Friday, February 29, 2008

Abstract Nº42

Look around the room… and I want you all to understand that there are forces all around you who wish to exploit division, rob you of your freedom, and tell you what to think. They are afraid of change…some of these forces are even within you. But I’m here to tell you, when young folks are motivated to action, when they act with insight, soul and fire, they can rekindle the weary spirit of a slumbering nation. It’s time somebody woke us up.

Wynton Marsalis.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Layers of the planet

When I was a child I was interested in animals, flowers, micro-computers (I am old), and astronomy. I loved those onion-like schemes of the planet earth showing the different layers; secrets of how giant planets look inside. Also liked a lot those other schemes of how the human body is by the inside. I used to disassemble things to see how they work (still do). Later in life started to search the relation between symbols and meanings. Everything is the same on this regards since I was a child: want to know how things work. Indulging food to my curiosity gives me a sense of reassurance, of being sure on how I should relate with the environment. Making instead of assisting. My moral scale developed over my curiosity of how the good and the bad works on the life of a person and a society.
The opposite pleasure was hearing my mother reading me bed-time stories; so since those times, I'm an art appreciator, beholding instead of making.
When I notice this kind of things, I am amazed of how much evolution has been in my life, but how small amount of change in the base of my personality too. I've won grown up values, but the childhood impulses keep being the same, only filtered by different behaviour. May be to other people it happens the same. That issue it's maybe a big part of how Being works in this life: your behaviour filter will boost or refrain your impulses, for better or worst, according to your evolution or lack of it. If I remember well, I heard something like that in my psychology classes during my rebel highschool years. :-)

An exaggerated sliced planet. As the body parts have functions, we are spiritual planets with different layers for different purposes. Telescopes, microscopes, a beautiful mystery to unwrap, "as above, so below".



This onion-dome holds all intricacies
Of intellect and star-struck wisdom; so
Like Coleridge’s head with multitudinous
Passages riddled, full of strange instruments
Unbalanced by a touch, this organism
From wires and dials spins introverted life.
It never looks, squat on its concrete shoulders,
Down at the river’s swarming life, nor sees
Cranes’ groping insect-like activity
Nor slow procession of funnels past the docks.
Turning its inner wheels, absorbed in problems
Of space and time, it never hears
Birds singing in the park or children’s laughter.
Alive, but in another way it broods
On this its Highgate, hypnotised
In lunar reverie and calculation.
Yet night awakes it; blind lids open
Leaden to look upon the moon:
A single goggling telescopic eye
Enfolds the spheric wonder of the sky.

Sidney Keyes, "Greenwich observatory".

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Barbed wire



Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two —
Who for his hours of life had chattered through
Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent:
Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and went
A noble fool, faithful to his stripes— and ended.
But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance
Of line — to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken
Wires, and saw the flashes and kept unshaken,
Till the politest voice — a finicking accent, said:
‘Do you think you might crawl through there: there's a hole.'
Darkness, shot at: I smiled, as politely replied —
‘I'm afraid not, Sir.' There was no hole no way to be seen
Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes.
Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing —-
And thought of music — and swore deep heart's oaths
(Polite to God) and retreated and came on again,
Again retreated — a second time faced the screen.

Ivor Gurney, "The silent one".

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Fragmentation



The body,
Eternal Shadow of the finite Soul,
The Soul's self-symbol, its image of itself.
Its own yet not itself—

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Fragment" (Lines from a notebook, april-june 1810.)

Monday, February 25, 2008

The hypnotizer II

This is the second version of the hypnotizer, there's hardly a face in the center. It is very hard to keep a blog daily updated when I am this busy, so the lack of creativity still may last a while.



The shadowy boy of night
Crosses the dusking land;
He sows his poppy-seeds
With steady, gentle hand.

The shadowy boy of night
Young husbandman of dreams,
Garners his gracious blooms
By far and moonlit streams.

Adelaide Crapsey, "Hypnos, God of Sleep".

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Form of eight points

I just kept this generated form of eight points -that I don't like- because between them there are something like almonds, but more red :-) Not very visible unless in full-size, but they are there to my eye.



The almond tree,—the almond tree—how lovely is its bloom,
It flourishes and fades away before the summer noon;
Alas! it is the symbol sad of beauty's young decay,
The flower of life whose early glow will quickly pass away.
Oh! cherish it—oh! cherish it—and drink its perfum'd breath,
And bind it round thy forehead fair, ere yet it droop in death;
Soon will its leaves forsake the stem, tho' gathered by the Hours,
And, like our pleasures, day by day, lose all its short-lived flow'rs.
Yes! we will taste thine odorous sweets thus swiftly wafted by,
And claim from Zephyrus thy tear—thy fondest, latest sigh,
Drain from the laughing chalices the honied nectar there;
Oh! why should death and pale decay e'er blight a thing so fair?
Like morning flower or vision bright is beauty's shortlived bloom,
It vanishes before the sun proclaims the hour of noon;
Night closes in, and like a tomb it veils the beauteous form,
And on the morrow brighter flowers the hills and vales adorn.
The wings of Time untired sail on, and cheeks are waxing pale,
And all the days are vanishing and spring begins to fail;
And every flower the soft wind fans, speaks thus and seems to say—
“Oh! hasten to enjoy us ere we—we—too fade away.”
And since they must—the beautiful—droop o'er their common urn,
And perish from the bright blue sky, no, never to return,
Spare—spare, oh! spare the bulbul's flower—his song be heard above,
And may the rose for ever bloom beneath the lips of love.

Edward Henry Bickersteth, "The Branch of the Almond Tree".

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Abstract Nº41

Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child’s dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love.

Yehudi Menuhin.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Abstract Nº40


Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

Tenzin Gyatso (14th and current Dalai Lama).


Thursday, February 21, 2008

Killing shot



Burma keeps suffering.  Now with the world eye looking away, they cowardly killed Padoh Mahn Sha.
Cowards they are, yes.
I didn't wanted to come back to the issue, but Than Shwe is such a filthy ruler, and Burmese people is so abandoned. All for the price of burma's rubies and sapphires... just a guess. Dictatorships always raise hidden behind ideologies, but just to steal money for a few and suffocate the masses, just for money, only money for a few at the price of blood.
I can do little, but if you'd live there, you surely couldn't even read this, the whole internet is filtered from the only two ISP's of the country.
However, from my experience, filters can be jumped over, like this:

Everyone's guide to by-passing Internet censorship. A civisec project, by the University of Toronto.

That's the most I can do with my immediate knowledge.
And now that Padoh Mahn Sha is killed, I wonder about the future luck of Aung San Suu Kyi.
I had ten years when the dictatorship in Argentina ended, driving us to a war in 1982 against nothing less that the UK, the US and the NATO (yes, argentinian military intelligence, ha), and at that age I had the stupid idea that that would be the last dictatorship and the last war I'd witness... innocent childhood.

Visit http://thebilo.com/

I cry aloud with all my people's mouths,
our land is smitten by a plague of fear and lead,
our land is shadowed by the gallows tree
our land a common graveyard, huge with dead.

Who'll come to help? Right here, at present, now!
Because the patient's weak, has lost his hold.
But, like the call of birds, my shouting fades
in emptiness: the world is arrogant and cold.

The sighing of the old, the baby's cry —
do they all run to sand, illusion, fail?
Men, women groan like wounded deer
to those in power all this is just a fairy-tale.

Dark is the world's eye, its ear is deaf,
the powerful lost in madness or stupidity.
Compassion's only felt by those whom suffering breaks,
and sufferers alone have hearts like you and me

Marie Under, "Denunciation".

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Clouds of a red dusk

And yesterday after the most incredible heat it fell down the most incredible rain, and after that, the most incredible dusk raised up with the smell of a freshened up earth, and took me by such a surprise that I didn't thought in picture it -shame on me. The sky was mostly orange, but blue and lead tinted too, light and heavy; the leaves were orange and green, real and unreal; everything around tinted by the colour of a trance; and I thought that the world turned ecstatic for two minutes, for a reason that will be totally unknown for us all, like a secret miracle, may be because of me, may be for a stranger still to arrive, may be all because of you.



There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Lord Byron, Childe Harold's pilgrimage, CLXXVIII. 

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Tyrian

Inspiration out of this post by Amber. A tribute to the most uncommon of the nature's colours, and for some unclear reason, a source of obsession for me. The image is supposed to be a marine snail spitting his ink, or sommmething. With that ink was produced the expensive colour that was used by the royalty and the powerful; but the poem is much deeper than that.

Purple —is fashionable twice—
This season of the year,
And when a soul perceives itself
To be an Emperor.

Emily Dickinson, 980.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Ceiling fan at night

There is such a heat these days that I forget what I'm doing middle way. During the night the ceiling fan drives down some waves of air, that doesn't prevents me from waking up sweating. I still like it that way and still resist the air conditioners. Also the character of a ceiling fan is fairly more poetic than a newer appliance. Everything older has it, as it has lived longer over the earth.
Last night I was in bed with the mind peaceful but wishing for a storm; woke up sweating later, and today I've seen birds under parked cars, looking for shadow.

Oppressive heat
My whirling mind
Listens to the peals of thunder.

Masaoka Shiki

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Prismatic fabric



I try to live each day
In such a way
That when tomorrow makes today a yesterday
I will have woven into the fabric of my life
Some gay design,
Some patch of color,
Bright, to please the eye.
So that, in the graying years to come,
When all the quick responsive senses dull,
I may look back across the patterns of my past
And, in my memory,
Live the joys and pains
Of all my yesterdays.

Don Blanding, "Fabric".

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Abstract Nº39

Fate is never too generous, even to its favorites. Rarely do the gods grant a mortal more than one immortal deed.

Stefan Zweig, from "Sternstunden der Menschheit" (Stellar Moments in Human History).

Friday, February 15, 2008

Hunted by a dreamed owl

Dreamed that a persistent owl chased me three nights ago; it was a blue one like in the Christina Rosetti's poem, but it wasn't a little one. I was a tiny mouse, and when I woke up, my mind digressed on mice because I'd like to have one, and from mice to rats, and that I am a water rat in the chinese zodiac, like my father, and that a week ago we entered the chinese year of the rat, and that this dream may have been a slight warning for the year?... After that I moved through the dark pipes of a new day ;-)



The Judge is like the Owl—
I've heard my Father tell—
And Owls do build in Oaks—
So here's an Amber Sill—

That slanted in my Path—
When going to the Barn—
And if it serve You for a House—
Itself is not in vain—

About the price —'tis small—
I only ask a Tune
At Midnight —Let the Owl select
His favorite Refrain.

Emily Dickinson, 699.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Butterfly's heart-shaped wings

Couldn't avoid turning cursi on this Valentine's day, so here you have the heart-shaped wings of this butterfly: look onto what your love had turned on. And now, please everyone excuse me for this, :-) but I suppose I'm not the only one having mixed feelings for this kind of day. That's why I like this Ogden Nash's poem below. So have a somewhat happy valentine's day you all.



More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That's how you're love by me.


Ogden Nash, "To my Valentine".

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The edge of the waterfall

Like flying over the edge of a waterfall in the morning?



O Child beside the Waterfall
what songs without a word
rise from those waters like the call
only a heart has heard-
the Joy, the Joy in all things
rise whistling like a bird.

O Child beside the Waterfall
I hear them too, the brief
heavenly notes, the harp of dawn,
the nightingale on the leaf,
all, all dispel the darkness and
the silence of our grief.

O Child beside the Waterfall
I see you standing there
with waterdrops and fireflies
and hummingbirds in the air,
all singing praise of paradise,
paradise everywhere.

George Barker, "O Child beside the Waterfall"

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Shamrock



[...]
Struggling, and yet for strife unmeet,
True type of trustful love thou art;
Thou liest the whole year at my feet,
To live but one day at my heart.
One day of festal pride to lie
Upon the loved one's heart—what more?
Upon the loved one's heart to die,
O shamrock of the Irish shore!

And shall I not return thy love?
And shalt thou not, as thou shouldst, be
Placed on thy son's proud heart above
The red rose or the fleur-de-lis?
Yes, from these heights the waters beat,
I vow to press thy cheek once more,
And lie for ever at thy feet,
O shamrock of the Irish shore!

Denis Florence MacCarthy, "A shamrock from the irish shore".

Monday, February 11, 2008

All for you



[...]
Turn, turn, my wheel! All life is brief;
What now is bud wilt soon be leaf,
What now is leaf will soon decay;
The wind blows east, the wind blows west;
The blue eyes in the robin's nest
Will soon have wings and beak and breast,
And flutter and fly away.
[...]

Henry Longfellow, "Kéramos"

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Dawn of the Apocalypse

Christina posted this morning image, and I saw the beggining of one last disclosure.

Happy birthday C.



On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet,
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world there will be,
No other end of the world there will be.

Czeslaw Milosz, "Song on the end of the world".

Saturday, February 09, 2008

The dreaming eye

For several reasons, today has been some kind of a dreamy day, sleepy plus oneiric day, nice for a change, very nice. I had this image stored.  This kind of weird eclipse-like image suppose to look like an eye with an unreal colour; it must be like this how the eye looks while we dream. :-) I think this is not the best result I made around the concept, but it is the one I have rendered now.  Will use this dream-like cosmic-eye to thank Katie Bowen for sending the movie Cold Tea, which I got and watched today, and David Kosh for writing it. I had a great break today thanks to that, and my eye turned to some new colour.
Cheers.



[...]
We live, while we see the sun,
Where life and dreams are as one;
And living has taught me this,
Man dreams the life that is his,
Until his living is done.
The king dreams he is king, and he lives
In the deceit of a king,
Commanding and governing;
And all the praise he receives
Is written in wind, and leaves
A little dust on the way
When death ends all with a breath.
Where then is the gain of a throne,
That shall perish and not be known
In the other dream that is death?
Dreams the rich man of riches and fears,
The fears that his riches breed;
The poor man dreams of his need,
And all his sorrows and tears;
Dreams he that prospers with years,
Dreams he that feigns and foregoes,
Dreams he that rails on his foes;
And in all the world, I see,
Man dreams whatever he be,
And his own dream no man knows.
And I too dream and behold,
I dream I am bound with chains,
And I dreamed that these present pains
Were fortunate ways of old.
What is life? a tale that is told;
What is life? a frenzy extreme,
A shadow of things that seem;
And the greatest good is but small,
That all life is a dream to all,
And that dreams themselves are a dream.
[...]

The Segismund soliloquy has perfect sound in spanish, so here's the original:

[...]
Es verdad; pues reprimamos
esta fiera condición,
esta furia, esta ambición,
por si alguna vez soñamos;
y sí haremos, pues estamos
en mundo tan singular,
que el vivir sólo es soñar;
y la experiencia me enseña
que el hombre que vive, sueña
lo que es, hasta despertar.
Sueña el rey que es rey, y vive
con este engaño mandando,
disponiendo y gobernando;
y este aplauso, que recibe
prestado, en el viento escribe,
y en cenizas le convierte
la muerte, ¡desdicha fuerte!
¿Que hay quien intente reinar,
viendo que ha de despertar
en el sueño de la muerte!
Sueña el rico en su riqueza,
que más cuidados le ofrece;
sueña el pobre que padece
su miseria y su pobreza;
sueña el que a medrar empieza,
sueña el que afana y pretende,
sueña el que agravia y ofende,
y en el mundo, en conclusión,
todos sueñan lo que son,
aunque ninguno lo entiende.
Yo sueño que estoy aquí
de estas prisiones cargado,
y soñé que en otro estado
más lisonjero me vi.
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño;
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.
[...]

Pedro Calderón de la Barca, "La vida es Sueño" (Life is a Dream)

Friday, February 08, 2008

Abstract Nº 38

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

Novalis, as quoted by Thomas Carlyle on his book "Novalis".

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Palette

This is sort of a virtual palette ;-) and half a dedication for real painters, plus half a dedication for fractal and evolutionary artists.



Many a year has fled away
Since this old palette was new,
As may be seen by the spots of green
And yellow and red and blue.

Many a picture was painted from this,
While many were only dreamed;
And shadow and light like the black and white
Across my life have streamed.

Accept, my friend, this plain old board
All plastered and imbrowned,
Where the pleasure and strife of a painter's life
Have left a mosaic ground.

The color that went to the picture's soul
Has left but its body behind;
Yet strive to trace on its cloudy face
Some gleam of the artist's mind.

Christopher Pearse Cranch, "My old palette".

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

The ring


This is the ring that once was offered, later slept into a drawer, and now live its dream at the bottom of a muddy river, like this:

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Blue button

This is a blue button, very hard to move from its place, please read this anti-war poem by an outstanding american poet and musician.



I have been watching the war map slammed up for
advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons—red and yellow buttons—blue and black buttons—
are shoved back and forth across the map.

A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one
inch west.

(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in
a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling
death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one
inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper
office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing
to us?

Carl Sandburg, "Buttons".

Monday, February 04, 2008

Yellow

Nothing special at all. Just the yellow colour. Can't be less than this. :-)


Sunday, February 03, 2008

Wood of the Yggdrasl

Today is my favourite patriotic date in Argentina, when the battle of Caseros was fought, a battle of 5 hours with very few losses; this historic battle was decisive for argentinian history, and the national constitution was granted thanks to the victory of the rebellion. The first constitutional president was a general from my province, and several future presidents of the country participated in this battle.
Related to this, when I was a kid, the literature of Jorge Luis Borges introduced me to the pleasure of the norse mythology, all tinted with a code of Courage, Truth, Honour and Discipline.

More serpents lie under the ash of Yggdrasill
than any fool can imagine:
Goin and Moin, they are Grafvitnir's sons,
Grabak and Grafvollud,
Ofnir and Svafnir I think forever will
bite on the tree's branches.

From the Grímnismál (Sayings of Grímnir), Konungsbók (Codex Regius).

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Hole in the sky



I'm looking through a hole in the sky
I'm seeing nowhere through the eyes of a lie
I'm getting closer to the end of the line
I'm living easy where the sun doesn't shine

I'm living in a room without any view
I'm living freely because the rent's never due
The synonyms of all the things that I've said
Are just the riddles that are built in my head

Hole in the sky, take me to heaven
Window in time, through it I fly

I've seen the stars disappear in the sun
The shooting's easy if you've got the right gun
And even though I'm sitting waiting for Mars
I don't believe there's any future in cause

Hole in the sky, take me to heaven
Window in time, through it I fly

I've watched the dogs of war enjoying their feast
I've seen the western world go down in the east
The food of love became the greed of our time
But now I'm living on the profits of crime

Ozzy Osbourne (when in Black Sabbath).

Friday, February 01, 2008

Blue tones



Always with the Novalis's blue flower in mind, I've discovered this excellent australian poet soon ago, and this poem deeply called my attention, as it deeply directs its attention into the deepness. :-)

I would be dismal with all the fine pearls of the crown of a king;
But I can talk plainly to you, you little blue flower of the Spring!
Here in the heart of September the world that I walk in is full
Of the hot happy sound of the shearing, the rude heavy scent of the wool.
Soon would I tire of all riches or honours or power that they fling;
But you are my own, of my own folk, you little blue flower of the Spring!
I was around by the cherries to-day; all the cherries are pale:
The world is a woman in velvet: the air is the colour of ale.
I would be dismal with all the fine pearls of the crown of a king;
But I can give love-talk to you, you little blue flower of the Spring!

John Shaw Neilson, "To A Blue Flower".

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