Everything is a knot

"The Buddha undid the knot that tied the victim to the sacrificial pole. But at the very moment he was undoing it, he explained that everything is a knot. From their vantage point in the heavens, the spies of Varuna, god of knots, were watching."

Roberto Calasso (1999), Ka, translated from the Italian by Tim Parks, Vintage, Random House London, p.367

Card from friends in Bochum

http://www.nikkes-berlin.de/
Hand-printed on recycled fabric, sold by Stueckgut, Bochum/Germany

Easter card from my daughter

"Oxfam works with others to overcome poverty and suffering. This card is supplied by Oxfam Activities Ltd. which covenants 100% of its taxable profits to Oxfam by gift aid.Traidcraft plc has sourced this Fair Trade card from Bangladesh. It is handmade using traditional embroidery techniques and cotton paper."

Found object

Murder Weapon

“I was recently in Utrecht, in the Netherlands, and in the Catherijneconvent Museum I came across a glass case in which lay a murder weapon from an old medieval crime: it was a stole woven of fine cream silk with silver thread – Byzantine work, sixth century. It had been used, said the label, to strangle Saint Cunera, by a wicked queen who was jealous of the young woman’s goodness and her beauty when she came to live at court.
[…] this Saint Cunera is a predecessor of Snow White, her story belongs to the famous Constance cycle of folklore and turns up, in different form, in classical, medieval and modern stories all over the European […] world.
[...]
In those long ago times we are wrong to call dark, stories seem to have traveled fast, acquiring resonance and depth, imagining the world in the shape of need and desires – almost as fast as satellites transmit tales today: the scarf that strangled Ursula’s last virgin was woven in Syria thirteenhundred years ago, lies in Holland today and belongs to a story every child knows.”

Warner, Marina, Saint Cunera's Scarf, in Warner (2004), Signs and Wonders: Essays on Literature and Culture, Vintage, Random House, London, p.90, 91

Happy Easter

G20

Pulling away from the protagonists, the host and his most esteemed guest, the TV camera scans the rest of the assembled world leaders, lingering - in search for visual interest, perhaps, among the sea of sombre dark business suits - on a blue turban, an Arab head scarf, Angela Merkel's bright red jacket. Minutes later, the same colours and patterns reappear on the screen among the protesters in the City of London, this time framed by the dark uniforms of the riot police. Shared visuals versus shared visions?