As for me, I’m about to leave this city to fiddle with the unknown. There is a big lake a few days away, and it’s in ivory territories: I will try to get there. But it is most likely hostile territory. I’ll buy a horse and go… Letter XVII, Harar, May 4, 1881, Arthur Rimbaud. […]

I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have […]

We are in January, the 6th, on Christmas Eve for the Russian Orthodox remained true to the Julian calendar. In 2012, the celebration is of a somewhat different tenor from the previous years. The Arab spring has resonated in the Russian land. The Moscow Patriarchate has gone out of its way to warn the Russian […]