Julia > Recent Status Updates

Greek vs Persians: 490 bc, 480 bc, 479 bc

Greece: Crete (destroyed by 1200bc), dorians, ionians, aeolians

Phoenicians: alphabet, trade, navigation. Ports of Tyre and Sidon

Jews: one god, Abraham 1700bc, Solomon 1000 bc, kingdom split in 2 (and Israel invaded and destroyed by Assyrians in 722 bc), Judah stayed

Mesopotamia: Babylon + Assyrians (Nineveh), Sumeritans (week days, houses/temples by 3100 bc), writing (cuneiform), Gilgamesh, law (King Hammurabi, 1700 bc), last King Nebuchadnezzar 600 bc, canals/cisterns)

Egypt: 2100 bc Cheops, Akhenaton 1370 bc (1 god)…

Ice age: talking, fire, bread, pictures, clay pots

[on listening to modern music] At 34, she was already deaf to the call to throw off her chains

Superorganism. A biologist coined that word for our giant African ant colonies, claiming that consciousness and intelligence resided not in the individual ant but in the collective ant mind. The trail of red taillights stretching to the horizon as day broke around us made me think of that term.

For more than a moment Helen didn't recognise him. Away from the hospital he looked so ordinary - just a tired, middle-aged man buying potatoes. No heads turned as he passed and Helen had experienced the curious sensation of seeing him as everyone else must; as he really was, perhaps. She had ducked out of sight behind a stall selling trays of white eggs, her heart thumping in protest at this unwanted awakening.

You know the Mark Twain quote about how the only reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen at once? I feel like everything that’s ever happened in my life is happening inside me.

…still not seeing the future take any shape she could recognise

It had gotten chilly overnight. She felt irrationally pleased by the drop in temperature, because it indicated a new season, and that meant a small step into her future and away from her disastrous past.

„You are depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world“

Asked “whom would you like to write your life story?” - “someone with a gorgeous style and a great big loving and forgiving heart”

“Most failures come too easily” was an unusual opinion of R.P.Blackmore. A genuine failure comes hard and slow and, as in a tragedy, is realised only at the end

For most readers I know, this is one of the joys of reading - a memoir of one person‘s life that is also about a collective past

Birds, the worlds only surviving dinosaurs. I liked watching him with this amazing fact in mind.

[“friendship” between a man and an octopus]
Anthropomorphism, some scientists said, projection, not really friendship but rather an elimination of a fear barrier and familiarity that allows for greater intimacy. In a word, friendship, no?

…though he was just shy of thirty, I would have carded him before serving him booze

"You know what's given me the greatest pleasure in my life? It's been our bungalow, the normalcy of it, the ordinariness of my waking, Almaz rattling in the kitchen, my work. My classes, my rounds with the senior students. Seeing you and Shiva at dinner, then going to sleep with my wife."

Life is full of signs. The trick is to know how to read them. Ghosh called this heuristics, a method for solving a problem for which no formula exists.

I knew Shiva‘s rituals, but not the logic behind them.

или переводили речь нашего всенародно избран-ного «пересидента», посвящённую Дню работников жилищно-коммунального хозяйства.

Когда-то, в моем бумажном детстве, у меня конечно же был велосипед - тот самый советский «Аист», на котором все мы доехали до конца империи

Таким образом, каждый новосозданный язык должен сочетать в себе благозвучие и свободу эсперанто, ум и сознание токипоны, лёгкое безумие славянских наречий и многозначность восточного иероглифа.

2/2 Язык не язык, если он не имеет тайн. Каким бы он ни был богатым и сложным, язык мёртв, если он открыт только для ограниченного количества интерпретации. Если на него (и с него тоже) невозможно переводить стихи

1/2 В-третьих, язык должен быть поэтичным. С одной стороны, содержать поэзию в самом себе, уже созданном, с другой, быть способным её воспроизводить, иметь потенциал образности, чувствовать в себе силу говорить о невыразимом.