"The familiarity of certain photographs builds our sense of the present and immediate past. Photographs lay down routes of reference, and serve as totems of causes: sentiment is more likely to crystallise around a photograph than around a verbal slogan. And photographs help construct, and revise, our sense of a more distant past, with the posthumous shocks engineered by the circulation of hitherto unknown photographs. Photographs that everyone recognises are now a constituent part of what a society chooses to think about, or declares that it has chosen to think about. It calls these ideas "memories" and, in the long run, that is a fiction. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as collective memory - it is part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. But there is collective instruction."

Susan Sontag, of course. there are more extracts from her new book, Regarding the Pain of Others here.

the florid evolution of gratitude


thanks (cheers)
thank you
thank you very much
thank you very much indeed
thank you very much indeed that's really/terribly/awfully kind/good/thoughtful of you
thank you very much indeed that's really/terribly/awfully kind/good/thoughtful of you - I/we really appreciate it
thank you very much indeed that's really/terribly/awfully kind/good/thoughtful of you - I/we really appreciate it - I'm/we're very/terribly/awfully grateful
thank you very much indeed that's really/terribly/awfully kind/good/thoughtful of you - I/we really appreciate it - I'm/we're very/terribly/awfully grateful - you really shouldn't have bothered
thank you very much indeed, that's awfully kind of you, I really appreciate it, I'm terribly grateful, you really shouldn't have bothered, you know.

Instructions for Life (the Dalai Lama's Millennium Message)


1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk

2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson

3. Follow the three R's:
Respect for self
Respect for others
Responsibility for all your actions

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly

6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship

7. When you realise you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it

8. Spend some time alone every day

9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It's one way to achieve immortality

15. Be gentle with the earth

16. Once a year, go somewhere you've never been before

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it

19. Approach love and cooking with the same reckless abandon

the glasto mud rhino.

a melancholy beast indeed. crumpled, bowed, half-collapsed, defeated, heavy head supported on a bale of straw, but still ( inevitably I needs must romanticise - rhino à rhino?) maintaining, despite all, an air of stoic, silent, ridiculous dignity.