Every month, we search dozens of soon-to-be-published books, to get great ideas and writing for Overview’site. Often we are surprised by certain paragraphs or sentences from the kitchen that pile up on our counters and spill onto our shelves. We sometimes share them with each other on Slack, and we thought, in return, we might share them with you. Here are some we found this month.
—Sophie Haigney, web editor, and Olivia Kan-Sperling, associate editor
From Jérémie Koering Iconophagy: A History of Image Ingestion (Zone Books), translated from French by Nicholas Huckle, description of Egyptian Statue of the Doctor Djedhor (320 BC):
The statue includes a wide variety of magical inscriptions, biographies, and dedications, and we find a double system of depressions carved into its base. The first, surrounding the main statue, allowed the collection of water poured over it and the stela, while the second, carved deeper and connected to the first by a channel, formed a kind of reservoir into which a vessel could be immersed. The two basins were clearly meant to be the statue’s medical-magic endpoints.
From the evidence presented by Lacau, we can see that the object was intended primarily for “washing” procedures and not for reading. … The magical inscriptions are generally positioned facing the healing figure, especially on the second basin, in such a way that they appear to be intended to be read not by the presiding priest, but by the statue itself. … The artifact is essentially activated by the flow of water which is then drawn by the sick person, or his intermediary, from the basin. Therefore, liquid poured onto the surface of an object is a substitute for incantation rituals.
But how do we understand this part Legdemain? What could cause such slippage? It is hard to believe that this prayer, whose meaning was so well known in ancient Egyptian culture, might have been put aside completely, at least conceptually. The solution is likely to be found in the analogy that can be made between the act of reading and flowing water. The contact and movement of the water might be compared to the experience of reading: the physical movement of the water, which flows from top to bottom and adapts to all the reliefs and depressions of the carved object, certainly feels equivalent to the work of the reader’s eye, moving down the sculpture from top to bottom, activating the magical potential of the written story. … The liquid, which poured over his body and over the stele of Horus, may be likened to a murmuring stream of sound. Basically, water will be called upon to enable potential readings that are always possible.
… The water flowing over the stelae performs a process that reading aloud cannot accomplish, mixing image and text in a flow that does not differentiate between the two material parts of the object. He gathered traces of images and writing into a material, dynamic and continuous substance, thus creating a medicine which, while still active and moving, could then be taken and given to a sick person.
Healing statue of Djedhor with Horus on a Crocodile. Photo by Once Upon a Time, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
From David Fishkind’s debut novel, Don’t Enter My Office (Arcade):
I glanced over my shoulder. I took my homemade marijuana edible out of my purse and unwrapped it in the shade Arms of the Relic of St. Valentines. Flecks of roasted sativa sprinkled across the floor. I tried to catch it but couldn’t, and I swallowed the rest whole.
From Attention!: Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement (Crown) by Mindful Friends (D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh, and Peter Schmidt):
In his 1902 novel, Pigeon WingsHenry James depicts a momentous, if fleeting, encounter between a terminally ill patient (female, sensitive, sad) and a venerable medical doctor (majestic, humane, busy). This was a packed and rushed meeting. For various reasons, they will only have a few moments together—time stolen from the concerns of daily life and obligations.
They sit. And this is how James evokes the redemptive power of that moment, using the language of concern, and describing it as grace that is truly at hand: “Very clean, a big empty cup of attention which he placed between them on the table.”
This is not infinite waiting, although there is something infinite in the emptiness of the cup. And this also does not trigger action, although we sense from the simplicity of the doctor’s actions the possibility that the cup has somehow gone unaccounted for. full. There is a presence here, a welcome, an invitation that is also generous and vital offer.
In this way, James’ story saves attention from antinomy. Mindfulness is not just a tool; it creates a space outside the disempowering operational logics of technology and capital. But this is also not an endless delay that means nothing. He moves in a world of weakness and pain. This promises healing—or at least comfort. This is the real gift of openness. This is where we meet in openness, and make space for what is happening.
This is perhaps the best explanation we have of what attention can be if it is truly ours, if it is a thing worth paying attention to, and a subtle medium through which we establish relationships—with ourselves, with others, and with the world.
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Gaming center adalah sebuah tempat atau fasilitas yang menyediakan berbagai perangkat dan layanan untuk bermain video game, baik di PC, konsol, maupun mesin arcade. Gaming center ini bisa dikunjungi oleh siapa saja yang ingin bermain game secara individu atau bersama teman-teman. Beberapa gaming center juga sering digunakan sebagai lokasi turnamen game atau esports.
