Blue Aesthetic Quotes

People say that Kashmir was crafted by God’s own hand. He molded the high mountains and hills that stretch as far as the eye can see, purified the crystal blue rivers and lakes, and painted the grass with His brush. He’s kept its beauty fresh ever since, a slice of heaven on earth. I don’t believe that. I think God forgot about us a long time ago. The aesthetic countryside is nothing but a facade, an illusion. Underneath the land’s mirage of beauty lies the truth, and this truth is the one thing the people of Kashmir understand above all else: suffering.

In here, Phryne, is the nursery. Do you like babies? Phryne laughed. No, not at all. they are not aesthetic like a puppy or a kitten. In fact, they always look drunk to me. look at that one---you'd swear he had been hitting the gin.

The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga.

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… . And one fine morning —— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Adam rejoined Blue on the other side of the vehicle. He took pains to stare at neither her breasts nor her lips. Adam and Blue were no longer together – insofar as they had ever been together in the first place – but being broken up and aware that it was good for both of them had not diminished the aesthetic appeal of either set of body parts. Her hair had got wilder since he first met her, less contained by all of her clips, and her mouth had got messier since he met her, more desirous of forbidden kisses, and her stance had got harder, her spine sharpened by grief and peril.

Ordering drinks always floored me. I didn't know whisky from gin and never managed to get anything I really liked the taste of. Buddy Willard and the other college boys I knew were usually too poor to buy hard liquor or they scorned drinking altogether. It's amazing how many college boys don't drink or smoke. I seemed to know them all. The farthest Buddy Willard ever went was buying us a bottle of Dubonnet, which he only did because he was trying to prove he could be aesthetic in spite of being a medical student. "I'll have a vodka," I said. The man looked at me more closely. "With anything?" "Just plain," I said. "I always have it plain." I thought I might make a fool of myself by saying I'd have it with ice or gin or anything. I'd seen a vodka ad once, just a glass full of vodka standing in the middle of a snowdrift in a blue light, and the vodka looked clear and pure as water, so I thought having vodka plain must be all right. My dream was someday ordering a drink and finding out it tasted wonderful.

I want to see the Parthenon by moonlight.' I had my way. They floodlight it now, to great advantage I am told, but it was not so then, and since it was late in the year there were few tourists. My companions were all intelligent men, including my own husband, and they had the sense to stay mute. I suppose, being a woman, I confuse beauty with sentiment, but, as I looked on the Parthenon for the first time in my life, I found myself crying. It had never happened to me before. Your sunset weepers I despise. It was not full moon, or anywhere near it. The half circle put me in mind of the labrys, the Cretan double axe, and the pillars were the most ghostly in consequence. What a shock for the modern aesthete, I thought when my crying was done, if he could see the ruddy glow of colour, the painted eyes, the garish lips, the orange-reds and blues that were there once, and Athene herself a giantess on her pedestal touched by the rising sun. Even in those distant times the exigencies of a state religion had brought their own traffic, the buying and selling of doves, of trinkets: to find himself, a man had to go to the woods, to the hills. "Come on," said Stephen. "It's beautiful and stark, if you like, but so is St. Pancras station at 4 A.M. It depends on your association of ideas." We crammed into Burns's small car, and went back to our hotel. ("The Chamois")

They are not aesthetic like a puppy or a kitten. In fact, they always look drunk to me. Look at that one—you’d swear he had been hitting the gin.

Sometimes gaining and losing are more intimately related than we like to think. And some things cannot be moved or owned. Some light does not make it all the way through the atmosphere, but scatters... The blue of distance comes with time, with the discovery of melancholy, of loss, the texture of longing, of the complexity of the terrain we traverse, and with the years of travel. If sorrow and beauty are all tied up together, then perhaps maturity brings with it not … abstraction, but an aesthetic sense that partially redeems the losses time brings and finds beauty in the faraway... Some things we have only as long as they remain lost, some things are not lost only so long as they are distant.

Now separated from the other courts, I could see definite Winter Court trademarks: Any skin outside the natural spectrum was tinged blue, purple, white--- an aurora borealis of fae. Metallic glints appeared here and there, reminding me of Heather. Antlers like mine poked out of one or two foreheads. Bright eyes came in every color, some of which I couldn't describe.

Prum believes that animals may come to adopt certain aesthetic characteristics not because those traits are adaptive but simply because they are beautiful. This may be because of a sensory bias in the brain—a neurological feature that just prefers shiny things over nonshiny things—or a preference for novelty. But these attributes don’t necessarily signal that there is something better about the peacock with the extravagant tail. The peahen doesn’t like his tail more than others because it suggests he’s a strong and fit potential mate, but just because she likes how it’s shiny, and blue, and large. Prum bases this theory on a lifetime of studying birds like those in the drawers at his lab, many of which have plumage, skeletons, or songs that make it difficult for them to fly or easy to be spotted by predators.

A man is always more than a man and always less than a man, more than a man because he has in himself all that jazz suggests and even anticipates, and less than a man because he has made an aesthetic and sterile game out of this liberty, a chessboard where one must be bishop or knight, a definition of liberty which is taught in school, in the very schools where the pupils are never taught ragtime rhythm of the first notes of the blue, and so forth and so on.

And while I’m reading, the new words I’m taking in will connect to others already taken in. That reference to blue is the third this chapter, and it always goes with wealth. That phrase is from the poem earlier. Deeper. That’s a reference to the myth of Orpheus. That’s a pairing of two words that don’t usually go together. Wider. That’s a symbol Dickens employs often. That typifies Said’s writings on Orientalism. Points of light. They make a map, or a pattern, or a constellation. Formless, intricate, infinitely complex, and lovely. And then, at once, they’ll connect. They’ll meet, and explode. Of course. That’s the entire point. That’s how the story works, the way each sentence and metaphor and reference feeds into the other to illuminate something important. That explosion of discovery, of understanding, is the most intoxicating moment there is. Emotional, intellectual, aesthetic. Just for a moment, a perfect moment, a small piece of the world makes perfect sense.

Furthermore, the sense of passion or of power, of depth and vibrancy, feeling and vision, we take away from any work is the result of the intermingling, balance, play, and antagonism between these: it is the arrangement of blues, not any blue itself, which lets us see the mood it formulates, whether pensive melancholy or thoughtless delight, so that one to whom aesthetic experience comes easily will see, as Schopenhauer suggested, sadness in things as readily as smoky violet or moist verdigris.

...Pat wondered what inspiration an artist might find in the attempts of twenty-first-century architects to impose their phallic triumphs on the cityscape. Had any artist ever painted a contemporary glass block, for instance, or any other product of architectural brutalism that had laid its crude hands here and there upon the city?...If a building did not lend itself to being painted, then surely that must be because it was inherently ugly, whatever its claims to utility. And if it was ugly, then what was it doing in this delicately beautiful city?

Attitudes towards menstrual blood in contemporary Western culture still circle around the subject with a mixture of denial and horror, advertisements for sanitary products typically use blue liquid in an attempt to sanitize the reality of blood, weary old jokes circulate about not trusting anything that bleeds for seven days and does not die. Menstrual blood is constructed either as something that requires a hygienic makeover or as something unnatural and obscene, a further indication of the horrors of sexual difference and the threatening ‘secrets’ of the female body.

Ana Magdalena nods. For an instant the blue eyes fix on his. 'She sees straight through me', he thinks with a jolt. 'Sees through me and doesn't like me'. It hurts him. It is not something he is used to, being disliked, and being disliked moreover on no grounds. But perhaps it is not a personal dislike. Perhaps the woman dislikes the fathers of all her students, as rivals to her authority. Or perhaps she simply dislikes men, all save the invisible Arroyo. Well, if she dislikes him he dislikes her too. It surprises him: he does not often take a dislike to a woman, particularly a beautiful woman. And this woman is beautiful, no doubt about that, with the kind of beauty that stands up to the closest scrutiny: perfect features, perfect skin, perfect figure, perfect bearing. She is beautiful yet she repels him. She may be married, but he associates her nevertheless with the moon and its cold light, with a cruel, persecutory chastity. Is it wise to be giving their boy - any boy, indeed any girl - into her hands? What if at the end of the year the child emerges from her grasp as cold and persecutory as herself? For that is his judgement on her - on her religion of the stars and her geometric aesthetic of the dance. Bloodless, sexless, lifeless.

The scientific world-picture vouchsafe a very complete understanding of all that happens—it makes it just a little too understandable. It allows you to imagine the total display as that of a mechanical clock-work, which for all that science knows could go on just the same as it does, without there being consciousness, will, endeavour, pain and delight and responsibility connected with it—though they actually are. And the reason for this disconcerting situation is just this, that, for the purpose of constructing the picture of the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying device of cutting our own personality out, removing it; hence it it gone, it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed. In particular, and most importantly, this is the reason why the scientific world-view contains of itself no ethical values, no aesthetical values, not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination, and no God, if you please. Whence came I, whither go I? Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears. Science, we believe, can, in principle, describe in full detail all that happens in the latter case in our sensorium and 'motorium' from the moment the waves of compression and dilation reach our ear to the moment when certain glands secrete a salty fluid that emerges from our eyes. But of the feelings of delight and sorrow that accompany the process science is completely ignorant—and therefore reticent. Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity—the One of Parmenides—of which we all somehow form part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God—with a capital 'G'. Science is, very usually, branded as being atheistic. After what we said, this is not astonishing. If its world-picture does not even contain blue, yellow, bitter, sweet—beauty, delight and sorrow—, if personality is cut out of it by agreement, how should it contain the most sublime idea that presents itself to human mind?

In Amsterdam, I took a room in a small hotel located in the Jordann District and after lunch in a café went for a walk in the western parts of the city. In Flaubert’s Alexandria, the exotic had collected around camels, Arabs peacefully fishing and guttural cries. Modern Amsterdam provided different but analogous examples: buildings with elongated pale-pink bricks stuck together with curiously white mortar, long rows of narrow apartment blocks from the early twentieth century, with large ground-floor windows, bicycles parked outside every house, street furniture displaying a certain demographic scruffiness, an absence of ostentatious buildings, straight streets interspersed with small parks…..In one street lines with uniform apartment buildings, I stopped by a red front door and felt an intense longing to spend the rest of my life there. Above me, on the second floor, I could see an apartment with three large windows and no curtains. The walls were painted white and decorated with a single large painting covered with small blue and red dots. There was an oaken desk against a wall, a large bookshelf and an armchair. I wanted the life that this space implied. I wanted a bicycle; I wanted to put my key in that red front door every evening. Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements my seem, the pattern is at least familiar from our personal lives. My love for the apartment building was based on what I perceived to be its modesty. The building was comfortable but not grand. It suggested a society attracted to the financial mean. There was an honesty in its design. Whereas front doorways in London are prone to ape the look of classical temples, in Amsterdam they accept their status, avoiding pillars and plaster in favor of neat, undecorated brick. The building was modern in the best sense, speaking of order, cleanliness, and light. In the more fugitive, trivial associations of the word exotic, the charm of a foreign place arises from the simple idea of novelty and change-from finding camels where at home there are horses, for example, or unadorned apartment buildings where at home there are pillared ones. But there may be a more profound pleasure as well: we may value foreign elements not only because they are new but because they seem to accord more faithfully with our identity and commitments than anything our homeland can provide. And so it was with my enthusiasms in Amsterdam, which were connected to my dissatisfactions with my own country, including its lack of modernity and aesthetic simplicity, its resistance to urban life and its net-curtained mentality. What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Oh, what a pleasure that was! Mollie Katzen's handwritten and illustrated recipes that recalled some glorious time in upstate New York when a girl with an appetite could work at a funky vegetarian restaurant and jot down some tasty favorites between shifts. That one had the Pumpkin Tureen soup that Margo had made so many times when she first got the book. She loved the cheesy onion soup served from a pumpkin with a hot dash of horseradish and rye croutons. And the Cardamom Coffee Cake, full of butter, real vanilla, and rich brown sugar, said to be a favorite at the restaurant, where Margo loved to imagine the patrons picking up extras to take back to their green, grassy, shady farmhouses dotted along winding country roads. Linda's Kitchen by Linda McCartney, Paul's first wife, the vegetarian cookbook that had initially spurred her yearlong attempt at vegetarianism (with cheese and eggs, thank you very much) right after college. Margo used to have to drag Calvin into such phases and had finally lured him in by saying that surely anything Paul would eat was good enough for them. Because of Linda's Kitchen, Margo had dived into the world of textured vegetable protein instead of meat, and tons of soups, including a very good watercress, which she never would have tried without Linda's inspiration. It had also inspired her to get a gorgeous, long marble-topped island for prep work. Sometimes she only cooked for the aesthetic pleasure of the gleaming marble topped with rustic pottery containing bright fresh veggies, chopped to perfection. Then Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells caught her eye, and she took it down. Some pages were stuck together from previous cooking nights, but the one she turned to, the most splattered of all, was the one for Onion Soup au Gratin, the recipe that had taught her the importance of cheese quality. No mozzarella or broken string cheeses with- maybe- a little lacy Swiss thrown on. And definitely none of the "fat-free" cheese that she'd tried in order to give Calvin a rich dish without the cholesterol. No, for this to be great, you needed a good, aged, nutty Gruyère from what you couldn't help but imagine as the green grassy Alps of Switzerland, where the cows grazed lazily under a cheerful children's-book blue sky with puffy white clouds. Good Gruyère was blocked into rind-covered rounds and aged in caves before being shipped fresh to the USA with a whisper of fairy-tale clouds still lingering over it. There was a cheese shop downtown that sold the best she'd ever had. She'd tried it one afternoon when she was avoiding returning home. A spunky girl in a visor and an apron had perked up as she walked by the counter, saying, "Cheese can change your life!" The charm of her youthful innocence would have been enough to be cheered by, but the sample she handed out really did it. The taste was beyond delicious. It was good alone, but it cried out for ham or turkey or a rich beefy broth with deep caramelized onions for soup.

Wherever you go, Provincetown will always take you back, at whatever age and in whatever condition. Because time moves somewhat differently there, it is possible to return after ten years or more and run into an acquaintance, on Commercial or at the A&P, who will ask mildly, as if he’d seen you the day before yesterday, what you’ve been doing with yourself. The streets of Provincetown are not in any way threatening, at least not to those with an appetite for the full range of human passions. If you grow deaf and blind and lame in Provincetown, some younger person with a civic conscience will wheel you wherever you need to go; if you die there, the marshes and dunes are ready to receive your ashes. While you’re alive and healthy, for as long as it lasts, the golden hands of the clock tower at Town Hall will note each hour with an electric bell as we below, on our purchase of land, buy or sell, paint or write or fish for bass, or trade gossip on the post office steps. The old bayfront houses will go on dreaming, at least until the emptiness between their boards proves more durable than the boards themselves. The sands will continue their slow devouring of the forests that were the Pilgrims’ first sight of North America, where man, as Fitzgerald put it, “must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” The ghost of Dorothy Bradford will walk the ocean floor off Herring Cove, draped in seaweed, surrounded by the fleeting silver lights of fish, and the ghost of Guglielmo Marconi will tap out his messages to those even longer dead than he. The whales will breach and loll in their offshore world, dive deep into black canyons, and swim south when the time comes. Herons will browse the tidal pools; crabs with blue claws tipped in scarlet will scramble sideways over their own shadows. At sunset the dunes will take on their pink-orange light, and just after sunset the boats will go luminous in the harbor. Ashes of the dead, bits of their bones, will mingle with the sand in the salt marsh, and wind and water will further disperse the scraps of wood, shell, and rope I’ve used for Billy’s various memorials. After dark the raccoons and opossums will start on their rounds; the skunks will rouse from their burrows and head into town. In summer music will rise up. The old man with the portable organ will play for passing change in front of the public library. People in finery will sing the anthems of vanished goddesses; people who are still trying to live by fishing will pump quarters into jukeboxes that play the songs of their high school days. As night progresses, people in diminishing numbers will wander the streets (where whaling captains and their wives once promenaded, where O’Neill strode in drunken furies, where Radio Girl—who knows where she is now?—announced the news), hoping for surprises or just hoping for what the night can be counted on to provide, always, in any weather: the smell of water and its sound; the little houses standing square against immensities of ocean and sky; and the shapes of gulls gliding overhead, white as bone china, searching from their high silence for whatever they might be able to eat down there among the dunes and marshes, the black rooftops, the little lights tossing on the water as the tides move out or in.

You do understand what I mean!” he exclaimed, pleased to see Maude responding to his song. “I chose Nina Simone to show you something else. Just like you, Nina Simone had a classical background. When she was younger, she wanted to become a concert pianist. Her skill was beyond measure and she used it in a wide repertoire of jazz, blues, and R&B songs. And I think you can do the same. Music knows no limits and I truly understand why James insisted on signing you, Maude.” Maude remained silent, still thinking about his rendition of Nina Simone. “All you have to do is dig deeper. Try finding some suffering in you. Don’t sing the Cenerentola with a smile. Although you look like a girl who’s had it all. You know, the nice girl from the North of France, who grew up in a quiet, small town with her loving mom and dad and brothers and sisters, always top of her class, quick-tempered when things didn’t go her way. A bit spoiled, I guess. You have to put all that—” “Spoiled?” Maude blurted in utter disbelief, the word echoing through her mind. Of all the things he could’ve said about her, spoiled was the last word that could have appeared remotely appropriate to describe her. As for suffering, she’d had plenty of that, too, which is why she didn’t want to think about it. Not while she was so happy in New York and Carvin and the Ruchets were the last thing she wanted in her head. She painfully pushed the Ruchets away from her mind and turned to Matt, eyes flaring up again. “You know nothing about me, Matt,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion. “And you obviously know nothing about suffering, or you wouldn’t idealize it the way that you do. You see it as a romantic notion that seemingly gives depth to songwriting. And it does. Not because the singers actually thought of woe in a purely aesthetic way, but because that’s how they actually lived. You will never understand that,” she finished, trembling from head to toe. And with that, she grabbed her bag, coat, gloves, scarf, and stormed out of Matt’s Creation Room, slamming the door behind her.

Sitting in Atlantic St. grill downing early morning cup of prison-like coffee stale rolls of cinnamon while up above freeways headed for suburban slums Gold Coast dwellers/ruling class sass Goodwill truckdrivers for talkin’ simple talk. No comment on the front page news. Through painful hurt sought desperately the obit page in rage to see if was really true, ‘bout you. Winter come-togethers fill my every thought Billie sings the blues communication complete, Cable (spool) table replete w/french bread apples cheese rhineskeller wine imported elegant tabacco, discussion of ideas politculture peoples lit & art, marxist aesthetics, how best to serve. Now, savoring on Neruda’s notes i think of you & Jimmie/son savoring favorite chocolate M & M’s. Them’s the thoughts i had of you today. No lavish praise no mournful elegy, just one last Vashon Island ferry ride to pray and cast an orchid into Puget Sound to see you safely on your journey to the other side.

Frank and the Transylvanians might be participants in a glam rock concert. Frank indulges in sexually provocative posturing while wearing women’s underwear, and has bisexual romps with Janet and Rocky. This, alongside Magenta and Riff Raff’s possibly incestuous relationship and their deliberately mysterious and grotesque presence, could be seen as an extension of the glam-rock personas of the early 1970s. Eddie, on the other hand, is a leather-jacketed, motorbike-riding character, originally played in the United States by Meatloaf, but often characterised as looking and sounding like Elvis. This characterisation relies on the folk or country blues associations of a nostalgic rock’n’roll sound in ‘Whatever Happened to Saturday Night’. This is regarded as passé within glam rock and he is killed. Janet and Brad are associated with the lighter pop sound of ‘Damn it Janet’, which from a rock aesthetic might be regarded as superficial. Brad is made to appear insignificant and foolish, while Janet’s musical language adapts as the plot develops. Rocky’s ‘The Sword of Damocles’, draws on associations of sensuality through the use of rumba patterns and prefigures his overwhelming sexual activity.

I guess she was going for the pretty princess, underground rave, fuckfest aesthetic.

Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet is truly a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Sōseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, “a physiological delight” he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves. As I have said there are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a toilet of the Kantō region, with its long, narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the eaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stones. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature.

THE MONSTER & THE MAN One obstacle pierces his soul and calls him down the dark road - heavy sighing he must carry on and at last, the thorn is retrieved - with agony in his brown eyes - he suddenly sees: Fever dreams, scarlet on blue velvet, like ink drowning in words - words drowning inside his veins - words that pleaded in vain - words so scarlet... so stained. Empty lines for empty souls that carry too much inside; empty pages for empty hands with nothing else to hide nor to control the beast inside his soul.

No: I want nothing. I’ve already said I want nothing. Don’t come to me with conclusions! The only conclusion is death. Don’t bring me aesthetics! Don’t speak to me of morals! Get out of here with metaphysics! Don’t trumpet complete systems, don’t line up conquests Of science (science, my God, science!) — Of the sciences, the arts, of modern civilization! What harm did I ever do all the gods? If they have the truth, let them keep it! I’m a technician, but I have technique only in technique. Beyond that I’m crazy, with every right to be so. With every right to be so, do you hear? Don’t bother me, for the love of God! Did they want me married, futile, quotidian and taxable? Did they want me the opposite of that, the opposite of anything? If I were another person, I would’ve done what they wanted. The way I am, give me a break! Go to hell without me, Or let me go alone! Why do we have to go together? Don’t take me by the arm! I don’t like being taken by the arm. I want to be alone. I just told you: I’m alone! Ah, what a nuisance, them wanting to keep me company! The blue sky — the same as in my childhood — Eternal truth, empty and perfect! O River Tejo, glassy, ancestral, mute, Small truth where the sky reflects itself! O sorrows revisited, Lisbon past and present! You give nothing, you take nothing, you’re nothing I feel. Leave me in peace! I’m not dallying, I never dally... And as long as the Abyss and Silence dally, I want to be alone!

You and your friends played a big role in the aesthetic sensibility bred in the anarchist milieu in the early 2000s. While most anarchists and radicals were occupied with identity politics, accountability processes, justice, and ethical living and consumption, you and your friends started projects that had a more nihilist bent. Queer hedonism and negation, ‘doing-being totally out of control’. What inspired this turn, and what were you guys doing? The aesthetic sensibility we bred corresponded with the (re-)emergence of the hipster. While the hipster identity was about separating oneself out into a certain identity, to us it was more about being able to become anything. To welcome the power that comes with being malleable. To turn this weak metropolitan subject against itself. There were university occupations across the country, at the New School, in California, mini-riots across the Midwest and in the South. That also corresponded to the English translation of The Invisible Committee’s The Coming Insurrection, which was an important moment. Notably, that book was the same blue as Obama’s branding, and was a book instead of some zine somewhere. The new interest in insurrectionist aesthetics beyond the anarchist milieu provided a sort of opening. Part of the program behind Institute for Experimental Freedom, why I made all this aesthetic crap, why Politics is Not a Banana was a bright-ass pink book, was to take advantage of this opening.

Do you like babies?’ Phryne laughed. ‘No, not at all. They are not aesthetic like a puppy or a kitten. In fact, they always look drunk to me. Look at that one—you’d swear he had been hitting the gin.

An experimental physics lab is probably unlike any other room you’ve been in before. The lighting is harsh, of course, aggressively bright and beyond the reach of aesthetic concerns. There are sounds of machines, a harmonic hum, sometimes just from fans on computer equipment as opposed to any motorized parts. There’s never any bespoke sound absorbers, so the machines have a sonic clarity that seems intentional, cranked up for some postindustrial experimental orchestra.

How do I know I have lived? How can I be certain my days were not squandered? What criteria, which principles qualify life as lived? Certainly, I have endured trials and troubles, and I learned from life’s lessons. I grew wise as well as empathetic. But is edification and its accompanying traits the ultimate aim for living? I have traveled. Oh, I have seen marvelous wonders in this world. Skies that were artic blue, emerald green, soft lilac, and rosy red. Mountains fixed like monuments to the gods. Waters as clear as crystal, as blue as larimar, deeper than a leviathan’s lair, and as vast as the night’s sky. I have witnessed pyramids and castles, colosseums, great walls, and temples. Is this living? To travel, to see, to awe at the world’s aesthetic wonders? I have experienced great joys in my days: laughter, kindness, fun, love, thrills, successes. I have suffered a great many sorrows: sickness, loss, pain, cruelty, vengeance, disparagement. I have valued the good and abhorred the bad. Is this the ultimate feat of living? I have been actively doing: from sailing to flying, acting to singing, hiking to biking. I have dived, danced, drummed, battled, built, raced, and used my incredible body to perform every activity I desired. I gained strength and endurance in the process. Is this a sure sign of living? I have been part of a family and raised my own. I have formed lasting, loyal friendships that have passed the test of time. I have felt what it means to sacrifice for loved ones, shared in their joys and sorrows, prayed for tender mercies and miracles in their lives. I have loved and been loved in return. Is it connection to family and friends, the relationships developed between kindred, is this what it means to truly live? How do I know I have lived? As my days near an end, how can I be certain my life was worthwhile and not wasted? Did I accomplish what life mandates of those who truly live? What qualifies life as lived?

Blue high heels, a timeless and enchanting accessory, have long held a special place in fashion. These stunning footwear pieces effortlessly blend sophistication with a dash of whimsy, making them a coveted addition to any fashion-conscious individual's wardrobe. In all its shades, the color blue has always been associated with a sense of calm, serenity, and depth. When translated into high heels, this color takes on a whole new dimension, turning a pair of shoes into a fashion statement that exudes confidence and charm. One of the most remarkable aspects of blue high heels is their versatility. Whether you opt for a classic navy, a vibrant royal blue, or an ethereal pastel shade, there's a blue heel to suit every occasion. Navy blue heels, for example, are an excellent choice for corporate settings, exuding professionalism and power. On the other hand, a pair of electric blue stilettos can add a playful pop of color to your evening ensemble, making you the center of attention at any event. Blue high heels also beautifully complement a wide range of outfits. They can elevate a simple jeans-and-blouse combo, add a touch of elegance to a cocktail dress, or provide a striking contrast to an all-black ensemble. Their ability to effortlessly blend into various styles and settings is a testament to their timeless appeal. In addition to their aesthetic charm, blue high heels offer the wearer a sense of empowerment. The elevation they provide not only increases height but also boosts confidence. Walking in heels requires poise and balance, qualities that further enhance one's self-assurance. Blue high heels are a must-have for anyone looking to infuse their wardrobe with elegance and style. These captivating footwear pieces offer versatility, empowerment, and a touch of sophistication, making them an indispensable accessory for fashion enthusiasts. Whether stepping into the boardroom, hitting the town, or simply looking to turn heads, blue high heels will always rise to the occasion, leaving a lasting impression wherever you go.

Where ever the design of their minds collaborate,then there would not be a horoscope to identify their matching souls, nothing could stop them in their curious push for the aesthetic Love with perceptual clarity, as if a crystalline stream ran forth to beautify their souls.

Both Mussolini and Hitler could perceive the space available, and were willing to trim their movements to fit. The space was partly symbolic. The Nazi Party early shaped its identity by staking a claim to the street and fought with communist gangs for control of working-class neighborhoods of Berlin. At issue was not merely a few meters of urban “turf.” The Nazis sought to portray themselves as the most vigorous and effective force against the communists—and, at the same time, to portray the liberal state as incapable of preserving public security. The communists, at the same time, were showing that the Social Democrats were unequipped to deal with an incipient revolutionary situation that needed a fighting vanguard. Polarization was in the interest of both. Fascist violence was neither random nor indiscriminate. It carried a well-calculated set of coded messages: that communist violence was rising, that the democratic state was responding to it ineptly, and that only the fascists were tough enough to save the nation from antinational terrorists. An essential step in the fascist march to acceptance and power was to persuade law-and-order conservatives and members of the middle class to tolerate fascist violence as a harsh necessity in the face of Left provocation. It helped, of course, that many ordinary citizens never feared fascist violence against themselves, because they were reassured that it was reserved for national enemies and “terrorists” who deserved it. Fascists encouraged a distinction between members of the nation who merited protection and outsiders who deserved rough handling. One of the most sensational cases of Nazi violence before power was the murder of a communist laborer of Polish descent in the town of Potempa, in Silesia, by five SA men in August 1932. It became sensational when the killers’ death sentences were commuted, under Nazi pressure, to life imprisonment. Party theorist Alfred Rosenberg took the occasion to underscore the difference between “bourgeois justice,” according to which “one Polish Communist has the same weighting as five Germans, frontsoldiers,” and National Socialist ideology, according to which “one soul does not equal another soul, one person not another.” Indeed, Rosenberg went on, for National Socialism, “there is no ‘law as such.’” The legitimation of violence against a demonized internal enemy brings us close to the heart of fascism. For some, fascist violence was more than useful: it was beautiful. Some war veterans and intellectuals (Marinetti and Ernst Jünger were both) indulged in the aesthetics of violence. Violence often appealed to men too young to have known it in 1914–18 and who felt cheated of their war. It appealed to some women, too. But it is a mistake to regard fascist success as solely the triumph of the D’Annunzian hero. It was the genius of fascism to wager that many an orderly bourgeois (or even bourgeoise) would take some vicarious satisfaction in a carefully selective violence, directed only against “terrorists” and “enemies of the people.” A climate of polarization helped the new fascist catch-all parties sweep up many who became disillusioned with the old deference (“honoratioren”) parties. This was risky, of course. Polarization could send the mass of angry protesters to the Left under certain conditions (as in Russia in 1917). Hitler and Mussolini understood that while Marxism now appealed mainly to blue-collar workers (and not to all of them), fascism was able to appeal more broadly across class lines. In postrevolutionary western Europe, a climate of polarization worked in fascism’s favor.

I drove to MedPro, which was across the Gandy Bridge on Roosevelt Boulevard in St. Petersburg. In the parking lot, I pulled into the only empty spot marked “visitors.” I’d never been to MedPro before and I was impressed with the aesthetics of the building. There was a small pond out back with a long dock running from the building to a large gazebo. The building itself was pristine white with “MedPro, Inc.” in large blue letters over the door. The lobby was similarly clean and decorated in a contemporary style. It continued the azure blue and bright white color scheme

had also become the familiar given, the necessary condition of life, viewed with a mixture of friendliness and, yes, condescension. They were simply the goyim, the routine term, still used today, for all Gentiles short of aristocratic status. Sometimes they were — in an inversion of “our Jews” — “our goyim.” And although Poles and Jews retained their spiritual separateness, their daily culture — habits, language, cooking, ordinary aesthetics — inevitably intermingled and influenced each other. They lived in similarly constructed wooden houses. Some of the gorgeous wooden synagogues of Polish towns and villages were decorated with Polish folk motifs. Yiddish was permeated by Polish vocabulary: shmata for rag, czajnik for kettle, paskudny for odious, among many others. The peasants picked up Yiddish words, and Jewish themes appeared in their proverbs. Even today, people in Brańsk say, “It’s as noisy as a cheder”, or “She’s dressed as for a Jewish wedding” — meaning, dressed ostentatiously. We no longer know whether the origins of chicken soup were Jewish or Polish. And then there was the music. Each village had its Jewish musicians, to whom everyone was willing to listen. People from Brańsk still remember the Jewish fiddlers and klezmer bands that played at Polish weddings. Their melodies combined Jewish and Gypsy and Polish and Russian influences — that vivid, energetic, melancholy mix that is the Eastern European equivalent of the blues. And surely if they played like that, moving their audiences to dancing and to tears, then their souls must have caught something of the genius loci — the tune, the temper, the spirit of the place. But toward the end of the nineteenth century, the balance began once again ineluctably to shift. In the Yizkor Book, several revealing details suggest new winds, new currents. Perhaps the most important changes were caused by sudden migrations, both inward and outward. The influx of new immigrants began after the assassination of the liberal Tsar Alexander II in 1881, an event followed by a wave of pogroms and other anti-Semitic persecutions within the Russian Pale. In the aftermath, tens of thousands of Jews, known as Litvaks — so named because most of them came from Lithuania or from parts of Belarus commonly called Lithuania in those days — fled to the Polish territories to seek refuge.

Quilters experiment with shape, pattern, and color. Their most consistent color, it's worth noting, is blue. But the quilt is also a metaphor, or better yet an aesthetic statement, that is evident in hoodoo too. Out of the remainders, the bits and pieces of discarded and worn fabric, life was crafted. Its use could not be limited to what we call "utility," though it was functional, even aesthetically speaking, because beauty is a function too. And beauty—if we release its meaning from the colloquial prison of whether a human body is ranked worthy—is one of the most democratic of virtues. Anyone—with a gesture of kindness, a moment of sweetness, a twist of ribbon, a beating drum— can make, be, and feel beauty. Gazing up into the sky, or out into the water, is, we now know, as essential to the human condition as a sip of water and the taste of oxygen. The living made from underneath the law and inside the category of Blackness was holistic and beauty-full to its very core.

SP Colour & Chemicals is manufacturing high-quality pigments that give a variety of home care products sparkling effects and various shades. Our pigments are made with care to guarantee their safety, longevity, and efficacy in the applications for which they are designed for. Bright automobile paints, cosmetics, or plastic items are frequently the first things that come to mind when we think about pigments. Our Pigments are used by various industrialists and businessmen, But when it comes to home care products, Our pigments are as important in addition to improving aesthetic appeal of any types of products. SP Colour & Chemicals’ pearl pigments can differentiate and improve the functionality of a variety of products, from fabric softeners and air fresheners to dishwashing detergents and surface cleaners. Why Are Pigments Used in Home Care Products? Aesthetic Appeal: SP Colour & Chemicals’ Pigments arouse feelings and affect consumer choices. Our Pigments give shimmering and vibrant colors which provide a sense of efficiency, cleanliness, and freshness. Product Differentiation: When businessmen use our premium pigments’ varieties of shades it can help a product stand out on the shelf in a crowded market. Functionality: Some pigments like iridescent, chameleon, and glow in the dark pigments have the ability to change color when a surface is properly cleansed, making them useful as indicators. Brand Identity: Product lines that use consistent colors foster trust and brand identification. Common Home Care Applications of Pigments Dishwashing Liquids: Dishwashing liquids frequently have vivid yellow, green, or blue colors. A high-end and shimmering effect appearance is added with shimmering pigments. Surface Cleaners: Cleaning sprays can seem opulent by adding metallic or iridescent pigments. Laundry detergents: To improve visual appeal, Our pigments are known to generate colorful liquids or powders. Air fresheners: Enhanced with pigments, colored gels and liquids give air fresheners a pleasing and eye-catching effect. Hand Wash Liquids: The elegance of the product is enhanced by delicate shimmering effects in pastel hues. Safe and Sustainable Pigments At SP Colour & Chemicals, safety and sustainability are core principles. Our pigments are: Non-toxic and skin-safe Stable in different pH levels Resistant to light and heat Eco-friendly formulations Final Conclusion When you Choose SP Colour & Chemicals for your Pigments’ need it is necessary to understand the product base (oil or water), desired visual effects, and transparency criteria all play a role in choosing the best pigment. Our professionals at SP Colour & Chemicals assist industrialists in selecting the ideal pigments for their product compositions. Our Pigments enhance branding, user experience, and product perception in addition to adding color to home care products. Innovative and safe pigments will remain essential in the home care sector as consumer tastes change.

In every direction, as far as the eye can see, there is endless, teeming construction. The shore does not contain it. Arabesques of manufactured islands rise from the blue sea waves. Tens of thousands of men labor. . . as if following blueprints derived from an overlay of medieval translucentvellum schemas of Dante's Inferno. . . . Here we are, in a surreal future beyond your aesthete's imagining. It's called Dubai.” Nick Tosches, “Dubai's the Limit,” June 2006

A great blue setting to a glorious sunrise, iridescent hazes wandering all over the horizon and the grand wheeling surge of the sun swept right up to the zenith, and all the dome of quiet night seemed to become visible alive with the life of God. But I wonder that I attempt to describe such sunrises They are to me daily poems of eternal worship, a ritual of aesthetic beauty indulged in before God.