analogies : vehicles

For example :

"The missionaries told us that in consequence of (Maori) recent cannibalism, the necessity they themselves felt of removing every spark of that inveterate habit, and the difficulty of handling the cognate doctrine of eating Christ’s flesh and blood, without confounding things in their minds, obliged them to revive the ancient discipline of the secret with their first catechumens. They taught them only that the Mass was the greatest of all the prayers, and whilst one priest said the Mass, another kept them occupied with prayers and hymns while it was going on."

Bishop Ullathorne (1806-1889), quoted in The French Place in the Bay of Islands p. 71 edited by Kate Martin & Brad Mercer (2011), from E. R. Simmons Pompallier, Prince of Bishops (1984) p. 56

 

« The interesting but ineffective French adventurer Baron Charles de Thierry, who settled on 800 acres in Northland in 1837 as ’Sovereign Chief of New Zealand’ but was later obliged to become an Auckland piano tuner, was portrayed by Protestant missionaries as the architect of an evil empire. »
Making Peoples, A History of the New Zealanders, From Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century, James Belich (1996) p. 184

"I placed her in every conceivable position, but she managed to obliterate their differences. She was always a lady certainly, and into the bargain was always the same lady. She was the real thing, but always the same thing. There were moments when I was oppressed by the serenity of her confidence that she WAS the real thing. All her dealings with me and all her husband's were an implication that this was lucky for ME. Meanwhile I found myself trying to invent types that approached her own, instead of making her own transform itself (…)"
The Real Thing (1892), Henry James

A chain of technical inventions has led to personal computers, such as the one on which the Second Nature becomes a text, and is shown here on your screen.

 

In this archaeology, Gondorla is partial to the sequence in Lyon (France). It links the old music boxes to the contributions from England, as with the Difference Engine made by Charles Babbage (1791-1871), or that of Alan Turing (1912-1954).

 

In eighteenth century Lyon, Basile Bouchon invented a perforated paper tape to control a loom, and Jean-Baptiste Falcon improved the device with perforated cards. Then in 1801 Joseph Marie Jacquard used these cards to program his own semi-automatic machine for the silk industry.

 

Music, fabric, text : quite a programme indeed.

 

Gondorla has but the most superficial knowledge of buddhism and its various schools.

 

However, the very notions of great vehicle and smaller vehicle are materials for its dreams.

 

'Who are these coming to the sacrifice ?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that eifer lowing at the skies

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest ?'

 

Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819), John Keats

 

Public transport gives access to possibly large scale mobility. At the same time as it gives such freedom, it restrains it through schedule, route, and capacity constraints.

 

It shapes the individual behaviour, which is good, whenever it is not the only option available.

 

Gondorla is reluctant to jump on board major topics for their package tours. The French Académie used to watch over the hierarchy of genres : allegorical and history painting were above genre and portrait painting, themselves above landscape, itself more dignified than still life. Naturally, various stratagems combined such genres to enhance their dignity.

 

Today's Académie for fiction genres demands respect. Thus for memorial duty (= nodding gravely and chatting safely while brandishing memories you do not have, long after a catastrophe; accusing and intimidating good people; asking for compensation for pain you have never experienced.)

 

The shadows those genres cast is so huge they announce a glut of predigested meaning. Those two genres essentially come under the category of reputational parasitism (just like each time Gondorla quotes some prestigious source.) It is difficult to bring any added value to those topics, given that all has been said by direct witnesses and first hand researchers.

 

To this may be added rapture in front of oneself, with an urgency to publicize the microevents of an ordinary existence, an amazement in front of life outside the bubble which should protect against any incident. A hybrid of this rapture consists in locating trivial matter in international cities, or in sublime settings, which lend their auras.

 

Of all the above, it results that Gondorla cherishes travelling alone in minor mode.

 

Parade floats move slowly, they run a contest for Most Festooned, displaying the largest number of remarkable and short-lived beauties. Floats love accumulating varied perishable items such as lemons in Menton (on the French Riviera).

 

So, Gondorla on the whole is a parade, it only exists through its successive vehicles.

 

 

One may rightly badmouth single-owner private cars. Yet for most of the history of mankind, those who could afford riding a horse dominated/crushed the mass of those who went on foot.

 

There is something refreshingly messy about all those noisy polluting cars everywhere.

 

Gondorla goes away when and where it pleases, yet without making any noise, nor asphyxiating anybody :  Gondorla is so modern.