Building the New

I wondered what was becoming of all the petrodollars we are so willingly contributing as we encase ourselves in two tons of steel and glass to pick up those consumer goods and move about. . . buildings in the desert!!
This is just one being built in Dubai (on the Persian Gulf) and has rotating floors each containing 12 modules (suites). There will be 80 floors, the top 10 of which will be villas with parking for your car on that floor; a retracting heliport exists in case you need to fly into your abode. The structure will be energy self sufficient with solar panels and wind turbines between floors to provide electric on a "third rail" system to each rotating floor. Efficient plumbing and electrical connections seem iffy to me but will no doubt be worked out during construction along with many other unforseen problems, I suspect.
Design is by David Fisher's Dynamic Architecture firm in Florence, Italy as he contributes to the city of Dubai known as the "playpen for architects" because of the extreme designs being offered by architects from around the world. Each room (suite) is constructed elsewhere as a finished module to be attached at the tower during assembly.
A better description: Is here


Wind turbines for power
(replacing a bearing will be fun!)












This looks like a module graphically being lifted into place.

















I would like to believe that great advances in medicine, agriculture, contributions to art literature and learning are in the offing but it is sparse finding so far!

CounterPoint

A nasturtium flower (tropaeolum majus) First discovered in the jungles of Peru and Mexico.
Described as having showy edible flowers and pungent seeds




The Bridge at Nasiriya


For a pulsing moment
he cannot remember
whether he came from Georgia
or some place further inward,
a recruiting office,
Captain Tilly congratulating him,
painting murals inside his head,
promises of a noble heart to be saved
for heaven, a good spot there.

They rushed across the bridge like savages,
dark-skinned small enemies, wide-eyed
with fear or hate --
like a suicide bomber.
Captain Tilly hadn't told him
the sound a child makes when she dies,
broken, on a bridge, irrevocably,
like a small turtle, stepped on.

The little girl is maybe five,
in a gold and orange dress,
colors for something special,
for running at a soldier, for lying in a ditch,
a bit of her chest missing,
like his sister's lost earring,
like the missing lid of a coke bottle.
His gun has melted into his fingertips.

A dead girl in a bright dress...
He came here then to kill a child.
A girl rushing across the bridge
running from the sound of helicopters,
running the way danger slams through a paper wall
and he had never shot a bear,
even a rabbit, he who was
promised a proud heart to save for heaven,
and a good spot there.

An hour is made of a thousand crazy instances --
An instance has a life of its own,
tells epics until you fall asleep from boredom.

He had never shot a sick dog
or a rabid skunk
but the child had run toward him,
a crazy instance,
like the frantic urge to tear out his own heart,
slash open the child and give her his,
still beating.

He will not remember this,
will not tell his cousin Billy,
who told him to go kick ass --
He will not remember this,
will not tell his mother who has put up
yellow ribbons --
He will not remember this,
his crazy instant of terror
as a child ran at him.
He will not remember this,
the sound of a soul brushing across one arm.
He will not remember this,
that he, in God's ledger, is the victim.

He who never shot a rabbit
will not remember
which of them soared upward from life,
or
which of them stayed behind.

---

Words by Lisa Walsh Thomas

Poets against War



I came across this in seeking others' experience of this war.
My experience is limited by the lack of news and reportage of our national corporate media who have more mundane things to report.
I would suppose a soldier walking through a city of Iraq scared shitless that someone will appear out of nowhere to do him harm would be edgy and react to any fast movement. I know that I would be. This is an urban war; over 600,000 civilians killed, by some accounts now.

I just read that the Polish army (such as it was, part of the "Coalition of the Willing") camped on the site where the city of Babylon once stood, south of Baghdad, east of the Euphrates. At least three thousands of years of history trod upon by yet another conquering army. When will it ever end?

Persian Perspective

This be a depiction of the Shayad Monument comissioned by Farah, the wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Shah of Iran) about 1971, in Teheran. Renamed Azadi (freedom) Tower after the 1979 revolution which sent the Shah into exile. It is clad in white marble and inset under with tile mosaic. The arch appears to be a Lamella truss. A diamond pattern also used for the astrodome in Houston.

This fellow ruled as monarch from '41 to '79 and was in later years considered by his people to be a corrupt dictator and a tool of the US and the British. In 1953 after the duly elected Prime Minister named Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the Iranian oil companies, which previously the British had controlled, the US and Britain engineered a coup d'etat to get rid of him and restore the Shah and his crony to power thus keeping oil out of the hands of the pesky Iranian companies.
At least his wife had good taste judging by her approval of this structure. There is a museum at the base and an elevator to the top where one can peer out over the city and the 15 hectare (about 38 acres) park with fountains surrounding.


This creation is from an art festival on the island of Hormoz in the Persian Gulf last January.


More to be seen at this link.
Iran lost 500,000 "martyrs" to the war with Iraq and Saddam Hussein's weapons of individual destruction provided mostly by US, in the 80's.

You wonder if it is more noble to kill for a country or to kill for a god. You wonder if it makes any difference to the long run.

I wondered what a 13th century prophet had to say:

The Silent Articulation of a Face

Love comes with a knife,
not some shy question,
and not with fears
for its reputation!

I say these things disinterestedly.
Accept them in kind.

Love is a madman, working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes,
running through the mountains, drinking poison,
and now quietly choosing annihilation.

A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous wasp.
Think of the spiderweb woven across the cave
where Muhammad slept!

There are love stories
and there is obliteration into love.

You've been walking the ocean's edge,
holding up your robes to keep them dry.
You must dive naked under and deeper under,
a thousand times deeper!

Love flows down!!
The ground submits to the sky and suffers
what comes.
Tell me, is the earth worse for giving in like that?
Don't put blankets over the drum!
Open completely.
Let your spirit-ear listen to the green dome's passionate murmur.

Let the cords of your robe be untied.
Shiver in this new love beyond all above and below.

The sun rises, but which way
does the night go?

I have no more words. Let soul speak with the silent
articulation of a face.

---Rumi

. . . oh, right



thanks naj

Sentinel

Our ducks: sprig on the right with bully boy, roxy, and spotts adjacent; we got them through the winter intact, now they can rest.
Canadian goose watching over while his mate sits on eggs nearby. The geese flew in a month or so ago seeking quiet solace and apparently finding it. Roxy is on eggs also when she feels like it . . . not much hope for a hatching there . . . domestication seems to rouen them, as it does us all.




Sprig with a particularly attractive tiara today; Spotts in back. Something got into the goose's eggs and they are gone but Roxie is being diligent with her eggs which are in the duck house inside the pen with only lake access, so we may have little Rouens soon to add to the four.