A clip, showing food production and consumption, from Samsara, non-verbal documentary from filmmakers Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson.

Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across. (J.S.F)

side a. watching the stone of celestial flaw rush down.
side b. in a realm of wander behold the fleeting shadows exclaim in delight.
side c. for seconds he felt the grandeur of devastation.
side d. together we transcend into this wreckage called heart.

Jon Westwood, illustrator from Ontario.

We can ask ourselves later why the fanatic specialism of the Phoenicians,
which hacked the alphabet out of the hieroglyphic culture, did not release any further intellectual or artistic activity in them.

The pre-Socratics were still mainly in a non-literate culture. Socrates stood on the border between that oral world and the visual and literate culture. But be wrote nothing. The Middle Ages regarded Plato as the mere scribe or amanuensis of Socrates. And Aquinas considered that neither Socrates nor Our Lord committed their teaching to writing because the kind of interplay of minds that is in teaching is not possible by means of writing.

M.M.

Los Angeles based automotive photographer Richard Thompson.

After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident.

J.G.B.

Index and credits:
1. NASA satellite image shows Iceland. (AFP Photo Handout-NASA)
2. Air Force One’s shadow is seen as on a frozen Lake Erie as it transports US President Barack Obama to Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport. (Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images)
3. A train passes through a tunnel in the rocks as people walk the foot-path “El Caminito del Rey” (King’s little path) a narrow walkway hanging and carved on the steep walls of a defile in Ardales near Malaga (AFP Photo / Jorge Guerrero)
4. An Iranian woman walks past a wall in Tehran. (Behrouz Mehri / Getty Images)
5. An Indian widow dances as they celebrate Holi or “festival of colors” in Vrindavan (Roberto Schmidt / AFP / Getty Images)
6. The Villarrica volcano, near Villarrica in southern Chile, shows some activity. (Martin Bernetti / AFP / Getty Images)

Polish illustrator Pawel Kuczynski.

The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep. (G.D.)