The Breeders, Off You

Alice Pike Barney, Medusa (Laura Dreyfus Barney), 1892

Pere Borrell del Caso, Escaping Criticism, 1874

"Grotto in an ice berg, photographed 5th January 1911 by Herbert George Ponting during the British Antarctic ("Terra Nova") Expedition (1910-1913). Shows scientists T Griffith Taylor and Charles S Wright at the entrance, and the Terra Nova in the distance."

Salvador Dalí, Portrait of Picasso, 1947

Salvador Dalí, Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time, 1939

Trona, San Bernardino County, California

The Flower Lover by Bukowski

in the Valkerie Mountains
among the strutting peacocks
I found a flower
as large as my
head
and when I reached in to smell
it

I lost an ear lobe
part of my nose
one eye
and half a pack of
cigarettes.

I came back
the next day
to hack the damned thing
down
but found it so
beautiful I
killed a
peacock
instead.

"We must accept our pain, change what we can, and laugh at the rest." ~ Camille Paglia, the Stoic

René Magritte, The Pleasure Principle: Portrait of Edward James, 1937

Emil Nolde, The Sea B, 1930

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Seated Dancer in Pink Tights, 1890

TV on the Radio, Wolf Like Me

Born this day

Earth from a million miles away by Deep Space Climate Observatory (Dscovr)

On this day in 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on the moon.

Photo of Buzz Aldrin by Neil Armstrong, 21 July 1969

September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright 
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can 
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. 

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire 
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Born this day

Edgar Degas, Dancer, 1877

ISS Expedition 44

This Soyuz-FG rocket, with 26 million horsepower, is scheduled to launch Soyuz TMA-17M into space on 22 July 2015.