Log24

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Banderas*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:30 pm

For Ms. Julie and the Pope

For Ms. Julie:

Nuevas Banderas in this journal…

Click on image
for details.

See also Balakrishnan's Last Problem

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110818-Balakrishnan-Banners-500w.jpg

For the Pope:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110818-Legend.jpg

Now playing; click poster for details.

See also "Damnation Morning" in this journal—

She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming implement
that looked by quick turns to me like a knife, a gun, a slim
sceptre, and a delicate branding iron—especially when its
tip sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live in the fourth
dimension or only die in it.”

— Fritz Leiber, short story, 1959

* For a time-leap from Leiber's 1959 to Hollywood's 2011, see yesterday's
  Marginal Remarks,  "The God particle ?" and a different Banderas.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Lyrics

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:29 pm

"The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo,
are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe
lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court…"

"Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar"

"No llores por mí, Argentina"

Friday, October 1, 2010

Volcano Dawn

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 6:24 am

Estas son las mañanitas
Que cantaba el rey David

Who is she that looketh forth as the morning,
fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101001-AmanecerPopocateptl.jpg

Good question.

A clue:

From The Hunchback of Notre Dame :

Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar.

A coffer of great richness
In a pillar’s heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound.

Those who prefer more commercial banners may consult this morning's New York Times.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Saturday June 21, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 pm
For Mary Gaitskill

(See Eight is a Gate and
Faith, Doubt, Art, and
The New Yorker
.)

A sructure from
today's previous entry:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix08/080621-Gates.gif
 

From Notre-Dame de Paris:

"Un cofre de gran riqueza        
Hallaron dentro un pilar,       
Dentro del, nuevas banderas 
Con figuras de espantar."      

"A coffer of great richness   
     In a pillar's heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound."  

For some further details, see
the brief Log24 narrative
"Indiana Jones and
the Hidden Coffer
" as well as
Symmetry Framed and
the design of the doors
to Rick's Cafe Americain:

IMAGE- The perception of doors in 'Casablanca'


Everyone comes to Rick's.

Saturday, September 2, 2006

Saturday September 2, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:31 am
Today's birthdays:

Salma Hayek
("
Frida")

Salma Hayek and Julie Taymor

"Shinin' like a diamond
 she had tombstones
in her eyes.
"

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060902-StarAndDiamond2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(For the above figures,
see Log24, 5/17/06,
"Tombstone," and
Log24, 9/13/03,
"For the Man in Black.")

and Keanu Reeves
("
Constantine")

 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050218-Highwater.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(For the above figure,
see Log24, 2/18/05,
"In Hoc Signo.")

Related material:

From Notre-Dame de Paris:

"Un cofre de gran riqueza        
Hallaron dentro un pilar,       
Dentro del, nuevas banderas 
Con figuras de espantar."      

"A coffer of great richness   
     In a pillar's heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound."  

For some further details, see
the brief Log24 narrative
"Indiana Jones and
the Hidden Coffer
" as well as
Symmetry Framed and
the design of the doors
to Rick's Cafe Americain:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060902-Ricks.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Saturday May 22, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:14 am

Star Wars

In memory of Melvin J. Lasky, editor, 1958-1990, of the CIA-funded journal Encounter:

“Once called as lively, and as bitchy, as a literary cocktail party, Encounter published articles of unrivalled authority on politics, history and literature.”

— Obituary in the Telegraph 

Lasky died on Wednesday, May 19, 2004.  From a journal entry of my own on that date:

This newly-digitized diagram is from a
paper journal note of October 21, 1999.

Note that the diagram’s overall form is that of an eight-point star.  Here is an excerpt from a Fritz Leiber story dealing with such a star, the symbol of a fictional organization:

Time traveling, which is not quite the good clean boyish fun it’s cracked up to be, started for me when this woman with the sigil on her forehead looked in on me from the open doorway of the hotel bedroom where I’d hidden myself and the bottles and asked me, “Look, Buster, do you want to live?”
….

Her right arm was raised and bent, the elbow touching the door frame, the hand brushing back the very dark bangs from her forehead to show me the sigil, as if that had a bearing on her question.

The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk made of fine dark lines and about as big as a silver dollar.  An X superimposed on a plus sign.  It looked permanent.
….

… “Here is how it stacks up:  You’ve bought your way with something other than money into an organization of which I am an agent….”
….

“It’s a very big organization,” she went on, as if warning me.  “Call it an empire or a power if you like.  So far as you are concerned, it has always existed and always will exist.  It has agents everywhere, literally.  Space and time are no barriers to it.  Its purpose, so far as you will ever be able to know it, is to change, for its own aggrandizement, not only the present and the future, but also the past.  It is a ruthlessly competitive organization and is merciless to its employees.”

“I. G. Farben?” I asked grabbing nervously and clumsily at humor.

She didn’t rebuke my flippancy, but said, “And it isn’t the Communist Party or the Ku Klux Klan, or the Avenging Angels or the Black Hand, either, though its enemies give it a nastier name.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“The Spiders,” she said.

That word gave me the shudders, coming so suddenly.  I expected the sigil to step off her forehead and scuttle down her face and leap at me—something like that.

She watched me.  “You might call it the Double Cross,” she suggested, “if that seems better.”

— Fritz Leiber,
   “Damnation Morning,” 1959

From last year’s entry,
Indiana Jones and the Hidden Coffer,
of 6/14:

From Borges’s “The Aleph“:

“The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo, are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court…. The mosque dates from the seventh century; the pillars come from other temples of pre-Islamic religions…. Does this Aleph exist in the heart of a stone?”

(“Los fieles que concurren a la mezquita de Amr, en el Cairo, saben muy bien que el universo está en el interior de una de las columnas de piedra que rodean el patio central…. la mezquita data del siglo VII; las columnas proceden de otros templos de religiones anteislámicas…. ¿Existe ese Aleph en lo íntimo de una piedra?”)

From The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar.

A coffer of great richness
In a pillar’s heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound.

See also the figures obtained by coloring and permuting parts of the above religious symbol.

Lena Olin and Harrison Ford
in “Hollywood Homicide

Finally, from an excellent site
on the Knights Templar,
a quotation from Umberto Eco:

When all the archetypes burst out shamelessly, we plumb the depths of Homeric profundity. Two cliches make us laugh but a hundred cliches move us because we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion . . . Just as the extreme of pain meets sensual pleasure, and the extreme of perversion borders on mystical energy, so too the extreme of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the Sublime.

— “Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage” (1984) from Travels in Hyperreality

Saturday, June 14, 2003

Saturday June 14, 2003

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 5:00 pm

Indiana Jones
and the Hidden Coffer

In memory of Bernard Williams,

Oxford philosopher, who died Tuesday, June 10, 2003. 

“…in… Truth and Truthfulness [September, 2002], he sought to speak plainly, and took on the post-modern, politically correct notion that truth is merely relative…”

— Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

“People have always longed for truths about the world — not logical truths, for all their utility; or even probable truths, without which daily life would be impossible; but informative, certain truths, the only ‘truths’ strictly worthy of the name. Such truths I will call ‘diamonds’; they are highly desirable but hard to find….

A new epistemology is emerging to replace the Diamond Theory of truth. I will call it the ‘Story Theory’ of truth: There are no diamonds. People make up stories about what they experience. Stories that catch on are called ‘true.’ The Story Theory of truth is itself a story that is catching on. It is being told and retold, with increasing frequency, by thinkers of many stripes…. My own viewpoint is the Story Theory….”

— Richard J. Trudeau, The Non-Euclidean Revolution, Birkhauser Boston, 1987

Today is the feast day of Saint Jorge Luis Borges (b. Buenos Aires, August 24, 1899 – d. Geneva, June 14, 1986).

From Borges’s “The Aleph“:

“The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo, are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court…. The mosque dates from the seventh century; the pillars come from other temples of pre-Islamic religions…. Does this Aleph exist in the heart of a stone?”

(“Los fieles que concurren a la mezquita de Amr, en el Cairo, saben muy bien que el universo está en el interior de una de las columnas de piedra que rodean el patio central…. la mezquita data del siglo VII; las columnas proceden de otros templos de religiones anteislámicas…. ¿Existe ese Aleph en lo íntimo de una piedra?”)

From The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar.*

* A coffer of great richness
In a pillar’s heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound.

See also the figures obtained by coloring and permuting parts of the above religious symbol.

Lena Olin and Harrison Ford
in “Hollywood Homicide

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