A young migrant boy tries on shoes donated by the people of Hungary
at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary. After days of confrontation and
chaos, Hungary unexpectedly opened its borders with Austria, allowing
thousands of migrants to leave the country and travel onto Germany: photo by Christopher Furlong via FT Photo Diary, 7 September 2015
The people who wanted the entomologists to die
wanted the Buddhists to live forever amid the ruins
of the industrial age. The people who wanted
the filmmakers to disappear wanted the trucks
full of dead people to drive all night to that point
where everything converges. The doctors who
brought the dead back to life wanted to spend
their days weeping at the poolside of the luxury
hotel that will be blown up later today. The men
who pour the concrete all day long into the holes
in the street in front of my house are the same
men who died before I was ever born, if I was
ever born. The prehistoric mountain of ice
wants the near-extinct African penguins
to stop saying goodbye. The bus terminal
wants the hitchhikers to end their journey.
The prayers want to stop providing answers.
9/1/2015 8:23
PM
Millennium Park, Chicago: photo by Millo Salgado, 17 September 2013
Here comes the GOP clown rodeo: Tea Party & ZOA team up with Trump & Cruz to oppose #IranDeal: image via Mondoweiss, 28 August 2015
A young migrant boy tries on shoes donated by the people of Hungary at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary. After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary unexpectedly opened its borders with Austria, allowing thousands of migrants to leave the country and travel onto Germany: photo by Christopher Furlong via FT Photo Diary, 7 September 2015
IMG_8128 (ladder): photo by locaburg, 9 November 2010
Construction workers. Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 1999; posted 15 November 2013
Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 7 July 2013
A Donald Trump supporter holds a copy of Time magazine, featuring the candidate on the cover: photo by Scott Eisen for the Guardian, 30 August 2015
Ceramic representation of Mictlantecuhtli, Aztec god of the dead and king of Mictlan (Chicunauhmictlan), lowest and northernmost section of the underworld, recovered during excavation of the House of Eagles in the Templo Mayor, now on display at the museum of the Templo Mayor, Mexico City: photo by Thelmadatter, 23 March 2008
¿Solo asi he de irme?
¿Como las flores que perecieron?
¿Nada quedara en mi nombre?
¿Nada de mi paso aqui en la tierra?
¡Al menos flores, al menos cantos!
Turquoise mosaic mask: Mixtec-Aztec, 1400-1521 CE: photo by Gryffindor, 17 January 2009 (British Museum)
Was it for this only that I came?
To die away like the flowers?
Nothing left of my name?
Nor of the days I have spent on earth?
At least my flowers, at least my songs!
from Cantos de Huexotzingo: Nahuatl, attributed to Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin, aka Aguila Blanca de Tecamachalco (The White Eagle of Tecamachalco), early 16th c.: English translation TC
Statue of Mictlantecuhtli, Aztec god of the dead, museum of the Templo Mayor, Mexico City: photo by Jamie Dwyer, 19 August 2008
Anaheim, California, USA: photo by Millo Salgado, 6 August 2013
No human being is "illegal" /
Ningún ser humano es "ilegal": JORGE RAMOS @jorgeramosnews, 26 August 2015
Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, left, asks Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a question about his immigration proposal during a news conference Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos was later taken from the room: photo by Charlie Niebergall/AP, 25 August 2015
A security guard for Republican presidential candidate Donald
Trump removes Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a news
conference Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and
began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal: photo by Charlie Niebergall/AP, 25 August 2015
A security guard for Republican presidential candidate Donald
Trump removes Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, left, from a
news conference Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and
began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal: photo by Charlie Niebergall/AP, 25 August 2015
Light sabre. Richmond, California: photo by efo, 2015
The Puppet. Chicago, Illinois, United States: photo by Millo Salgado, 2011
Migrants wrap themselves in blankets to warm up as the sun rises: photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters, 9 September 2015
Migrants wrap themselves in blankets to warm up as the sun rises: photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters, 9 September 2015
#migrants talk as sun rises at a collection point near Roszke village of the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015
#Hungary #migrants walk on the railway tracks near Szeged. #AFP PHOTO by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015
#Hungary #migrants walk on the railway tracks of a train-bridge near
Szeged. #AFP PHOTO by @afpattila: image via Aurelia
BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015
#migrants cross a fence near a collection point of Roszke village at the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015
#migrants cross a fence near a collection point of Roszke village at the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September
#migrants cross a fence near a collection point of Roszke village at the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015
#migrants cross a fence near a collection point of Roszke village at the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015
Hundreds of migrants break through police lines in south Hungary [photo Csaba Segesvari]: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 9 September 2015
#migrants try to light a fire at sun rise near Roszke village on the Hungarian-Serbia border. #AFP PHOTO by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 9 September 2015
#migrants walk on the railtracks along a make shift camp at sunset near Roszke. #AFP Photo by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 9 September 2015
#migrants and refugees board a train after crossing the Macedonian-Greek border near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 9 September 2015
A Syrian boy walks past a pile of rubbish at a refugee camp in south Lebanon: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 9 September 2015
A journey to the unknown on the Balkan migrant route, day 6: "Welcome to Germany..." [photo Aris Messinis]: image via AFP Correspondent @AFPblogs, 9 September 2015
#migrants camp beds installed in an exhibition hall on the Munich fairground, yesterday. #AFP by Christof Stache: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015
#migrants camp beds installed in an exhibition hall on the Munich fairground, yesterday. #AFP by Christof Stache: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015
#migrants camp beds installed in an exhibition hall on the Munich fairground, yesterday. #AFP by Christof Stache: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015
Migrants and refugees wait under the rain to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, in northern Greece on Thursday: photo by Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP, 10 September 2015
Migrants and refugees wait under the rain to cross the
Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, in northern Greece
on Thursday: photo by Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP, 10 September 2015
This is really disturbing!...As a young migrant boy tries on shoes donated by the people of Hungary at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary.
ReplyDeleteL'Enfant,
ReplyDeleteDisturbing times. A weight upon the heart, a steady din of care troubling the mind...
Amidst all how to make out the odd bit of music for earthlings?
This is a breathtaking post, Tom.
ReplyDeleteBut for music I would have chosen something from Reijseger/Sylla (Requiem for a Dying Planet).
Best,
b.
That point/ where everything converges
ReplyDeleteI can't seem to shift this escatological smog that feels my head; it's here and now that everything's contested, to get due measure of the weight of responsibility, of care. It can't help but hurt and we can't help but fail.
Terry catches so much in those few lines: presenting the truth and doing those difficult excavations.
"The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious".
"The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious".
ReplyDeleteToo right that. If there is nothing left to save and protect but the overwhelming mythology of capital, in whose systems we have been inculcated as though they were natural law, whose fictions we have been taught to act out and whose interests we have been trained to serve perhaps without even knowing it, what then?
And if the things we are now meant and were once taught to revere, honour, save, protect turn out to have changed into something we can no longer recognize?
And the new things then, where are those...
Encouraging at least to hear that the new iPhone, culmination and last golden promise of the triumphal epoch of post industrial tech smartism (the genius of the two second attention span that can't proceed without flipping open the playing-card-size aladdin's lamp, were children this easily distracted we'd call it a developmental disorder) has not, in fact, made quite as much money as was predicted.
I note we have another national holiday today, at least Google has tied a black ribbon knot on its home sweet home page.
Here's a song about growing up in the Irish immigrant urban culture in the Big Apple before the place turned into the big Apple device app. Music for earthlings.
When New York Was Irish (Terry Winch), performed by Terry Winch with Celtic Thunder, the Irish-American band started by Terry and his brother Jesse in 1977
billoo has a point, there were many, many kinds of music for earthlings I might have proposed, none perhaps quite so unearthly as the remarkable Sun Ra bit I've picked.
Strangely, unearthly has in my mind come to seem a thing not to fear but to protect, to save from the onslaught of the New earthly. But more on that later let's hope not.
This I'd take to be the most relevant / appropriate section of the piece billoo has suggested:
Ernst Reijseger and Mola Sylla perform "In Search of a Hospitable Place", from Reijseger: Music for a Dying Planet
Everybody hears lamentation differently. It's not so much a language as a tone maybe, a quality of affect, intuitive, universal.
Something like this would be the sort of tonality I'd conjure in my head when staggering down the railroad track in an unfriendly continent, with no hope or trust left, only the desperate revolution of soul require to keep putting one step following the last.
Marcel Khalife
Thanks, again, Tom for the unexpected honor of having a poem of mine appear in "Beyond the Pale." I'm not sure how exactly you put these posts together, but the results are always remarkable. Some one thing usually hits hardest, in this case these lines of lamentation:
ReplyDeleteWas it for this only that I came?
To die away like the flowers?
Nothing left of my name?
Nor of the days I have spent on earth?
At least my flowers, at least my songs!
It occurs to one that the world is not very good at politics -- and, in a certain way of looking at things, the world is not very good at war, either. Thankfully we have a few very great poets like Mr. Winch who can offer us an alternative to prayer. Thanks for this post.
ReplyDeleteDG