer, rugby and so on - are sprawling..."

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:23:18 +0000

“Most sports are metaphors for combat. The team games – soccer, rugby and so on - are sprawling battles in which attackers and defenders ebb and flow up and down the field in a clash of will and power led by their military-titled “captains”. American Football is a series of frantic First World War-style scrambles for territory measured in 10-yard increments. Tennis is a pistol duel, squinting shots lined up in the glare of a high-noon sun; running races are breakneck chases between predator and prey, triggered by the firing of a gun. That video games would extend the combat metaphor that defines most human play was natural.”

- Simon Parkin, ‘Nobody Remembers Their First Kill: the importance of video game violence’, New Statesman, 12 February 2013

"I’ve never saved anyone’s life before. It felt as ordinary as collecting photographs..."

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:14:03 +0000

“I’ve never saved anyone’s life before. It felt as ordinary as collecting photographs from Boots the Chemist. Slightly exciting beforehand, but basically a let down.”

- David Mitchell, Ghostwritten (1999), p275

A sliver of St Paul’s

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:19:34 +0000

A sliver of St Paul’s

"Earlier on we’d crossed an imaginary line marked by a little roadside sign which said..."

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 12:40:08 +0000

“Earlier on we’d crossed an imaginary line marked by a little roadside sign which said ‘60’. Not a speed limit - it announced the degree of latitude. Tonight there would be no dark, only an hour or two if ‘simmer dim’ as the Shetland people say - a twilit stillness at midnight, as though the sun were holding its breath.”

- Kathleen Jamie, ‘The Gannetry’ in ‘Sightlines’ (2012), p74

"“… Men live, as I say, rejoicing from age to age in something fresher than progress—in..."

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:40:16 +0000

“

“… Men live, as I say, rejoicing from age to age in something fresher than progress—in the fact that with every baby a new sun and a new moon are made. If our ancient humanity were a single man, it might perhaps be that he would break down under the memory of so many loyalties, under the burden of so many diverse heroisms, under the load and terror of all the goodness of men. But it has pleased God so to isolate the individual soul that it can only learn of all other souls by hearsay, and to each one goodness and happiness come with the youth and violence of lightning, as momentary and as pure. And the doom of failure that lies on all human systems does not in real fact affect them any more than the worms of the inevitable grave affect a children’s game in a meadow. Notting Hill has fallen; Notting Hill has died. But that is not the tremendous issue. Notting Hill has lived.”

“But if,” answered the other voice, “if what is achieved by all these efforts be only the common contentment of humanity, why do men so extravagantly toil and die in them? Has nothing been done by Notting Hill than any chance clump of farmers or clan of savages would not have done without it? What might have been done to Notting Hill if the world had been different may be a deep question; but there is a deeper. What could have happened to the world if Notting Hill had never been?”

The other voice replied—

“The same that would have happened to the world and all the starry systems if an apple-tree grew six apples instead of seven; something would have been eternally lost. There has never been anything in the world absolutely like Notting Hill. There will never be anything quite like it to the crack of doom. I cannot believe anything but that God loved it as He must surely love anything that is itself and unreplaceable. But even for that I do not care. If God, with all His thunders, hated it, I loved it.”

”

- G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Book V, Chapter III, pp293-294

"“I am to understand, then,” he said at last, with a cough, “that you, ahem, were..."

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 14:20:18 +0000

“

“I am to understand, then,” he said at last, with a cough, “that you, ahem, were the President of Nicaragua when it made its—er—one must, of course, agree—its quite heroic resistance to—er—”

The ex-President of Nicaragua waved his hand.

“You need not hesitate in speaking to me,” he said. “I’m quite fully aware that the whole tendency of the world of to-day is against Nicaragua and against me. I shall not consider it any diminution of your evident courtesy if you say what you think of the misfortunes that have laid my republic in ruins.”

Barker looked immeasurably relieved and gratified.

“You are most generous, President,” he said, with some hesitation over the title, “and I will take advantage of your generosity to express the doubts which, I must confess, we moderns have about such things as—er—the Nicaraguan independence.”

“So your sympathies are,” said Del Fuego, quite calmly, “with the big nation which—”

“Pardon me, pardon me, President,” said Barker, warmly; “my sympathies are with no nation. You misunderstand, I think, the modern intellect. We do not disapprove of the fire and extravagance of such commonwealths as yours only to become more extravagant on a larger scale. We do not condemn Nicaragua because we think Britain ought to be more Nicaraguan. We do not discourage small nationalities because we wish large nationalities to have all their smallness, all their uniformity of outlook, all their exaggeration of spirit. If I differ with the greatest respect from your Nicaraguan enthusiasm, it is not because a nation or ten nations were against you; it is because civilisation was against you. We moderns believe in a great cosmopolitan civilisation, one which shall include all the talents of all the absorbed peoples—”

“The Señor will forgive me,” said the President. “May I ask the Señor how, under ordinary circumstances, he catches a wild horse?”

“I never catch a wild horse,” replied Barker, with dignity.

“Precisely,” said the other; “and there ends your absorption of the talents. That is what I complain of your cosmopolitanism. When you say you want all peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. If the Bedouin Arab does not know how to read, some English missionary or schoolmaster must be sent to teach him to read, but no one ever says, ‘This schoolmaster does not know how to ride on a camel; let us pay a Bedouin to teach him.’ You say your civilisation will include all talents. Will it? Do you really mean to say that at the moment when the Esquimaux has learnt to vote for a County Council, you will have learnt to spear a walrus? I recur to the example I gave. In Nicaragua we had a way of catching wild horses—by lassooing the fore feet—which was supposed to be the best in South America. If you are going to include all the talents, go and do it. If not, permit me to say what I have always said, that something went from the world when Nicaragua was civilised.”

”

- G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Book I, Chapter III, pp 40-41

"“And the yellow paper,” he began, with anxious friendliness, “and the red..."

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:40:00 +0000

“

“And the yellow paper,” he began, with anxious friendliness, “and the red rag….”

“The yellow paper and the red rag,” said Fuego, with indescribable grandeur, “are the colours of Nicaragua.”

“But Nicaragua …” began Barker, with great hesitation, “Nicaragua is no longer a….”

“Nicaragua has been conquered like Athens. Nicaragua has been annexed like Jerusalem,” cried the old man, with amazing fire. “The Yankee and the German and the brute powers of modernity have trampled it with the hoofs of oxen. But Nicaragua is not dead. Nicaragua is an idea.”

Auberon Quin suggested timidly, “A brilliant idea.”

“Yes,” said the foreigner, snatching at the word. “You are right, generous Englishman. An idea brillant, a burning thought. Señor, you asked me why, in my desire to see the colours of my country, I snatched at paper and blood. Can you not understand the ancient sanctity of colours? The Church has her symbolic colours. And think of what colours mean to us—think of the position of one like myself, who can see nothing but those two colours, nothing but the red and the yellow. To me all shapes are equal, all common and noble things are in a democracy of combination. Wherever there is a field of marigolds and the red cloak of an old woman, there is Nicaragua. Wherever there is a field of poppies and a yellow patch of sand, there is Nicaragua. Wherever there is a lemon and a red sunset, there is my country. Wherever I see a red pillar-box and a yellow sunset, there my heart beats. Blood and a splash of mustard can be my heraldry. If there be yellow mud and red mud in the same ditch, it is better to me than white stars.”

”

- G.K.Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, pp37-38

"Ads find places to root that aren’t even places. They sprout on the backs of travelcards, the..."

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 09:33:00 +0000

“Ads find places to root that aren’t even places. They sprout on the backs of travelcards, the surfaces of the ticket machines that sell them. The fronts of every step out of the Tube, so, rising from the earth, you’re faced with strips of meaningless enthusiasm for product. ‘All about me the red weed clambered among the ruins’. Marketing chokes London as vigorously as Wells’ end-of-the-world Martian flora. Outside Waterloo station, at a bus stop, LoveFilm projects an endless loop of bait-drivel onto a building across the road, so its visions lurch into anamorphic frights on the sides of every bus that passes. And this commercial has a soundtrack. Now, close your eyes, you still can’t opt out.”

- China Miéville, London’s Overthrow, p20-21

Photo

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 12:40:31 +0000

"Gone are the days of capturing a sea of guests with genuine emotion on their faces. Now you have to..."

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 09:43:18 +0000

“Gone are the days of capturing a sea of guests with genuine emotion on their faces. Now you have to give an elbow to Aunt Clair who’s blocking the aisle with her Digital Rebel in hand as the bride makes her grand entrance. I used to love capturing guests emotion during the first dance, parent dance, even the toasts. But now my subjects are a handful of guests with point and shoots held up blocking their faces, or the tops of everyones head because they are looking down at the back of the camera to check the photo they just took. My favorite moment so far was a photo of the bride going down the aisle from behind. Everyone in front of the bride has their cameras up, everyone that the bride has past is still facing the back of the church with the heads down looking at the back of their camera. Very few people stopped to enjoy the moment of a father walking his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day. I did have a beautiful photo of a bride coming down the aisle with great emotion on her fathers face. However there were hues of red and green across them both thanks to all of the focusing beams from guests cameras. That’s an instant black and white! The cake cutting has become my favorite time now that I have no room to move around thanks to the crowd of people and cameras. It’s amateur suffocation.”

- Richard Esposito, ‘The New Wedding Guest’ on Tiffinbox, 14 March 2011

internetpoetry: Facebook conversation between riversleep and...

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:19:13 +0100

internetpoetry:

Facebook conversation between riversleep and brainloverecords

"The subtlest change in New York is something people don’t speak much about but that is in..."

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 12:09:19 +0100

“The subtlest change in New York is something people don’t speak much about but that is in everyone’s mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.”

- E.B. White, Here is New York (1949)

"The Lord first created Light: From the Lord’s play all living creatures came, And from the..."

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 14:18:20 +0100

“The Lord first created Light:
From the Lord’s play all living creatures came,
And from the Divine light the whole creation sprang.
Why then should we divide human creatures
Into the high and low?”

- Guru Granth Sahib, p.1349