Thanking the visitors

This blog was born on march 31, 2007, is an aries and for some unexpected reason we don't like each other. ;-) However. I will thank the visitors and commenters all through this year of blogging.

This is a simple blog to post my 2D visual arts created with interactive genetic algorithms (some 3D GA's intruded the blog too) and nothing more, however, the commenters and the ones I know about between the invisible visitors, many many times had made a difference in my mood, my state of mind, certain zones of my general behaviour, and my sense of decency too, why not :-) I've known excellent people only because of blogging, and some of them became friends who lend a hand even when I never asked that. Cheers.

I'm thanking every visitor during twelve agitated months, and that means everyone; it certainly includes all who I can't speak with anymore, because everyone who was related to me and this blog at the same time, became an important person to me, at least at one particular moment of this past year of blogging.I've responded every comment. Since some undetermined day I felt pushed to post everyday, any crappy image available, but everyday. This blog became cathartic during a crisis in my life last year, somehow changing its simple objective to a more human one (although I never liked to speak of myself in any public forum). Never thought I would surpass the limit of the three months of blogging: but did it. Never thought I would be able to create as many evolutionary art images and relate them to the art of another artist that I like, as my daily blog requires: but did it. Never thought that a person may thank me for making him/her know another artist: they did it. Never thought it would be possible to openly speak of myself, with my picture and real name: did it. Never thought I could know in person a faraway reader, did it. Never thought I would make a friend who could be with me in a moment of need (or viceversa) without even knowing that person's face, did it too. All because of this spare-time blog, so happy bloggiversary to a blog with two parenthesis too much. It is certainly a happy blog to the author, every day it's a happy event to come back here. Cheers.

I'm proud of this, although it may be common: I may bore you but (lucky me) never insulted your intelligence; never explained what I shouldn't during my everlasting chaotic behaviour and thinking.

Thank you for becoming a friend after visiting, you've let your mark in me. Will try to go for another year.

Here comes the sun (III):




And here comes the song:

Waterfall

As the poem is named, this is for C. A supposed view from behind a waterfall.

Behind a laughing waterfall
There lies a little fount of tears,
Deep, dark, and rarely seen at all
By those the sparkling torrent cheers.

Beneath a suit of armor bright,
Shaft-proof and burnished, hard and cold,
There beats, concealed from common sight,
A tender woman's heart of gold!

John Lawson Stoddard, "To C."

Seven variations on the "Chess" subject

These seven uninteresting images are the scrap remains of a work named "Chess", posted here.

This were different stages of the search for an appropriate image to make company to the dream that I had that time (days before I posted the image, the dream, and the Borges's poem).

So this are belated versions now named Chess II, III, IV, V, VI, VII and VIII. Just scrap pieces right now, and my preferred between the scraps is the Nº8. I let them here mostly to document the search... or the simplicity I was chasing.
As you can notice, the final version of "Chess" posted before is composed by the

combination of Number II and Number V. This is how results in evolutionary art are achieved, you select, mutate, crossover, and evaluate sets of offspring until one work is finished and you can finally pick up a phenotype or individual (an image in this case).


Nº 2:


Nº 3:


Nº4:


Nº5:


Nº6:


Nº7:


Nº8:


Just in case, to not make you click, this was the final version of "Chess", that my dream needed:



And I add now this outstanding poem by Ezra Pound that I found relevant for the post:

DOGMATIC STATEMENT CONCERNING THE GAME OF CHESS:
THEME FOR A SERIES OF PICTURES

Red knights, brown bishops, bright queens,
Striking the board, falling in strong ‘L's of
colour.
Reaching and striking in angles,
holding lines in one colour.
This board is alive with light;
these pieces are living in form,
Their moves break and reform the pattern:
luminous green from the rooks,
Clashing with ‘X's of queens,
looped with the knight-leaps.

‘Y' pawns, cleaving, embanking!
Whirl ! Centripetal ! Mate ! King down in the
vortex,
Clash, leaping of bands, straight strips of hard
colour,
Blocked lights working in. Escapes. Renewal of
contest.

Ezra Pound, "The Game Of Chess".

Gems

Wanted to create a set of heart-shaped gems for the haiku, but whenever I modified the Z-Axis and the gems took the shape of a heart, the three connected into one, and I didn't wanted that, so I post this one even on its very "work-in-progress" state.

As in a clear glass
I want to see her, I feel;
I would meet my darling;

As a belt of jewels,
My enduring love
Grows lusher now.

Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro.

Structured floration

Just tried to illustrate this lovely poem.

Is made up of reservoirs,
Birds flying South, mailmen

Snow falling or rain falling,
Railmen, Howard Johnson and airmen

Birds of Paradise
Silk lined caskets

Prize poems and guitars,
Beatitudes and bestiaries,

Children taught contemporary manners,
Time taking time away

With a haymaker or a sleigh,
Hope always belaboring despair.

Form is a jostle, a throstle,
Life a slice of sleight,

Indians are looking out from the
Cheekbones of Connecticut Yankees,

Poltergeists deploy northward
To tinderboxes in cupboards in Maine,

The last chock knocked, the vessel
Would not go down the Damariscotta

Until the sick captain’s four-poster,
Moved to the window by four oldsters

Gave him a sight of her, and
He gave her a beautiful sign,

And there was the witch of Nobleboro
Who confounded the native farmers

Who, having lost the plow-bolt
Right at their feet, found it

Concealed in her apron: she laughed,
And made the earth fecund again.

The hard structure of the world,
The world structure of illusion.

From seeing too much of the world
We do not understand it.

There is something unknown in knowing.
Unfaith is what keeps faith going.

Richard Eberhart, "The hard structure of the World".

Abstract Nº53

Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon.

Jorge Luis Borges, from "The Wall and the books".

Abstract Nº52

To complete my expression of admiration for many works of Van Dyke, who was always at the shadow of Tennyson anyway, is that I post this poem from him, now that it coincides its subject with this stressed month of mine. And surely passionate workers will like the poem too.

Let me but do my work from day to day,
In field or forest, at the desk or loom,
In roaring market-place or tranquil room;
Let me but find it in my heart to say,
When vagrant wishes beckon me astray,
"This is my work; my blessing, not my doom;
"Of all who live, I am the one by whom
"This work can best be done in the right way."

Then shall I see it not too great, nor small,
To suit my spirit and to prove my powers;
Then shall I cheerful greet the labouring hours,
And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fall
At eventide, to play and love and rest,
Because I know for me my work is best.

Henry Van Dyke, "Work"

Sunrise at the hive

This is the second part of the post and the poem from yesterday.
I admire how Van Dyke worked its way through the concept till the end of this poem. It is great how the author goes through the particular -greek myth- onto the general -meaning of life.

[...]

VI

Look how the landscape glitters wide and still,
Bright with a pure surprise!
The day begins with joy, and all past ill,
Buried in white oblivion, lies
Beneath the snowdrifts under crystal skies.
New hope, new love, new life, new cheer,
Flow in the sunrise beam,—
The gladness of Apollo when he sees,
Upon the bosom of the wintry year,
The honey-harvest of his wild white bees,
Forgetfulness and a dream!



III

Legend

Listen, my beloved, while the silver morning,
like a tranquil vision,
Fills the world around us and our hearts with peace;
Quiet is the close of Aristæus' legend, happy is
the ending —
Listen while I tell you how he found release.

Many months he wandered far away in sadness,
desolately thinking
Only of the vanished joys he could not find;
Till the great Apollo, pitying his shepherd, loosed
him from the burden
Of a dark, reluctant, backward-looking mind.

Then he saw around him all the changeful beauty
of the changing seasons,
In the world-wide regions where his journey lay;
Birds that sang to cheer him, flowers that bloomed
beside him, stars that shone to guide him, —
Traveller's joy was plenty all along the way!

Everywhere he journeyed strangers made him
welcome, listened while he taught them
Secret lore of field and forest he had learned:
How to train the vines and make the olives fruit-
ful; how to guard the sheepfolds;
How to stay the fever when the dog-star burned.

Friendliness and blessing followed in his foot-
steps; richer were the harvests,
Happier the dwellings, wheresoe'er he came;
Little children loved him, and he left behind him,
in the hour of parting,
Memories of kindness and a god-like name.

So he travelled onward, desolate no longer,
patient in his seeking,
Reaping all the wayside comfort of his quest;
Till at last in Thracia, high upon Mount Hæmus,
far from human dwelling,
Weary Aristæus laid him down to rest.

Then the honey-makers, clad in downy whiteness,
fluttered soft around him,
Wrapt him in a dreamful slumber pure and deep.
This is life, beloved: first a sheltered garden,
then a troubled journey,
Joy and pain of seeking, — and at last we sleep!

Henry Van Dyke, "The white bees".

Within the hive

I felt like making two images for two halves -one today, one tomorrow- of the poem The White Bees by Henry Van Dyke, just because I like the poem... a little long for posting in a blog... but I like the poem, I said... very much, specially how the writer find his way till the end of it. And it is pretty relevant for the end of winter and the beggining of spring.

I

Legend

Long ago Apollo called to Aristæus,
youngest of the shepherds,
Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees."
Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey;
golden, too, the music,
Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees.

Happy Aristæus loitered in the garden, wandered
in the orchard,
Careless and contented, indolent and free;
Lightly took his labour, lightly took his pleasure,
till the fated moment
When across his pathway came Eurydice.

Then her eyes enkindled burning love within him;
drove him wild with longing,
For the perfect sweetness of her flower-like face;
Eagerly he followed, while she fled before him,
over mead and mountain,
On through field and forest, in a breathless race.

But the nymph, in flying, trod upon a serpent;
like a dream she vanished;
Pluto's chariot bore her down among the dead;
Lonely Aristæus, sadly home returning, found his
garden empty,
All the hives deserted, all the music fled.

Mournfully bewailing, — "ah, my honey-makers,
where have you departed?" —
Far and wide he sought them, over sea and shore;
Foolish is the tale that says he ever found them,
brought them home in triumph,
Joys that once escape us fly for evermore.

Yet I dream that somewhere, clad in downy
whiteness, dwell the honey-makers,
In aerial gardens that no mortal sees:
And at times returning, lo, they flutter round us,
gathering mystic harvest,
So I weave the legend of the long-lost bees.


II

The Swarming Of The Bees

I

Who can tell the hiding of the white bees' nest?
Who can trace the guiding of their swift home flight?
Far would be his riding on a life-long quest:
Surely ere it ended would his beard grow white.

Never in the coming of the rose-red Spring,
Never in the passing of the wine-red Fall,
May you hear the humming of the white bee's wing
Murmur o'er the meadow, ere the night bells call.

Wait till winter hardens in the cold grey sky,
Wait till leaves are fallen and the brooks all freeze,
Then above the gardens where the dead flowers lie,
Swarm the merry millions of the wild white bees.


II

Out of the high-built airy hive,
Deep in the clouds that veil the sun,
Look how the first of the swarm arrive;
Timidly venturing, one by one,
Down through the tranquil air,
Wavering here and there,
Large, and lazy in flight, —
Caught by a lift of the breeze,
Tangled among the naked trees, —
Dropping then, without a sound,
Feather-white, feather-light,
To their rest on the ground.


III

Thus the swarming is begun.
Count the leaders, every one
Perfect as a perfect star
Till the slow descent is done.
Look beyond them, see how far
Down the vistas dim and grey,
Multitudes are on the way.
Now a sudden brightness
Dawns within the sombre day,
Over fields of whiteness;
And the sky is swiftly alive
With the flutter and the flight
Of the shimmering bees, that pour
From the hidden door of the hive
Till you can count no more.


IV

Now on the branches of hemlock and pine
Thickly they settle and cluster and swing,
Bending them low; and the trellised vine
And the dark elm-boughs are traced with a line
Of beauty wherever the white bees cling.
Now they are hiding the wrecks of the flowers,
Softly, softly, covering all,
Over the grave of the summer hours
Spreading a silver pall.
Now they are building the broad roof ledge,
Into a cornice smooth and fair,
Moulding the terrace, from edge to edge,
Into the sweep of a marble stair.
Wonderful workers, swift and dumb,
Numberless myriads, still they come,
Thronging ever faster, faster, faster!
Where is their queen? Who is their master?
The gardens are faded, the fields are frore,
How will they fare in a world so bleak?
Where is the hidden honey they seek?
What is the sweetness they toil to store
In the desolate day, where no blossoms gleam?
Forgetfulness and a dream!


V

But now the fretful wind awakes;
I hear him girding at the trees;
He strikes the bending boughs, and shakes
The quiet clusters of the bees
To powdery drift;
He tosses them away,
He drives them like spray;
He makes them veer and shift
Around his blustering path.
In clouds blindly whirling,
In rings madly swirling,
Full of crazy wrath,
So furious and fast they fly
They blur the earth and blot the sky
In wild, white mirk.
They fill the air with frozen wings
And tiny, angry, icy stings;
They blind the eyes, and choke the breath,
They dance a maddening dance of death
Around their work,
Sweeping the cover from the hill,
Heaping the hollows deeper still,
Effacing every line and mark,
And swarming, storming in the dark
Through the long night;
Until, at dawn, the wind lies down,
Weary of fight.
The last torn cloud, with trailing gown,
Passes the open gates of light;
And the white bees are lost in flight.

[...]

Henry Van Dyke, "The white bees".

Abstract Nº51

Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of a few metaphors.

Jorge Luis Borges, from "Pascal’s Sphere".