अनन्त का छंद - 4

The immense hope, and forbearance Trailing out of night, to sidewalks of the day  Like air breathed into a paper city, exhaled  As night returns bringing doubts  That swarm around the sleeper’s head  But are fended off with clubs and knives, so that morning  Installs again in cold hope  The air that was yesterday, is what you are,  In so many phases the head slips form the hand.  The tears ride freely, laughs or sobs:  What do they matter? There is free giving and taking;  The giant body relaxed as though beside a stream  Wakens to the force of it and has to recognize  The secret sweetness before it turns into life—  Sucked out of many exchanges, torn from the womb,  Disinterred before completely dead—and heaves  Its mountain-broad chest. “They were long in coming,  Those others, and mattered so little that it slowed them  To almost nothing. They were presumed dead,  Their names honorably grafted on the landscape  To be a memory to me. Until today  We have been living in their shell.  Now we break forth like a river breaking through a dam,  Pausing over the puzzled, frightened plain,  And our further progress shall be terrible,  Turning fresh knives in the wounds  In the gulf of recreation, that bare canvas  As matter-of-fact as the traffic and that day’s noise.”  The mountain stopped shaking; its body  Arched into its own contradiction, its enjoyment,  As far from us lights were put out, memories of boys and girls  Who walked here before the great change,  Before the air mirrored us,  Taking the opposite shape of our effort,  Its inseparable comment and corollary  But casting us further and further out.  Wha—what happened? You are with  The orange tree, so that its summer produce  Can go back to where we got it wrong, then drip gently  Into history, if it wants to. A page turned; we were  Just now floundering in the wind of its colossal death.  And whether it is Thursday, or the day is stormy,  With thunder and rain, or the birds attack each other,  We have rolled into another dream.  No use charging the barriers of that other:  It no longer exists. But you,  Gracious and growing thing, with those leaves like stars,  We shall soon give all out attention to you.

—John Ashbery, “Spring Day” Art Credit Lottie Hedley

The tide at night, murmur of bare feet on the sand.

The tide, at dawn, opens the eyelids of the day.

The tide breathes in the deep night and, sleeping, speaks in dreams.

The tide that licks the corpses that the coast throws at it.

The tide rises, races, howls, knocks down the door, breaks the furniture, and     then, on the shore, softly weeps.

The tide, madwoman writing indecipherable signs on the rocks, signs of death.

The sand guards the secrets of the tide.

Who is the tide talking to, all night long?

—Octavio Paz, from “Target Practice” Art Credit Richard Diebenkorn.

Below the Asphalt Lies the Beach

Below the Asphalt Lies the Beach

There is still much to learn from the radical legacy of critical theory.

Source: Below the Asphalt Lies the Beach

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अनन्त का छंद - 6

अनन्त का छंद – 6 प्रसन्न कुमार चौधरी ग. ज्ञान 75. इस पूरे प्रकरण में ‘नॉलेज़’ शब्द के लिए ‘जानकारी’ की जगह आम तौर पर प्रचलित ‘ज्ञान’ शब्द का इस्तेमाल किया गया है । वैसे भारतीय चिन्तन परम्परा में ज्ञान का प्रयोग सार्विक भाव के उदय के लिए किया जाता रहा है । यह ज्ञान पूंजी कदापि नहीं हो सकती । इसे हासिल करने की कोई वैज्ञानिक-तार्किक विधि नहीं । इसी तरह जानकार और ज्ञानी में भी फ़र्क किया जाता है…

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'Sentiment must be outlawed from the domain of science and things should be judged from an objective standpoint. For myself I shall find as much pleasure in a positive destruction of my own ideology, as in a rational disagreement on a topic, which, notwithstanding many learned disquisitions, is likely to remain controversial forever.' Dr. BR Ambedkar, 'Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development'.

The Empire of ancient Ghana The empire of ancient Ghana created by the Mende (Soninke) with human habitation dating back to at least around 4,000 BC.

Ancient Ghana was located in what is now southeastern Mauritania and western Mali. Today the area around Dar Tichitt in southern Mauritania has been the subject of much archaeological attention, revealing successive layers of settlement near what still were small lakes as late as 1200 BCE. At this time people there built circular compounds, 60-100 feet in diameter, near the beaches of the lakes. (‘Compound’ is the name given to a housing type, still common today, in which several members of related families share space within a wall.) These compounds were arranged into large villages located about 12 miles from each other. Inhabitants fished, herded cattle and planted some millet, which they stored in pottery vessels. This was the last era of reasonable moisture in this part of the Sahara. By 1000 BCE the villages, still made up of compounds, had been relocated to hilltop positions, and were walled. Cattle were still herded, more millet was grown, but there were no more lakes for fishing. From 700-300 BCE the villages decreased in size and farming was reduced at the expense of pastoralism.

Architecturally, the villages of Dar Tichitt resemble those of the modern northern Mande (Soninke), who live in the savanna 300-400 miles to the south. These ancient villagers were not only farmers, but were engaged in trade connected with the salt and copper mines which developed to the north. Horse drawn vehicles passed through the Tichitt valley, bringing trading opportunities, ideas, and opening up the inhabitants to raids from their more nomadic northern neighbors. Development of the social and political organization necessary to handle commerce and defense must have been a factor in the subsequent development of Ghana, the first great Sudanic empire, in this part of West Africa.

It is very plausible to think that the people of antiquity in Ancient Ghana may be connected to the Ancient peoples who lived in the Sahara before it turned into dessert. Additionally Habitation of the region where the Ghana empire existed is much older than Western academics are aware of.

—Jessica Greenbaum, Poetry, July/August 2012 At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Lisa Russ Spaar reviews Greenbaum’s The Two Yvonnes, mentioning “the abecedarian ‘A Poem for S.,’” above.

Rio de Janeiro, Aug 8 (IANS) Dipa Karmakar created history by becoming the first Indian gymnast to enter the Olympic finals at the Rio Olympic Centre here. Competing in the third sub-division, Dipa had an average score of 51.665. In uneven bars, Deepa scored 7.166 for execution and 4.5 for difficulty

We men are deplorable, dependent creatures. But compared with these women, every one of us is king, for he stands more or less on his own two feet, not constantly waiting for something outside of himself to cling to. They, however, always wait for someone to come along who will use them as he sees fit. If this does not happen, they simply fall to pieces.

-Albert Einstein

The fact the Einstein was a raging misogynist kind of makes sense, given that it is widely speculated his first wife made significant contributions to the Theory of Relativity, but was completely unacknowledged (especially after he left her for his cousin).

There is more and more evidence that Mileva Einstein-Maric (Einstein’s first wife) is the coauthor of “The Theory of Relativity.”  Recently published letters between Mileva Maric and Albert Einstein are shedding light on who is the author(s) of the “Theory of Relativity.”  Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921: he gave all the money from the Nobel Prize to his ex-wife - Mileva Maric- this was the condition for the divorce settlement.  Einstein did not leave any documents which acknowledged the contribution of Mileva Maric to the Theory of Relativity. 

In 1905, several articles bearing the name of Albert Einstein appeared in the Annalen der Physik - a Germans Physics Journal where the Theory of Relativity was published.  The paper dealing with relativity was entitled Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper.  Only Albert Einstein’s name appeared in the journal as author.  According to Abram Fedorovich Joffe, the original paper was signed “Einstein-Marity.”  ”Marity” is a variant of the Serbian “Maric”, Mileva’s maiden name.  Mileva Maric Einstein’s name was left out when publication of the article took place, but Joffe saw the original 1905 manuscript.

- The Tesla Society

"How happy I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on the relative motion to a victorious conclusion."

A young Albert Einstein wrote these words to his first wife, Mileva, shortly before publishing the Theory of Relativity. The release of letters like this one has scholars arguing over Mileva’s contribution to relativity. They met at Zurich’s prestigious Swiss Polytechnic School: Mileva was the only woman in the class, and only the fifth in the school’s history. The daughter of a wealthy Serbian family, Mileva excelled at physics and math, and was devoted to her studies until she met Albert Einstein. The two brilliant scientists fell in love. They lived and worked together. But more interested in their own work than their classes, both failed their final exams. Einstein passed on a second attempt. Unmarried and pregnant, Mileva failed hers again. Einstein never met his daughter… and no one is sure what happened to the baby. Einstein and Mileva later married and had two sons. Mileva focused her energies on Albert’s career. Some scholars believe Mileva did the math for the Theory of Relativity, others say she corrected Einstein’s math, and still others claim she was even more deeply involved. The paper outlining the theory is signed with a hyphenated name Einstein-Marty, the Hungarian form of her maiden name Maric.

Before the work was published, Albert Einstein left his wife and two sons. He never acknowledged his first wife or her work.

He did, however, give Mileva all of the Nobel Prize money. But, the money didn’t last long: Mileva was sick, and caring for their mentally ill (schizophrenic) son. Einstein went on to great acclaim, but he never again produced physics equal to the work he did while married to his first wife and collaborator, Mileva Maric.

-Women in Science

(via witheringwhiteskies)