Solstice Afternoon

Summer Hath Come to Dhalgren-By-The-Sea

“Dhalgren” is a book written by Samuel R. Delany about a fictional Midwestern city called Bellona. The plot of the novel follows the protagonist, named Kid, as he travels through the city. If there’s any propelling force in the plot of this novel, the easiest narrative to name is Kid’s search to remember his name.

The opening words of this book are: “To wound the autumnal city.”

The process of grief naturally is different amongst us and for me I guess after January 2002 hospital poisoning I have prepared myself. As a philosophical soul trapped in a world I created I mourn not only my life, but the life of man.

To think “synthetic life” is very desirable and then to think so desirable perhaps even more than 20 years of science and money has aimed at this alchemical outcome cannot but frame the Umbrella of Covid. And possibly for those who laugh at how fate operates by symbol.

Marchesa Elena Grimaldi, by Anthony van Dyck, 1623

Thomas Wright, in his Domestic Manners of the English, gives a drawing from the Harleian MS., No. 604, which represents an Anglo-Saxon gentleman walking out attended by his servant, the servant carrying an umbrella with a handle that slopes backwards, so as to bring the umbrella over the head of the person in front. The use of the parasol and umbrella in France and England was adopted, probably from China, about the middle of the seventeenth century. At that period, pictorial representations of it are frequently found, some of which exhibit the peculiar broad and deep canopy belonging to the large parasol of the Chinese Government officials, borne by native attendants.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Hybrid-capitalism-is-serving-China-well

I believe that it is not certain that we can continue to do as we have done so far, that is, to fight or act in the name of principles and concepts such as democracy, the constitution, law, which perhaps we already knew, we long ago saw losing their meaning. So you can of course continue to wage battles in the name of our rights, but you can do it in a tactical way. Strategically, I think, it may be futile, in the sense that facing a government that ignores legality, it seems a bit vain to invoke human rights. And I repeat: what sense would it make to invoke rights to Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini? It doesn’t make sense, we should not try to counter those who have abandoned all legality with the talk about rights. We are facing a government that has abandoned all legality. If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand the situation we are in.

Giorgio Agamben, conference intervention, Turin, 08/12/2021

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD Their foot shall slide in due time (Deut. xxxii. 35). In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God’s visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but who, notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works towards them, remained (as ver. 28.) void of counsel, having no understanding in them. Under all the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; http://www.jonathan-edwards.org/Sinners.pdf