5cense

439> Viconcrete poetree + seedy arkhives «not books but 3D spaces where any sensorial experience finds a suitable abode»

Roman aquaducks (click for high rez)

25 June | from Monte Verità drove us along lago maggiore molto traffico coming against us try to find autostrada can see it overhead but as usual nowhere to axess sines lead u in circuls hit traffick in Milano il pezzo of driving between Bologna + Firenze = hell on wheels stopped in Orvieto for lunch w/ a vista of the striped cathedral:

Orvieto duomo

 

> decided to enter Rome from the SE come sempre that adage about all roads lead to Rome totally bullshit stopped @ the parco acquedotto which in 3 years in Rome never saw just never got around to it diffrent perspectiv when u have a car @ yur disposal

(click for high rez)

> checked into hotel Prisca @ base of Aventino (where dwells Romulus's nemesis Remus) ran along Tiber south (route #3)(north chocked full of trashy summer beer tents) ate in Testaccio all the hip places booked but the lowkey places better comunque cacio e pepe e ciccoria e buffalo mozz mmmmm

drinking again from bocca del lupo nasone

26 June > still probly spent more time this yr so far in Rome than «home» in NYC when last we here we thawt purhaps the last time @ least for a while now 2 months later pretty certin oggi è nostro ultimo giorno a Roma so did a little giro around visiting old haunts grnds where we stomped even found a few stradas never had we travelled down from where we sleep up the Aventino to Santa Sabina + down to Circo Massimo had coffee @ FAO where our better-½ had a meeting so continued us solo on up to Chiesa di San Gregorio al Celio thru Villa Celimontana to S Stefano Rotondo (some new how to kill xtians murals since last we went now restored) oh + just me + sum strange experimental singer messing around w/ echo machines (good acoustics) we presume for a wedding seems a popular place to have them (last time we visited the bride + groom + their entourage showed up on Harleys) sorta morbid backdrop no?

S Stefano Rotondo

 

death by raking

 

death on the dismemberment plan

> then over to Domus Aurea (witch still we havent seen inside but only open sat/sun) past the Quirinale (overheard 1 tourist telling another that the pope slept there didnt have the heart to correct them) thru the Spanish Steps area but skipping the major monuments thru piazza Popolo stopped @ Ara Pacis to see wat xhibit ma niente in particolare tho 100s of Ferraris parked out front staging for sum sort of takeover of Roman streets

coliseum crackhouse

 

Esquilino

 

the modern mixed in

 

wall for Aldo Bandinelli

 

sums up the state of Domus Aurea

 

SPQR billboard #∞

 

a rare parking spot (otherwise Rome fast becoming a giant parking lot every sq cm covered w/ cars)

 

1 of 100s of Ferraris

> then looped home along the river stopped for another capuccino in 1 of our faves Bar Peru then said ciao to Giordano Bruno (whose name seems to pop in everything we read lately) in Campo d'Fiori then across Ponte Sisto thru Trastevere visto our old produce vendor Bruno @ the marketo we used to fare spesa @ most every day for 3 yrs the same sanpietrini inklings of nostalgia starting to form ma forse not enough time has passed ± the more places u go the less nostalgia u feel cuz every 1 blends into 1 another also stopped in Chiesa di San Francesco a Ripa to see the ecstatic beatification of Ludovica Albertoni then back across thru Testaccio had cacio e pepe at Felice J came back + then we walked up to Monte Verde had apperitivos at our old friends then ate sea urchin spaghetti @ Gensola even stopped @ our other fave place Da Teo see other friends another last hoorah this the final 1 for real this time?

Peru bar

 

supreme court

 

St Peters + castel San Angelo

 

homeless trolls still believing

 

Tiberian shipwreck

 

Tiberian hydrograph

 

another casualty of diluvio passato

 

chain wear (traces of past floods)

 

tethered bollard

 

Giordano Bruno

 

new meme near bar San Callisto

 

looking out S Francesco Ripa

 

 

trustevere

 

 

old book vendor in Trastevere market ancora lì

 

Testaccio

27 June> last run in Rome @ least for a while up Aventino nod to Remus down around Circo Massimo across Isola Tiberina nodding again to where Romulus + Remus became born/found floating + suckled to life by she-wolf down along the Tiber + back to Testaccio picked up better-½ @ FAO hit the road bumper to bumper traffic getting out of Rome cuz of sum Roman holiday what shd've taken 1 hour took 3 after that fast along the coast this time then inland at Parma to Milan in time for dinner in Rho actually town/suburb NW of Milan

28 June> Rho > woke up worked out took train to the World Expo Milan this year 2015 focused on food rite up our better-½'s alley seduti in fila for over an hour waiting to go in all to wait in more lines to get into each pavilion organized by country went strait to Japan but line già 1:20 long standing in hot sole all so stupido hit us sum of the smaller xhibits w/o filas no 1 gives a shit about Africa ± countries che non hanno abbastanza money to build fancy structures w/ gimmicky flair + bells + whistles every1 missing the whole pt to educate ppl about food ate sum decent Jordanian then bad + expensive Mexican (after waiting in line only to aspettare in subsequent holding areas looking at dumb vids) all of it seeming like promotional travel videos for the country w/ a slight emphasis on the cuisine sumtimes not even if u want to summarize the experience as a whole felt like travelling to every country in nel mondo going no further than the airport giftshops w/ all the cliché kitschy knickknacks di quel paese on display architected all fancy but makeshifty (what the hell they gonna do w/ all this stuff afterwords? cazzo rifiuti) + even worse surrounded by annoying + pushy Italian famiglies w/ bratty kids really no reason to leave home u cd have a website dear Inurnet that contains all this info + snazzy multimedia displays w/o having all these idiot humanos to interact with next world fair shd take place online tho the meatspace awe of the UN pavilion 0 made it all worthwhile + no crowd (not gimmicky enough ± ppl dont gives a shit about UN/feeding the planet just free takeaways) u walk into this massive archival library sort of façade w/ all these drawers like a giant seedbank symbolizing a repository of knowledge thawt cool they emphasized that + intresting movies about typical life goatherds + whatnot

sum sort of iconic characters from food encyclopedia

 

seeds (Russian xhibit)

 

arid lands area

 

periodic table of plants

 

forget which pavilion forse Corea

 

Turkish dancers

 

 

the UN Pavilion 0 (for zer0 hunger challenge)

> worth quoting the description of the above Delminian archive that of corse no 1 bothers to read:

«Pavilion Zero, like the number it represents, is the beginning of all stories.

The first—and the most important of all—is the one that tells about man's evolution on earth and his relationship with food and therefore with nature, of which he is a part, but of which he is also a creator and aware or an unintentional transformer.

Knowing just how much man has produced and what he nourished himself with from the moment he arrived on earth until today, the transformation of the natural landscape, the culture and rituals of consumption is, in fact, the starting point for any future project.

Inspired by the utopian project of encyclopaedic representation of universal knowledge, created by the humanist Giulio Camillo Delminio in the XVI century, the archive of the world is a real projection of human memory. The universal map of all the arts and sciences is represented in a theatrum: a real wooden building where the extraordinary representation of knowledge is staged. All the loci of knowledge are hidden inside a «library» made out of drawers: not books but three-dimensional spaces where any sensorial experience can find a suitable abode.»

> trained back to Rho came across sum sort of street performance fair tightrope walkers + peepole on stilts + fire-breathing dragons all sorts of unexpected strangeness

rumpled stilt skins w/ wings in Rho

 

sum sort of dragon charmer

 

fire-breathing dragon

29 June > Malpensa airport > woke up early returned car ridiculous double-security thanks to US homeland security + of corse we get singled out cuz we travel so lite they think we terrorists cuz we dont check bags just a little daypack now sitting in lounge w/ US waterpolo team bunch of blonde cornfed Neanderthals knuckles hanging to the ground «do they have flies here?» 1 asks «just nuke everything in the microwave» says another + overheard another saying in regards to the airport security «the Swiss really know how to do their shit» ummm wrong country we in Italy + the flight read Vico (see below) + watched Ex Machina (silly + contrived) + going thru US customs get flagged again «that's all u brought?» they aks over + over guess it dont help that we wear a commie hat got rerouted follow the yellow line to holding area not as evasive as that inquisition in Dublin when they held up our connecting plane an hour on our account but still further interrogated by homeland security why does this keep happening to us we have global entry even if they kept tabs on us they'd know we travel a lot as harmless peaceful creatures of this planet but hey @ least the day b4 supreme court voted 5-4 proud to = American + married @ least for a day now back stateside for the rest of the summer

> cont reading New Science by Giambattista Vico on the plane the book that informed the 4-ply framework for Finnegans Wake tho actually Vico gives 3 reoccurring cycles to civilizations (that he in turn derived from Egyptians or maybe the Greeks) 1. divine 2. heroic 3. human mostly he talks about Greeks + Romans (himself from Naples) but also Jews pagans Egyptians etc a guidebook w/ everything u need to know about the human condition talks a lot about auguring + Romulus + Remus + tutto riguarda sempre nel ruolo del linguaggio the clues etymology gives us how language evolves w/ each stage (1. mute ± wordless ± hieroglyphic 2. heroic (poetic) symbolic language (using similes metaphors images descriptions of nature etc) 3. human civilized or epistolary language mostly what we forced to read now agreed upon grammar + conventions for defining laws + science + the bizness of everyday life also parla di giants (barbarians) + the flood (the «starting points of Greek history» all presented in a series of #ed axioms come questo:

[204] All the histories of barbarous peoples have mythical origins.
[205] As regards myths, this axiom is confirmed by the custom of the masses. For when they consider famous people, noted for certain things and living in a certain context, they create myths which are appropriate to these conditions. These myths are ideal truths, since they truly conform to the merit of the figures they celebrate. And if they are sometimes false in fact, it is only to the extent that they inadequately recognize such merit. Indeed, if we consider the question carefully, poetic truth is metaphysical truth; and any physical truth which does not conform to it must be judged false...

> tho in Italian of corso (we reading lazily in traduzione unlike Joyce who we imagine lo leggere in originale) intresting tho to read in Italy + when reading about the savage big footed giants surrounded by huge US waterpolo jocks (+ us wearing our «I EXIST» yeti shirt) strangely these savage giants descended from Noah in a sorta reverse evolution (as a consequence of abandoning family structure) to Africa Asia + Middle East stead of converging other way around altro axiom struck a cord w/ us:

[354](3) The etymologies of native languages also agree with these institutions, for they trace the histories of the words which denote them. Such etymological histories begin with the meanings proper to their origins, and follow the natural progress of their metaphorical uses....

> like wierd that we say «ears of corn» rite? also this axiom:

[409] All figures of speech may be reduced to these four types—metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony—which were previously thought to be the ingenious inventions of writers. But my discussion of them proves that they were in fact necessary modes of expression in all the early poetic nations, and originally had natural and proper meanings. These expressions became figurative only later, as the human mind developed and invented words which signified abstract forms, that is, generic categories comprising various species, or relating parts to a whole. Knowing this, we may begin to demolish two common errors of the grammarians: that prose is the proper form of speech, and poetic speech improper; and that men spoke first in prose and later in verse.

> drilling down all sorts of intresting eatmelogical anticdotes whats in a nome? name itself = nature = definition = 1s right to something (in Roman law) = law (to the Greeks) always thawt it strange leggere = to read in Italian + legge = law + his bit about verbs fascinating:

[453] Finally, the authors of languages formed verbs. In just this way, we observe that children express nouns and particles, but leave the verbs to be understood. For nouns awaken ideas and images which leave clear mental imprints, and particles do the same by signifying modifications of these ideas. But verbs signify motion, which implies past and future moments measured against an indivisible present, a concept which even the philosophers find difficult to grasp. This scientific observation is confirmed by the following case. There is living in Naples a gentleman who was suffered a severe stroke, and can only utter nouns, having completely forgotten the verbs.

> + also how word order inverting (qualcosa che xperimentato w/ in The Becoming + ancora now in A Raft Manifest) like how Native Americans + Germans roll arose cuz of difficulty of completing sentences like better to dice «home we go» backwordass rather than «we go home» shd put destination 1° no? wat makes cense to us tho Vico thinks the Greeks clever cuz they didnt invert noun-verb order Romans sumwhere between Greeks + Germans

[494] The first founders of civilizations strove to devise an art of sensory topics. This allowed them to combine what might be termed the concrete properties, qualities, and relations of individual objects and their species. These combinations in turn created their poetic genres. [...] As Axiom 52 states: 'Children excel in imitation; poetry is simply imitation; and the arts are simply imitations of nature and are, in a certain sense, concrete poetry.'

> this = as far as we got roughly ½-way + now home sweet home


 438 <( )> 440 > n ∀merikin horse tongue sandwitch + the crime of lot # 321,278,823


5cense

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