sepoy

@sepoy

historian, walker.

231 Siguiendo2498 Seguidores1024 Publicaciones

Website Bluesky

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y sepoy.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

sepoy@sepoy· 1d

I CANNOT
WRITE MY LIFE
Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in OMAR IN SAID'S
AMERICA
Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst

sepoy@sepoy· 3d

today's walk

A beautifully handwritten Urdu sign mostly with words laser jets, ink jets, color and cartridge refill etc. love this talent in Urdu

sepoy@sepoy· 10d

today's walk

The Blue Bus Project Bus https://www.thebluebusproject.org

sepoy@sepoy· 11d

today's walk

sepoy@sepoy· 14d

today's walk

sepoy@sepoy· 24d

Eric J. Hobsbawm in 1993 at the opening of CEU in Budapest (cool to see him reference *5000 Years of Pakistan* (by Mortimer Wheeler)) www.nybooks.com/articles/199...

The past legitimizes. The past gives a more glorious background to a present that doesn’t have much to show for itself. I recall seeing somewhere a study of the ancient civilization of the cities of the Indus Valley with the title 5000 Years of Pakistan. Pakistan was not even thought of before 1932–1933, when the name was invented by some student militants. It did not become a serious political aspiration until 1940. As a state it has existed only since 1947. There is no evidence of any more connection between the civilization of Mohenjo Daro and the current rulers of Islamabad than there is of a connection between the Trojan War and the government in Ankara, which is at present claiming the return, if only for first public exhibition, of Schliemann’s treasure of King Priam of Troy. But 5,000 years of Pakistan somehow sounds better than forty-six years of Pakistan.

sepoy@sepoy· 25d

today's (200+ AQI) walk

sepoy@sepoy· 26d

today’s walk

sepoy@sepoy· Jul 8

Must Read: "On Anticipatory Complicity" by @durba.bsky.social muse.jhu.edu/pub/434/arti...

To anticipate is to take steps before, to prepare for the future. Compliance is abiding by laws, standards, guidelines. But we are not in a system [End Page 418] after 2025 that is creating rules lawfully, with fair standards or lawful guidelines. Rather, I would submit that the hushed feeling that captures the institutional mood of our moment is, more accurately, complicity, defined in Oxford Languages as "the state of being involved with others in an illegal activity or wrongdoing." In our moment now, higher education in the United States has found itself in its era of willful wrongdoing, of anticipatory complicity. And perhaps nowhere is this clearer than the standing of women, gender, and sexuality studies (WGSS) in the university right now. The university never really treated WGSS as a field of knowledge production, which helps to explain the current rush to complicity. The call against "gender
ideology" is coming from inside the house.

sepoy@sepoy· Jul 5

today’s walk

sepoy@sepoy· Jul 3

my mona lisa moment is seeing Klee’s *Angelus Novus* in person at the excellent Klee show at the Jewish Museum. Don’t skip this! (i wrote my BA thesis on Klee and Kahlo)

Angelus Novus, or the Angel of History
Throughout his life Klee painted and drew a variety of angels. The early ones, such as Angelus Novus, seem puppetlike, presumably because Klee was constantly fashioning such figures for his son, Felix.
More than any other work by Klee, Angelus Novus has become immortalized, called the Angel of History by the German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, who purchased the drawing in
1921. The piece became his most precious possession and inspired his Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), written shortly before he committed suicide while fleeing the Nazis. Benjamin describes the angel as
looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the Angel of History. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
Since its literary designation as the Angel of History, the work has been transformed from a modest drawing into an iconic image, a powerful allegory for the catastrophic march of history and
"progress" to which to Benjamin tragically fell victim. Its lasting influence continues to inspire debate.

Paul Klee: Angelus Novus
Postscript
Klee, like many of his contemporaries, understood the present as not easily experienced, always secured as it was to the past or the future.
In his writings, he posited that art should not only depict a static final product but also reveal its genesis through time, be forever evolving.
In the catalogue for his 1920 exhibition Klee published the following statement, which became his epitaph:
I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn. Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough.
204 AD)) 902

sepoy@sepoy· Jun 29

today’s walk

sepoy@sepoy· Jun 23

tuesday flowers

sepoy@sepoy· Jun 18

Got a copy of Nehru’s *The Discovery of India* (1960 imprint) and discovered this ticket from Dec 1961!

The Discovery of India
Jawaharlal Nehru
EDITED BY ROBERT I. CRANE
A DOUBLEDAY ANCHOR BOOK

ticket:

10 Jahre Madrigalchor Sankt Veit Großer Musikvereins-Saal
Sonntag, den 10. Dezember 1961, punkt 15 Uhr
S
FESTKONZERT
Bruckner: E-moll Messe
S
35.-
Amtiich
aufgelegt
1. Balko-Loge
1. Reihe
Sitz:
2

sepoy@sepoy· Jun 18

amazing

sepoy@sepoy· Jun 14

today's walk (a gentleman comes right up to me and says "hey man, did the Knicks win?" I nod. Bursts into a huge laugh and says THAT'S RIGHT THEY DID and keeps walking.)

acquisitions: a brunson jersey (gift) and some football cookies (also gifts)

sepoy@sepoy· Jun 12

today’s walk

at the High Line TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN
The Light That Shines Through the Universe, 2026

TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN
The Light That Shines Through the Universe, 2026
Sandstone, stainless steel, brass; 9' 5" × 9'10" × 25' April 2026-Fall 2027
For the fifth High Line Plinth commission, Tuan Andrew Nguyen presents The Light That Shines Through the Universe. This towering, 25-foot sandstone sculpture pays homage to the Bamiyan Buddhas, two 6th-century colossal statues in central Afghanistan that were tragically destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 in an act of iconoclasm. The work's title directly references the affectionate nickname locals used for the larger Buddha: "Salsal," which translates to "the light shines through the universe." Nguyen's Plinth commission is not an exact replica of Salsal, but rather an echo, intended to invoke the memory of these lost cultural treasures.
Reincarnation is a recurring motif in Nguyen's work, presented as a spiritual idea and a potent political metaphor. He explores how past injustices persist and manifest in contemporary life, while also offering speculative space to imagine futures for the people, places, or things that were destroyed or forever changed by conflict. His use of material similarly speaks to these themes; in particular, the artist looks to the legacy of the Vietnam War (1955-1975), and the continued violence and trauma that impacts local communities to this day. Widely considered to be the largest aerial bombardment in human history, the Vietnam War left the country littered with unexploded ordnance (UX)-bombs, grenades, and artillery shells that failed to detonate. Nguyen takes these objects of violence, melts them down, and reshapes them into expressions of healing, resilience, and hope. For The Light That Shines Through the Universe, the artist continues this form of alchemy by reimagining the Buddha's hands. Cast from melted-down brass artillery shells and positioned into mudras, or ritual gestures that signify "fearlessness" and "compassion," the gleaming hands become symbols of healing and empathy.

sepoy@sepoy· Jun 8

today’s walk

sepoy@sepoy· Jun 6

today’s walk

sepoy@sepoy· Jun 1

today’s walk

sepoy@sepoy· May 26

tuesday flowers

sepoy@sepoy· May 24

Recent (re) reads

A philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros

Georg Lukács "The Theory of the Novel: A historico-philosphical essay on the forms of great epic literature"

sepoy@sepoy· May 23

today's walk

sepoy@sepoy· May 11

the tide is turning on AI among its most captured user base

sepoy@sepoy· May 7

today I learned (via @lrb.co.uk)

“For all the admirers who queue at the Indira Gandhi Memorial museum to pay homage to the bloodstained sari she wore on the day of her assassination, the taint of corruption still clings. I was reminded of it, of all places, in a North London ocakbaşı, where I found out that Indiregandi is Turkish slang for
'embezzlement'”

this is like when in cairo i was told that amitabhbachan was slang for browning bananas….

sepoy@sepoy· May 3

finally! scroll.in/article/1092...

sepoy@sepoy· May 1

DRUM (Desis Rising Up & Moving) is an amazing org and folks should support it

Support DRUM's Midwood, BK Chapter
DRUM was founded in 2000. We have come a long way from being an all-volunteer-run organization to now having staff and membership-driven chapters in six different neighborhoods in New York City!
Midwood, known to many as "Little Pakistan," has been at the heart of DRUM's story. In the wake of 9/11, this community was deeply impacted by the state-sponsored racism, xenophobia and anti-muslim policies that tore apart our families and communities. Our mosques became sites of surveillance, our neighborhoods filled with fear, and many of our original members were disappeared by the state or self-deported.
In 2022, we reactivated our Midwood base after the devastating floods in Pakistan and launched a campaign for Temporary Protected Status for undocumented Pakistanis whose families were reeling from the climate disaster. That campaign reignited the spark of organizing here, reconnected neighbors, and it reminded us of our power to
Midwood members-taxi drivers, retail and restaurant workers, and women who are fulltime care workers of their families-have begun to engage in deeper conversations about politics and ask broader questions beyond hyper local politics like: What does power look like here? How do we defend our communities? What does solidarity mean in our daily lives?
Through gatherings like "Chayee Paani Gupshup," hosted jointly with our Kensington base, we have created space for both men and women to come together, to speak, lead, process and take action. These spaces have opened up conversations on mental health, patriarchy, and the kind of cultural shift we want and need to live in a country that is often hostile to our people.

sepoy@sepoy· Apr 30

today's walk

sepoy@sepoy· Apr 20

This is a very important new book, just out from @columbiaup.bsky.social: Julian Columeau's *Linguistic Resistance in Pakistan: Punjabi Language Movements after Independence* (2026)

Linguistic Resistance in Pakistan: Punjabi Language Movements after Independence by Julien Columeau

sepoy@sepoy· Apr 18

horror