NOW is PAST

"For the present form of this world is passing away." -Saul of Tarsus

[nowispast]

Run away to sea, huir al mar, es la rotura inglesa tradicional de los padres, la iniciación heroica. La geografía la recomienda y aun la Escritura (Salmos, CVII): "Los que bajan en barcas a la mar, los que comercian en las grandes aguas; ésos ven las obras de Dios y sus maravillas en el abismo.

Jorge Luis Borges, Historia universal de la infamia (El impostor inverosímil Tom Castro)

[nowispast]

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

[ashmoleanmuseum]

Hundreds of these mysterious eye idols were found in a place of worship at the archaeological site of Tell Brak in modern-day Syria - but what exactly are they, and what were they used for? 

Find out more about these fascinating objects in this *one minute* video. 

[nowispast]

“Happiness, not in another place but this place… not for another hour but this hour”

Walt Whitman, “A Song for Occupation,” Leaves of Grass

[nowispast]

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! — and listens to their testimony.

James Baldwin, “No Name in the Street”

[nowispast]

Topic sentence. However; but; as a result. Blah, blah, blah. It follows from this. Concluding sentence.

Charles Bernstein, “Content’s Dream.”

[nowispast]

To be inside and outside a position at the same time—to occupy a territory while loitering skeptically on the boundary—is often where the most intensely creative ideas stem from. It is a resourceful place to be, if not always a painless one.

Terry Eagleton, “After Theory”

[nowispast]

Tomorrow / we shall have to think up signs, / sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan / on the double page / of day and paper. / Tomorrow, we shall have to invent, / once more, / the reality of this world.

Ocatvio Paz, "January First" (translated by Elizabeth Bishop). Excerpt from: Peter Turchi, “Maps of the Imagination.”

[nowispast]

Reversal of fortune can, I suspect, be a spur to rereading; where once one had read for adventure, now one rereads for the safety of the unvarying text. -Larry McMurtry, “On Rereading”

The New York Review of Books, July 14, 2005 https://email.nybooks.com/t/y-l-udilpd-jilutiukhj-y/

[nowispast]

We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.

John of Salisbury (1159)

[nowispast]

It is insufficient to say that power and violence are not the same. Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.

Hannah Arendt

[nowispast]

Translations that are more than transmissions of subject matter come into being when in the course of its survival a work has reached the age of its fame.

Walter Benjamin

[nowispast]

7 documentales completos sobre la vida y obra de Le Corbusier

En agosto de 2015 se cumplieron 50 años desde la muerte del célebre Le Corbusier y en nuestra sección de "Cine y Arquitectura" lo celebramos con una...

[nowispast]

The first part of a longer series provisionally entitled "1000 things I miss about the actual bookshop"

These days of “social distancing” provide an opportunity to reflect creatively about what we have left behind, even if for a while.

[ashmoleanmuseum]

Ashmolean from Home: The Great Bookcase Learn the fascinating story behind this enormous, elaborate and highly decorated bookcase that belonged to Victorian Architect and Designer William Burges.

[nowispast]

Reading a masterpiece in a language for which you need a dictionary is in itself a course in reading word by word. And as I puzzled out the gorgeous, labyrinthine sentences [of Marcel Proust], I discovered how reading a book can make you want to write one.

Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer

[nowispast]

I read closely, word by word, sentence by sentence, pondering each deceptively minor decision that the writer had made. And though it’s impossible to recall every source of inspiration and instruction, I can remember the novels and stories that seemed to me revelations: wells of beauty and pleasure that were also textbooks, private lessons in the art of fiction.

Francine Prose, Reading Like a Wirter