As I was looking up Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, (I think that’s the whole text of his Treatise on the heathen superstitions that today live among the Indians native to this New Spain), I found this paper on the Social Reproduction of Late Postclassic Ritual Practices in Early Colonial Central México, with a curious diagram showing the clandestine circulation of ritual texts in a single town, including a superimposed schema depicting kinship between the individuals involved. And just so you know, the ritual texts included sets of incantations for things like inducing sleep before theft or rape (fine, yes, that’s the most salacious incantation, everything else is for stuff like carrying heavy objects); as well this paper on family structure in pre-Columbian Nahua culture. It sounds as though the idea of nuclear family didn’t really exist on it’s own, but rather as part of a directly nested structure that ranged from husband-wife-child unit to “ethnic states.”
In Defense of Eye Candy. Thanks Stephen P. Anderson. I heave a great sigh of relief that someone bothered to stitch this all together so elegantly. I have to confess to being far too impatient at this point in my career to defend this in loving detail ever again (and again and again). I just march in assuming that everything must be beautiful and steamrolling anyone who wants to sit down and debate at length lovely versus crappy… And speaking of crap, though only the noun, Virginia Gardiner is making all sorts of things out of poo. But the really interesting thing is the GCH4 toilet she’s working on. The mechanics still sound a bit fuzzy (though maybe that’s just what’s available online) but the idea is to capture the methane output from human waste as fuel. I am curious to see where this goes. At least to hear more about the proposed process/program. And while we’re at it, have The Humanure Handbook.
A conversation with Jan Fabre, the guy responsible for Heaven of Delight, the installation of bazillions of iridescent green scarabs in a glowing mosaic in the Royal Palace in Brussels.
The lovely work of Ackroyd & Harvey at PechaKucha Daily. And some more, and more.
Early the other Saturday morning we were waiting at Union Square for the 6 train, arms full of awkwardly mismatched bags of eggs and leafy things from the green market when I saw a guy wander right off the platform on to the tracks. It happened very quietly and very quickly. He lay there on his back in the black water between the tracks for too long, ignoring the knot of people holding their arms out to him from the platform. Finally he pulled himself up and reached unsteadily for the hand of a woman in a white hat, who’d been yelling at him. She continued to shout– falling down in the tracks, what do you think you’re doing and nobody going over there to help you what on earth are you thinking, you could have been killed, just get up now, and you’re fine, what were you thinking, what kind of a world is this? as she and a man in the black and white uniform of a busboy pulled him back up on to the platform. He stumbled over to the bench and sat down next to me, staring straight ahead. I wondered if he was in shock, but realized after a minute that he was high instead. He didn’t look homeless, but his clothing was filthy and drenched from the fall. He boarded the train with us. We sat down and he leaned back against the door and appeared to go to sleep, dripping a vile puddle on the floor. One hand was bleeding a little. He continued to sway, eyes shut, against the door as we rolled into the next station. I thrust the baby into V’s lap and half stood to yank him forward just as the door opened behind him. The woman who’d pulled him from the tracks met my eye and shook her head. I sat back down and he edged in to stand in front of me. He began to sway above me, mouth working, eyes closed again. Every so often his hand would slip from the bar above my head and he would lurch down toward me, arms suspended, hands half closed around nothing, dripping onto my knees. After a while, we got up and moved to the other side of the train. The woman in the white hat said, I was wondering how long you were going to stay there. Everyone in the train watched him in anxious silence until, with surprising decision, he opened his eyes and got off the train at 59th Street.
