Latin v. delinquere: "to lack, to fail In 1836, Francis Baily travelled to the Scottish Borders to see a solar eclipse. He witnessed a macabre and beautiful phenomenon. A row of lucid points, like a string of bright beads of irregular distance and size from each other. These suddenly appeared around the circumference of the…
Learn some new words in Māori during Mahuru Māori/Māori Language Month. Here are the various times of the day...enjoy! Waenganui pō - Midnight Te Pō - Night Atapō - Before Dawn Ata Hapāra - Breath of Dawn Atatū - Just after sunrise Awatea - River of Light Ata - Morning Poupoutanga o te rā -…
Continue reading ➞ Wāhanga o Te Rā/ Times of the Day in Māori
Nadir ˈnā-ˌdir (from Arabic) The lowest or worst point. The sunken place of great depression or degradation. Astronomically, it is the point to opposite to the zenith. Merlin by Ralph Waldo Emerson He shall not seek to weave,In weak unhappy times,Efficacious rhymes;Wait his returning strength,Bird, that from the nadir's floor,To the zenith's top could soar,The…
Edward Brooke Hitching, history-hound, lover of quirky things and writer for the ever-popular and erudite quiz show QI, has written The Sky Atlas. A treasury and history of some of humankind’s most beautiful maps and charts. Yet this book is more than that, it’s a sparkling and glittering array of sky-bound achievements. It’s a visual…
Continue reading ➞ Book Review: The Sky Atlas by Edward Brooke Hitching
1. Moons of Nirn: A 90 minute atmospheric ambient mix An epic and transporting mix of emotional ambient music, along with stunning footage of the Aurora Borealis. This makes for an awe-inspiring background soundtrack to the rest of my top ten. https://youtu.be/U9Phu1vCUVE 2. Wycrow: Finding Stillness Inspiring fellow blogger Wycrow talks about how to find…
Continue reading ➞ 10 Uplifting things I found on the internet this week #7
Peter and Beatrice Leigh are a childless 30-something British couple who are devoutly evangelical Christians and are living in a Britain of an imagined near future. In this imaginary Britain things look largely similar to how they are right now, except that there's a colony of humans living on a faraway planet called Oasis. These…
Continue reading ➞ Book Review: The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Creative non-fiction genius and nature writer extraordinaire Annie Dillard has won a Pulitzer Prize for her essay writing. She has a unique, warm and intensely spiritual, even transcendental way of writing that elevates her above most other writers. That’s big praise I know, but this is really great writing. She has the ability to probe…
Continue reading ➞ Book Review: The Abundance by Annie Dillard
Have you ever wondered where the original ideas in mathematics, astronomy, science, medicine, philosophy ever came from? The answers to these questions are in this remarkable history book that takes us on a tiki-tour through the highways and back alleys of some of the most vibrant and buzzing cities of the ancient world, where knowledge…
Continue reading ➞ Book Review: The Map of Knowledge by Violet Moller
We do a lot of looking; we look through lenses, telescopes and TVs. Our looking is perfected every day - but we see less and less. Never has it been more urgent to speak of seeing...we are onlookers, spectators. 'Subjects' we are, that look at 'objects'. Quickly, we stick labels on all that is, labels…
“Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff."
And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. A terrace house in Sevilla, Spain. © Content Catnip 2010 And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the…
Continue reading ➞ Comforting Thought: And the people stayed home by Kitty O’Meara
It turns out that Wellington CBD and Mount Victoria close to where I live is prime viewing for the Tesla Starlink Satellites as they cruise through the sky after dark. Starlink taken from the top of Mt Victoria Blink and you'll miss it though. It's all over in about 2 minutes. They rocket past in…
Continue reading ➞ Welcome to Starlink Express brought to you by Elon Musk!
Vladimir Nabokov on butterflies and timelessness
The last gasp of Victorian spirituality infused cutting-edge science with old-school mysticism. Theosophy was all the rage; Many weird and and wonderful ideas being developed at the turn of the century around death, ghosts, the fourth dimension filled the Victorians with a palpable sense of possibility.
Kawaakari (Japanese) The glow of a river or stream in darkness or dusk, the gleaming surface of a shadowed river (Japanese 川明かり). Kawaakari can refer to the reflection of the moonlight off flowing water, or the gleam of late sun at dusk. Obumbro (Latin) To shadow over and over: to make dark with shadow; to…
The traditional seasons in Japan are marked out by impercetibly small changes in nature across 72 miniature seasons in a year, each lasting 5 days and reflecting the fleeting, impermanent and diaphanous beauty of nature and all of its wonders. There are 24 divisions or sekki in the calendar that are split into 72 kō…
Continue reading ➞ Japan’s 72 gossamer-light and poetic microseasons
Glamour is an 18th Century corruption of the word grammar. Or the occult processes that were traditionally associated with learning during the middle ages. The words grammar and glamour are also associated with the word grimoire - a spell-book. Glamourie: witchcraft, magic, fascination or a spell Glaumerify: to cast a spell over or bewich Glamour-bead:…
Continue reading ➞ Ancient words of the day: Glamour and grammar
At night I lie awake In the ruthless Unspoken, knowing that planets come to life, bloom, and die away, like day-lilies opening one after another in every nook and cranny of the Universe... Diane Ackerman Wild woman quote: show your soul ''Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.'' Maya AngelouInside of the walls of…
I saw this one at this year's NZIFF in Wellington. Directed by Claire Denis, High Life is about a group of prisoners who are used as guinea pigs in sexual experiments by an evil nurse played by Juliette Binoche on board a space mission. I don’t normally speak in such plain terms about the plot…
Content Catnip recently interviewed established Portuguese artist Eleonor Piteira. She once wanted to be an astronaut as a child, but instead has allowed her imagination to wander all over the galaxy through her striking an beautiful art, impressing people like director Guillermo del Toro along the way...
Here are a collection of my favourite ambient, dub, experimental and drone albums of all time. They are in no particular order because they're all brilliant. I hope you will give them a listen, let me know if you enjoy them! Everything is a spawling, epic atmospheric soundtrack that echoes the enormity of the universe.…
Continue reading ➞ Ambient Album Review #1: ‘Everything’ by Lukas Boysen & Sebastian Plano
In this stunning short film called Sun Moon London by filmmaker Luke Miller, we witness otherworldly visions of the interplay of the moon, sun and bustling central London. Luke captured the harvest moon on the 5th of October 2017, when the moon was at its zenith of autumnal equinox. Along with footage of the 1st…
Continue reading ➞ Short film: Celestial wonders in downtown London
Bowie needs no introduction in his ability to induce wonder, awe and beauty in anyone he touches. And now even after death, his legacy lives on in the form of a mannequin Star Man set to take a silence-filled orbit around our dark solar system and towards its final destination of Mars. The poetry and…
Continue reading ➞ Starman, Bowie and the symbolism of SpaceX’s new world
Every element in the universe is composed of parts of a cataclysmic explosion of supernovae. This encompasses the iron found inside of the hemoglobin of our blood, the primary element of supernovae. That's what we all are. The instant of star death. https://vimeo.com/95285095
