The Neo-Amazons of New Amazon

I am Erodotus, the Mad Historian. No ears will any longer take in the warnings I give. Which are the dreams, my nights or my days? The nights are haunted by visions of civilisations long ruined, where men spoke tongues understood by none today, save one. In the day I struggle so to find an audience for my words, I might as well be speaking an incomprehensible tongue. They are all asleep, in the day as in the night, delving into the same pasts I see, addicted to those pasts as to those potions they take to prolong their dreams. There are those who dwell in the past to hide from the present, and those who search unfathomable pasts for answers, both equally mad. Yet the healers think me mad! Would that I had known it would come to this.

But first...

Legend has it that the peoples of New Amazon were visited by two plagues which shaped their present race, and are doomed to be scourged by another that will prove their end. The first of these was a pox which took all their menfolk, yet left the women untouched bar their grief. Their treasuries possessed stores of seed with which to sire new young; but any boys born fell ill with the same pox and did not last long. But the women knew not despair, for their cities were high in Science. They attempted to find cures for that dread disease, but all manner of elixir, herbal or alchemical, proved futile. The women then turned their efforts to finding a way to bear children without men, at which task they succeeded by a method (involving two women) still used in the present day.

LoL 2012

So much happened in one year, it feels like a lifetime has passed. The theme of 2012 was, for me, epistemology (retrospectively I would call the theme of 2009 ethics, 2010 aesthetics, and 2011 networks). How do we know what we know? How do we know what we don't? How do we know that we know? I have remained conscious of these questions throughout the year, whether during active contemplation or by implicit awareness. This has also had the effect of making me realise the pervasiveness of intellectual sins in the world, rendering them all the more frustrating, and even at times discouraging.

Yet I am heartened by the beauty of the works which I had the pleasure of encountering throughout the year, all monuments to human achievement in their own right. Only the three categories of fiction, non-fiction and movies appear below as they are the only categories to which I had sufficient exposure to judge in 2012. It is astounding how many of the non-fiction books I read in 2012 were the magna opera of their authors, even though not all of them made the list. If I have seen further over the last year, it is because I have been fortunate to have stood on the very top of a totem of giants, whom you will find below.

LoL 2011

Due to a technical mishap regarding My Documents late in 2011, some categories will be skipped owing to my inability (or laziness) to reconstruct them. Nonetheless, the categories that remain succinctly sum up my year. Entries will be in ascending order of rating.

If on a winter's night a reader

I am presently drunk with euphoria after reading If on a winter's night a traveller, by Italo Calvino. As if a homeopathic dose of the proverbial 'Whatever the author is smoking (I want some of that)', amplified by serial draftings and editings, has overwhelmed me.

There are the works that arouse in my pen hand a wanderlust, a desire to once more take flight and set words on paper, knowing that my writing has improved by mere exposure to the author's shadow. And then there are the works so far beyond sublime they are lime; they paralyse that same hand into inaction, for no words I write can ever compare.

If on a winter's night a traveller is both.

List of Lists 2010

In this inaugural List of Lists (LoL), I shall recap some of the most memorable things of 2010. Overall 2010 was a year of exploration, both of the inner and outer world. I pushed the boundaries in many areas, experiencing and learning new things, discovering moments of artistic and sensory delight along the way. Without further ado, here is the LoL 2010 with categories in alphabetical order. Music-related entries to follow in a separate post.