tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855223901782590860.post8645462919549141894..comments2024-02-19T05:12:30.844-05:00Comments on Oh Boym: A Happy Daycbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03342342242345926624noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855223901782590860.post-30356666132684835092011-11-22T02:10:50.213-05:002011-11-22T02:10:50.213-05:00I have a little dancing skeleton from Mexico with ...I have a little dancing skeleton from Mexico with roses in her hair that sat on my desk at home - a great memento mori to enjoy it all while it lasts. (Also there was a wonderful Day of the Dead exhibition at the much missed Ethnographic Museum off Piccadilly about 15 years ago - huge papier mache skeletons flying and cavorting, a riot of colour and exuberance in the old dark rooms, unforgettable).Kate Lord Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00278515379867576350noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855223901782590860.post-18774697434425377622011-11-06T21:22:10.221-05:002011-11-06T21:22:10.221-05:00How fortunate that you were not only present but a...How fortunate that you were not only present but also to enjoy something of a guided tour of the Holiday. It is a curious practice and one that suggests to me a consciousness of a real proximity to death. <br /><br />Death, not as the unwelcome stranger, but the neighbor coming for a cup of sugar, the neighbor who borrows tools but seldom returns them. I suspect it is all an exercise in borders, facades and masks, all in the most practical sense of these words. <br /><br />We in the rational West, lifted the sheets off ghosts and explained away things that go bump in the night centuries ago. Our monsters are inevitably human. Still, this proximity leaves me uncomfortable. Can it also explain the tens-of-thousands murdered in the last few years, some murdered with the kind callousness and brutality that we thought we buried at the end of the Second World War, or finally put a stake in the heart in the more recent wars in the Balkans. If all that separates the living from the dead is little more than a semi-transparent curtain why should homicidal impulses be resisted?RWordplayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13987980380490858573noreply@blogger.com