Paraphrasing Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights, the night "set in mist and cold" upon Muswell Hill tonight. Started its reading. Interesting way of saying things in a very ritualistic manner, too cumbersome at first sight. Meaning that a young person is dressed in a shabby upper garment, Bronte describes: "the young man had slung on to his person a decidedly shabby upper garment". And to say that someone is the husband of someone else, the character comments: "Ah, certainly_ I see now: you are the favored possessor of the beneficent fairy". And the recipient of such comment got upset. Of course.
Tough reading in the morning, I enjoyed much in my way back though. This whirling manner of narration seems to hypnotize and attract to the main discourse, as a sort of gravitational force, to the core of the circumstance and the events. It has a pleasant appeal. Let's sense more of it and will let you know.
***
I found peaceful relish and reassuring content in the Evensong service on Sunday afternoon in the Southbank Cathedral. Church of England. Evensong. Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer was a prominent figure of English Reformation, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533 and married himself, before, to the niece of a Lutheran Reformer. He declared the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon void and married him to Anne Boleyn, months later. He was burn to the bone in Oxford (1556) in time of Bloody Mary, accused of treason.
Two Sundays only I attended it _The psalms are nice; the choral songs, beautiful; the meditation, full of insightful lessons; the Book of the Common Prayer, juicy. I guess, Evensong: an unpretentious and profound form of community prayer composed by an ambitious and powerful man.
Only one question. During the confession of faith, we say: "I believe in the Roman Catholic Church". Can you explain to me why?
***
Speaking of Catholic Church, I came across today with a large poster who, in showing some figures on world revenues out of drug consumption, considers the teachings and faith of the Catholic Church among psychological drugs, and places it in the same cathegory as that of porn industry. It is a free exhibition in the Welcome Exhibition building across Euston Station entitled "High Society" about "mind-altering drugs in history and culture".
The $34 billion of yearly revenue of Catholic Church is, thus, the outcome of selling a psycological, consciousness-altering drug-product, as much as half of that of world porn industry ($60 billion, if I remember correct), another drug-product best-seller of psychological type. No statement is made about other religions or any sects. In the legal cathegory, coffee and tobacco revenues, but only UK taxes from alcohol. In the realm of pharmaceutical products (i.e. medical use), the larger percentage showed is made by "Painkillers". To prevent erectil disfunction only, $6 billion yearly, if I remember correct.
The panel is divided actually in two. The right poster is dedicated to enhace the expenses derived from the war on drugs. A huge space, larger than any other highlightens the $2500 billion that US has spent in the last 40 years plus, in another significat space, $450 billion since 1970 spent in keeping drug-related criminals in federal prisons. Those are the only figures not showed in a yearly basis.
Taken those expenses as constant for the last 40, the war against drugs costs Americans (i.e. taxes) $62 billion a year and the maintenance of inmates, less than $12billion a year. These numbers are quite different, and allow comparison to, for instance, the $33 billion of yearly revenues that hundreds of crooks and wicked, evil gangsters collect, free of taxes, from the selling of drugs in the "youth market", at the expend of the youth.
This art-work is entitled "Painkillers", by David McCandless, 2010. I am glad this gentleman became an artist: he has not showed half an inch of intellectual depth and honesty.
***
In 1993, my Latin teacher in the High School tells us the story of an incipient communication tool, a tool for the future, called Internet, which has allowed him to actually see pictures kept in the Louvre. The old man (not too old, as I see it now) was excited.
I kind of sense a similar feeling as I find "Internet" to be a magnificient opened gate to the past. I guess I am not old enough to get anxious about the future and I can just sit and wait for it to come to me. However, I have never seen the past and I am moving in opposite direction, away from it. Or, perhaps, I am stuck and it is the past the one moving away, leaving me before.
So, I am interested in the past, not actively, though, but sloppy and randomly. And so, I get excited when I discover something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJaToCF0tIU
"For His Son", D.W. Griffith (1912) _ The film is showed in "High Society" exhibition.
Or this:
http://vodpod.com/watch/5317119-jean-painleve-les-cristaux-liquides-liquid-crystals
"Les Cristaux Liquides", J. Painleve ("Science is Fiction" collection, 1978) _ Tate Modern Museum: Jean Painleve, (1902 - 1989), the Science - Surrealism merger, the communist rebel, the biologist anti-mathematician... All I guess, despite his father's disapoinment and sorrow.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment