the universe will not be controlled by the likes of us
the title is a brilliant phrase uttered on the intertubes by AdamSelene @ theoildrum.com. this space accumulates other such short, poetic, and found-elsewhere insights into the limits of human cognition. it is a project dedicated to Wes Jackson’s vision of an “ignorance-based worldview.” a brilliant phrase uttered by his friend Wendell Barry in a letter.Archive for water
i saw ravens playing
in Iceland, the sun always seems to be in the wrong place. remember the last time you saw a solar eclipse, and everywhere you looked, not just at the sun and the moon, but the whole earth, the light seemed utterly strange, but beautiful? that’s how it seems to me every day here, when the sun is out. especially this past sunday. it was a stark blue, twilight day, and very windy. i went to the edge of steep slope that overlooks the airport, in the hopes filming a crosswind landing. what i didn’t know is that this is what i would see instead (if the embedded video doesn’t work below, here’s the youtube link).
the painting in the header
i took a 900 pixel by 200 pixel chunk out of Caspar David Friedrich’s Mönch am Meer (monk by the sea) (1809-10), which i found at Marie’s blog At the Lighthouse. the painting in its entirety is more beautiful, and more hopeful (blue sky begins to appear.) i liked Marie’s comments on the painting:
The man in the picture looks so small in comparison to the vast sea, and of course the fact that he is a monk adds a whole extra dimension to the existential anxiety this painting inspires. The motif reminds me a great deal of the ending of Joyce’s The Dead, with the sea playing the same part as the faintly falling snow: Nature as a menacing force, something all-consuming that we cannot conquer, and thus a reminder of the terminality of our lives. Beautiful.
