dig

Dig

  • A model specimen, truly original.

    AG2026__1560356a.jpg. La Habana, 2019.

    Here in this section are the eagles.
    The golden, flowing one.
    The imperial one.
    The eagle atop its nopal.
    The two-headed one (a phenomenon)
    in a cage all its own.
    The medal-decorated ones
    ripped from the chests of ?the condemned
    in front of firing squads.
    The pecuniary one, doubled, $20 gold (twenty dollars).
    The heraldic ones.
    The Prussian one, in all black, always, like a faithful widow.
    The one that flew for sixty years over the Maine, in Havana.
    The Yankee, taken back from Vietnam.
    The Napoleonic ones and the Roman ones.
    The heavenly one,
    with the Altair star shimmering on its chest.
    And finally,
    the eagle
    from that brand of condensed milk, “Eagle.”
    (A model specimen,
    truly original.)

    THE EAGLES, Nicolás Guillén, translated from the Spanish by Aaron Coleman (Poetry, September 2024)

  • 102926

    AG2016_1010686b
    102-0940

    2016

  • When pushed

    PXL_20261028_155032036_lab
    PXL_20261028_155032036_lab

    …

    We know how close 
    we get to feral
    when pushed.

    Push us, we think.
    We’re half 
    crime already. 

    Election Returns, Christy Prahl

  • Here there’s an offering of how

    PXL_20261027_195822884_lab
    PXL_20261027_195822884_lab

    the scatter as a call to connect the dots differently, or not

    How do we stay in life without reproducing what’s diminishing in it?

    Here there’s an offering of how to construct and occupy the historical present.

    (LB)

  • change through exchanging with others

    Our utopia is about the idea of change–not the thought of the absolute that we impose on ourselves and others. I always sum this up with a saying: “I can change through exchanging with others, without losing or diluting my sense of self” – Glissant.

    The Archipelago Conversations, Édouard Glissant & Hans Ulrich Obrist, Emma Ramadan, translator. Isolarii, 2021.

    Peter Fischli David Weiss, A Restless Night (Equilibres series), 1985. C-Print, 15.6 x 11.8 inch. Galerie Eva Presenhuber.

  • Orchid, 1982

    Robert Mapplethorpe
    Orchid, 1982
    Gelatin silver print
    66.3 x 63.5 x 2.5 cm
    26.1 x 25 x 1 inch

    via Mai 36 Galerie

  • Disproportion

    AG2026_1222301a
    AG2026_1222301a

    Aggressive, disproportionate, excessive policing … still, in 2026.

    https://bsky.app/profile/ouest-france29.bsky.social

  • it still means something to be human.

    PXL_20261013_131328912_lab
    PXL_20261013_131328912_lab

    Talk to It, James Gleick (New York Review)

    Sherry Turkle, the MIT sociologist who has chronicled our tumultuous relationship with computers across more than forty years, sees “a long-standing fantasy, shared by science fiction and engineers, that AI will offer a perfect companion that knows everything about you. It will be there for you and ask nothing in return.” Her wise new book, Artificial Intimacy, expands on themes she began developing in The Second Self (1984) and sounds an alarm: “We are on a path to forgetting what it is to be human.”

    […]

    … it still means something to be human. We have knowledge and feelings that come from experiences in a physical world and interactions with our fellow creatures. We engage with reality in a way that an algorithm cannot. The distinction between real and virtual still matters:

    When people talk about how relaxing it is to talk to a chatbot, it’s because the real slips away. To act in the world, you need to deal with its friction: almost everything takes conflict, negotiation, compromise, and time.