"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
A werewolf story by Alexandre Dumas père. Chapter XIX: The Dead and the Living At the same moment that the trembling soul of the young Baron passed away, Thibault, awaking as if from an agitated sleep full of terrible dreams, sat up in his bed. He was surrounded...
Introduction: Stories We Tell About Data Before we ever store, query, or analyze it, we tell stories about data. Not with words, necessarily, but with structures. With paths, branches, and webs. With ontologies and classification systems. With expeditions and search parties. Data — raw, abstract, and infinitely...
We Were Always Here: on Memory, Erasure, and the Persistence of Queer History All month long, we have journeyed through scroll and scripture, painting and poetry, ruin and reliquary, gathering voices, gestures, glances that once defied the world to say: we have always loved differently. These...
Letters in Exile: Rumi’s Longing for Shams al-Din Tabrizi “Since Shams appeared,my heart has been a hundred thousand burning lamps.The world is a candle, and I am the wick:I am consumed in the flame of love.”-- Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, 13th century, Persia Among the most exalted voices...
The Love That Wrote Itself: Hadewijch and the Ecstasy of the Unknown Beloved “And she beheld me with love,and made me forget all my suffering.”-- Hadewijch of Brabant, Visions and Poems (13th century) In the heart of the 13th century Low Countries, amidst convent walls and cloistered...
This book took my heart, chewed it up, spit it back out, set it on fire, and then laid a flower on it. Although I was in Jerusalem almost twenty years after Alberto Stabile, in events closely related to another hotel, my life was intertwined...
Saint Wilgefortis and the Bearded Woman of Lützen: Gender Miracles in Devotional Art A crucified female saint — dressed in noble garments, arms outstretched, and crowned with an improbable beard — stares out from the cross not in agony, but in defiant serenity. This is Saint...
I know I'm overdue two important posts, one on the Biennale in Venice and one on the Triennale here in Milan, but I'm still digesting many of the things I saw over there. More importantly, I'm working around the concept of adaptive and responsive architecture...
Christina of Sweden: The Queen Who Refused to Be a Woman Crowned queen at the age of six and ruling in her own right by eighteen, Christina of Sweden stood as one of the most enigmatic and transgressive monarchs of the 17th century — a woman...
A werewolf story by Alexandre Dumas père. Chapter XVIII: Death and Resurrection The cold morning air brought Thibault back to consciousness; he tried to rise, but the extremity of his pain held him bound. He was lying on his back, with no remembrance of what had happened, seeing...
