A Medieval/Age of Enlightenment/Any Excuse to Wear a Codpiece Faire*

Somebody posted to the Medieval Club of New York's Facebook page that the Society for Creative Anachronism was going to be having jousting in front of the Cloisters. I'm not really into the whole creative anachronism scene, but I thought that in that setting, it might be worth a visit. It turned out to have been a whole medieval faire thingie, and the jousting in front of the Cloisters was — a real missed opportunity — sort of down the hill from the museum rather than in front of it.

The falconry was pretty nifty, though.

Click to enlarge any of the images.

In Memoriam, Always Already

The view from my apartment complex.

Esta bala es antigua. 

En 1897 la disparó contra el presidente del Uruguay un muchacho de Montevideo, Arredondo, que había pasado largo tiempo sin ver a nadie, para que lo supieran sin cómplice. Treinta años antes, el mismo proyectil mató a Lincoln, por obra criminal o mágica de un actor, a quien las palabras de Shakespeare habían convertido en Marco Bruto, asesino de César. Al promediar el siglo XVII la venganza la usó para dar muerte a Gustavo Adolfo de Suecia, en mitad de la pública hecatombe de una batalla. 

Antes, la bala fue otras cosas, porque la transmigración pitagórica no sólo es propia de los hombres. Fue el cordón de seda que en el Oriente reciben los visires, fue la fusilería y las bayonetas que destrozaron a los defensores del Álamo, fue la cuchilla triangular que segó el cuello de una reina, fue los oscuros clavos que atravesaron la carne del Redentor y el leño de la Cruz, fue el veneno que el jefe cartaginés guardaba en una sortija de hierro, fue la serena copa que en un atardecer bebió Sócrates. 

En el alba del tiempo fue la piedra que Caín lanzó contra Abel y será muchas cosas que hoy ni siquiera imaginamos y que podrán concluir con los hombres y con su prodigioso y frágil destino.

***

This bullet is ancient. 

In 1897, a boy from Montevideo fired it at the president of Uruguay after spending a long time in solitude so he would be known to have acted alone. Thirty years previous, the same projectile killed Lincoln, in the criminal or magical act of a thespian made Marcus Brutus, assassin of Caesar, by Shakespeare himself. At the turn of the seventeenth century, vengeance used it to deal death to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the midsts of the public catastrophe of battle. 

Before that, the bullet was other things, because Pythagorean transubstantiation is not only the domain of men. It was the silk cord that Oriental viziers met; it was the artillery and the bayonets that destroyed the Alamo's last defenders; it was the triangular knife that slit the queen's throat; it was the dark nails that pierced the flesh of the Redeemer and the wood of the Cross; it was the poison that the Carthagean general kept in an iron ring; it was the placid cup from which Socrates drank one late afternoon.

At the dawn of time it was the rock that Cain threw at Abel. It will be many more things that we cannot yet fathom but that will be able to put an end to men and their prodigious, fragile destiny. 

— Jorge Luis Borges. In Memoriam, J.F.K. English translation mine. 

Volumes 2, 10 and 12

This shelf of books, in the "eastern religion" section of the Strand, with its separation of three volumes of the EI from all the rest plus its juxtaposition against books about terrorism, struck me as sad:

Yea, Though I Picnic in the Valley of the Shadow of Death

This is likely to become a regular feature. If I were a medievalist in Europe, I'd spend my weekends out photographing castles and I wouldn't have to explain why I was posting the pictures on my medievalist blog. Obviously we don't have great old medieval ruins in America, but the aesthetic pull of the decrepit things that people used to inhabit is still great. So I seek out more modern ruins, though it's not totally separate from my intellectual life.

The New York City Marble Cemetery is one of two so-called marble cemeteries at the top of the Lower East Side that were built entirely from the marble quarried at Tuckahoe, NY. The one on 2nd St., a 19th-century non-denominational site, held an open day today; the strangest thing was that many people treated it like just another green space in the city and picnicked there.

I'm still still getting used to the camera, and the hours for the open day (11-5 in the middle of the summer) made the lighting conditions a challenge. In fact, there are a few images that I'll post here that will do well with a light touch of the dodging tool in photoshop. So with all the usual caveats, more photos after the jump.