You Know What's Strange About The Viral Photo of the Blacked-Out Eiffel Tower?

It’s how much the illustration on The New Yorker cover — I’m referring to the Jorge Columbo iPad painting the week before the terror attack — is so similar.

Okay. One’s the result of fog, the other, grief.  Still, it makes you wonder (or makes me wonder, anyway) about rhythms in the universe and whether, on some primordial level, the erasure of the illustrator’s in Paris was presaged.

With the New Yorker now having posted its commemoration of the attack that has shaken France and Europe, it’s also curious to see these signature landmarks on consecutive covers. Out of the blood (part of me reads it as fuel for a rocket), what we hope survives and elevates us is the power of expression.

(illustration 3: Ana Juan for The New Yorker)