The Perfect City

In appending new forms the backward society takes not their beginnings, nor the stages of their evolution, but the finished product itself. In fact it goes even further; it copies not the product as it exists in its countries of origin but its ‘ideal type’, and it is able to do so for the very reason that it is in a position to append instead of going through the process of development. This explains why the new forms, in a backward society, appear more perfected than in an advanced society where they are approximations only to the ‘ideal’ for having been arrived at piecemeal and with the framework of historical possibilities...

In a similar spirit, personal liberty in Dubai derives strictly from the business plan, not from a constitution, much less ‘inalienable rights’....

The Russian girls at the bar are the glamorous façade of a sinister sex trade built on kidnapping, slavery and sadistic violence. Al-Maktoum and his thoroughly modern regime, of course, disavow any collusion with this burgeoning red-light industry, although insiders know that the whores are essential to keeping the 5-star hotels full of European and Arab businessmen.When expats extol Dubai’s unique ‘openness’, it is this freedom to carouse and debauch-not to organize unions or publish critical opinions-that they are usually praising...

Dubai’s police may turn a blind eye to illicit diamond and gold imports, prostitution rings, and shady characters who buy 25 villas at a time in cash, but they are diligent in deporting Pakistani workers who complain about being cheated out of their wages by unscrupulous contractors, or jailing Filipina maids for ‘adultery’ when they report being raped by their employers.

---from Mike Davis, New Left Review.

If Dubai goes belly-up, don't expect the black sun to be saddened.As long as I get my camera, I couldn't give a fig about 'educational city' and 'media city'.

z words

why does everything begin with 'a'...and end with 'z'?

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else.
It seems to him there are a thousand bars;
and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly--.
An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
---Rilke.

there are words you do not know, lands you will not see, lives that fleetingly pass by yours, like a dream you once had. the simplicity of it. the fierceness of the heart, the steadiness of the mind. you bring the whole weight of your experiences to bear on this question: is knowing everything?an arc of chances was opened to you: but this, and not another. thisness, not thatness. you heard and pictured your circular thoughts. fear struck: what if there is no beginning, no end? if this is your only voice, what you really sound like?

what do you say when there is nothing left to say? tokens, rituals, emblems, symbols. anything but the thing-in-itself. the slow depletion that shows up in your sad eyes, the brown freckles that are proliferating, rising to the surface of your skin. and yet, the unconquered, undimmed flame. there are words you will not utter, except in the darkest night, the longest moment, when the heart is defeated, like Z, z-words...

the narrowing down of conversation, the winnowing of truth from your face, the slack that has gradually unfolded, the deepening shadows. their inner structure revealed. like an animal, you think of nothing but the elemental: food..survival..breathing...water. many have died from the lack of water; none, absurdly, from the lack of love.

the heavy weight of the past

Tons Of Joy: Wrestling champ ‘Daula’ pins down his English adversary ‘Clark’, to the patent dismay of the referee, at a fundraiser for the Lahore Warplanes Fund, the Police Spitfire Fund and the Minto Park Fund, in Lahore in the late 1930s]

photo via chapati mystery.

Ubo's uncle was a wrestler and so I've always been fascinated by the story he told about him (he, himself, was going to be named 'Rustum' but when he eventually came into the world they quickly forgot about that notion!) Would love to make a short film on wrestlers (and/or on the circus).

You realise just how few links and connections you have to the past. Which is okay, that's just the way it is; you can only work with what's been for(given) you, the inheritance of dark light. No need to grasp at what isn't yours. Each of us in a particular place and time. We can plunge into it, deepen our awareness of it, find our own voice against it and within it, and even imagine distant shores, possibilities...but even when we do, those imaginings still start from where we're at. Not everything is possible. Some lines meet, others don't. People you might have loved pass by you all the time. Different paths, or different times. Same difference. You don't care much for origins. But the centre, the centre of things, that's a different story...

A grey line on wite paper. Erased, reversed. Still leaves a mark, a trace. Grey, softly drawn on the plane white, fades and fades, until there's a meeting of two minds, the breathing of one spirit.

November ends. Still unforgiven. The winter months upon us now, the slow hardening of brown earth, the chains of frail winter light that touch abandoned things, and leaves them unredeemed.

lust, caution

She not only gets inside me, she worms her way into my heart like a snake. Deeper. All the way in. I take her in like a slave. I play my part faithfully so I, too, can get to her heart...

---adapted from Lust, Caution.

how do we differ? in what we're a slave to? some to money, others to flesh, the mind; bow down to the gods of success and status. and we're all slaves to time. so where is your uniqueness, which qibla do you turn to? flesh will grey, sag, rot, the mind slow, thought slip, picking on garbage, forsaking universals or particulars; success is another word for anxiety. tell me, why was there a snake in the Garden (and therefore in every garden)?

'silence is not absence'. then what is it? idols vacantly stare into eternity, the smooth everlasting golden smile of tranquility a balm for the weary. the way out is not a way out. still. not for you. not overcome by "the desire to sleep overcomes all desires". what fiery heart you hold, that knows no sighs? what strange creature is this...that knows no bonds, that takes no captives?

~~~

a man walked in the street, holding three pieces of string. attached to them were a goat, a monkey, and a dog. the monkey to entertain, the dog for companionship. and the goat? the goat to remind him of death.

out of place

"But where are you from?", she asked.

You realized it was a mistake to talk in the interval

"err..who can say? From here or hereabouts, I guess". When 'When are you from?' might have been a better question, you think to yourself. What do you have but fragments. And you want to construct a whole world out of that? The background ordinariness of the world, the sheer, utter necessity of it, of worldliness, of "bridges" (Simone W).

"But there is real pathos in this dying people. These are my people-my own father, brother, mother, aunt and uncle...Yet I have no illusions: the death of these archaic, unprofitable, businesses is inevitable..But it is also the case that something rich and timeless that bids us to our roots and past, something central to our cultural imagination..is being lost"
---G.Bowley, on the decline of farming in England (Prospect magazine)

Perhaps the most valuable, the most useful, skill we can impart to our children now is precisely that of being able to ‘slow things down’, of being able to identify, in the fast-moving kaleidoscope of images and impressions which surround us and press on us from every side, those things which are significant. Significant, I mean, in that they enrich our life experience, are not ephemeral, have more than entertainment value. It seems to me that those of us who are old enough to have been reared and educated in what was in some respects a much simpler world, a book-based world, before the Internet, before Big Brother, when the only take-away food was fish and chips and people mended socks rather than throwing them away, when the shops remained shut on a Sunday-those of us who are that old are privileged. Because we had fewer distractions, and society in general had different values, we have resources and motivations which are harder to acquire these days. And yet, and yet-thank goodness there are some young’uns among us who are somehow managing to navigate a way through all the dross and emerge as thoughtful, intelligent people capable of discrimination and independent thought. Some of them are even here in cyberspace!

Celia Eddy.

senian

Some thoughts on Sen:

Underlying this skepticism towards the mainstream is not just dissatisfaction with what some see as an overly abstract, formal, and technical approach but, also, a much deeper suspicion: namely, that economists’ approach to human behaviour has- with their simple models and rigid conceptual framework-often been a spectacularly narrow one, an approach that is merely a "limited fragment of the whole"...

In 1987 Sen wrote a profound book entitled ‘On Ethics and Economics’ that reminded economists who were unaware of their own tradition that the origins of economics-or at least one of the origins- lay in moral philosophy (or what might loosely called ‘political economy’). It is worth recalling that it was only around the 1930’s , or possibly the early 1900’s if we include Pareto’s work, that economics made some headway in purging itself of psychological content and ethical considerations-or what some thinkers, perhaps taking the lead from the logical positivists, called "metaphysical nonsense". This development is famously encapsulated in Lionel Robbins’ words:

"It does not seem logically possible to associate the two studies [ethics and economics] in any form but mere juxtaposition"

Sen’s observations here are acute: not only should we be aware of the plural nature of the substantive theories of utility (is it happiness, desire-fulfillment, or pleasure?) but in practice, the tendency to assume that utility is both one’s welfare and the maximand in choice behaviour leads to the unlikely conclusion that one always sets out to maximize one’s welfare. This seems unreasonable because we may have limited cognitive capacities and foresight, or we may have limited information, time, and experience to make a sound evaluation of what is good for us; and even if do know what is good, we may still prefer what is bad, or lack the will to choose the good...

Amartya Sen’s work has reached a fairly wide audience in no small part as a consequence of his critique of utilitarianism, the dominant tradition in welfare economics, and his pioneering of another perspective which he called the "capability approach".

stand forgotten

"The striving for perfection leads an artist to make spiritual discoveries, to exert the utmost moral effort. Aspiration towards the absolute is the moving force in the development of mankind...realism is a striving for the truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical"

The old pond was still
A frog jumped in the water
And a splash was heard.

Reeds cut for thatching
The stumps now stand forgotten
Sprinkled with soft snow.
---Basho.

To say the most, in the shortest time; the line that connects two spaces. Learning what not to say. To keep silent. Let things come to you. Know when to jump. Thoughtlessly.

Snow melts.
Reveals stones.
Sometimes green earth.

Different Trains

This is so utterly haunting and moving that it's stayed with me for a long time-and has been in the background of all the 'crow' posts. In some ways I'm a bit reluctant in sharing it with others. And that I find strange. But since anton posted something beautiful I wanted to as well, for her...

Cd's came in: Messiaen's End of Time (Tashi); Nils Okland's 'Straum'; and Hildur Gudnadottir's 'Without Sinking'.

Someone, listening to the beautiful track Aether,asked: is this soul? Perhaps. But whose? Or is it experimental or traditional? The meeting of spontaneity with received lines of transmissions.