Burning bright

So i first remember seeing this a couple of years ago and it's definitely worth sharing, it's by a Brazilian artist called Guilherme Marcondes who's done a load of very cool animations, it's inspired by the William Blake poem "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright"

A nice slice of Spam

A couple of months ago i recieved via my work e-mail account a rather curious message. It was titled as: Tech Support requested update, but when i opened it i found a quote from Faulkner. I really liked the tone of the message and it was one of those strange moments of synchronicity where something seemingly random coincided with events at the time in order to make it seem profound. Anyway, here's the body of the quote;

I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field reveals to a man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury

I think it impressed on me that the desire to win can sometimes be counterproductive, blinding you to other possibilities. I also like the flipside of that, meaning that if the concept of winning in those circumstances is irrelevant then surely you can also never lose. There are also the time aspects to the statement, the whole thing seems to tie in with some eastern philosophies of allowing yourself to be taken along for the ride, allowing yourself to flow with the river rather than trying to control your passage over it.

Sunrise, Sunset

On the subject of beginnings lets take it back to basics, to the classic dualism of day and night and the twilight times inbetween, full of magic.

There is so much to say about night and day, the expectations and fears of both, intricately woven into the fabric of everything we know.

I used to so love the night and the seductive anticipation of the sunset. The dark and illicit, the eternally youthful rush of hedonistic pleasure, where danger is welcomed but death scorned as a distant enemy.

More recently I have begun to appreciate mornings and the dawn more keenly. There is something incredibly hopeful about witnessing the fragility of a newborn morning.

There is a fantastic poem by Jorge Luis Borges which has an interesting perspective on the matter, i would like to quote directly but unfortunately many of my books are on another continent from me at the moment. The poem mentions the ideas of Schopenhauer and Berkeley that the world is a collective dream of souls conjured solely by those experiencing it, so that at the instant of daybreak when the people able to perform this act of magic are fewest, is the time when the world is at its most delicate.

Well you know what they say about pictures and words, so here's a couple of twilight shots from places I've been for you to make up your own mind about.

Seven Oaks, Ontario

Tofino, British Columbia

Hackney, London