There exists a popular Greek legend which talks about a mermaid who lived in the Aegean for hundreds of years who was thought to be Thessalonike. The legend states that Alexander, in his quest for the Fountain of Immortality, retrieved with great exertion a flask of immortal water with which he bathed his sister's hair. When Alexander died his grief-stricken sister attempted to end her life by jumping into the sea. Instead of drowning, however, she became a mermaid passing judgment on mariners throughout the centuries and across the seven seas. To the sailors who encountered her she would always pose the same question: "Is Alexander the king alive?" (Greek: Ζει ο βασιλιάς Αλέξανδρος;), to which the correct answer would be"He lives and reigns and conquers the world" (Greek: Ζει και βασιλεύει, και τον κόσμο κυριεύει!). Given this answer she would allow the ship and her crew to sail safely away in calm seas. Any other answer would transform her into the raging Gorgon, bent on sending the ship and every sailor on board to the bottom.
 

source: Wikipedia

She was there, at the desert’s lip; I touched her; she spoke to me: 

‘It isn’t true, it isn’t true,’ she cried. 

‘I didn’t board the blue bowed ship.

I never went to valiant Troy.’ 

       from 'Helen' by George Seferis

 I will declare a contest. Odysseus used to set up a line of axes in the hall, a row of twelve like the props under a ship being built. Standing some way off he would shoot an arrow through them all. That can provide a test for the Suitors. Whoever makes the best attempt at stringing Odysseus’ bow, and shooting an arrow through the twelve axes, is the one I will go with, leaving this house where I was first a wife, this lovely house filled with riches, a house I know I will always remember in my dreams.

from 'The Odyssey' by Homer

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet

    from 'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to it for help -- for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

                            quote: Omar Khayyám 

Santiago's air is the most polluted air in Chile. In the 1990s air pollution fell by about one-third, but there has been little progress since 2000. A study by a Chilean university found in 2010 that Santiago pollution had doubled. Particulate matter air pollution is a serious public health concern in Santiago, with atmospheric concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 regularly exceeding standards established by the US Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organisation.

Diesel truck exhaust is another major source of winter smog. A lengthy replacement process of the transit system that began in 2005 was ended in 2010.

A final major source of Santiago air pollution, one that continues the year-around, is the smelter of the El Teniente copper mine. The government does not usually report it as being a local pollution source, as it is just outside the reporting area of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, being 110 kilometres (68 mi) from downtown.

source: Wikipedia

First my left foot
Then my right behind the other

from 'Mother' by Tori Amos

The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I've said too much
I set it up

   from 'Losing my Religion' by R.E.M.

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When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing. 

           'The God Abandons Antony' by C.P. Cavafy
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The Chicago Boys (c. 1970s) were a group of Chilean economists, the majority of whom trained at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, or at its affiliate in the economics department at thePontifical Catholic University of Chile. Upon their return to Latin America they adopted positions in numerous South Americangovernments as economic advisors, many of them reaching high positions. They are credited with transforming Chile into Latin America's best performing economy and one of the world's best business climates. However, critics point to drastic increases in unemployment that can be attributed to policies implemented on their advice to fight inflation. Some (such as Nobel laureateAmartya Sen) have argued that these policies were deliberately intended to serve the interests of American corporations at the expense of Latin American populations.

source: Wikipedia

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As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
 
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
 
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
 
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
 
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. 

           'Ithaka' by C.P. Cavafy
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Take time with a wounded hand
'Cause it likes to heal

from 'Creep' by Stone Temple Pilots

Roy Cohn: [delirious, under the impression that Belize is the Angel of Death] Can I ask you something, sir?

Belize: "Sir"?

Roy Cohn: What's it like? After?

Belize: After...?

Roy Cohn: This misery ends?

Belize: Hell or heaven?

Roy Cohn: [laughs]

Belize: Like San Francisco.

Roy Cohn: A city! Good! I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.

Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.

Roy Cohn: Isaiah.

Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths. And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.

Roy Cohn: And Heaven?

Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.

from 'Angels in America' by Tony Kushner

πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει
Everything changes and nothing stands still.

δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης.
You could not step twice into the same river.

       Heraclitus as quoted by Plato in Cratylus 402a

All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things (τὰ ὅλα ta hola, "the whole") flows like a stream.

        Heraclitus as quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, ix. 4

As this pointed out the way to explain the case in question, without a moment's delay, and transported with joy, archimedes jumped out of the tub and rushed home naked, crying with a loud voice that he had found what he was seeking; for as he ran he shouted repeatedly in Greek, ευρηκα ευρηκα. 

from 'The Ten Books of Architecture' by Vitruvius

Nor was [it] once, nor will [it] be, since [it] is, now, all together, / One, continuous; for what coming-to-be of it will you seek? / In what way, whence, did [it] grow? Neither from what-is-not shall I allow / You to say or think; for it is not to be said or thought / That [it] is not. And what need could have impelled it to grow / Later or sooner, if it began from nothing? Thus [it] must either be completely or not at all. (B 8.5–11)

[What exists] is now, all at once, one and continuous... Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike; nor is there any more or less of it in one place which might prevent it from holding together, but all is full of what is. (B 8.5–6, 8.22–24)

And it is all one to me / Where I am to begin; for I shall return there again. (B 5)

                                          from 'On Nature' by Parmenides

Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
Kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy

  from 'Paranoid Android' by Radiohead

That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal

Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox as recounted by Aristotle in 'Physics' VI:9, 239b10

How do I master
The perfect day
Six glasses of water
Seven phonecalls

  from 'It's Not Up To You' by Bjork

We live in a constellation

Of patches and of pitches,

Not in a single world,

In things said well in music,

On the piano and in speech, 



As in the page of poetry-

Thinkers without final thoughts

In an always incipient cosmos.

The way, when we climb a mountain,

Vermont throws itself together.

July Mountain by Wallace Stevens

I'll be the sky above the Ganges
I'll be the vast and stormy sea.

                 from 'Be Mine' by R.E.M.

When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, we admired the island and wandered all over it, while the nymphs Jove's daughters roused the wild goats that we might get some meat for our dinner.

        from 'The Odyssey' by Homer

# 1

Iguazu Falls

Music: 'Alone' by Colin Newman

#2

Istanbul 

Music: 'Let down' by Radiohead

#3

Santiago

Music: 'Able' by Polish Club

#4

New South Wales (Australia) - Various

Music: 'Yumeji's theme' by Shigeru Umebayashi
           'The memory remains' by Metallica

#5

Iguazu Falls

Music: 'Goodbye horses' by Q Lazzarus

#6

Buenos Aires

Music: 'Like a prayer' by Madonna
           'Confide in me' by Kylie Minogue
           'Beggin' by Frankie Valli and the Four
                                    Seasons

#7

Words

Music: 'make thee an ark' by Clint mansell