A demonstration of the general principle that whenever a building is torn down and a new building put up in its place, the new building is always worse than the building that was torn down.
HT: Never Yet Melted
Next post: Meme Magazine 2: The Obama Legacy is Trump
Previous post: Something Tangible
He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Uglifying the present, and the near future.
Cheaper, though.
The video is a short excerpt from the one hour “Why Beauty Matters” by Roger Scruton. A fantastic video, worth every minute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc
Indeed. The same thing is happening on our public lands.
Freedom, ruggedness and self-reliance are being replaced with weakness, vulnerability and dependence on government.
Heartbreaking innit?
Speaking of hearts, you know what’s at the heart of this stuff?
It’s really pretty simple, so simple in fact that I overlooked it for a long time.
See, I’ve been involved in some projects like this but most of the time I bail somewhere along the long way cause I just can’t tolerate the mendacity and the spending of stolen money tends to rub me the wrong way.
The bronze plaque.
Say what?
Yep, I’m pretty much convinced it’s the bronze plaque installed permanently in the lobby of these buildings that causes them to happen. It’s a way for the “important people of that time” to live in perpetuity. Their arrogance precludes them and jams itself right into your eyeballz.
Remember, they ain’t spending their money…..
They are spending your money and because of the way the things are financed, they are spending money well into the future, maybe into perpetuity itself.
….thus there is no compunction to spend money well.
Logic and sense of quality have left the building.
(Can anyone look at modern architecture and truthfully claim it is timeless?
Of course not.
Well then, what is it?
Why it must be like everything else now, disposable.)
The people in charge of these large scale processes, no matter how many “specialists/consultants” they hire because that bronze plaque is the golden ring. Everyone wants their name on it and nothing else matters.
And the breathtaking amount of ass kissing.
Did I mention that part?
You know whats worse than ass kissing and brown nosing?
The expectation of the same.
It’s a shocking thing to behold, even more so when the expector is a supposed prominent long term participant in the community. To see that look in her eyes is something you’ll never forget. Her brain is completely blinded by the gleam from her vision of that bronze plaque. And as James Hettfield says, “Nothing Else Matters”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAGnKpE4NCI