Fleeting Satisfaction?

First No-ing

“No Thanks” from Futility Closet.

In June 1744, the College of William & Mary invited the Indians of the Six Nations to send 12 young men to be “properly” educated. They received this reply:

We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those Colleges, and that the Maintenance of our young Men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinc’d, therefore, that you mean to do us Good by your Proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of Things; and you will therefore not take it amiss if our Ideas of this kind of Education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some Experience of it: Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your Sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, spoke our Language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, or Counsellors; they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less oblig’d by your kind Offer, tho’ we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take great Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them.

Later Alligator

Sunset in Shoubra, Jan 25. See you later, Nile/Neil.

 

Until next time...

Car Talk

On my last afternoon in Cairo I eyeball’d 2 cars of slightly varying vibes…

 

Shit, don’t be shy if you’re riding a doomspiral. Let everyone who steps into yr taxi know where you stand re: this current slog on da mortal coil!

On the flip side of the doom meter: The snug shag carpet enveloped the entire amour-mobile. Across the plush trunk it read, in white on red, LOVE FOR EVER.

The driver is flashing me a redundant Thumbs Up. No shit you’re brandishing a Thumbs Up—your whole everything is Thumbs Up! You are feeling it! Let love rip!

 

Everything in every direction: I endorse both cars!

Art Against Army

Under the 6 October overpass in Zemalek.

The butt-crack is a deft touch to convey the military henchmen as base & brute. [If a butt-crack can ever be a deft touch…] The tank on the left until recently was part of a larger mural: a poetic stand-off between the hulking tank and a bread delivery boy on bicycle.

During the Mohamed Mahmoud St. violence in December—the episode in which the military insisted no violence was occurring despite all TV screens to the contrary—the most terrible & powerful image was that of a military gang stripping & stomping a woman; literally dragging her across the square by her hair. Her crime: apparently she had come to the square to give lunch packets to the demonstrators.

A man I came across in Tahrir on the 25th had a proposal for justice. Or perhaps commentary on the military self-destructing through violence against the people. Powerful poster.