The Last Performance -

sparkling thoughts in

wordslast — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:07:54 -0700

sparkling thoughts in the middle of the day make me think, apart from morningslumber to daynight dances in the light of the future that is to come closer. not yet there but soon to be a yesterday. soon a yesterday but not a now that will last forerver. i am at the lookout of the time that appears as sunstripes at the sky directing me to what will be a tomorrow´s twilight.

A brief note on dignity value.

abhayghiara — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:38:55 -0700

A brief note on dignity value.

Last summer I introduced the notion of dignity value at the Goat Island symposium (July 2008). In this little note I want to point out the shortcomings of the two traditional notions of value in economics.

Classical economics acknowledges value as a central concept and defines it as value-in-exchange. The value of anything in this formulation is what it can exchange for. The problem with this is that there can never be a general increase in value. Anytime something increases in value, something else must necessarily decrease in value. Value is not only relative but it is also reciprocal. In a Robinson Crusoe economy, a favorite pedagogical device in Classical economics, when coconuts rise in value they do so not only in relation to but also inversely to let us say boats. Since there can never be a general rise in value, humans are stuck in a mad system of competition. I can only increase my value at an equal cost to someone else.

Towards a Rejected Text (adjustments made)

sara jane bailes — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:25:59 -0700

Towards a Rejected Text (adjustments made)

Recently the NHC Institute for Research in Construction Offense (NHC-IRCO) conducted an experiment in a 13 story office building.

This particular building had 4 identical stairwells and over 4000 daily occupants. The building housed some 3000 chairs, no time-keeping instruments and had few distinguishing features.
On 3 of the stairwells photoluminescent egress markings were put into place ranging from marking just the corners of the steps to full contiguous markings across each step and each handrail.
The 4th stairwell was lit with emergency lighting and no markings. It had noticeable graffiti on its walls that said: Don't Look Now.

Things I Saw for 33 Minutes 1)

sara jane bailes — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:11:07 -0700

Things I Saw for 33 Minutes

1) Lin - Matthew's hands - 56 seconds

2) Lin explaining before doing - 3 minutes and 29 seconds

3) Karen as Simone Weil (but not) - 14 minutes and 10 seconds

4) Matthew turning - 4 minutes and 9 seconds

5) Lito Standing - approximately 9 minutes

6) Undoing Matthew; the sight of Bryan - 24 seconds

More or less that, more or less; it was more or less like that except without the act of someone seeing what they thought they were all doing

art that hitches blindness to insight try it this way

sara jane bailes — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:44:28 -0700

art that hitches blindness to insight

try it this way

(i was listening to the way she spoke about seeing)

adorno's splinter in the eye - the flaw in vision as the route to vision

we have to be pronged by what we see in order to see, in order to gain insight

no sight is true sight without a flaw - the splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass

one must disturb seeing (adorno)

one must disturb experience (benjamin)

the world shattered into the image of the world

estranged focus enables the production of insight

I wake up to the singing of the children in the next building. I listen

abhayghiara — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:04:03 -0700

I wake up to the singing of the children in the next building. I listen to the song lying in bed very still trying to recognize a snippet which will remind me of my own schooling here. Then I realize it is not a song but multiplication tables being said out aloud in a sing song way and then I can't resist listening very carefully to see if they make a mistake. But they make no mistakes no stray voice saying the wrong number even once.

I look over at Krista. She is fast asleep. I notice she needs to sleep longer in this city that is so new so different for her from what she grew up around.

I am back here not sure what I will find. Like an

abhayghiara — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:47:27 -0700

I am back here not sure what I will find. Like an explorer in my geography textbooks in grade school looking looking for something that the world forgot about a long time ago.

Panaji is a beautiful city built on a river. We are not by the river and the river is not beautiful anymore covered as it is with casino paddle boats moving up and down stream with its cargo of rich foreign tourists. We are told we are by the river but we are actually by a small stream. It is dark and suddenly it is impossible to know what time we are in as in what era. We gaze at the cross. It has been standing here since the Goa Inquisition. I look to see if there is any sign of blood on the cross. There is none. A motorcycle goes by and I am reminded of the present. We walk up the night street along the stream and come to a night performance. It is being staged right on the street under the dull yellow street lights. It is a sad story about a Rajasthani camel who is lost in the desert. The camel has been looking for his mate for many years now and now he is about to give up and rest. A large tour bus suddenly rushes down our street and we jump and run away to the edge, the very edgo of the dark road and we know that a few inches off to the wrong side is a sharp drop down to the stream and the right side if there is one is close very close to the approaching diesel monsterbus.

There is a scrambling up ahead that barely registers

rumbleon — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:40:19 -0700

There is a scrambling up ahead that barely registers from where I stand. The figure looks solid but of course everything is re-aranging. And when I put my hand out to touch, filaments cohere around it like a kind of glove that darts this way and that disassembling and collecting as my hand swipes the air, then comes to rest. That is when I notice that the figure is indeed solid whenever I find the capacity to keep still. It hugs around my rough shape, slotting into place like a deck of cards, the scales of a fish, the roof of a house. Otherwise in movement when continuous and of a certain speed, I am no more solid than it.

The waterfall. Replaceable. But an invigoration.

rumbleon — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:03:45 -0700

The waterfall. Replaceable. But an invigoration. Even form here. On the side. Behind the barrier. The black enamel painted steel barricade. I lean against. Feel my body swaying, tipping in the direction of the gushing water. Then stopped.

A bird on a rusty piece of piping, swoops down and lands, as if placing its two feet with a precision it had exacted from long ago on to the grassy partly submerged island right in the middle of the swirl. Some distance away it lands.

I have just left the room where I have been all morning. Just left it and rolled over cobble-stones on a bicycle just missing a darting child to be here where the drop in levels causes the water to rush. It was like that in the room, a small boy rocking on top of me, nudging a movement out of me piece by piece until we became a rocking machine. Before that and as a practice run for something that no one could foresee in advance, he crept under a red plastic dome and lay there with the sun from the nearby window penetrating the shell and warming his body softening his eyes.

Repetition is an

rumbleon — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:03:06 -0700

Repetition is an imprint on the rebound and a gradual barely noticeable falling away.
We can not even sway lean or topple unless we are rooted to that practice that is struck up over and over again. One end is always grasped out of a knot that spirals into the filaments of finer and finer gradations. These must fly away. That this flight is fixed in an impossible heaviness is not always apparent to the observer who follows the patterns of such scatterings and goes too. Or else it is only the heaviness-the repetition of pushing into that same ground over and over again that captures us rivetting us in that way.