Black, White, Red, Green, Blue

I'm on my vacation time, and now I'll take some days off; will travel and I'll bite the fruit like an animal, and letting the juice run over my face will be sweet and sour, feral and sophisticated, inciting and instigating, enlightening and dangerous, dirty and sexy, royal and menial, melancholic and euphoric, deep and playful, genuine and surreal; needed.

I leave this high five, out of Rimbaud, until I'm back.

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
which buzz around cruel smells,

Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
in anger or in the raptures of penitence;

U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
silences crossed by [Worlds and by Angels]:
–O the Omega! the violet ray of [Her] Eyes!

-- The original:

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d'ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides
Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;

O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des [Mondes et des Anges]:
—O l'Oméga, rayon violet de [Ses] Yeux!

Arthur Rimbaud, "Voyelles".

Creature of the Light Nº7

I prefer the gorgeous freedom,
And I fly to lands of grace,
Where in wide and clear meadows
All is good, as dreams, and blest.
Here they rice: the clover clear,
And corn-flower's gentle lace,
And the rustle is always here:
"Ears are leaning… Take your ways!"
In this immense sea of fair,
Only one of blades reclines.
You don't see in misty air,
I'd seen it! It will be mine!

Aleksandr Blok, poem named after the first line.

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract Nº78

(Shine, perishing republic)

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity
Heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the Molten Mass, pops
And sighs out, and the mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make
Fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,
Ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.

You making haste, haste on decay: not blameworthy; life
Is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than
Mountains: shine perishing republic

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance
From the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lies at the
Monster's feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man.
A clever servant, insufferable master.
There is a trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught
they say God, when he walked on Earth.

Robinson Jeffers, "Shine, perishing republic".

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract Nº77

Hail! Childish slaves of social rules
You had yourselves a hand in making!
How I could shake your faith, ye fools,
If but I thought it worth the shaking.
I see, and pity you; and then
Go, casting off the idle pity,
In search of better, braver men,
My own way freely through the city.

My own way freely, and not yours;
And, careless of a town's abusing,
Seek real friendship that endures
Among the friends of my own choosing.
I'll choose my friends myself, do you hear?
And won't let Mrs. Grundy do it,
Tho' all I honour and hold dear
And all I hope should move me to it.

I take my old coat from the shelf -
I am a man of little breeding.
And only dress to please myself -
I own, a very strange proceeding.
I smoke a pipe abroad, because
To all cigars I much prefer it,
And as I scorn your social laws
My choice has nothing to deter it.

Gladly I trudge the footpath way,
While you and yours roll by in coaches
In all the pride of fine array,
Through all the city's thronged approaches.
O fine religious, decent folk,
In Virtue's flaunting gold and scarlet,
I sneer between two puffs of smoke, -
Give me the publican and harlot.

Ye dainty-spoken, stiff, severe
Seed of the migrated Philistian,
One whispered question in your ear -
Pray, what was Christ, if you be Christian?
If Christ were only here just now,
Among the city's wynds and gables
Teaching the life he taught us, how
Would he be welcome to your tables?

I go and leave your logic-straws,
Your former-friends with face averted,
Your petty ways and narrow laws,
Your Grundy and your God, deserted.
From your frail ark of lies, I flee
I know not where, like Noah's raven.
Full to the broad, unsounded sea
I swim from your dishonest haven.

Alone on that unsounded deep,
Poor waif, it may be I shall perish,
Far from the course I thought to keep,
Far from the friends I hoped to cherish.
It may be that I shall sink, and yet
Hear, thro' all taunt and scornful laughter,
Through all defeat and all regret,
The stronger swimmers coming after.

Robert Louis Stevenson, poem named after its first line.

Specie of the Dark Nº 2

To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.

Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil", Chap. IV.

Specie of the Dark Nº 1

Species of the Dark is my complementary serie to Creatures of the Light.  This is the first.

Whose little babe is this?
Who now slumbers on a city sidewalk
Bundled in a tattered sleeping bag
In back of a brick and mortared building
Knocked crooked by time.

Whose little boy is this?
Who now wakes in a garden of cigarette butts
And abandoned pages of old newspapers
On ragged cement
Where only the most desperate weeds
Dare to grow.

Whose mother’s son is this?
Who now pulls himself up and out
Of the brief escape of sleep
And stands in icy morning air
Extending his thoughts only as far
As the ashen tip of the smoldering cigarette
He sips like a cool, sweet glass of juice.

All his generations reduced to this,
A life too young for such resignation,
Too old for much renewal,
Too far from home
This lost child.

Russ Loar, "Lost child".

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract Nº76

Crimson
Waves weeping
Tears on
My sleeves alone
Is the colour stronger.

Ki no Tsurayuki.

Creature of the Light Nº6

I can't explain what I don't clearly understand. I can't be clear about how is it that I love a city that I never visited, its spirit, its hues, since I was a child. How to explain that I belong to something mostly unknown?
Today I think I got a glimpse of the How-Is-It, when I read this post: Vanishing City.
Of course! The soul, the misfits, the community of the different ones in a perfect blend and connection, and also the lack of it, les enfants terribles and les enfants gâtés, the outrageous evictions, the greed, the worried filmmakers... and the unique resistance to lose the spirit of the city itself. All too pure, like frozen winter air, to breathe it in all at once, without hurting the lungs.

By simple logic, if a city is a city for the misfits to fit in, as the "Vanishing City" post say, then that it's not only a city, but an extended state of mind, that never sleeps. Sexy city.

It is another Creature of the Light to me.

City of orgies, walks and joys,
City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make
Not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your
spectacles, repay me,
Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the wharves,
Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows with
goods in them,
Nor to converse with learn'd persons, or bear my share in the soiree
or feast;
Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and swift flash
of eyes offering me love,
Offering response to my own—these repay me,
Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.

Walt Whitman, "City of orgies" (from "Leaves of grass", Book V.)

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract Nº75

If you're respectful by habit,
constantly honoring the worthy,
four things increase:
                 long life, beauty,
                 happiness, strength.

Words attributed to the Buddha on the book of the thousands (Dhp VIII, 109).

Creature of the Light Nº5

I am a shell. From me you shall not hear
The splendid tramplings of insistent drums,
The orbed gold of the viol's voice that comes,
Heavy with radiance, languorous and clear.
Yet, if you hold me close against the ear,
A dim, far whisper rises clamorously,
The thunderous beat and passion of the sea,
The slow surge of the tides that drown the mere.

Others with subtle hands may pluck the strings,
Making even Love in music audible,
And earth one glory. I am but a shell
That moves, not of itself, and moving sings;
Leaving a fragrance, faint as wine new-shed,
A tremulous murmur from great days long dead.

Stephen Vincent Benet, "A minor poet".

Ghost in the machine

... my today’s self perpetually slips out of any hold of it that I may try to take.

Gilbert Ryle, "The Concept of Mind", p. 196.

When two terms belong to the same category, it is proper to construct conjunctive propositions embodying them. Thus a purchaser may say that he bought a left-hand glove and a right- hand glove, but not that he bought a left-hand glove, a right- hand glove, and a pair of gloves. ‘She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair’ is a well known joke based on the absurdity of conjoining terms of different types. Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this. It maintains that there exist both bodies and minds.

Gilbert Ryle, "The Concept of Mind", p. 23.

Bug

With bugs, with butterflies,
With bees, ants, dragonflies, –
My youth withdrew into the fields
And waves with wings of mist.

Tightshut eyes see the suns
That roll across coarse earth
Where the days of my youth died
While waiting for new dawns.

With bugs, with butterflies,
With bees, ants, dragonflies, –
My youth withdrew into the fields
And waves with wings of mist.

Faustas Kirsa, "The tiny kingdom".

Purple entity

Sometimes I dare to use the expression "digital beauty"; or maybe are only my eyes this time, but when I was rotating images and this one suddenly bloomed, that's what I thought.  It lacks some light, and it works better fullsize.  Almost everything is owed to the computer this time.  And I wondered how is it that our best things come out when you let things freely flow.  No extra work was needed -was born like this, and the background combined quite well; like other things in life.

Is it a flower or a creature?  Is it perhaps a intermediate being between flora and fauna?  Is a spiritual being, a lotus flower bloomed out of deep meditation?

[EDIT: I traded the original for a better illuminated version.]

[...]

The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls
Stand ever mantling with aëreal dew,
The drink of spirits: and it circles round,
Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,
Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,
Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.
Arise! Appear!

[A Spirit rises in the likeness of a winged child]

This is my torch-bearer

[...]

Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Prometheus Unbound", Scene III (3.3.142).

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract Nº74

The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palm, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers -all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.

Lawrence Durrell, "Prospero's Cell"

Crystal ball

Pure energy.
Once I posted what I could consider my finest image, Crystal Ball 2, made in 2D.
And this time, while playing with lights and transparency, looked for another crystal ball for me, and found that there's a lifeline of crystal balls to read a lifeline; like that witty Kafka's line in his Diaries, suggesting to read the future by actually living the present until the future gradually becomes something more readable -the present itself.




By the way, orange is the symbolizing colour for spiritual searches.

"Oh, crystal ball, crystal ball, save us all, tell me life is beautiful", says the song.  You can play it with this gadget down here:

Structore up

Weak pun.

By this stairway narrow, steep,
Thou shalt climb from song to sleep;
From sleep to dream and song once more;—
Sleep well, sweet friend, sleep well, dream deep!

Richard Watson Gilder, "The stairway".

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract Nº73

This one is right out of the binary oven.
In electronic nature, no matter how estranged, nothing can't be prevented from reflecting the sky.

O rapid days, electric hours,
Flashing with all that kindles life,--
O shifting scene of suns and showers,--
O melodrame of love and strife,--
Such stirring racing days as these
Are all too full of strong effects
For stale simplicity to please,
Or equal what the world expects.

Time was, a wonder lived nine days,
And sorry talents grew to fame;
But now, one minute's curious gaze
Is all we give to note or name:
Glutted with news of all things strange,
We scarcely care to watch the turns
Our quick kaleidoscope of Change
Is working in the world's concerns.

The foaming river of events
Rushes adown its rocky steep,
And causes, facts, and consequents
Are hurl'd together in a heap,
And keen Excitement's rainbow light
Hangs iridescent o'er the fall
Of waters rushing in their might,
Solemnly overwhelming all,--

Ay,-- a Niagara-life is ours!
No rest, but ever hurried on
By the great deep's gigantic powers,
By the strong wind Euroclydon,--
Yea, by the mighty flood of Fate,
Yea, by the gale of human crimes
We speed along, as if "too late"
Were the great terror of the times.

The lotus-eaters all are dead;
There is no nook for quiet thought;
The halcyon birds of peace are fled,
And calm content has come to nought;
Spur on,-- spur on! our steeds are strong,
No need to spare them in the pace;
With reckless energy headlong
We all resolve to win the race.

O day of hot competing strife!
O crowded scene of struggling sin!
What chance of any prize in life
Has any tyro battling in?
The rarest worth wins little gold;
Wisdom has barely wit to live;
What chance, compared with calms of old,
Does all our hurly-burly give?

What chance? -- pray, labour, and be still;
They do not drown who lie afloat,--
And quietness sets free the will
To pilot well the crankest boat;
And,-- he that stands aloof from strife,
Calmly resolved to thread the maze,
Shall quell to his Success in life
The riot of these rapid days.

Martin Farquhar Tupper, "Railway times"