May 2013
20 posts
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And Death Shall Have No Dominion
By Dylan Thomas
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost...
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“…earth, waters, and climate, the mute world, the voiceless things once...”
– Michel Serres, The Natural Contract, p 3.
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Table of Contents, 5-2013
I don’t usually post original content here, but for anyone who’s interested here is a map of my dissertation as it is today. Only one of the chapters is written in any substantive way, as well as part of the introduction. I’ve found that the biggest hangup isn’t content but structure, so it helps me to think of the dissertation as a map of a windscape, where the parts...
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“As I recall this I realize how open we are to the persistent message that we can...”
– Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking. 206.
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“In 1929 and 1930, during my weeks of travel over the lifeless sand sea in North...”
– RA Bagnold. Sand, Wind, and War: Memoirs of a Desert Explorer.
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“Threat is as ubiquitous as the wind, and its source as imperceptible. It just...”
– Brian Massumi 2009. National Enterprise Emergency. P 160.
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“These two criticisms are ridiculously contradictory. What do foreigners mean...”
– Sun Yat-Sen, from “The Three People’s Principles”
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PLANT TREESEVERYWHERE
November and December 1982
I
Plant trees everywhere and make our country green in the interest of future generations.
(Message for a conference held by the People’s Liberation Army to review the experience in afforestation and to honour outstanding units and individuals for their work.)
II
This work should continue for 20 years and be more solid and successful every year....
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“Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the...”
– Jose Luis Borges, 1972
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“But the rainforest denies individuality in its very superfluity of life. In the...”
– Yi-Fu Tuan, “The Desert and I: A Study in Affinity.” 2001.
April 2013
23 posts
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“Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat...”
– From Anne Carson’s ‘Glass Essay’
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“Here, instead of finding chaos and disorder, the observer never fails to be...”
– R.A. Bagnold 1941. The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes. Xix
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“We have lost the world: we have transformed things into fetishes or merchandise,...”
– Michel Serres (1992). “The Natural Contract.” 3.
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“Picturing the landscape is to infer its renovation.”
– Charles Waldheim (1999). “Aerial Representation and the Recovery of Landscape, in James Corner, ed. Recovering Contemporary Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture. 133.
“But if the landscape has been tamed, our interventions - intentional or not -...”
– Kazys Varnelis (2008). “Introduction: Networked Ecologies” in The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles. 15
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“I was on a panel today with Chris Eyre, the Native American director. And he...”
– Roger Ebert, rebuking an audience comment about Better Luck Tomorrow at Sundance Film Festival, 2002.
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“Zoning technologies” refers to political plans that rezone the national...”
– Aihwa Ong, “Zoning Technologies in East Asia” in Neoliberalism as Exception. p. 103.
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“LII
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
of my gab and my...”
– Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
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“But to look at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the...”
– Vincent van Gogh, 1888
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I had a dream of you last night. Did you. Yes you were this old Indian guy standing on the back porch and there was a pail of water there on the step with a drowned bird in it— big yellow bird really huge you know… Yellow? said Geryon and he was was thinking Yellow! Yellow! Even in dreams he doesn’t know me at all!
Anne Carson, from The Autobiography of Red
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“The conclusion the enemy came to was that the Chinese nation is a heap of loose...”
– Mao Zedong, “On Protracted War.”
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From "Persimmons" by Li-Young Lee
[…]
Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father sat up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons,
swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.
This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand,...
“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a...”
– Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities.
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“I didn’t learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should...”
– Kurt Vonnegut
March 2013
20 posts
Why did you not return to the field?
First of all, I couldn’t because of the war. I was therefore obliged to work in my study. I like that kind of life, but not the routines of research. I lack patience.
Is it nonetheless necessary to do field work at least once in order to become an ethnologist?
Without a doubt.
Why?
To know how best to use the work that others bring back from their field.
...
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“The Master said, “With sincere faith he unites the love of learning;...”
– The Analects of Confucius. Chapter 8, Translator James Legge.
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“In chasing dirt, in papering, decorating, tidying we are not governed by anxiety...”
– Mary Douglas (1984[1966]). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London and Boston: ARK. p 2. 