Bacon vs. Bacon

In philosophy class tonight a fellow student brought up Deleuze's book on Francis Bacon. For the rest of class the professor would say things such as, "...as is the case with the Bacon...".

While is was clear that he was talking about this:                I couldn't stop thinking about this:

Hello Seahorse!

Hello Seahorse! is a pop/rock group out of Mexico City. I guess they've been around since 2005 but they are new to me. They aren't allowing their YouTube video for the song "Bestia" to be embedded, so check it out here and chime in to let me know what you think.

Saxophone Superstar Sergio Flores is Above the Law

Translation and Progeny as Repetition: "Al hijo"

No soy yo quien te engendra. Son los muertos.

Son mi padre, su padre y sus mayores;

son los que un largo dédalo de amores

trazaron desde Adán y los desiertos

de Caín y de Abel, en una aurora

tan antigua que ya es mitología,

y llegan, sangre y médula, a este día

del porvenir, en que te engendro ahora.

Siento su multitud. Somos nosotros

y, entre nosotros, tú y los venideros

hijos que has de engendrar. Los postrimeros

y los del rojo Adán. Soy esos otros,

también. La eternidad está en las cosas

del tiempo, que son formas presurosas.

-Jorge Luis Borges

El hacedor, 1960

It is not I who begets you. It is the dead.

My father, his father and their ancestors;

those who have traced a long labyrinth

of loves from Adam and the deserts

of Cain and of Abel, in an aurora

so ancient that is is now mythology,

they arrive, blood and marrow, this day

of the future, in which I now beget you.

I feel their multitude. We are they

and among us, you and those yet born

whom you shall beget. The last ones

and those of red Adam. I am these others,

also. Eternity is in this things of time,

which are fleeting forms.

(translation my own)

Carbon Fiber Daydreams

Perspective

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.


"We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just form the distance of the Moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you've ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself-all behind your thumb. And how insignificant we really all are, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to able to enjoy loving here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself."

-Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 & 13, interview for the 2007 film The Shadow of the Moon


"When you're finally up at the moon  looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people."

-Frank Borman, Apollo 8, Newsweek, Dec. 23 1968

"That's not a toaster, that's a deadly weapon!"

Beard Slap

El gran piramde de Cholula: An exercise in ruins

What at first appears to be a cathedral prominently standing atop a large hill is really an exercise in ruins, the ruins of what was at one time the largest pyramid in the world.

While this particular pyramid isn't the subject of my study, these are the beginnings of my dissertation. In an e-mail to a friend I described it in this way:

Mexico in/as Ruins in 20th Century Mexican Poetry and Narrative. The title is a bit broad, but in one chapter I want to look at earlier manifestations of Mexico as ruins. In Octavio Paz and Pacheco, the poetry of the 40-60's often returns to the metaphor of ruins to describe the political or social situation of the country. But there is also an element of time as flux, the past is creeping back into the present, the wrongs of the past that we thought were buried are coming back to haunt us. That may transition into the next chapter which would look at Rulfo and maybe another dude named Tario who, when everyone else is concerned about the nation and a "national" literature, are writing about ghosts and ghost towns. That is their critique of the national project and the govt. and reforms that came out of the revolution. There could also be a contemporary novel included here, because at the turn of the century, it went back to that era and explored how the polished facade of what the nation and the city were, was really just that. That Mexico City was populated by corpses, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc.

Finally the last chapter may be an ecocritical reading of the poetic response to the 1985 quake that literally made a ruin out of Mexico City. I think this topic will allow me to use, as a point of comparison, theory on time, ghosts, and repetition (the stuff I like) while not looking beyond the make and replacing the text with theory.

This project may be derailed or radically changed due to my recent discovery that this book exists. But I hope not. Today I was reading about the building of the Catedral Metroploitana in Mexico City and looking for a good text that I can use in a term paper. In the term paper I want to address that the cathedral (or at least its predecessor which was built by Cortés) was built with stones from the Temlpo Mayor of Tenochtitlan and how the two  buildings are, in a way, one and the same while not being the self-same. If I am understanding my readings this quarter, that means they are an instance of the Deleuzian notion of repetition. But I can't tell you that I am understanding Deleuze well, if at all. That has been a source of frustration and maybe I shouldn't have taken these Deleuze courses this quarter. Regardless, I am excited to get working on my PhD reading list/dissertation list. I am beginning to see light shining through the edges of the jungle.