18 of my recent curiosities

     hello dear readers, recently i have been feeling especially curious about the world. i have been thinking a lot about how vast the universe is, how vast human knowledge is, and how i can deepen my experiences with the world. i have been feeling very restless in the world of academia, and have been missing the sensory experiences of life. i’ve been stimulated mentally, writing papers, comparing and contrasting, memorizing new concepts. i miss going down rabbit holes about niche concepts that don’t matter, or discovering patterns in the things i witness. 

    every ritual is a sensation. drinking tea fills me with liquid warmth. waking up naked feels like being swaddled in soft cloth as a baby. i’ve been missing the warmth of sun on my face, the feeling of paint or oil or water on my skin, i miss the smell of the ocean or the smell of fog. i miss digging in the dirt, touching my bare feet to someone else’s, whittling sticks into points, hugging trees, rolling down hills. i may blog about these sensations soon in the future, but for this blog i would like to include some of the mental points of stimulation and devotion i’ve been appreciating recently. i will include patterns, research topics, funny pictures, strange phenomena, beautiful anecdotes, anything that keeps me up at night or has reminded me of the abundance of life on earth. i hope you enjoy.

1. Monks blessing data centers - i have felt very compelled by monks recently. part of this was incited by hearing a very juicy news story about a female money-laundering monk in thailand who allegedly spent $1,500 on lingerie. but this rabbit hole is what brought me to the topic of monks blessing data centers. it’s a practice common in big tech companies who operate primarily in asian countries (google, apple, etc). in attempts to be sensitive to local culture, they’ll often get buddhist monks (or other religious figures) to bless the data centers so nothing goes awry. this got me thinking about monks DJing and monks on computers, which i also think is a whimsical phenomenon. i’m very fascinated by monkhood and the amount of discipline it takes to live a life like that, as well as related topics such as blessings and DJing, so enjoy this collection of photos i’ve compiled.

2. Security checks/are you human questions - i’ve been loving a lot of digital things recently, including beautiful circuit boards (i think they look like train maps or tree branches) and 2000s style video games. but a phenomena that has fascinated me for years has been the “are you human” questions. many of them now are simple checkboxes that measure the movements of the user’s mouse. but many are very intricate puzzles and visuals that genuinely excite me. they always make me wonder about my humanity, and the fact that it’s provable based on whether or not i can recognize photos of motorcycles or place a puzzle piece in the correct spot. i’ve included some that i’ve collected from my own digital encounters, my favorite being “the least connected”. 

3. Wikipedia rabbit holes - some recent wikipedia rabbit holes i’ve been down include; mirror stage (what about seeing myself in inanimate objects?), tautology (logic) (i still don’t fully get it…), simulation hypothesis (how can you prove this blog isn’t part of it?), non-place (just like mall world), macau (portuguese colony in china??), the gerry mandering font, and prophetic perfect tense (biblical writing advice). if i were to write my own wikipedia page, it might be on mall world, which is another piece of devotion recently. i think i’ll talk about this more when i eventually blog about dreams, but trust i am adequately obsessed with it. 

4. Giant statues dwarfing humans - i love to see how humans shrink ourselves by sculpting our religious figures into giants. it’s one thing to see how small humans are on a natural scale- of course we are tiny in comparison to a mountain or an ocean. it’s another thing to see how we shrink ourselves in cities, surrounded by things that we create but that do not mirror our organic shapes. i think it’s so magical to see humans next to giant statues of human-like figures, especially when they’re religious figures. i don’t know if i believe in god as one giant human-shaped entity in the sky, but when it’s put like this i can see the vision. 

5. Childhood toys - specifically HexBugs and bath oil pearls, because look at how fun these are!

6. Bagel and googly eye as yin and yang 

7. This Marx quote (from the Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property within the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844) - i think this is a good lesson in non-materialism. thanks, Karl. 

8. Free Derry - i have recently become completely obsessed with the revolutionary period in ireland. a lot of it comes from my love for kneecap and the maze by matthew xata (i PROMISE i will talk about the maze soon), combined with my general feelings towards anti-imperial struggles. i intend to make a blog post about the troubles soon that goes more in depth into my findings and my thoughts, but i’ve included some preliminary pictures that convey my deep love for this struggle. more to come.

9. Strange carousel animals - here are some of my favorites from various google and pinterest sources. if i had a carousel of my own, i would want these four for sure, as well as a seal, a shark, an ostrich, a nicely restored toucan (see point 15) a borzoi, a flying pig, a hummingbird, a frog, a snake, a weird little fish, and probably some others. p.s. - the last photo is from a bug-only carousel at the bronx zoo. i’ve become obsessed with it and must visit soon. 

10. Turing tests - we discussed turing tests in my science class, and although the concept kinda freaks me out, i like the idea that there are certain words and concepts a computer can’t recreate. love, soul, intimacy, etc. it reminds me of the quote somewhere along the lines of: “computers are not spiteful or horny and therefore cannot create art” (to heavily paraphrase). i love my digital realm, i love believing that angels live inside the bodies of chunky old technology and the corners of the lost internet, but it’s only a reflection of my belief in the divinity of human nature. the words and concepts that i orient my life around are the very things that distinguish me from zeroes and ones. 

11. Angels in disguise - i have been thinking about how i can see things, what i call dreams and visions. i believe in those things. similarly, i like to believe in something i can’t see, to quote ryan beatty. recently i read the quote: “be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise”. this quote is painted above the doorway in George Whitman’s Shakespeare and Company bookshop (est. Paris, 1951). i feel strongly about this quote, and the assertion that angels are truly everywhere in disguise, so much so that i have decided i want to paint it above my door (university housing be dammed…)

12. Cave paintings - as someone on tumblr put it (in response to the dance scene cave painting), “we are worth saving”. 

 

13. Questionable religious phenomena 

14. Weird road signs and unusable maps - i thought of the concept of an unusable map the other day when i was on my pilgrimage to the transmission towers (post coming soon), so i drew a sample of one. this is an unusable map of how to get from my dorm room to the library, the concept being that it's based on non-permanent observations and thus is practically impossible to follow (besides basic landmarks). i think they remind us that every journey is different and unique, based off chaotic synchronicities that make life interesting.

15. Toucan bird restoration - some of the photos and videos of toucans with chipping beaks make me a little squeamish, but apparently beak damage doesn’t hurt them since it’s just keratin. i find it funny that it’s literally called “bird restoration” like they’re nice pieces of furniture- not in an objectifying way but in an endearing way. it’s sweet to see how humans can care for other creatures by doing such tedious and materially un-rewarding tasks like bird restoration. i’ve seen a bunch of videos of people lovingly exfoliating, massaging, restoring- even making prothetic beaks for toucans whose beaks have been damaged. i think we should all take lessons from these people about caring for strange creatures, even if our humanness is unshakable (ie making prothetic beaks for a literal bird). this is sort of a marxist train of thought- the idea that our humanness is undeniable in our perception of the world, and that nature is not a finite thing within or outside of that perception, but i hope you understand my point. below is Grecia, one of the first toucans to get a 3D printed prothetic beak. she is living in costa rica and supposedly thriving thanks to her veterinary help and new beak.

16. This specific piece of Tlatilco pottery - discovered on the r/mesoamerica feed, where it’s discussed that the Nahuatl word for armadillo is ayotochtli, translating to “turtle rabbit”. 

17. Ludwig Bemelmans’ sketches of the dachshund Noodle - i love his other drawings too (you probably know him as the author/illustrator of the Madeline books), but these are some underrated favorites. 

        

        

18. Historic gay people - recently i have been researching a few historic examples of queer love, such as the hasanlu lovers, a pair of human remains found in iran. they were discovered by archeologists in 1972, and dated to have died around the year 800 BCE— their bones are preserved in an eternal embrace. they were originally believed to be the remains of a man and a woman, but it was later realized they were both biologically male skeletons (meaning they could be a gay couple or possibly a gender-queer couple, depending on the cultural understanding of gender in the society from which they came. also, i’ve been interested in niankhkhnum and khnumhotep, two male royal servants of the sixth pharaoh of the fifth dynasty (~25 BCE). they share a joint tomb, depicted in paintings as being laid to rest “nose to nose” (an intimate pose usually reserved for couples). although some people believe they are brothers, others assume they are the first documented queer couple in ancient egypt (interpretations vary based on translation, subtext, etc). 

    other honorable mentions for this devotion blog include the following: strange instruments (especially ocarinas and inca water flutes), fish tank waterscapes (check out tanks for nothing on youtube), i-spy books/junk drawers, soviet brutalist architecture, concept cars, the west end in boston (zine upcoming, i’ll probably post some of it here). also the quote “every day is all there is” by joan didion, old 2000s click player games and the evolution of computer button design, pampas grass, dykehood (more on this coming). additionally, self aware bumper stickers, insane buildings under scaffolding (because even the holy are subject to change), and political love (like kisses through the berlin wall). perhaps i will speak to these fascinations someday, but for now this blog is long enough. goodnight my dear readers, until next time. 

in love and curiosity,

- ek