In Hindu mythology, the Kali Yuga is a 400,000-plus century period - one in a cycle of four ages. Our current human iteration has just begun this period, and it marks a time in which we as a race move away from God: chaos is coming, and everything will be torn down and destroyed. I had a prof. who was fond of saying 'it's the Kali Yuga, baby' in response to the insanity of the world. I made him a T-Shirt with that saying above a corresponding drawing of the goddess Kali, and I have since realized that this is the wrong Kali. The Kali in Kali Yuga is a male demon. Oh well.
Cyclical destruction, life happening on a scale outside comprehension. The recipient of SM's weak explanation of all this choas is Gogol. I have a spurious memory of watching an adaptation of Gogol's 'The Overcoat' (orig. 1842) in Russian (with subtitles) sitting on the floor in elementary school. There's a hapless clerk hazed by his colleagues, buried under a mountain of paperwork that cascades from a booby-trapped cabinet. "Why do you persecute me so?" was the awkwardly translated plea. Forty-something years on I can't even tell if this memory is from a real event, let alone from that Russian story. I do remember the girls in the class exclaiming sadly as they realized the coveted fur collar came from an innocent stray cat. But perhaps I've conflated disparate memories.
I'm currently experiencing a similar paperwork avalanche, and that's really the only reason Gogol is there.
I'm happy with the Pharm panel, not happy with the Soap panel (which started simple and got stupidly overworked). And the final frame, Philip Glass, simply conveys the sensation that I am swept in events that far exceed my comprehension. "No Conventional Plot" was a line from a summary of "Koyaanisqatsi" (1982), the film from which the nauseating feeling in the Glass' cyclic score was the sensation I was trying to get in touch with here. Does that sentence scan? No matter.
In Hindu mythology, the Kali Yuga is a 400,000-plus century period - one in a cycle of four ages. Our current human iteration has just begun this period, and it marks a time in which we as a race move away from God: chaos is coming, and everything will be torn down and destroyed. I had a prof. who was fond of saying 'it's the Kali Yuga, baby' in response to the insanity of the world. I made him a T-Shirt with that saying above a corresponding drawing of the goddess Kali, and I have since realized that this is the wrong Kali. The Kali in Kali Yuga is a male demon. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteCyclical destruction, life happening on a scale outside comprehension. The recipient of SM's weak explanation of all this choas is Gogol. I have a spurious memory of watching an adaptation of Gogol's 'The Overcoat' (orig. 1842) in Russian (with subtitles) sitting on the floor in elementary school. There's a hapless clerk hazed by his colleagues, buried under a mountain of paperwork that cascades from a booby-trapped cabinet. "Why do you persecute me so?" was the awkwardly translated plea. Forty-something years on I can't even tell if this memory is from a real event, let alone from that Russian story. I do remember the girls in the class exclaiming sadly as they realized the coveted fur collar came from an innocent stray cat. But perhaps I've conflated disparate memories.
I'm currently experiencing a similar paperwork avalanche, and that's really the only reason Gogol is there.
I'm happy with the Pharm panel, not happy with the Soap panel (which started simple and got stupidly overworked). And the final frame, Philip Glass, simply conveys the sensation that I am swept in events that far exceed my comprehension. "No Conventional Plot" was a line from a summary of "Koyaanisqatsi" (1982), the film from which the nauseating feeling in the Glass' cyclic score was the sensation I was trying to get in touch with here. Does that sentence scan? No matter.