Exactly what I've been trying to say:

“The One, the flourish of stars which perhaps comprise the unattackable body of Truth. Yes, every passion of the world, of the living, of the tremor by which being is provoked, begins with this consensual lack: the One. And each persuades himself that the One is abrupt, that it is only attainable through outburst, through spark and revelation. Generous naiveté, but a necessary ardor, without which departure is defective, hardened. To move beyond the ecstatic ambition of the One is to build with patience, without denying the primordial burst, the stages of a knowledge at long last approached. The oeuvre in its continuity traces this itinerary, beyond which, perhaps, the more or less victorious accidents which are its markers or, to the letter, its milestones: books.”

—Édouard Glissant, Poetic Intention

I thought you should see this

The coldest dust in the Andromeda galaxy is here depicted in red, the warmer stuff in blue. An odd choice, but it does look cool. The cold bits are where stars get birthed, billions of 'em, like bugs. Look close.

Loops

 You may have noticed that I have a bad habit of photographing cameras. Specifically surveillance cameras. Watching the watchers, you know. There is a fantasy attached: that sufficient surveillance of surveillance will one day create enough feedback to blow out the whole system, at which point we will have no choice but to watch one another the old fashioned way, using eyes. Or, at the height of sneakiness, using mirrors, reflections in still water, in shop windows, or in each other’s eyes.

  

I took this photo in the old city of Hebron a few weeks ago, in the Ibrahimi Mosque. A couple of yards away, on the other side of those yellow panels, the same structure goes by a different name. The Tomb of the Patriarchs, it’s called over there. In a tomb visible from both sides, Abraham (or Ibrahim, if you prefer) supposedly lies buried, as do Jacob and Isaac, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, all of whom are said to have died about 4,000 years ago, which may, for the skeptics among you, raise certain questions about the veracity of certain claims about the remains of certain perhaps-wholly-mythical individuals lasting all those years, let alone anyone knowing where they are. But all of that is beside the point. What is the point? The point is that on this day in 1994, an Israeli settler named Baruch Goldstein entered the mosque and opened fire on Palestinian worshipers as they kneeled in prayer. He killed 29 people. The mosque was divided, the yellow panels and surveillance cameras installed. Problem solved. Most of Shuhada Street, one of the old city’s main commercial thoroughfares, was closed to the city's 250,000 Palestinians and reserved for the use of a few hundred settlers and the 2000 soldiers assigned to their protection. The city is also divided, torn and sutured with razor wire, checkpoints, concrete barriers, more cameras, nests on the rooftops where IDF snipers can make themselves at home. The best guide to Hebron I can think of is in fact a work of science fiction. There was a protest there today, as there has been for each of the last four years at roughly this time. Twelve marchers were injured with rubber-coated bullets, and one young man was shot in the leg with live fire. Oh: the uncanny thing that I almost forgot to mention—from the other side of that yellow wall I could hear the settlers praying.

I don't know about you

But I can't stop watching this. The moment of brightness, the moment of darkness, the brightness again. The cars slow for almost a second. The still beauty of the contrail, the baby crying, the patient faces of the injured, the young policeman's expression as he makes himself look busy, kicking the broken glass around the floor. This one's good too. This one too: the car alarms!

Tunnels

 

From the airplane I could see the Rocky Mountains. I could see canyons, suburbs, snow. In the airport I walked around and bought a sandwich and a coffee and a giant chocolate chip cookie and learned that San Bernardino cops burned Christopher Dorner alive. On the airplane, the woman next to me read a book. "Dedicate yourself to leadership growth," said the book. "The workplace has become more pleasant for everyone." I took the above photo the day I left, in the West Bank village of Al-Walaja just south and east of Jerusalem (or, if you prefer, north and west of Bethlehem). Israel is building a wall around the village. All the way around it. The wall, you understand, is not a single contiguous barrier. The wall is many walls. I'm not being metaphorical. One home will remain outside the wall, cut off by the Israelis-only road to the nearby settlements of Gilo and Har Gilo. That home will be surrounded by a barrier of its own, most likely not a concrete wall, but a high chain-link and barbed-wire fence. It will be its own island, isolated from the village and the fields and olive groves in the valley below. A tunnel will connect it to the village. The tunnel has already been built. You can see it in the picture. Inside it, someone has spray-painted the words "Free Palestine." Here is a photo of the wall, still incomplete: