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The Yaddo board first discussed building a swimming pool on September 20, 1959. Due mainly to the insistence of John Cheever, the Board would finally approve the pool in 1961. Cheever would then write the short story "The Swimmer" in 1963 and it appeared in The New Yorker on July 18,1964. The publishing was postponed so that the short story could have a Summer release date.
"The Swimmer" synopsis
In the affluent suburbs of Westchester County, New York, middle-aged Neddy Merrill wants to retain his youth and marvels at his trail-blazing idea of "swimming the county" -by following a chain of pools he can literally swim home. Neddy enters the backyard of his neighbors, sometimes bursting into a party, sometimes engaging in conversation, and most of the time having a drink - but always swimming the length of their pool. At first Neddy is well-received but after finding a dried pool and waiting for a storm to pass, he starts to feel tired and disillusioned. Neddy is upset to find out that the Welchers' pool is dry and their house for sale. He recognizes his memory must be failing him since he cannot remember what happened to the Welchers. At the Halloran residence, Mrs. Halloran tells Neddy she is sorry to hear of his misfortunes (which he cannot remember) and mentions something about his children and selling his house. At the Biswangers’ he is perceived as a party-crasher and even their barman treats him with disrespect. He overhears Mrs. Biswanger saying that someone showed up one day asking for money since he went bankrupt. Further on, Neddy's former mistress tells him that she won't "give him another cent". He slowly observes that each pool is significantly colder and more difficult to swim. He notices that some of the tree leaves are already yellow. At one point he smells wood smoke in the wind, wondering who could be building a fire at that time of the year. At the Sachses', Neddy asks for a drink, but Helen Sachs tells him they don't have alcohol since her husband underwent surgery 3 years before—something Neddy has no memory of. Neddy is unable to recognize the constellations of the midsummer sky, instead finding the northern constellations, implying a change of season. Neddy eventually reaches his own house. As he looks inside a locked and deserted home, he wonders why his family is not there.
"Some see Jef as an example of existentialist man, a man who does not exist except through his acts (...) Or as an expression of fatalistic Orientalist ethics (the film IS called 'Le Samourai') concerning solitude and the inevitability of death.I am more sympathetic to those who see 'Samourai' as a dream, a study in solitude, or a portrait of mental breakdown."
Alice Liddel about "Le Samourai", a film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (1968)
IMDB.com
Basel, Switzerland. Diptych.
I can trade this card as a special trade. I will trade it for a card from my favorites.
***
Everybody knows…
shit happens
TAOISM – ”if you understand shit, it isn’t shit”
HINDUISM – “this shit happened before”
CONFUCIANISM – “confucious say ‘shit happens’”
BUDDHISM – “shit will happen to you again”
ZEN – “what is the sound of shit happening?”
ISLAM – “if shit happens it is the will of Allah”
SIKHISM – “leave our shit alone”
JEHOVA’S WITNESS – “knock knock, shit happens”
ATHEISM – “I don’t believe this shit”
AGNOSTICISM – “can you prove that shit happens?”
CATHOLICISM – “if shit happens, you deserve it”
PROTESTANTISM – “shit happens, amen to that”
JUDAISM – “why does shit always happen to us”
ORTHODOX JUDAISM – “so shit happens, already”
TELEVANGELISM – “send money or shit will happen to you”
RASTAFARIANISM – “let’s smoke this shit”
HARE KRISHNA – “shit happens rama rama”
NATION OF ISLAM – “don’t take no shit”
NEW AGE – “visualize shit happening”
SHINTOISM – “you inherit the shit of your ancestors”
HEDONISM – “I love it when shit happens”
SATANISM – “sneppah this”
CAPITALISM – “this is MY shit”
FEMINISM – “men are shit”
EXISTENTIALISM – “what is shit, anyway?”
SCIENTOLOGY – “if shit happens, see Dianetics p. 137”
MORMONISM – “excrement happens” (don’t say shit)
BAPTISM – “we’ll wash the shit right off you”
MYSTICISM – “this is really weird shit”
VOODOO – “shit doesn’t just happen – we made it happen”
DISNEYISM – “bad shit doesn’t happen here”
WICCA – “you can make shit happen but shit will happen to you three times”
COMMUNISM – “lets share the shit”
MARXISM – “you have nothing to lose but your shit”
CONSPIRACY THEORISM – “THEY shit on us!”
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS – “tell me about your shit”
DARWINISM – “survival of the shittiest”
AMISH – “modern shit is useless”
SUICIDAL – “I’ve had enough of this shit”
OPTIMISM – “shit won’t happen to me”
TREKISM – “to boldly shit where no-one has shit before”
SHAKESPEAREAN – “to shit or not to shit, that is the question”
DESCARTES – “I shit therefore I am”
FREUD – “shit is a phallic symbol”
LAWYERS – “for enough money, I can get you out of shit”
ACUPUNCTURIST – “hold still or this will hurt like shit”
DOG – “I just shit in your shoe”
CAT – “dogs are shit”
MOUSE – “oh shit! a cat!”
POLITICALLY CORRECT – “internally processed, nutritionally-drained biological output happens”
EINSTEIN – “shit is relative”
FAMILY GATHERING – “relatives are shit”
MATERIALISM – “ whoever dies with the most shit, wins”
VEGETARIANISM – “if it happens to shit, don’t eat it”
FATALISM – “oh shit, it’s going to happen”
ENVIRONMENTALISM – “shit is biodegradable”
AMERICANISM – “who gives a shit”
STATISTICIAN – “shit is 84.7% likely to happen”
HIP-HOP – “motherfuck this shiznit, beeatch!”
TANTRISM – “fuck this shit”
CYNICISM – “we are all full of shit”
SURREALISM – “fish happens”
The traditional branch of philosophy known as existentialism is still widely disconcerting. “Who you are and who you were”, “how do you feel and why”, “what do I want to be in the future”, as so as “what do others think about you or other fundamental things that you are concerned about” might be some of the most common questions that you will (and should) ask yourself at some point of your existence.
As a novice philosopher –or a person who simply loves knowledge–, one of the most astonishing aspects of this has always been the fact that it is such a huge subject to be analised that does not matter if you have been years dedicated to it that your progresses will be miniscule. Although, looking at it with positive eyes, it is yet an improvement. On that regard, for me one of the most interesting paradoxes in Life it is how difficult is to see ourselves with the right perspective. The nearest to objectivity as possible. First of all, due to our anatomy, the only way of seeing yourself is through reflections, projections or maybe opinions –what is kind of risky– what gives you an always distorted image. And secondly: The context, what is even more complicated to avoid.
In the same way it happens with light when is about reflecting,the position of the sun, the humidity, the clouds, the surface or the seasons– we are into an unavoidable environment. And this, before we are even born, determine the concept we do have or ourselves. This is probably why it is always that hard to match “who you really are” with “what do you think you are” and “what do others perceive you are”.
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Big thanks to W., for following my strict directions and making this photograph possible.
We're Here! : Existential - Picturing the questions {and vice versa}
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"In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion." (Albert Camus)
Gallery www.justanobserver.com/
Blog www.juzno.com/
Diana F+, Fujifilm Neopan Across 100, digitized
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Logic can either operate as part of an intellection, or else, on the contrary, put itself at the service of an error; moreover unintelligence can diminish or even nullify logic, so that philosophy can in fact become the vehicle of almost anything: it can be an Aristotelianism carrying ontological insights, just as it can degenerate into an "existentialism" in which logic has become a mere shadow of itself, a blind and unreal operation.
Indeed, what can be said of a "metaphysic" which idiotically posits man at the centre of the Real, like a sack of coal, and which operates with such blatantly subjective and conjectural concepts as "worry" and "anguish"? When unintelligence (and the variety we mean here is in no wise incompatible with what passes for intelligence in "worldly" circles) and passion prostitute logic, it is impossible to escape from that mental satanism which is so frequently to be found in contemporary thought.
The validity of a logical demonstration thus depends on the knowledge which we, as demonstrators, have of the subject in view, and it is evidently wrong to take as our starting-point not this direct knowledge but pure and simple logic.
When man has no "visionary" knowledge of Being, and merely "thinks" with his "brain" instead of "seeing" with his "heart", all his logic is useless to him, because it starts out from an initial fallacy. Moreover, the validity of a demonstration must be distinguished from its dialectical efficacy; the latter evidently depends on the intuitive disposition available for the recognition of truth when demonstrated, and therefore on an intellectual capacity.
Logic is nothing but the science of mental co-ordination and of arriving at rational conclusions; it cannot, therefore, attain the transcendent through its own resources; a supralogical -not an illogical- dialectic, based on symbolism and analogy, and therefore descriptive rather than ratiocinative, may be harder for some people to assimilate, but it conforms more closely to transcendent Reality.
Contemporary philosophy, on the other hand, really amounts to a decapitated logic: what is intellectually evident it calls "prejudice"; wishing to free itself from servitude to the mental, it sinks into infralogic; shutting itself off from the intellectual light above, it exposes itself to the obscurity of the lowest "subconscious" beneath.
Philosophic scepticism takes itself for a healthy attitude and for an absence of "prejudices", whereas it is in fact something completely artificial; it proceeds, not from real knowledge, but from sheer ignorance, and for this reason it is as alien to intelligence as it is to reality.
---
Frithjof Schuon
---
Quoted in: The Essential Frithjof Schuon (edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)
dogma
upon further consideration
the legato of lines is to me so amusing
the thought of a rectilinear existance so laughable
the possibility of a perfect circle
turning somewhere in some imaginary world
wholly ludicrous
that we could be so bold to create
by definition a flawed way of understanding
and then by our own terms claim
that we do indeed know it all
is the all encompassing validity
that we have gone beyond conceit
and into absurdity
in the end
the numbers
will not
add up
and we will be left with as much knowledge
as we had from the start
==
thankyou for reading
[eeq]
Plaque on the house of the philosopher Karl Jaspers and his Jewish wife Gertrud Jaspers-Mayer, Basel, Switzerland. Jaspers - teacher and friend of Hanna Arendt, and rival-colleague of Martin Heidegger, accepted the offer of the University of Basel after WWII, being disappointed that German academies would not deal with the guilt for the Holocaust during that war. His book "On Guilt" was translated to Hebrew a few years ago.
Gertrud was the elder sister of my grandfather, Dr. Fritz Mayer (who immigrated from Berlin, Germany to Mandatory Palestine in 1933). I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Jaspers ("Onkel Karl" and of course Tante Trude, i.e. Gertrud) in that house as a child. They even let me do the unthinkable in a German house: do some "balagan" (some dis-orders) bringing grocery products from the basement up to the kitchen and living room, exhibiting them on the floor!
That's why I took this self-portrait in front of the plaque outside their house, October 2006.
here's for never letting go
please View On Black
-
"A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence."
~ Rollo May, 1991, The Cry for Myth, p. 15
Today's FGR group is Immortality. I had a difficult time coming up with something at first, because of course, I don't like thinking about such things for any length of time.
But I always remember that, while I'm mortal, I'm really only a part of something bigger - a human race that will continue to flourish long after I'm gone.
It's sort of comforting to think about it that way. :o)
Damn FGR making me ponder my existence! Party hat day cannot come fast enough!
Taken for FGR - IMMORTALITY
(Thanks to natdiastok for the texture)
I woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain't it funny how the night moves
When you just don't seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in
--------------Bob Seger
"I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back."
- from Grendel, by John Gardner
Standing on a beach, staring at the sea... Existentialism in the spirit of the famous novel "The Stranger" by Albert Camus. Also inspired by the many fantastic beach self-portraits by Nathan Wirth.
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More ICM / street / double exposure / whatever-you-want-to-call-it stuff. Shot in Vuosaari, Helsinki, Finland.
All rights reserved. Please send me a private message if you wish to use this photo. Adding to Flickr galleries is fine without permission.
One last ICM picture before I return to something more traditional. Combining motion blur and still subjects was a fun challenge, a very different kind of photography experience. I will probably attempt this again at some point or go "full ICM", we'll see. Thank you for the feedback so far!
All rights reserved. Please send me a private message if you wish to use this photo. Adding to Flickr galleries is fine without permission.
My first time-lapse. All I shot one by one with my hand.
496 photos, non-stop 4 hours.
(I put the daisy in thinner to die faster)
“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Kamera: Nikon F3 (1989)
Linse: Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f1.4 (1970)
Film: Kodak 5222 @ ISO 400
Kjemi: Fomadon Excel (stock / 9 min. @ 20°C)
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“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
I have a question for you all…
Does photography have to be an expression of your own Existentialism or can you just go out because you enjoy it without having to psychosplain our image / reason for shooting?
Is it not just a marketing tool to make you more relevant to the ecotourist.
Hi, everybody! It's been a while. I took a creative break from photography for the summer and have only now been slowly getting back into it.
For the past couple of weeks, I've been experimenting with intentional camera movement, something I've always found fascinating but haven't done much myself. The results so far are exciting; especially when combined with still subjects the scene becomes very dreamlike and esoteric. The picture you see here is essentially a double exposure – the person and the surroundings were shot in the same location but with vastly different techniques. It's like street photography taken to a whole new, existential level.
Tell me what you think, or just say hello in the comments, and I'll make sure to catch up on your latest photos!
All rights reserved. Please send me a private message if you wish to use this photo. Adding to Flickr galleries is fine without permission.
Taking a breather from her regular occupation as a singer and entertainer, Hoshimachi Suisei gracefully paces along an assortment of unusually large novels. Having spent so much of her time on Internet live streams, television shows, and radio broadcasts, Suisei finds a remarkable sense of tranquility in simply slowing down and basking in the reverent silence of a private library. After all, when an ambitious young lady like Suisei finally fulfills her long-standing aspiration of singing for a combined in-person and virtual audience at the Budokan in Tokyo, it ought to be a nice change of pace to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet for a little while.
Caution is advised in choice of literature in this down-time, however. Any one choice of book could give her visions of dystopia, the horrors of the human condition, facing down existentialism with good humor, or expand her consciousness of a future tens-of-thousands of years in the making.