The Damned

"A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned in the next world, if only to justify itself for making their life a hell in this."

                  R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.

Siena

Urbs Senarum in Etruria admodum nobilis est, et agrum late patentem possidet.
--- Pope Pius II, Commentaries.

No Kidding

Plus de Miracle

The small but abiding shock 
of apprehending bodies 
dispense with agency.

Children speak love
without prompting.

Birds sing at three hands
past the witching hour.

Marvels of otherwise
unremarkable days.

Bodies

   
"Daily habit makes one forget that one has a body that is equally subject to all the laws of destruction in the physical world as is a piece of wood that we saw or cut in pieces, and that the body moves in accordance with the same laws as any other physical machine constructed by human beings. --Only on certain occasions do we become sharply aware that our body is a physical object which can be destroyed--and then we are frightened at ourselves, suddenly feeling that we supposed ourselves to be something we are not, and that instead we are something that we fear to be."

                                          ---- Karl Philipp Moritz, Anton Reiser, Part Three.