Undeclared Rules have no Power

There must be no more books. The shelf which holds the queue of ‘current concerns’ is 70cm wide and holds roughly 140cm of books. (Actually, there’s a couple stacked on top of some others now, so it’s especially bad). There is no more room; there must be no more books. It turned out, at the start of the year, that reading may be a viable hobby, which it hadn’t seemed before. This is the story of a philistine trying to relearn how to read.

Shelves need rules. Nothing can be added which would obscure any book already on the shelf (i.e. I have to clear the front row and then make enough room for a new book alongside, rather than in front of, the others). Anything new I start reading has to go via the shelf. If something really isn’t working, it can be abandoned (books last too long for bad ones to be endurable). The disease of philosophy means a lot of time is spent between books trying to devise rules for book order. Candidate rules include counting up recommendations, or making space as efficiently as possible, or some kind of randomisation (or worse, a meta-rule combining the three).

There’s no more room; there can be no more books. Even a sliver of shelf space is at least 90cm or so away. The current book is White Noise. That should have a couple more days of life in it.

The Actual Focus

Eyes forward, to the redeemer, whilst the sole witness rests in the darkness of the pews; he wasn’t visible to the eye, the light from the front barely reaching him. He certainly isn’t praying, though He might wish otherwise. The only transformation here is the exorbitant meddling with colour and light levels.

Transformations

As day becomes night the lights transform reality into something different and scarier. Humans afraid of the changes of nature tried to explain them with the supernatural and then to tame them.

In the process they manage to use the divine to transform their minds and souls. But is it really the divine approaching the human to transform him or is it the human transforming the divine?

Duomo di Milano

Doppelgänger

England too has her ships, here seen bobbing gently up and down in a harbour they almost certainly never leave; the sea, so close, may as well be dry land to them.

By the time the sun has quit the day and been replaced by the little artificial suns lining the boardwalk, the water has turned into a mirror: below each ship now sits its double, un-movingly trapped under the still waters.

A different kind of Market

You sell me stuff from inside the sea… I sell you stuff that float on it. The bad greek-english translation is just a bonus.

The picture was taken in the Thessaloniki Marina in December 2009. Do not let the sunshine full you… it was cold.

And the products:

Fruits de Mer

In reply to a fruit, in the sea, which is not of the sea, I offer fruits of the sea, on land, which are not fruits. On the other hand, the background is full of very busy fruit of the land. The stall of sea-fruit only appears on Friday mornings, brought by a van of fish. I bought some salmon and it tasted of clean, as salmon should. Buying things out the back of a van is the way of the future.

The die is cast, and it’s green

I know, the die is supposed to give you a random answer to a specific question. This randomness connects with the specific. In our case the specific is green. A green object in the foreground. And the background? Just the place you happened to be at the time when you needed to use the green object.

Crete, August 2008. Some people on the Elafonisi beach were hungry. They had a very specific question: “What shall we eat?” The green object gave them the random answer. “I exist, I am here, eat me”  said the Watermelon.

I give you the green answer to the specific question on the background the actors were at the time. For any more questions, ask the die.

Crete

Dicing: Uncertain Fate

This is the first in the series of Photographic Word Association, so the rules should probably go here. Each post in the game is an answer to the one before it, including some attempt to justify it as an answer. This means word-talent can make up for lacking photog-talent, thankfully. I imagine anything you can say with a straight face will qualify as a legitimate move. The first thing was to roll to see who would go first, with the other player guessing at the result (either ‘high’ or ‘low’);

first shot

Someone cheated by looking at the die before guessing, so we had to reroll.

The re-roll

And now the spiel. It’s easier to do the starting shot, since there’s nothing at all logically constraining what could have be used. I went for the dice rolls that settled who would begin because they were close-to-hand and I am lazy. As randomisation goes, this was a pretty feeble attempt; apart from the half-hearted cheating by the other player, we had failed to work out what the rolls (or the guesses) would actually mean. Far from being inescapable fate, it turns out the verdict of the die was entirely powerless given that we hadn’t settled whether guessing right meant you went first, or made you second.

Settling In

I do like those books at the top. These translates into wanting more books. Lots more books. There’s room, you know. Almost.