( via / via )

"Our dwelling place..."

"To bear a name is both terrible and necessary." --Don De Lillo, Ratner's Star (1976)

"In Washinghton Square,/ the benches were empty..."

"Pluto 2
After the action of the International Astronomers Union 8/24/06

Poor Pluto, icy stone, never so lovely as Venus
or possessing Jupiter’s pull. Dragging along
your equal moon, that old cold pagan dance-partner,
Charon. Still tangled up with Neptune’s elliptic
and its inner tides. Second-tier, our mirror,
unable even to clear your wobbly orbit of debris.
Yet, for all of it, the sun’s faint ray still falls
on your gravelly eye. A great debate – and bang! –
you’re X’ed from the canon by the IAU, in Prague
not Rome, but still the same: too many minor objects
threatening the cosmic balance. It’s just as Irenaeus
argued and the holy fathers, in their wisdom, then declared
the gnostic gospels bogus – full of outlandish sayings
like: 'Pick up a stone, and you will find me there.' "

--Richard St. John (from Vox Populi Sphere via Michael Sims on Fb)

Scissors, Paper, Sphinx.