Coping with Transience is a delightful study of Ecclesiastes that interprets its most significant themes on the basis of its keyword hebel. 'Vanity', 'irony', and 'the absurd' are either the traditional or latest meanings thought to be behind Ecclesiates' hebel, yet each in its own way renders the contradictory or confusing. A more natural, yet still biblical meaning of the word is 'the temporary'. This is the term Eccesiates uses for his advice on how to cope with the brevity of life. Once the word 'temporary' is understood, the book becomes immediately consistant within itself, and supportive of much of the biblical worldview. Coping with Transience interprets Ecclesiates from a biblical and ancient Near Eastern perspective, without the impositions of modern existentialism, or extra-biblical redefinitions of hebel.

Ephemeral images from a troubling dream inspire Samuel Border to meet a girl who proceeds to capture his heart. The transience of their encounter in no way reflects the indelible imprint haunting his mind, but events intervene to postpone their union. A compulsion to locate the woman of his dreams results in a tragic accident to his younger brother, causing Samuel to abandon the search. Only happenstance many years later alters that decision. Were life simply about the present and not unduly influenced by an evil family legacy, Samuel would not be drawn inexorably toward his destiny. It will require all his instincts and courage to bring the woman he loves beyond measure home safely.

Transience is an exploration into Estelle Asmodelle's neo-abstract expressionism and a journey into perception of form and structure through abstraction. Transience resists discrete interruption but facilitates the observer with interplay between conscious and sub-conscious interpretation of primal symbolism.

Ghaus Mohiuddin Ansari was born in Lucknow, India. He was educated at Lucknow University, University of London, and University of Vienna where he earned his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1957. He served in research and teaching positions at universities in Baghdad, Libya, Kuwait, and Vienna, where he was appointed professor emeritus. He was the founding chairman of the IAUES Commission on urban anthropology. After retirement he lived in Calpe, Spain and Vienna, where he died in 2012.

Temporary urban uses – innovative ways to transform cities or new means to old ends? The scale and variety of temporary – or meanwhile or interim – urban uses and spaces has grown rapidly in response to the dramatic increase in vacant and derelict land and buildings, particularly in post-industrial cities. To some, this indicates that a paradigm shift in city making is underway. To others, alternative urbanism is little more than a distraction that temporarily cloaks some of the negative outcomes of conventional urban development. However, rigorous, theoretically informed criticism of temporary uses has been limited. The book draws on international experience to address this shortcoming from the perspectives of the law, sociology, human geography, urban studies, planning and real estate. It considers how time – and the way that it is experienced – informs alternative perspectives on transience. It emphasises the importance, for analysis, of the structural position of a temporary use in an urban system in spatial, temporal and socio-cultural terms. It illustrates how this position is contingent upon circumstances. What may be deemed a helpful and acceptable use to established institutions in one context may be seen as a problematic, unacceptable use in another. What may be a challenging and fulfilling alternative use to its proponents may lose its allure if it becomes successful in conventional terms. Conceptualisations of temporary uses are, therefore, mutable and the use of fixed or insufficiently differentiated frames of reference within which to study them should be avoided. It then identifies the major challenges of transforming a temporary use into a long-term use. These include the demands of regulatory compliance, financial requirements, levels of expertise and so on. Finally, the potential impacts of policy on temporary uses, both inadvertent and intended, are considered. The first substantive, critical review of temporary urban uses, Transience and Permanence in Urban Development is essential reading for academics, policy makers, practitioners and students of cities worldwide.

This book analyses the themes of anxiety and transience in the poetical thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a prominent 19th-century poet. The book argues that, despite Hopkins’s strong religious beliefs, his artistic vision and quest for an original aesthetic were the foremost concerns in his poetry. The author examines Hopkins’s early interest in transience, which he later developed through the influence of the philosopher Duns Scotus and the aesthetic critic Walter Pater. In the second half of the book, the author employs Martin Heidegger’s philosophy to deepen our understanding of Hopkins’s poetics of anxiety and transience. He illuminates how these themes shaped Hopkins’s poetic voice, revealing his affinity with Romanticism and his belief that transience and anxiety enhance rather than hinder the creative process. The book provides a fresh perspective on Hopkins’s work, challenging the prevailing views that downplay the importance of these themes. While the book is primarily a contribution to literary scholarship, it may also appeal to readers interested in the intersection of literature, philosophy and art.

Transience is found in every meeting and form of coexistence between people and things that live and exist by, or move across or along, the Black Sea. It may come in various forms and guises, from de facto states, tourism, migration, trafficking or military troops, and it needs to be written and captured in sensuous, affective and imaginative ways. With particular attention to poetics, politics and aesthetics, this volume focuses on the scales of transient moments and histories, and enables readers to see and sense the many forms of transience that occur in a given landscape, sea or space.

A collage in art is something like a mosaic. It takes picture fragments which have a certain meaning in themselves and juxtaposes them with other picture fragments that convey a somewhat different, but related, idea. When viewed as a collective whole, the sub-themes in each picture blend together to create a large unified master theme. This book might be described as a literary collage. The theme in each essay conveys a part of the life of our society and political landscape. The essays were written to accompany e-mail greetings for my four daughters and several of my friends at the four seasonal turning points of the year, experienced similarly at the middle latitudesthe two equinoxes and two solstices. Now, some nine years after starting the practice in 2006, a number of essays have accumulatedsome short and personal and others longer and impersonal. The essays usually make some point about the world that we live infrom the way that words convey meaning, to phenomena of the mind, to political issues of the day. The purpose of this book is to stimulate thought and to encourage discussion.

Memoir of an Indian academic, recounting his life from graduate school till his retirement, in locations in the Middle East and Europe, while maintaining his Indian roots. People interested in anthropology, life of an Indian immigrant in Europe, the politics of oil and the Middle East. It has been more or less a year since ‘Transience of Life’ volume 1 was published. It is cause for much reassurance that serious-minded Urdu readers, some venerable magazines, and a few dedicated friends and associates have praised the memoir in appropriate words and raised my confidence. Otherwise, in the last half a century, all my books and articles on topics in anthropology that were published are in English, the language that became the tool of my teaching and academic employment. Reading and writing in Urdu had been left behind in Lucknow half a century ago.

In this meditation on religion and science, Lightman explores the tension between our yearning for permanence and certainty, and the modern scientific discoveries that demonstrate the impermanent and uncertain nature of the world. As a physicist, he has always held a scientific view of the world. But one summer evening, while looking at the stars from a small boat at sea he was overcome by the sensation that he was merging with a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute and immaterial. This is his exploration of these seemingly contradictory impulses, and the journey along the different paths of religion and science that become part of his quest. -- adapted from publisher info.