Poesy

Des Hommes et des Dieux

Des Hommes et des Dieux (2010) IMDb

Assassination of the monks of Tibhirine

Quote from film (Swedish):

Om det någon dag skulle hända att jag, och det kan ske i dag, faller offer för terrorismen som drabbat utlänningar här vill jag att mitt samfund, min kyrka och min familj ska minnas att jag gav mitt liv åt Gud och detta land och att de accepterar att allt livs Mästare inte är främmande för en sådan brutal hädanfärd och att min våldsamma död, likt många andra förpassas till glömska och anonymitet. Jag har levt länge nog för att vara en medbrottsling till ondskan som verkar segra i världen och som tveklöst kommer att förgöra mig. Jag skulle aldrig önska mig en sådan död. Jag skulle aldrig kunna glädjas åt att folket som jag älskar urskiljningslöst skulle anklagas för mitt mord. Jag vet hur man över hela världen har föraktat det här folket och hur karikatyrerna av islam främjat en viss typ av islamism. Det här landet, och islam, är för mig något annat. Det är en kropp och en själ. Min död kommer att ge dem rätt som kallat mig naiv och idealistisk men de ska veta att jag nu fått min brinnande nyfikenhet stillad och, om Gud vill, ska jag försänka min blick i Herrens och beskåda Hans islamska barn såsom Han ser dem. I detta tack, när allt är sagt om mitt liv vill jag givetvis omfatta gårdagens och dagens vänner och även du, vän i min sista stund som inte visste vad du gjorde. Ja, även till dig vill jag tillägna detta tack och farväl som du har förutsett. Må vi mötas igen likt lyckliga tjuvar i paradiset om Gud så vill, Han som är fader till oss båda. Amen. Inshallah.

English:

Should it ever befall me, and it could happen today, to be a victim of the terrorism swallowing up all foreigners here, I would like my community, my church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to his country. That the Unique Master of all life was no stranger to this brutal departure. And that my death is the same as so many other violent ones, consigned to the apathy of oblivion. I’ve lived enough to know, I am complicit in the evil that, alas, prevails over the world and the evil that will smite me blindly. I could never desire such a death. I could never feel gladdened that these people I love be accused randomly of my murder. I know the contempt felt for the people here, indiscriminately. And I know how Islam is distorted by a certain Islamism. This country, and Islam, for me are something different. They’re a body and a soul. My death, of course, will quickly vindicate those who call me naïve or idealistic, but they must know that I will be freed of a burning curiosity and, God willing, will immerse my gaze in the Father’s and contemplate with him his children of Islam as he sees them. This thank you which encompasses my entire life includes you, of course, friends of yesterday and today, and you too, friend of last minute, who knew not what you were doing. Yes, to you as well I address this thank you and this farewell which you envisaged. May we meet again, happy thieves in Paradise, if it pleases God the Father of us both. Amen. Insha’Allah.

Hunger (2008), Bobby Sands

Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, 5:07 minute clip ( IMDb )

A Woolgathering Exodus

Directed by Church & Steak. Featured on PitchforkTV, XLR8R, and Stereogum.

Church & Steak is a film collective founded by Josh Lowman and Rinee Shah.

pioulard.com
churchandsteak.com

memento vivere

Morgenrot

film by Jeff Desom
music by Hauschka
Song issued from the album “Ferndorf” released by FatCat Records

23:38

the moment the great cogwheels come chugging to a silent stop,
and then slowly start in the opposite, positive direction

shortest day of the year
all down hill from here!

healthy happy sexual prowess

birds a’singing, bees a’stinging

from pale and goose-bumped to golden and up-pumped

puke up that processed deep-fried crap
devour fresh greens,
sweet honey, maple sap

no need to rent stupid films
Lets slip out for a walk!
I’ll show you things.

My friends, now for half a year or so
living in the present will always be better than an instant ago.

The judge on war, excerpt from BLOOD MERIDIAN, Cormac McCarthy

Chapter 17, page 248

The judge cracked with the back of an axe the shinbone on an antelope and the hot marrow dripped smoking on the stones. They watched him. The subject was war.
The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.
The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said.
The good book does indeed count war en evil, said Irving. Yet there’s many a bloody tale of war inside it.
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
He turned to Brown, from whom he’d heard some whispered slur or demurrer. Ah Davy, he said. It’s your own trade we honor here. Why not rather take a small bow. Let each acknowledge each.
My trade?
Certainly.
What is my trade?
War. War is your trade. Is it not?
And it aint yours?
Mine too. Very much so.
What about all them notebooks and bones and stuff?
All other trades are contained in that of war.
Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.
That’s your notion.
The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.
Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.
Brown studied the judge. You’re crazy Holden. Crazy at last.
The judge smiled.
Might does not make right, said Irving. The man that wins in some combat is not vindicated morally.
Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by an ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof. For the argument is indeed trivial, but not so the separate wills thereby made manifest. Man’s vanity may well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and howevermuch he comes to value his judgements ultimately he must submit them before a higher court. Here there can be no special pleading. Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised. Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, natural.
The judge searched out the circle for disputants. But what says the priest? he said.
Tobin looked up. The priest does not say.
The priest does not say, said the judge. Nihil dicit. But the priest has said. For the priest has put by the robes of his craft and taken up the tools of that higher calling which all men honor. The priest also would be no godserver but a god himself.
Tobin shook his head. You’ve a blasphemous tongue, Holden. And in truth I was never a priest but only a novitiate to the order.
Journeyman priest or apprentice priest, said the judge. Men of god and men of war have strange affinities.
I’ll not secondsay you in your notions, said Tobin. Dont ask it.
Ah Priest, said the judge. What could I ask of you that you’ve not already given?

”Job” – Léon Bonnat

1880, 63 3/8 inches x 50 ¾ inches, oil on canvas

“The Crucifixion” – Léon Bonnat

1874, oil on canvas

excerpt from BLOOD MERIDIAN, Cormac McCarthy

Chapter 17, page 243

He watched the fire and if he saw portents there it was much the same to him. He would live to look upon the western sea and he was equal to whatever might follow for he was complete at every hour. Whether his history should run concomitant with men and nations, whether it should cease. He’d long forsworn all weighing of consequence and allowing as he did that men’s destinies are ever given yet he usurped to contain within him all that he would ever be in the world and all that the world would be to him and be his charter written in the urstone itself he claimed agency and said so and he’d drive the remorseless sun on to its final endarkenment as if he’d ordered it all ages since, before there were paths anywhere, before there were men or suns to go upon them.