The autumn leaves in #NorthJozi. 🌳🍃🍂🌍🌧

A cool, cloudy day, and one has to focus on not rolling one's eyes or pursing one's lips on the ridge of the Witwatersrand just north of the Johannesburg city centre. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, #NorthJozi. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖🌳🍃🌺🌼🌍⛅️

One really must work away this pique about having to leave the #LateImperialLibrary to perform the tasks required of one's imperious personage in the heart of the country. Aunt Lydia was correct: duty is indeed a hard taskmaster. Noblesse oblige in #NorthJozi; aussi, pour encourager les autres . . .

In #NorthJozi this Monday one recalls that Dutch seminar on beauty and consolation . . . 🫅🏾📚🤓📖🌳🌺🌼🐝🌍⛅️

Sunday night shelving in the #LateImperialLibrary; time for the evening tea as we listen to cicadas and crickets and frogs in the garden. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗃🗝🚪🌍🌘

Mood.

Ankh ankh, en mitak Yewk er heh en heh Aha en heh. Time to return to Amarna. 🫅🏾

Sunday morning in and beyond the #LateImperialLibrary in an unseasonably cool #NorthJozi. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it […] I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’ […] I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children […] And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall ▫️Bob Dylan, 1963

Saturday morning. 🌍🌤

Sun setting in autumnal #NorthJozi: to see the variety of light discourses, pace Zoë Wicomb; or, that southern light, pace J. M. Coetzee. Shutting in for the night in the #LateImperialLibrary. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🍂🌍⛅️

Back from the office (one's week of imperial duties imperiously done usually concludes on a Thursday afternoon, but, noblesse oblige) where one took some consolation in the marvel of this brief #NorthJozi blip on the multiversal time-space continuum. 🌳🍂🌺🌼🌍⛅️

One came home from a day – and what a day, indeed – to this delightful addition to the #LateImperialLibrary. In many senses 2026 is a year of "ill favoured and leanfleshed kine" in #NorthJozi and the world, but in terms of reading, it is a time of "well favoured kine and fatfleshed". 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📦🗝🚪🍂🌍☀️

Reluctantly going forth from the #LateImperialLibrary into the demimonde of #NorthJozi; one understands Cousins Beatrix and Akihito and Margrethe and Juan Carlos . . . Shall one be tempted into abdication, thus? 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🍂🌍☀️

Post your favorite LORD OF THE RINGS character. Wrong answers only.

"What's wrong with the times, apart from politics?" "We've got no remorse. Only guilt, that's the trouble. […] What can one do in a time when no one is ashamed of having done something, when people are only guilty, as a weapon?" ▫️Penelope Gilliatt, 1972 #BookSky 📚💙 📚🖋

"He could imagine decency, but that was hardly a virtue in a time that had grown sinister. He could imagine humanism, but that made no difference in a time that exalted the will of the crowd. He could imagine a frail inteligence, but that meant little in a time that honoured brute strength."

Lacrimosa dies illa Qua resurget ex favilla Judicandus homo reus.

Late night shelving in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi: embarking on a task long overdue to avoid doing work imminently due and ignoring major life's work years overdue and all but abandoned . . . 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🌳🍂🌍🌖

Choose 20 MORE books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. #BookSky 💙📚 #Books #BookChallenge Day 3B

Mood . . . 🖐🏼

Sunday morning reading in the #LateImperialLibrary in a very breezy #NorthJozi suddenly chillier after the heatwaves of January and February. Another failed fasting day to be paid off later. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑☕️🗝🌬🍂🌍🌤

Hubris? Parochialism? Bathos. Beware of prophecy . . . 😵‍💫🫨🤢🤮

Saturday afternoon in the #LateImperialLibrary with the new inductee (Masha Gessen on surviving autocracy), unable to decide at which desk to work in sunny, autumnal #NorthJozi. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🌳🍂🌍☀️

Saturday morning in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi after days of uncharacteristic "motregen". 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🌳🍃🍂🌍

The sheer volume of facile rightwing content created by barely literate shills being pushed at me on Youtube is interesting, given I mostly watch the videos of one team of film reviewers, and 1980s music videos.

There is nothing ineluctable about war. If we want war we can choose war, if we want peace we can equally well choose peace. If we want competition we can choose competition; alternatively we can take the path of comradely collaboration. ▫️J. M. Coetzee, 2007 #BookSky 📚💙 📚🖋

Choose 20 MORE books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. #BookSky 💙📚 #Books #BookChallenge Day 2B

Rainy Friday morning in #NorthJozi; one is locked down in the #LateImperialLibrary, engaged in a #CerebralRinse. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🧠🚿🗝🚪🌍🌧

I must have gone to bed Around a quarter after ten I need a lot of sleep And so I like to be in bed by then I must have read a while The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style It's funny, but I had no sense of living without aim ▫️Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus, 1982

Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence. #BookSky 📚💙

How I feel when someone blocks me.

First wound of pride and how you cried and cried But save your tears you've got years and years Fool if you think it's over 'Cos you said goodbye Fool if you think it's over I'll tell you why […] You're a fool if you think it's over It's just begun ▫️Chris Rea, 1978

Man muss es in den Kauf nehmen, wenn einem Volke, das am nationalen Nervenfieber und politischen Ehrgeize leidet, leiden will, mancherlei Wolken und Störungen über den Geist ziehn, kurz, kleine Anfälle von Verdummung. ▫️Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886

The overthrow of beliefs is not immediately followed by the overthrow of institutions; rather, the new beliefs live for a long time in the now desolate and eerie house of their predecessors, which they themselves preserve, because of the housing shortage. ▫️Nietzsche, 1878

With no context, how are you starting the week?

Rainy morning harvest, early autumn in #NorthJozi. 🌳🍃🍂🌍🌧

Talkin' to myself and feelin' old Sometimes I'd like to quit, nothin' ever seems to fit Hangin' around nothin' to do but frown Rainy days and Mondays always get me down ▫️Richard Carpenter, 1971 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🌳🌍🌧

[B]ureaucratic techniques (performance reviews, focus groups, time allocation surveys ...) developed in financial and corporate circles came to invade the rest of society—education, science, government—and eventually, to pervade almost every aspect of everyday life. ▫️David Graeber, 2015 📚💙 #BookSky

Perhaps the analogous precedent for the leaders of the Empire of Fright is not to be found in the strong man of the mid-century Italian boot or in the demagogue at those mass rallies in Nürnberg, but in Pétain both during and after the war, and that increasingly apt concept, "indignité nationale".

Must make a dent in this pile before the world ends. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🌳🌍⛈️

Earthquakes mean March […] The sun of this month cures all. Therefore, old women say: Let the sun of March shine on my daughter, but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law. ▫️Anne Sexton, 1975 A new, apocalyptic month in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🌍

Books and buns, parsley and prunes: one dared to go forth to market just before the afternoon wind-storm began in #NorthJozi. 🫅🏾🛒📚🥖🥬🫐🌬🌍☁️

Today's mini-harvest from the volunteer food garden in #NorthJozi.

Friday inductees into the #LateImperialLibrary: time to shut one's imperious personage in for the week's end. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🌳🌍🌔

Today's harvest from the two vines and two new flowers in #NorthJozi.

"How chemicals from our laptops and TVs have ended up in the brains of dolphins and porpoises" www.euronews.com/2026/02/25/h...

Thursday inductees into the #LateImperialLibrary; one went forth to get poppadoms and ended up ensnared in a table-top book trader's trap. Still, one can never have too many copies of Cervantes or Le Guin, and the Bolaño was a good find. 🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑🗝🚪🌳🌍🌔

Mood. clip.cafe/share/i-leav...