This door was here only for you.

Truth Commission

Hepburn and Peck in Roman Holiday

These officers are highly skilled interrogators, trained in telepathic techniques, equipped with the most advanced lie detectors, with readings taken from the sensitive reactions of living creatures: this flower droops at a lie, and this octopus turns bright blue
Burroughs / Cities of the Red Night / 241






















La Bocca della Verità, Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin























Parrhesia
The point of departure. My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role.




















The Jodhain Morain - breastplate of judgment - has the power of squeezing the neck on utterance of false judgment.

Peithynin or Elucidator.

"I'm not a peace officer," Rick said. "I'm a bounty hunter." From his opened briefcase he fished out the Voight-Kampff apparatus, seated himself at a nearby rosewood coffee table, and began to assemble the rather simple polygraphic instruments...
"This" - he held up the flat adhesive disk with its trailing wires - "measures capillary dilation in the facial area. We know this to be a primary autonomic response... This records fluctuations of tension within the eye muscles.
PK Dick

Urim & Thummim Exodus xxviii 30
Light and Truth

This was the oracle of God put into the sacred breastplate of judgment by Aaron, by which the divine will was to be sought on solemn occasions. many and varied conjectures have been offered as to the nature of this oracle; but, as the Scriptures do not clearly instruct us, perhaps we shall never obtain satisfactory information. The opinion of Josephus is, that they were rows of precious stones in the pectoral, and are so called for their brilliancy and perfection; and that these stones, on particular occasions, indicated the mind of God by some remarkable appearance. On each of the stones was engraven the name of one of the sons of Jacob; and it has been conjectured that the letters forming the response became in a peculiar way distinguished from the rest. others suppose it was given by an audible response from the voice of Shechinah, addressed to the high-priest, arrayed in his robes, and standing with his face twoards the ark. The oracle seems only to have been used in national difficulties, by the high-priest alone, and not for any private purpose…

Farrar / Biblical and Theological Dictionary / 1884

druidomania

neodymium/ la vie en rose

In daylight or incandescent light neodymium glass appears lavender, but it appears pale blue under fluorescent lighting.

the spatialisation of poverty

Research indicating the presence of phenomena such as the persistence of urban deprivation in particular areas of cities, suggests that poverty and social exclusion may be related to properties of the spatial structure of the physical form of the city... the spatialisation of poverty.

social exclusion is the outcome of an emergent, complex spatial process.

traitor's gate

Fifth principle. Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications. To get in one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures. Moreover, there are even heterotopias that are entirely consecrated to these activities of purification -purification that is partly religious and partly hygienic, such as the hammin of the Moslems, or else purification that appears to be purely hygienic, as in Scandinavian saunas.

ambidextrous dictation

image source
catherine of siena

Paul Nash, Swanage, 1936

spook

foundation stories/ walsingham

pynson ballad

deptford water gate

'Cross Creek Road into Watergate Street.
Further down the wall of the former DEPTFORD DOCKYARD runs alongside this. At the river end the Master Shipwright's House of 1708 is visible. On the opposite corner is Twinkle Park laid out as a community project in 1999. The building on the riverfront was Payne's Wharf (Penn's boiler shop).'

Since Fortune has chosen that my hope should go to the wind to complain,
I wish the time were destroyed; my planet being ever sad and ungracious.
William Tyrrel 1541

all the king's horses and all the king's men

observations, weather changes or other events of daily importance

siesed thereof in his desmense as of fee

In the feudal system, demesne; via Old French demeine from Latin dominium)^[1] was all the land, not necessarily all contiguous to the manor house, that was retained by a lord for his own use - as distinguished from land "alienated" or granted to others (alieni) as freehold tenants.

Seisin primarily means possession, and for several centuries after the Conquest it was the only word known to the English lawyers capable of conveying this meaning. It was consequently applied at one time to the possession of chattels, as well as of land. Later it was applied only to the possession of land or of incorporeal things, and in this connection it came finally to be used only in reference to possession by one claiming a freehold estate; he being said to be "seised," while a tenant for years or at will was said to be merely "possessed."

The word, while suggestive to our minds, from its similarity to the word "seize," of the idea of violence, is in reality only distantly connected with the latter word, and is to be associated rather with the words to "sit" and to "set," with which it is also connected etymologically, and properly implies the idea of one being "set" on land, and thereafter sitting there in rest and quiet.

chattels and muniments

MUNIMENT, a word chiefly used in the plural, as a collective term for the documents, charters, title-deeds, &c. relating to the property, rights and privileges of a corporation, such as a college, a family or private person, and kept as "evidences" for defending the same. Hence the medieval usage of the word munimentum, in classical Latin, a defence, fortification, from munire, to defend.

Muniments of title do more than merely "affect" title; they must carry title and be a vital link in the chain of title.

CHATTERTON,the child found there his favorite haunt. The knights, ecclesiastics and civic dignitaries, recumbent on its altar tombs, became his familiar associates; and when he was able to spell his way through the inscriptions graven on their monuments, he found a fresh interest in certain quaint oaken chests in the muniment room over the porch on the north side of the nave, where parchment deeds, old as the Wars of the Roses, long lay unheeded and forgotten.

In an old chest left to moulder in a room over the north porch of this church Chatterton professed to find the Rowley manuscripts. In this room, "here, in the full but fragile enjoyment of his brief and illusory existence, he stored the treasure-house of his memory with the thoughts that, teeming over his pages, have enrolled his name among the great in the land of poetry and song. Happy here, ere his first joyous aspirations were repressed—ere the warm and genial emotions of his heart were checked—before time had dissipated his idle dreams, and neglect, contempt and distress had fastened on his mind, and hurried him onward to his untoward destiny.

your napkin is too little: let it alone

The scene in which Desdemona loses the precious handkerchief that is to testify so fatally against her is given thus in the Folio:

Oth: I have a pain upon my forehead, heere

Des: Why that's with watching, 'twill away againe.
Let me but binde it hard, within this houre
It will be well.

Oth: Your napkin is too little,
Let it alone: Come Ile go in with you

Exit

Des: I am very sorry that you are not well.

III/3

observations, weather changes or other events of daily importance

A penitent wearing the sanbenito. from A Life of John Hawkins
SCHLEGEL, Hermann (1804-84). from Traité de Fauconnerie

edward hailstone/ optical daywear

poison and traps

Charles Waterton

portrait without provenance

patrimony

golden section/ video still

es spukt.

contacts between civilisations in time
A renaissance, on the other hand, is an encounter between a grown-up civilisation and the 'ghost' of its long-dead parent. Though common enough, it may be described as abnormal, and will be found on examination to be often unwholesome. The other encounter between present and past from which renaissances are to be distinguished is the phenomenon which we have called Archaism, using this word to denote attempted reversions to an earlier phase in the development of the society to which the archaizers themselves belong. Toynbee A Study of History, 1934-1961












SCENE V. Another part of the platform.
Enter GHOST and HAMLET

HAMLET
Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no further.

Ghost
Mark me.