dicebourbon:

James Nares’ Street. I want to see the whole thing.

“Join Spectrum as Thurston Moore, co-founder of Sonic Youth, performs live in front of a projection of Street, a video by British-born artist James Nares that features Moore’s original music.

Over the course of a week in September 2011, Nares—a New Yorker since 1974—recorded sixteen hours of footage of people on the streets of Manhattan from a moving car. He then greatly slowed his source material, editing down the results to one hour of steady, continuous motion and scoring it with music for a twelve-string guitar composed and performed by Moore. Nares’s video forms the centerpiece of the exhibition Street, on view at the [Metropolitan] Museum [of Art in NYC] through May 27, 2013.”

I could watch this for an hour.

Happy Solemnity of the Ascension (celebrated today in most U.S. dioceses.)

“Christ goes up to heaven on high, Alleluia,
He hath led captivity captive, alleluia.
He hath bestowed gifts upon all mankind, alleluia,
God goes up to heaven with rejoicing,
And the Lord with the sound of the trumpet, alleluia.” - Ascendens Christus, English translation

“Christ’s Ascension into heaven signifies his participation, in his humanity, in God’s power and authority. Jesus Christ is Lord: he possesses all power in heaven and on earth. He is ‘far above all rule and authority and power and dominion’, for the Father ‘has put all things under his feet.’ Christ is Lord of the cosmos and of history. In him human history and indeed all creation are ‘set forth’ and transcendently fulfilled.” - Catechism of the Catholic Church

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Damien de Veuster, a true portrait of incarnational love and courage. He voluntarily entered into quarantine in a Hawaiian leper colony on the island of Molokai to minister to the people there. In addition to his spiritual work he treated wounds, built houses and dug graves. In the course of his work, he contracted leprosy. The disease took is life after he had lived and worked in the colony for 16 years. “The political and journalistic world can boast of very few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, counts by the thousands those who after the example of Fr. Damien have devoted themselves to the victims of leprosy. It is worthwhile to look for the sources of such heroism.” - Mahatma Gandhi Damien of Molokai, pray for us.
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Today is the Feast Day of Saint Damien de Veuster, a true portrait of incarnational love and courage.

He voluntarily entered into quarantine in a Hawaiian leper colony on the island of Molokai to minister to the people there. In addition to his spiritual work he treated wounds, built houses and dug graves. In the course of his work, he contracted leprosy. The disease took is life after he had lived and worked in the colony for 16 years.

“The political and journalistic world can boast of very few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, counts by the thousands those who after the example of Fr. Damien have devoted themselves to the victims of leprosy. It is worthwhile to look for the sources of such heroism.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Damien of Molokai, pray for us.

Fiction: A Missed Calling

I don’t see the world the way other people do. Specifically, I don’t see other people the way other people do. 

When I look at someone, deep truth is laid bare. I see things that sometimes not even the closest friend or spouse of the person I’m looking at would guess. Sometimes things not even the person would guess.

I see where they are meant to be.

Vocationally, I mean.

No matter what kind of job they hold or what they put on that morning, I see them dressed in the garb and surrounded by the tools of the trade for which they are best suited.

It can be…depressing. Sometimes I wish I had been born with the ability to be able to tell when people would die. That would be less depressing. Seeing what I see is such a downer because most of the time people aren’t doing the thing they were made to do.

There’s a lady who works at my bank, I think she’s a loan officer. Every week when I go in to deposit my paycheck I can see her through the glass wall of her office. She’s decked out in Carhartt coveralls and a straw hat. A gas tiller, which only I can see, sits unused in the corner.

She’s a farmer. That’s all there is to it. And she’s stuck in that loan office everyday.

It can be funny, like when I see the mayor and he’s dressed like a janitor. Standing there giving a speech with a mop in his hand. Oh, and there’s this janitor over at the hospital who looks like a Pharaoh. Decked out in the headdress and everything. Some people were just born too late, I guess.

It can be scary. I nearly passed out when I met the surgeon who was going to remove my gall bladder: he was wearing this stained butcher’s apron and had a cleaver tucked in his belt.

I got a second opinion. I still have my gall bladder.

Every now and then, though, you see someone who fits, someone who is exactly where they need to be.

I’m a software engineer, and there’s this lady three cubicles down. Her name is Helen. She does data entry and she looks like she’s supposed to be there. And it’s beautiful. She may be short and squinty and nearly 50, but she’s the most beautiful person on my floor because she’s exactly where she needs to be.

Me? When I look in the mirror, I’m wearing a tuxedo with tails and the whole 9. Sometimes I have sheet music tucked under my arm. My chair at work looks like a piano bench to me, and I never even learned to play. It’s kind of hard for me not to feel like I missed my calling.

You? Tell me what you do?

Really?

Hahaha.

No, you don’t want to know what I see. It would just depress you.

We should just go get a drink. There’s a bartender down here who should have been an artist. He makes good drinks, so he kinda is, I guess.