Franz Kafka: Absent-minded Window-gazing (Three Meditations)

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Untitled: Miroslav Tichý, n.d. (Foundation Tichý Ocean)

Absent-minded Window-gazing (Zerstreutes Hinausschaun)

What are we to do with these spring days that are now fast coming on? Early this morning the sky was gray, but if you go to the window now you are surprised and lean your cheek against the latch of the casement.

The sun is already setting, but down below you see it lighting up the face of the little girl who strolls along looking about her, and at the same time you see her eclipsed by the shadow of the man behind overtaking her.

And then the man has passed by and the little girl's face is quite bright.

Untitled: Miroslav Tichý, n.d. (Foundation Tichý Ocean)

Rejection (Die Abweisung)

When I meet a pretty girl and beg her: 'Be so good as to come with me,' and she walks past without a word, this is what she means to say:

'You are no Duke with a famous name, no broad American with a Red Indian figure, level, brooding eyes and a skin tempered by the air of the prairies and the rivers that flow through them, you have never journeyed to the seven seas and voyaged on them wherever they may be, I don't know where. So why, pray, should a pretty girl like myself go with you?'

'You forget that no automobile swings you through the street in long thrusts; I see no gentlemen escorting you in a close half-circle, pressing on your skirts from behind and murmuring blessings on your head; your breasts are well laced into your bodice, but your thighs and hips make up for that restraint; you are wearing a taffeta dress with a pleated skirt such as delighted all of us last autumn, and yet you smile - inviting mortal danger - from time to time.'

'Yes, we're both in the right, and to keep us from being irrevocably aware of it, hadn't we better just go our separate ways home?'

Untitled: Miroslav Tichý, n.d. (Foundation Tichý Ocean)

The Street Window (Das Gassenfenster)

Whoever leads a solitary life and yet now and then wants to attach himself somewhere, whoever, according to changes in the time of day, the weather, the state of his business, and the like, suddenly wishes to see any arm at all to which he might cling -- he will not be able to manage for long without a window looking on to the street. And if he is in the mood of not desiring anything and only goes to his window sill a tired man, with eyes turning from his public to heaven and back again, not wanting to look out and having thrown his head up a little, even then the horses below will draw him down into their train of wagons and tumult, and so at last into the human harmony.

Untitled: Miroslav Tichý, n.d. (Foundation Tichý Ocean)

Franz Kafka: three short tales, written between 1904 and 1912, from Betrachtung (Meditation), 1913, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir in The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces, 1948

Franz Kafka b. 3 July 1883, Prague; d. 3 June 1924, Vienna
Miroslav Tichý b. 20 November 1926, Netcice, part of the town of Kyjov, Czechoslovakia; d. 12 April 2011, Kyjov, Czech Republic

Striped Skunk and Steam Plant (A Night-Wandering Tale)

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Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis), California: photo by randomtruth, 11 August 2011

On most nights the only sign of human presence on the sprawling university campus during the deep nocturnal hours is that of roving police cruisers, maintaining a constant vigilance lest scattered elements of the common urban riffraff -- that ever-growing army without standards, the hungry and homeless -- be found seeking, on a muddy creek bank or beneath a rat-infested bush, a place to lay down, for a few hours, that heavy, heavy thing, a weary head.

A small sharp wind was kicking up, blowing dead plant matter about, after the manner described by the poet Shelley, who wrote in his Ode to the West Wind of leaves fleeing as before an enchanter.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes

Heat is generated in the campus buildings by steam power. A massive building houses the steam plant. Through the terrorist-proof grated windows one can make out the enormous steam pipes, as impressive as the monster machinery at the Ford River Rouge Plant once venerated in the reverent mechanical-utopian images of Charles Sheeler.

Steam puffs issuing from subterranean vents waft forth constantly upon the air currents, blown this way and that, like ghosts with sheets disheveled, from an enchanter fleeing, their sheets flapping behind them.

Last night, the spiky little breeze was bringing forth great white billows of steam from the huge steamship-funnel-size vents of the steam plant. Passing through these clouds it was possible to view the world as a Gustave Doré illustration from Dante.

It took a moment to notice a small scrabbling sound from the drift of dead leaves littering the margin of the concrete path.

A skunk sifting through the vegetal rubble for something to eat. And indeed a very handsome Striped Skunk, Mephitis mephitis, a much maligned yet entirely innocuous and splendidly attired creature.

From six feet away, we exchanged glances. The following conversation ensued.

"Hello, Skunk."

"???"

Back to the sifting, impassively ignoring the intruder's untoward presence.

Any urban-venturing deer would have frozen warily in its tracks until the passage out of range of the trespasser in its space.

The skunk, though, as if better accustomed to the project of sorting out the dangers of the night, apparently sensed no danger.

And a very pretty skunk it was, so intent, so beautiful, so industrious, framed there as it was in the billowing white cloud blown over us both by the steam plant, there in the middle of the night of the world.

Museum director Lilly Tellefson at work in the Georgetown Power Plant Museum, Seattle: photo by Joe Mabel, 12 January 2008

But Really It's OK

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Abandoned house, New Mexico Highway 209 north of Clovis: photo by Billy Hathorn, 11 July 2008

.someone

has gone away
in
the
.....wilderness
.for awhile,

...... and presto,
. different room, another empty
house

. in the next block
green
...... the lawn
trembling with
. your tracks

Abandoned street and home, Rowley, Alberta: photo by Kappakapa, 2008

Avenue with No Name

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Hallway of abandoned hospital in former East Berlin: photo By S-b, June 2008

The Avenida sin Nombre, as, if you have looked about yourself, you may have already gathered, is a street that has lost its memory.

It is a street that has forgotten it is a street and thinks instead that it is a tunnel, an intermediary passageway leading the approximately living and the intermittently sentient -- those who have managed despite the depredations of the present to retain at least some dim awareness of their surroundings -- toward, it is to be supposed, a place where oblivion will at last be complete.

It is lined all along on either side by high walls covered with peeling paint and here and there, sometimes for extended stretches, by commercial hoardings decorated with strange palimpsests of obscure hieroglyphic markings, maybe they are the texts of some sacred or for that matter not so sacred creed, no one now living has ever been able to make them out in such a way as to decipher their meaning, indeed many suppose them to have no meaning at all.

No one is quite sure where this street has its provenance or its terminus.

West Lawn -- Wrong Door: photo by Justin Hayes, 18 March 2009



An urban explorer under Hobart, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 May 2008

Vessel

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Ding (tripod cauldron), Late Shang Dynasty: photo by Mountain, 27 February 2006 (Shanghai Museum)

It sat there on the shoulders,
an unidentified object,
an unexpected guest.

It sat there
for a while, and then it stood
there for a while, where it was.

It was full of air
for a while, and then
for a while it was

full of nothing, and
then for a while,
blood.

Ding (tripod cauldron) with animal mask, early western Zhou: photo by Mountain, 27 February 2006 (Shanghai Museum)

Credible Threat

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Lo-Cost Liquor, Berkeley: photo by efo, 30 July 2005

Postcolonial history reads differently for the winners, enveloped in the conceptual transparency of their own guiltlessness, their difference.

Numbly so musing when a clumsy footfall in the night startles the mother deer out of her browsing covert on the hillside of the haunted house above Southampton,

a darker shadow against the deep background obscurity, and she springs from the concealing underbrush into the path of the approaching headlights,

her two maturing offspring follow and somehow as incredible as fairytale apparitions all three shadows emerge a long moment later on the other side of the road.

To every wild creature the signal of homo sapiens approaching is always a credible threat. The incredibility of the certainty

of the universal threat posed by homo necans hangs in the wet air under the thick umbrella of fog, far away across the invisible bay from the Season Opening Opera Gala

far from the warm virtual fireside glow of cell phones bathing patrons supping upon caviar and egg mousseline, Maine lobster medallions, seared squab and Cherries Jubilee, unseen

far away across the Bay, off the freeway exit, the cool neon azure circle of the Blue Moon Saloon floats in particulate city mist

above a shapeless homo-sapiens-size figure clutching a crumpled brown paper bag,

as though the contents of a brown paper bag at the bus stop on San Pablo were the Lotus, the last chance to be honest.

Jay Vee Liquors, Berkeley: photo by efo, 30 July 2005



Performer at the San Francisco Opera Guild's Opera Ball 2011, "An Evening in the Forbidden City": photo by Hardy Wilson/San Francisco Examiner

Tip Top Liquor, Berkeley : photo by efo, 30 July 2005



Performer at the San Francisco Opera Guild's Opera Ball 2011, "An Evening in the Forbidden City": photo by Hardy Wilson/San Francisco Examiner



Statewide Liquors 2, Berkeley: photo by efo, 30 July 2005

Supernova, Peaking: We owe these fiery monsters everything

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Supernova SN 2011fe (initially designated PTF 11kly) in the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101), peaking on 7/8 September 2011: photo by BJ Fulton/Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network

You wouldn't want one for a close neighbour -- at their fiercest, they can be five billion times brighter than the sun -- but supernovae, briefly capable of outshining an entire galaxy, have in the past 400 years lit up our universe. Tycho's nova or new star, recorded in 1573, was the first direct evidence that the heavens were not immutable. Kepler's supernova in 1604 was visible even by daylight. Both served as beacons to signal the scientific revolution. The latest candidate for supernova celebrity –- provisionally called PTF 11kly -- is blazing in the Pinwheel Galaxy, 21m light years away: it has already earned its place in history, if only because astronomers caught the explosion within hours of its commencement, and are now fiercely measuring every stage of its bright but brief convulsion. This is a Type 1a supernova, and such puzzling celestial fireworks have served as "standard candles" to measure the rate at which the universe is expanding: if you know exactly how bright such a star ought to be, you can make a good guess, from its dimness, at its distance. Supernovae are, so far, science's best explanation for the heavy elements: everything from helium to iron is known to have been forged from hydrogen in the thermonuclear furnaces of ordinary stars. But gold, lead or uranium require something much fiercer, and supernovae are the best candidates for such alchemy. If so, we owe these fiery monsters everything, including the fabric of the planet from which we observe them.

-- The Guardian, 8 September 2011

"The best view of this exploding star is likely to be this Wednesday or Thursday. Look for it just after evening twilight near the ‘handle’ of ‘The Plough’," said Dr Mark Sullivan of Oxford University’s Department of Physics. "Whilst it looks more or less like just another bright star, unlike its companions this supernova will soon fade away, and after a few days it will only be visible with larger telescopes."

The discovery of the supernova is particularly important because it is a type 1a supernova –- the kind used by scientists to measure the expansion of the Universe.

Dr Sullivan added: "For many people it could be a once in a lifetime chance to see a supernova of this kind blossom and then fade before their eyes; we may not see another one like it for another forty, or perhaps over a hundred, years!"

-- Oxford University Astrophysics, 7 September 2011

Pinwheel Galaxy (M101): image by NASA/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope, 28 February 2006 (NASA)

The entire universe is composed of stellar systems. In order to create them nature has only one hundred simple bodies at its disposal. Despite the prodigious profit it knows how to make from its resources, and the incalculable number of combinations these allow its fecundity, the result is necessarily a finite number, like that of the elements themselves. And in order to fill the entire expanse nature must infinitely repeat each of its original or generic combinations.

Every star, whatever it might be, thus exists in infinite number in time and space, not only in one of its aspects, but as it is found in every second of its duration, from birth until death. All the beings spread across its surface, big or little, animate or inanimate, share in this privilege of perennity.

The earth is one of these stars. Every human being is thus eternal in every second of its existence. What I write now in a cell in the fort of Taureau I wrote and will write under the same circumstances for all of eternity, on a table, with a pen, wearing clothing. And so for all.

-- Louis Auguste Blanqui, L'éternité par les astres, Librairie Germer Bailliére, 1872, Paris; trans. Mitch Abidor

The sun, as seen from the surface of earth through a camera lens: photo by Lykaestria, 2005

He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

-- William Blake: from Proverbs of Hell, c. 1789

Study for Portrait II (after the Life Mask of William Blake): Francis Bacon, 1955 (Tate Gallery)

Babe Ruth -- And You Are There

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Ruth knocked out. Baseball player Babe Ruth knocked unconscious, after he ran into a concrete wall at Griffith Stadium, Washington, D.C., while trying to catch a foul ball: photo by National Photo Company, 5 July 1924 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)

Wearing the familiar Yankee pinstripes
With the heraldic NY emblem elegantly covering the heart
Babe Ruth sits on a stiff-backed chair in front of his locker
It is locker No. 3
The photographer has caught Babe Ruth in the act of
Reaching across his body with his large and powerful right hand
To untie his left shoe
His long slim legs in black knee socks are crossed
And his body hunches forward over them
With his left hand dangling in his lap
His head is moon-shaped and seems much too big for his body
He cocks his head up to the left as if someone there is speaking
His eyes are intelligent and wary
His nose is broad
His ears are enormous
They are pinned back flat against the side of his head
In its cowish amplitude his face
Slightly resembles Severn Darden's

Three doors down the row of lockers
On a Persian strip rug
Which partially covers the bare board floor of the clubhouse
As if for temporary royal visitation
There rests a pair
Of two-tone Oxfords -- brown and white? --
The kind golfers used to wear

Babe Ruth at bat, Garret catching: photo by National Photo Company, 1922 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth: photo by National Photo Company, 1922 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth in reflective mood in New York Yankees dugout at Yankee Stadium, smoking a cigar before the game as American League President Ban Johnson looks on: photo by National Photo Company, 12 April 1922 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth, Ernie Shore, Rube Foster and Del Gainer of the Boston Red Sox: photo by Bain News Service, between 1915 and 1917 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox: photo by National Photo Company, 1919 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth: photo by National Photo Company, 1919 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth carrying a 300 pound log for the stove, in snow: photo by National Photo Company, [192-] (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth rolls 'em down a new groove : photo by Underwood & Underwood, 30 October 1919 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth in the field: photo by Bain News Service, 1921 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth, New York Yankees, with children on field at Yankee Stadium before a game: photo by Bain News Service, 1921 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth at bat: photo by National Photo Company, 1921 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



George Herman "Babe" Ruth at the White House: photo by National Photo Company, 7 December 1921 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth warming up in the field during spring training, New Orleans: photo by Bain News Service, 23 March 1922 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth and mascot: photo by Bain News Service, 1922 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth, left, leads the New York Yankees onto the field at the ceremonial opening of Yankee Stadium: photo by Bain News Service, 18 April 1923 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth Shaking Hands With U.S. President Warren Harding at Yankee Stadium: photo by Bain News Service, 24 April 1923 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth, John McGraw, Nick Altrock and Al Schacht: photo by Bain News Service, 10 October 1923 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth with John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants: photo by Bain News Service, 23 October 1923 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth with U.S. General of the Armies John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing: photo by National Photo Company, 28 May 1924 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth crossing the plate after hitting his first home run of the season: photo by National Photo Company, 21 April 1924 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Three baseball stars here for the World Series, Washington, D.C. Left to right: George Sisler, Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb: photo by National Photo Company, 4 October 1924 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Yankees' Babe Ruth safe at third on Bob Meusel's fly out as Washington Senators' third baseman Ossie Bluege waits to apply the tag, Griffith Stadium, Washington, D.C.: photo by National Photo Company, 1925 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)



Babe Ruth and former New York Governor Al Smith at the Biltmore Hotel and Country Club, Coral Gables, Florida: photo by G. W. Romer, 1930; image by J. G. Howes (Florida Memory Project/State Archive of Florida)



The Bam still a favorite. Although out of baseball for the last few years, "Babe" Ruth still retains his popularity with the millions of baseball fans the country over. With Mrs. Ruth the "Babe" is shown autographing a ball for an admirer at the All-Star game today at Griffith Stadium, Washington, D.C.: photo by Harris & Ewing, 7 July 1937 (Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress)



George H.W. Bush, captain of the Yale baseball team, receives George Herman "Babe" Ruth's manuscript of his autobiography, which Ruth is donating to Yale: photographer unknown, 1948 (National Archives and Records Administration)

The Players

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Herman A. "Germany" Schaefer (1876-1919), one of the most entertaining characters in baseball history, trying out the other side of the camera during the Washington club's visit to play the New York Highlanders in April 1911. Germany Schaefer, a versatile infielder and quick baserunner, played most of his career with the Detroit and Washington clubs. The camera pictured is a 5x7 Press Graflex with a modification to accommodate the large lens, produced by the Folmer & Schwing Division of Eastman Kodak Co.: photo by Bain News Serice, 1912 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Casey Stengel, full-length portrait, wearing sunglasses, while playing outfield for the Brooklyn Dodgers: photo by Bain News Service, c. 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress)

Eugene Franklin "Bubbles" Hargrave Chicago, National League: photo by Bain News Service, 1914 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Roger Bresnahan, St. Louis, National League: photo by Bain News Service, 1911 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Harry Franklin "Slim" Sallee, St. Louis, National League: photo by Bain News Service, 1914 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Germany Schaefer, Washington, American League: photo by Bain News Service, 1912 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Washington pitcher Al Schacht: photo by National Photo Company, 1920 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)

Nick Altrock, Washington, American League: photo by National Photo Company, 1919 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)

Girls baseball. Washington fans are strong for "Uncle Nick Altrock" and therefore the War Risks have Dot Meloy in training as a side line entertainer. Nick is teaching her a few of his stunts: photo by National Photo Company, 10 June 1920 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)

Women dancing and two Washington baseball players, Al Schacht and Nick Altrock, clowning on baseball field: photo by National Photo Company, 1924 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)

Roger Peckinpaugh, of the Washington Nationals, tagged out at home plate during baseball game between Washington and the Philadelphia Athletics: photo by National Photo Company, 1924 or 1925 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)

African American baseball players from Morris Brown College, with boy and another man standing at door, Atlanta, Georgia: photographer unknown, 1899 or 1900, from unbound album: Negro life in Georgia, U.S.A., compiled and prepared by W.E.B. Du Bois, v. 4 (Daniel Murray Collection, Library of Congress)

Baseball team, Eymard Seminary, Suffern, New York: photographer unknown, between 1890 and 1900 (Wittemann Collection, Library of Congress)

The Ball Team, composed mainly of glass workers, Indiana: photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, August 1908 (National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress)

Three baseball players (boys) wearing Cleveland uniforms: photographer unknown, 22 July 1922 (Library of Congress)

Fourth of July, near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Rural filling stations become community centers and general loafing grounds. The men in the baseball suits are on a local team which will play a game nearby. They are called the Cedargrove Team: photo by Dorothea Lange, 4 July 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Baseball game, Manzanar Relocation Center, California: photo by Ansel Adams, 1943 (Library of Congress)