Led to this poem by Trakl last night as we re-called Jac’s time with us
Aeon (Georg Trakl)
An animal face in the brown green
Glows at me timidly,the bushes gleam.
In the far distance an old fountain sings
With child voices. There I listen.The wild jackdaws mock me
And all around the birches veil themselves.
I stand silent before a fire of tares
And softly images paint themselves.
On golden ground an ancient myth of love.Over the hill the clouds spread their silence.
Over the ghostly pond-mirror
Fruit beckons, glowing and heavy.
A toast to Jacques
Jacques about a month old
Trakl, as always, so many levels of meaning in his poems. Many an epic tale in themselves.
A different take on a folklore theme – intriguing story with a good cast and great setting.I like the apocalyptic setting, or is it post-apocalyptic! And – not over-playing the supernatural element. Music score – I thought, at first, it wouldn’t work, but it did. Full marks ‘Gwlad yr Ia.’
The cast includes Guðrún Ýr Eyfjörð, Íris Tanja Flygenring, Ingvar Sigurðsson, Þorsteinn Bachmann, Sólveig Arnarsdóttir, Guðrún Gísladóttir, Baltasar Breki and Björn Thors from Iceland and Aliette Opheim and Valter Skarsgård from Sweden among others. The series is created by the award winning director Baltasar Kormákur (Trapped, Everest) and produced by RVK Studios.
One year after the outbreak of a violent eruption of the subglacial volcano Katla, the peace and tranquility in the small town of Vík has been dramatically disturbed with the eruption still active. The ice near the volcano has been melting, the area has been evacuated and only a few remaining people manage to provide the necessary community service in the village, which is now only accessible by crossing the Markarfljót river. The grand area has turned out to be somewhat apocalyptic and Vík is declared a danger zone.
Mysterious elements, that have been deeply frozen into the glacier from prehistoric times, start to emerge from the melting ice with consequences no one could ever have foreseen
Folklore: a changeling is a child believed to have been secretly substituted by fairies for the parents' real child in infancy.
Ditto the few theologians and Biblical scholars who are aware of the hidden agenda of the Biblical corpus. A veritable library of fake news but there's nothing fake about the dangerous ideology that crafted these stories and religious propaganda.
Charlton Heston taking his tablets and breaking them on Mt Sinai. He was a real person but Moses, of course, was a literary invention
Enjoyed the story very much , not ‘too-over-the-top’ in terms of fantasy but for me Christian Convery (the deer boy) doesn’t have that special bit of magic or charisma to make it a great series. The big guy, Nonso, was excellent. And with better lead casting, the chemistry between him and the deer boy would have been really magical. As for the deer-boy antlers and their ‘movement’!!! Very weak.
And a brilliant, though, obviously harrowing in parts, Polish film. Excellent in every way, 2019 Legiony.
As a Polish militia battles for independence from Russian rule in the 1910s, a star-crossed romance puts loyalties to the test. Inspired by true events.
Jacques the jackdaw came into our lives on 27 May aged about 3 weeks – and therefore into our care. He is thriving and thus reminding us of the importance of the basics in life: food in our bellies and security … love and ‘being watchful’ … and, as with all babies and infants, cleaning up after poo – and that’s a privilege also!
Animals see the unobstructed
world with their whole eyes.
But our eyes, turned back upon
themselves, encircle and
seek to snare the world,
setting traps for freedom.
The faces of the beasts
show what truly IS to us:
we who up-end the infant and
force its sight to fix upon
things and shapes, not the
freedom that they occupy,
that openesswhich lies so deep
within the faces of the animals ... A gentle reminder of words from a favourite series of poems by Rilke - his Duino Elegies, this one from VIII - translation by Robert Hunter
Or, as Jacques Derrida would have it, on discovering he was being looked-at by a cat, rather than looking-at 'it'! ... 'The Animal Therefore That I Am' (2002).
Jacques Derridad. 2004 Paris
From 2009 Peter Sloterdijk's ‘Rules for the Human Zoo’, his ‘response’ to Heidegger's ‘Letter on Humanism’ (1977). In this account of the history of humanism as the ‘taming’ of men and the breeding of good citizens, Sloterdijk pauses briefly to discuss the ‘domestication of men’, their construction of houses, such that men became ‘not only sheltered by their language, but also tamed by their accommodations.’ He notes that: 'historians of culture have made it clear that with domesticity the relationship between men and animals changed. With the taming of men by their houses the age of pets began as well. Their attachment to houses is not only a question of civilizing, but also a matter of direction and upbringing.'
The Fugitive Stag 