London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.

Inejiro Asanuma, the head of the Japanese Socialist Party, was assassinated by 17 year old Otoya Yamaguchi on October 12, 1960. With a sword. This photo by Yasushi Nagao won the World Press Photo award that year.

Taken Sunday during a bike ride. This is Eric, looking at the building shown above.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities.

From "Gerontion", T.S. Eliot

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

Kurt Vonnegut, R.I.P.

I ran 12.5 miles this morning, a half mile for every year. It brought me to the ocean.

the dead tree gives no shelter

...when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets; before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 12:4-8

I'm going to Tokyo and Kyoto next month. I will ask, do the dead ski to heaven

It snowed in Vermont last week. I wasn't there.

Bruno Peinado, Untitled, Vanity Flight Case, 2005
flight case, resin skull, mirrors, motor, smoke, machine, spotlights
77 x 31 x 27" (195.5 x 79 x 68.5 cm)

Liliata retilantium.
Turma circumdet.
Iubilantium te virginum.

In the absence of a priest, this may be said to someone on the edge of death, in hopes God will receive the deceased into heaven. It translates:

May the glittering throng of confessors, bright as lillies, gather about you. May the glorious choir of virgins receive you.

Taken from my living room.

O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

--- from "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d", Walt Whitman

I was with friends watching Vertigo when the fog came in and dispersed the light. The moon was nearly full above the Mission Dolores.