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Watercolor, pen and gold pen.

Made today 02/15/22, while talking on the phone w/ my brother-in-law.

Sometimes it's nice to make something while speaking on the

phone; I'm not conscious of what I'm doing, just letting the

hand meander.

A constant stream fed by glaciers on Mt. Hood in Oregon.

  

THE DRUNKEN MUSE

The story "Drunken Muse" was audio recorded on a hidden voice recorder during the conversations about two decades ago. The story-teller didn't know or consent to the recording.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_recorder

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette

The audio tapes on compact cassettes were never used. The records were partially damaged and lost.

Herewith the unedited transcript version.

 

medium.com/paul-jaisini-paints-invisible-paintings/paul-j...

I am so pumped to get back to painting as I return to the second year of the art school after a full year suspension. As always it is like time-travel culturally speaking, like walking right into the middle ages going through the antique building’s portal.

Art studios are the huge L-shaped lofts with super tall ceilings 20 feet no less with the wall to wall windows so that sunlight illuminates the space from south and east side designed for the purpose so that one could paint there from morning till sunset.

In a studio there are classical gypsum sculptures, expensive copies of Venus de Milo, David, Laocoön and the others. In the art studio there stood the noses, eyes, lips, feet, and palms on the wood shelves.

Sketching the gypsum body parts helps you to build the classic academic base on which stands the whole modern and contempo art. This sort of teaching is specific for the art schools that preserve the traditions they had been founded on. There is only few art schools like this and of this caliber left now. Could be that this is the only legendary school that continues to function as if nothing had changed in the world. In the rest of the world with billions of some art classes nobody knows what does the old tradition of art school is for, its totally unfashionable.

Studying classic art (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_art) here is the foundation for creativity in any of the art styles.

  

The smell of art is what defines the studio but not from human presence, something like an aroma reminiscent of the eastern market where smoke from hookaahs mix with the oil vapors, exotic fragrance from candles and spices. The Art Studios were never renovated since the times they were built over 150 years ago. The wood floors are saturated with art oils as if the floor is waxed with the organic oils from nuts, linen ( linseed oil, poppy seed oil, and so forth.) Adding to the mix the varnishes used by painters (pine wood varnish, Dammar varnish and others) It makes this ART SMELL to be the most intoxicating and ever-lasting musk.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting - Ingredients

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio - Art_studio

  

The instance you enter the studio space you feel the belonging to a knighthood and the whole art history. You are the undivided part of those people who left their creation imprints.

Super pumped up after the long break up with the arts after my full year of non-stop party marathons I had returned to the bohemian life style.

Actually my other life style wasn't any different from the bohemian.

The only difference is that there is some meaning in the bohemian life style, something to create, to shape. Not just spend time doing sports and girls but something on a whole 'nother level only with the same sub text and by far more emotionally connected.

The bohemian I think is much more my thing, that fits me as a person. Maybe because my old man is the greatest sculptor.

He is color blind so apparently I took up the torch, I have a very special sense for color.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculpture

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness

  

There could be an inborn human predicament or inborn genius.

I returned into the world to kiss its ground. I like everything about it, the babeville and its fashion circus.

The art students are known to come up with endless varieties of how to be stylish.

Take me for example, I am chilling in a suit jacket. It was professionally hand-tailored out of a denim Pajamas with stripes and starry silk underlining.

This “look” is completed by my python leather jeans. And over that an authentic LONG military Germany Waffen Elite Officer black Leather Coat from the WWII, only it is without a Swastika.

I never part with my large portfolio and a Field Easel.

EASEL

  

About 700 students attend the studies. The art school accepts only the best of best with few exception such as the kids of celebrity artists, writers and musicians and people who had real power in the city.

I wasn't enrolled for money or the A-lister parents, but for my talents. The Art specialty (painting, drawing, sculpture) teachers here are the world-wide recognized contemporary artists.

In a matter of my working ethics these important artists would point at me as the example of how fast I work, how well I sketch in color, how I always choose the most unexpected and unusual angle for my composition and so on...

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_(visual_arts)

name banner gif

  

Optical illusion geometric gif

  

(portraiture, still-life, and landscape)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_life

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_painting

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_drawing

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_painting

  

I never work on an académie (live drawing of a model, live painting of a model) the given eighty -- ninety hours. My whole process is about six -- nine hours to fully complete the work so I get out of the studio for some action and fun.

I’m probably the strongest in the class. My art professors know I don’t need to be there to distract the others.

When I’ve got nothing to do I start banging the head against the wall. Still I am criticized SUPER harshly for cutting the classes.

At this point I am not aware of the inner workings of “THE SYSTEM”.

I call suitcase with a secret compartment.

At the grade shows I only see the bad grades on my best artworks.

There is another side of the coin. It revealed in the future when I got to befriend a secretary at the Dean’s office. It was about the time of my graduating year.

The art teachers actually always considered me to be the leading artist among all students. They would grade all my artworks high on my personal record I knew nothing about.

That was how the art school’s system pushed the talented students to go further to open up their potential. Pushing to the limits of impossible.

I am harshly criticized for cutting a lot of classes.

There is another side of the coin. It will be revealed in the future when I got to befriend a secretary at the Dean's office. It was about the time of my graduating year.

The art teachers actually always considered me to be the leading artist among all students. They would grade all my artworks high on my personal record I knew nothing about.

That was how the art school's system pushed the talented students to go further to open up their potential. Pushing to the limits of impossible.

Willing or not but the doubts get in my head. I was thinking (rather frantically) that maybe I’m all just misguided. I will work to beef up my skills unable to accept that I am not really a “genius” artist. The bad grades were corrupting my vision.

Totally clueless that these bad grades in my case were used as "disciplinary measures" for my behavior of anarchy. These grades had nothing to do with my artworks.

And yet my best drawings and paintings are graded the lowest. At the same time the art professors are taking my works home. I always find empty walls where my works were displayed for the semester shows.

Sooner or later the missing artworks got me enraged. My classmates tell me the back story on what REALLY had happened.

All the art professors usually go the painting major's finals. So they just took my artworks right off the wall.

Ever since I heard this back story I flaunt how IDGAF to even pick up my works with the bad grades after the finals end.

Like a bunch of some doomsday looters in sight of an electronic store the art students same as the teachers vultured my artworks. Later some of my paintings and drawings were seen at the school's museum, especially the paintings.

The story of the artworks snatched off my exhibit wall developed further.

In the art school the art teachers are the privileged kind who exhibit regularly. All are the accomplished artists with big names.

Another thing about my artworks (no longer mine and in someone else's possession) is the story that involves someone with the top art rep being the art dynasty. Even so it happed that the leading art professor nicknamed Molly (for her annoying facial mole) used my art stuff to have her son who studied same years as me, just never expelled, to apply to an art academy with the highest qualification requirements. Molly's son portfolio sucked. To get him qualified to apply she gave her son all of my artworks she collected.

The juice was given to me by the reliable sources. The story was concurred by the eye--witnesses the students who were applying to the same academy together with Molly's son. Some of these students knew my work by the style, special color palette and the brushwork.

They all knew that Molly's son was using my artworks. He only had to forge his signature and remove mine.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_(art)

  

My drawings, sketches, paintings, watercolors are in "wide" use by others.

I tell that to describe the routine of my life.

It could explain why I was expelled three times for the chronic absence, for sabotaging the lectures -- getting my classmates to leave the studio and go to the movies or to the beach.

Fast forward to that event of the breaking point when I started to work systematically.

  

I was sucked into work as if a drug addiction. I was penetrating deeper to the very core of creativity. Reading books, going to the museums, working in the field, working in the museums to copy masters. I completely forgot all about life around me.

Practically I was devoured and digested with my nails and hair by that devil called the academic art. It sucked out the leftovers of my soul.

I stayed in the studio after the classes to work. There were only few students like this, spiritually close to me. To them it was their life style since the day they had entered the art school unlike me. Whenever I'd get bored with art I'd quit working and just leave without asking permission.

Now as if something had hit me hard and I started to really work. Most art students here typically come from such backgrounds when they did their baby steps and studied in the children's (secondary) art school from an early age and tutored by art teachers at home

I had a tendency to take on a higher complexity unprepared without the experience of any art school training (the eight years on a daily basic with teachers and methodical practice.)

As long as I remember myself I was drawing, during my school years, on the notebooks, with chalk on the asphalt, with stick on the sand. I did it subconsciously, not knowing what I was doing.

IDK, could be due to the several bad bike accidents when my head ended up hitting the brick...

  

Why did my brain moved into the direction of noticing those things that normal people should not be noticing? That the leaves on the trees are not at all green, but violet.

The falling shadows from the street lights are not at all outlined by black, the contours are the absolute blue.

The trees look like people.

There are so much more shades of colors that language could articulate.

Stuff like this filled up my head so that there was no place left for just a thought about girls, more so even the thoughts to manipulate my body functions. For instance using the

bathroom. I almost peed my pants. Truthfully I was on the edge of madness.

I remember how I hallucinated during my work imagining that someone had come into my studio and I spoke to "the guest." My brain was ill, there was no escape from that hell.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_(color)

  

Once I was walking on a street without any awareness. My mind was no longer in command of anything accept the obsession with my painting. As I was pushing the limits of what was humanly possible in a matter of progress from the previous stage when I could draw and paint with intuitive results now I considered as totally armature waste of art materials. My condition would be hard to describe since I could hardly remember what was it like during that madly intense period. I know that I was working non--stop and did make some major break through. It worked but at the same time the progress turned its evil side, I wasn't able to stop even for a brief moment. Something happened to my otherwise incorruptible memory that I could only remember few things from that period. And one of those things was my death walk through the city streets on a day I was supposed to disappear.

When I realized that I was walking automatically, blind and incredibly

avoiding the cars, for the first time I felt the fear of madness that can easily take my life. It wasn't something I would fear if I was in my other life when loosing it would be quite an ordinary thing and not due to my lost mind.

Whatever it was I survived with no chances to stay alive that day. I had more chances to live on when I was shot at execution style, when I was drowning in bad storm, climbing on a building like a cat, and on many others such occasions.

Some guardian angel was looking over me as I came to the final moment of certain death, blind, deaf, disoriented and delusional.

As we finished with draperies, still life, gypsum figures we moved on to the nude. To draw and paint from the live sitter, male or female model.

There comes an old fat hag to be posed before the artists. She will be POSING even during the breaks. She sits professionally without a slight move of her flab folds for us to draw her “forms”. ‘assume it was done for the boys not to get distracted with the female anatomy.

The models with “rounded” forms were chosen so we would study the reflects and double reflects on a “sphere-like” and “cylinder-like” forms.

There would be plenty of the cast shadow (a type of shadow that is created on a form), and a drop shadow ( below the image).

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_positions

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_study

  

The working objective was to concentrate on the drawing’s construction.

When we’d get a young female model, she’d be so skeletal that we studied the skeleton. This type of models was as unattractive as the fat ones.

The art students without an eye for a drawing and technique produced their works of caricature quality. With the lost proportions the models looked like animals, skinny chickens or fat frogs.

For me it was a serious job, body didn’t exist. I x-rayed the flubs of fat to see the bones to connect them to muscles, to build a form.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caricature

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeleton

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skeleton

  

The illness I call the overdose had progressed and my end was near.

Homies who knew me used to say that I was cracked.

When I moved from the classicism to modern (I refused to see any modern or contemporary art, never wanted to see it, or ever saw it) I entered the Modern art on my own, as my foot stepped into the forth dimension.

I entered the world of mad pressure. Good I stepped in it one foot yet.

I was sleeping in the studio right on the floor near my work and placed an electric heater near by.

It was impossible to heat up whole place where fifty heavy-duty easels only took a quarter of the studio space.

In the center there was a huge round stage made from a special hard wood to hold any number of models when needed for the multiple human-figure compositions.

The place was full of easels, portable and the large for the field. The chairs, tables, palettes, boxes with paint, cases with paper and lots of other art stuff piled up into mountains.

The parquet floor was always covered in fresh oil paints even though the teachers tried in vein to prove a fact that working neatly was by far more productive.

  

We had a dormitory built same year as the art school which was 150 something years ago.

If you stayed late in the studio that was forbidden, you couldn't get to the dorm.

A guard at the main door was a real watch dog, he faithfully guarded the pathway knowing every student's face.

The dorm was occupied by those who couldn't pay for a room or the apartment in the city.

Ten beds were squeezed in a dorm room.

This part of the antique building was never renovated probably b/c it was planned to be turned into more art studios.

But since there were out of town students who had no place to live they were given a place in this dorm.

The beds were of a good prison-like quality so the survival was possible. Another thing is what was happening in the dorm.

On a typical day nobody there had any money left after the expensive art materials. Not a penny to get high. Alcoholic liquid (40-60%) was soaked into the bread.

From one bite of that bread you could instantly drop dead as if your legs got cut off by a train.

The receptors inside the nose absorb the fumes to hit right into the brain, this way the booze doesn't ever enter the digestive system and blood.

It kills or makes one go bonkers.

Some pissheads in desperation poured vodka into a wine bottle cap to inhale it like coke. After one cap screw it was a total alchoholocaust.

There were many ways of economizing: to use a medical thin rubber tube to suck the drink very slowly, one bottle would

serve four alkies.

It was the usual schizophrenic day for me. I had my dose of coffee and ate on a way to the studio.

Those days I didn't miss a class afraid to get expelled for the last and final time.

I couldn't understand this thing about my artworks. Why did my classmates literally begged on their knees to have the C-graded artworks I was never satisfied with.

It became my trade mark to give away all of my stuff left and right. I didn't know why I let go of my drawings and paintings so easy. Now I regret that. It would be interesting to see the growth.

Once I happened to tell a guy from my class who worked very hard on his drawing (he wasn't a good draftsman): "Oh Wow! you are doing a lot of progress, buddy, congrats!" I looked at his portfolio and pointed at a piece: "This drawing here is really mature and quite interesting, you achieved volume and air in just a linear drawing."

The guy suddenly goes red, stares at me wide-eyed with anger or confusion I couldn't quite understand...

"Am I saying something wrong?" I asked.

"You're fucking dissing me!" He answered.

"Why?" I wondered.

"This is YOUR drawing," Was the answer: "I took it, that is when I asked you and you gave it to me, don't you remember?"

I didn't recognize, didn't see my signature, as it was overlapping the drawing.

The guy was holding a grudge for this but it didn't turn him into one of my enemies.

  

At some point I am thankful to the teachers for their sneaky methods and experience on how to tame the most unruly and bring them into the art's stable. On the other hand these people were like sadistic fascists who used their special gases on me experimenting, would I survive it and live on.

The bohemian hyped up life only started after the classes at about seven in the evening. This part of the artist's life was full of sex, booze, and drugs, more sex booze drugs and orgies. The art youth was progressive, the sex - communal with the conveniently shared girlfriends and boyfriends.

Strangely the good times didn't concern me anymore now.

There was a small group of idiots who followed their criteria of achievement: to draw and paint a vase with flowers so that it comes to life, right out of the canvas to the carrying hands of the one who painted it. The flowers turned alive would be given to the girl/boyfriend.

The madness of the 4th dimension.

The art group was lead by me and another guy soon (one month later) to disappear forever for the reasons unknown.

After the classes me and few others searched for a studio. Found it. Not my studio. Any studio with the door unlocked.

As usual I would set a still life. Take off my nazi coat.

Set my next canvas on the easel to start quick sketching.

Out of nowhere shows up some dude who was a new student, he was much older, about twenty three, somewhere from Texas and just plain untalented.

He wanted to hang around with "the power-group" to learn.

There were few girls with the ambition to reach the level of a manly hand in creation.

We all usually worked in grave silence and even a slight noise would be extremely annoying.

If a brush would fall it seemed the atomic bomb had exploded somewhere near. We would exchange vicious cursing at the jittery creaking sneezing noise maker.

When you are focusing intensely and can't quite catch the brush stroke to complete the shaping of a form so that the image would turn real and come out of the flat surface the nerves are high strung to the limit.

The last months I just never left the studio, didn't even come outside. Slept on my German coat in the corner. It was veiled with the drapery. I'd wake up in the morning. The doorman was already used to give me the keys knowing that I sleep and work there. It came with a warning that if I am discovered I must tell any story and solemnly kept the secret.

The memories from those years distract me from telling what I want. It's about the event that had closed for me the entry into the forth dimension.

That day I was getting upset over some stupid teases: "What had happened to you!"

Whether the bros wanted to elevate my mental state, or they needed to get my works it had really caused me distraction. I was focusing on my work. Suddenly I hear the sounds of music in the studio. It jumped me: “Are you out of your fucking minds? That asshole doorman will come here."

"No he ain’t gonna."

"Why?"

"He is passed out, we had to carry him away." Was the answer.

"What is going down?" I worried.

"Not much, nothing is going down, we just want some fun. The way it is on here is so buzz-killing."

Was it some holiday, I didn’t know. Holidays passed by me, I didn’t smoke or drink and only worked. What they were saying didn’t reach me.

“Shut down the music. You’re gone but I must sleep here."

"Why must you sleep here?" Asked Lorenzo (nick-named after his personal preferences of the Benzos)

"Hmm, I guess there will be no way of working today?" I asked.

"Working, way working, you gonna make me some home works," Assured me the dude nicknamed Kuz. "For that I will make your sculpture complete."

As interesting as it was to play with the real forms in sculpting I disliked dealing with the clay. Those times I believed the painting to be so much more in gradations, possibilities and complexity. Now I changed my mind to consider any art media possess the unlimited possibilities.

I agreed. Suddenly the guys were fixing to leave and I had to ask: "So? Who will finish building up the sculpture if you're leaving?"

"No worries, will build it up, brb just a quick run for some booze before the stores closed up."

"What booze? Get out of here go to another studio. I work, don’t mess me up."

"No biggie, son, you can rest for once."

It was pointless to argue, they'd already been drunk and I was only getting nervous. My work wasn’t going good at all. I have changed the lighting set up many ways in vein.

Suddenly, out of nowhere Muse appears. A young, very-very attractive girl about eighteen. The returned gang introduced her to me:

"J-Sin, meet her... lets say Nicky."

"Eh, hello Nicky, who and what are you?" were my greetings.

She smiled to everyone and answered: "I will be posing for you today."

"We agreed about everything, will pay the price,” –explained Lorenzo barely moving his tongue, "She is gonna be happy!"

His bag full of bottles made loud clanking noise.

When the drunks got them out I counted six.

“Yes, this is going to be a wild night.” I was thinking what to do now. I approached the model, took off her coat and hanged it, removed her blouse and explained that she can go behind the curtain.

"Hey, hey! What curtain son, what’s with you? She is from the med school, our people!"

I heard the Kuz's inebriated voice. "She is THE model!"

"What -- nude?" I wondered.

"And what did you think, she'd sit covered up in here?" They burst into laughter.

Suddenly I feel elated with the anticipation of the new and amazing subject for the work. I was fed up with the poor set up and the struggle to "find" the good lighting for the gypsum head. How wonderful it turned out that I could make some picturesque oil sketches.

When the model took off her bra, her young breasts, her nipples instantly distract my attention from work.

Shit, I couldn’t focus. Since we hadn’t a glimpse at such models it was too interesting. Could be that something about this evening or the environment was different. First time in a long while the music was playing, the glasses jingled and filled up with wine.

As she posed we were all doing the quick sketching. She removed everything except her panties.

The drunken assholes wouldn’t let me focus.

"Let me finally have a chance to work." I yelled getting distracted.

They seemed to try bargaining: "We brought you the model, hey girl turn around!" Kuz pulled up her skirt and slapped her buddy. "Look at these buns, you've got to do another

drawing for the semester show."

"Boys, you are so bad!" She giggled to Kuz. "I will spank you for being soooo bad!" And she was laughing in most contagious sexy trills of her childish capricious voice.

  

I didn’t understand what these die--hard drunks were doing at the art school, without any talent or interest in art. My former palls in another life that was long forgotten. Today the serious artists who always worked together with me had left the moment this bad company swam by.

Now I was looking at their watery eyes winking at the model. They caressed her things as she reclined on the wooden stage to rest. I wanted to figure out why did they distract me even more now?

I was the same age as the model. I didn’t see her body, to me now it was the model for painting.

It was getting late when the cold winds penetrate the place from the drafty wall size windows. I put on my sweater in the starting freezer. The one meter or the three feet and 33/8 inch walls are like the thermos to absorb and hold the cool temperature. I looked at the laughing bunch who labored on my sculpture.

One was drawing a huge flying dick with wings with a charcoal right on a white wall.

I had finished sketching the figure. I came up to the stage to set up the heater. I asked the model if she could sit some more taking breaks whenever she needs to move.

When she looked at me she was constantly smiling.

"Sure she’ll sit! And she'll lay, right, sweet buns?"

I held my breath working imagining how awesome would be to have such a model every day. With a shaky hand I was working fast as a machine expecting any minute now she would say that she is too cold to sit another minute and she leaves, its all over. I will have to kill her and sit her lifeless body on a chair to complete my work.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!"

The heater I placed caused the red reflexes on the body. I was painting and had to get the color right. So I removed the heater. The model immediately complained about the cold. Kuz brought her a glass of wine asking me why did I remove the heater.

From wine her face flushed red. I tried to adjust the color scale, laying brushstrokes over the whole figure.

Meanwhile the music turned up it was getting real loud.

The model took her break.

I walked after her studying her forms.

"Is something wrong?" She asked.

"Its all right, could you turn this way."

"Oh, I see. Same in our med school, the nut cases," She openly declared to the others when I was on a floor looking from a lower viewpoint.

"Who is this?" She asked: "What kind of a mental is he?"

"Its a disease, but it will pass" – was the answer for her. "Sometimes it is terminal. Not his tho, his will pass, he loves the young girls very much…"

Something from the stupid jokes had reached me.

"Hon, now he needs the medical attention. You are the medic? We are forever in debt to yous for allowing us come to the mortuary and for helping with the dead bodies... What we have here is a zombie. You are the goddess who saves the body as your calling."

What I heard was polluting my pure artistic brain with that life I refused. Now I was paying attention not to the mammary glands but to her breasts. Her back muscles are slightly weak. As I looked over the skeleton the muscles slowly disappeared. No matter how hard I tried to focus my x-rays were weakened. Maybe the electricity turned off inside my head.

"Pour me some," I asked.

Six months of my immaculate virginity and celibacy was broken by a wine glass. The red wine like the blood of innocents was running in my throat filling up the brain that shortly was boiling with vigor. So I said:

"Could you please remove your panties?"

"It wasn’t the deal," protested the model with her eyes glowing like honey.

Lorenzo interrupted her:

"For god’s sake, take of your panties, what is it to you, aren't you a medic?"

"I thought someone here was shy, as for me" She lustfully licked her lips. "Well, of course its nothing."

"Who is shy?" Asked someone.

"Him the weirdo!" She giggled in a very cute bubbly little voice.

"Are you shy?"

"It seems it was me who asked her to remove the panties." I explained.

She just jumped right out of her panties not without pleasure it seemed.

I imagined how to position her, what pose should she take.

"Hey!" I asked Kuz to pour me another glass. He was cheering me on yet reminding that I should first finish the drawing.

"Later," I mumbled turning to the model: "Would you please sit on a chair and spread your pretty legs a little, as much as you wish."

"Hey, Alex, so he is normal?" She asked.

I was far away from normality. A actual girl weaved from the reality. But the process was a transformation with splitting dimensions.

She was turning more real when I touched her to show how to position her legs.

I glimpsed at the red pubic hair seeing the pink flesh of her vaginal lips.

I couldn't focus on my work. Could the “female anatomy” destroy the temple of magic I was erecting for the eight months?

I returned to my easel and continued working. She was fidgeting changing poses uncomfortable this something hurting that... But it was only natural, she was sitting naked on a plain hard wooden chair. She was sliding from one side of the chair to another. I was buzzed from wine and couldn’t work, but I tried to complete my work just to annoy these assholes who screwed up my day. First work was washed off with turpentine and I wiped up the canvas dry with a rag.

I was sketching now not with a charcoal but brushing in umber. It resulted in an interesting tonality and I was captured again. The model squirming on her hard chair complained.

"Yo, why don’t you lay her down, what is she suffering for?" Asked Alex, "Lay her the fuck down, why not."

Right! I thought a little and told her to lay on the stage. Underneath her I spread some drapery.

After few wine glasses I took off my sweater, my cheeks were on fire. Hers too. I unbuttoned my shirt, my blood was boiling, the body was washed with the warmth.

The heater was moved away.

"So true that wine warms you up," she said to Alex.

"Jay, so tell me how to lay her down there. Sit, sit, you poor thingy, I'll assist you" And he jumped on the stage. "Do you want her legs spread this way?" he asked opening

up her legs so that her whole anatomy was showing.

"Is this ok for you?" He winked at me: "Is it good?"

"Oh no, can’t show it like this at the mid-semester show." Thinking some I added: " Let it be, lift her leg a little higher, like this. Turn her head down."

"Like this?" He kissed her on the lips.

"Alex, the fuck you're doing, I don’t have any time."

"Work, keep drawing, go on!" he said. "We won’t disturb you."

I was outraged after I just washed everything off my canvas ready to work, but this wasn't going anywhere. I kept asking Alex what did he mean by not disturbing me when he messed everything up. I heard the girls laughing trills. "For real, he is ill!"

"The sick can be cured." Insisted Alex. "Will hill him." He slurred.

Of course, I own them my very life. If it weren't for them –- that’s it, finito.

Kissing her on the lips and winking at me Alex continued bugging me: “Is this right?”

For like ten minutes I was staring in the infinity in the emptiness… Then I yelled: "Why are you sucking her? Get away from her, let her lay there quietly."

Only to hear some nonsensical mumbling.

"But I want you to work on the position, is this position right?"

"Right, just fuck off of her."

Meanwhile Kuz, I noticed, was taking off his pants. He said: “Let him go fuck himself. Motherfucker is gonna fuck us up today, if he doesn’t want it, so fuck it.”

Now I thought I knew what they wanted from me.

I saw Alex’s naked butt as he laid on the stage, banging the girl and his ass wiggled.

I started sketching their nude asses.

My consciousness was still in the process of transforming.

I thought of how interesting were their poses.

Lorenzo came up to me and took the brushes from my hands placing all in my field easel he closed up.

"Listen, J-man, you’re being a fucking buzzkill. Go draw some vases, fuck off to another studio. You don’t want it. For free?"

I didn't understand him what did he mean. He explained:

"What do you see Alex is doing right now?"

"He is fucking his girlfriend." I said.

Lorenzo continued:

"Whose girlfriend? What we have here is a

scientist, from the med school who is helping us in our artistic quests, to understand the core of anatomy not only from the outside but from the inside. I recommend you, in order to comprehend, as you must know, you can only know the truth from the inside, experiencing the inside, to understand the outside. That’s why I seize the brushes. Here is another glass of wine. Drink!"

I looked at him as a doctor listening to his drunken bullshit.

"The most important thing for you is to understand from the inside. See, you can’t understand it from the outside, it’s not how things are done."

"Yes knowing the internal anatomy helps, take a muscle, body doesn’t exist without muscles." I agreed.

"Hell yeah, yeah… ha ha…that’s what I am going about. Look how Alex is working how he is learning."

I looked at the bare ass's motions back and forth, at the girl who was lifting her legs and actively moving her hips. Alex jumped off, wiped up his cock with the drapery, he also wiped out the girl. “Who is next?”

Kuz was kissing her from one side, when Lorenzo said:

"He worked very hard today, he must learn from the inside. You see, because he just can’t break through the inside."

When Kuz was mounting her, Lorenzo spanked him loudly:

"You can wait, the man needs the muse, get it? Understanding the Muse comes only from the inside.." They all bust into laughter.

Lorenzo nearly helped my cock inside the girl cheering on: "Just do it, little one, everything is gonna be great. Honey, turn him back into a soldier that we've lost."

"The man is gone, the man known yesterday is not the man you meet, forever, around the corner, in London or in the street..." chanted Nick appearing from nowhere. He continued slurring his poems.

Hearing the noise I didn’t know what’s going on as I kissed her breasts.

"Feel the forms." I heard the racket near by as I was buzzing off the wine and licking the girl's body. On the other side Lorenzo had joined in groping her breasts. To be more at ease I moved her body closer to the stage’s edge. I was on top.

I didn't hear any sounds of music, the entry door was covered with the draperies as the orgy just steamed up for the whole night.

I woke up on the stage from loud knocking.

The art students asked me what happened to the busted still life set.

I exhaled my dragon breath to hear no more questions. Took my coat and left the building. Walking the street I met Alex.

"Your face is not yet blushed, your eyes are a bit foggy, can’t say anything after the sleepless night. Like Cures Like."

He grinned getting money out of his pocket. "Let us get some treatment."

We walked to the known spot for aching heads gathering.

   

Model: Jamie Rose

 

Taken for a photochallenge, I made Jamie hike about a mile with me and change into this dress, in the middle of Griffith Park. I had originally envisioned this to be a very bright, high-key image. Instead, I turned day into night :-)

 

'God created your soul so that you can reach God through your soul and you come to know God.' - His Divine Eminence RA Gohar Shahi

 

Self-portrait inspired by winter.

Format: 35mm

Film: Fuji S-400

Camera: Pentax MX

Lens: Voigtländer Color-ZOOMAR MC 70-210mm

 

www.kanearcadia.com

"I feel confined, only free to expand myself within boundaries.”

 

('Motoko Kusanagi' / 'Stand Alone Complex' version by Figma / Max Factory)

 

Diorama by RK

🎧 microscopic meditations offered for heart and heart's ease, after listening to morning blessings of Mahant Swami Maharaj in his divine presence in Mumbai on 23 February 2023:

 

to see right there in the palm of your hand, a place where consciousness & the subliminal gather in hands cupped like a bowl; to go into the forest with this bowl, where silence and beauty are the deepest; and that’s when the magic happens...

 

phone isn’t

the same string

from person to

person now

that we carry

them and

have no homes

 

eileen myles

 

when you 'get it,' the language is heart's ease - beautiful, connected, resonant; and when you don’t, it can be frustrating to ramble about an isolating experience.{} honesty is a sine qua non to this reflection process...all I want is to be opened.

 

Meditation 1: painful intimacy - emotional openness ...which stems from startled silence of emotion; emotion never dodged, only the details. an intimacy which is not destructive, on the contrary, it becomes constructive to discover through the fogs of silence, the secret of the wounds. an innocent intimacy as you meditate like writing a letter to a close friend, confiding the innermost and intimate nature of that kind of conversation:

 

between two infinities, when one can never spin fast enough to catch a glimpse of the spinning world; zoom in - a pas de loup. body-edged journey squaring the circle; where openness is not charted - soul-flow is getting missed; and so the next second brings storm-clouds ☁ over the head; unguarded position found. le séjour. it brings in triple waves - of emptiness, of hurried emotions (signs of dizziness you don't know) and of deeply unfathomable feelings (when light and darkness is felt closer than ever); feeling cold to take the next step in the shivering rain that never stops, one further feels the subtle clouds looming over a larger distance as far as you can see, to bring in muted moments of indecision. terra incognita - the map of every place in the mind of 'jonathan livingston storm gull'; wherein to find the path means to lose the peace. a silver lining gains a place of esteem in the head-cloud, “we don't patch up and piece together the time spent with illusions.”

 

"I tie my handkerchief

to a kite

to try and dry

the cries of

the clouds up there.

Pour, pour:

oh, if only

I hadn’t loaned

my umbrella

to that submarine!"

.

playing the royal game in circles, 'put the blame on', each and every day, the paper airplanes fly inside through the window; the newspaper has been crying another day older denying any liability in non-fulfillment to worth of life; the auto-triggered paralyzing thoughts of a messy heart slowly finds the status quo - the chaos reigns as reprehensible acts gain momentum and then it will no longer be possible to stave off utter misery; pollen's hardened outer coating, the honey bees cleave the grains at a vulnerable point. a moth-like attraction to the mental processes full of waves of frivolity, that will cost the moth everything; recklessness always turns out to be expensive, yet the mind clothed in rags remains obdurate as it cannot let go the sub-stratum of such images which spring to the impromptu mind who dreams to robe ornate clothing; images which are result of attraction of cohesion to the highest beauty which a flesh-mental-ego self would love to marry. the dense calendar flows like water bursting out through your hands and yet the empty thirst never quenched; and when you really wake up, the corrosive paper airplane has been compelled to form a slowly moving boat of ineptitude, asking you to drink your own tears. with bonds damaged, tissue paper in water, coming apart from a sailing quality. inundated areas of thinking start to project the weakness on others. same emotion tumbling around in your head, amorphous but forming. evaporating as the years pass by and the brooding clouds keep crying. even when the skies clear, there is a constellation of grief around and there is no clearing of deceit-less path to find a way out of the shame, dread, debt, doubt and sadness. lurching between soaring high waves and agonizing lows waves, how can one sail in the ruling tides of haunted past, wistful present, and the disorienting future? simply unmoored, breasting the surging tide, the turbulent seas...

 

heart does the assignment

underlines the words

after mind erases them

the emotion has its own tide coming in

a blank page is a mirror

has the line that won't go away

 

being aware of the deceptive circles in which you move. ripples... as in the mirror, every little bad dream is preening to be remembered; also a reflection of hangover after past that adumbrates the future and so the mind is churned over again to seek relief-joy; a melting point [IIΙ] for wisdom followed by series of griefs, each compounding the last one. the count never ends; but this creates a immobilizing language of circumstances and sad database, which infiltrates the joy of gratitude and the defense of it.

 

"every problem has a solution. the problem is to find the solution to the problem." — pierre filion

 

irredeemably till how long will you will you continue to define yourself but not refine yourself into aligned understanding? restructuring of the self and reality needs to see the essence - 'the soul can always evolve.' backfired, in measuring the positive parts of life, the numbered days of the passing life does not paint the whole picture; and yet they start becoming a Lazy Sunday - each day. and so finding satisfaction in moments of stark relief, punctured in these wasted days, a recluse does not think beyond the merry-go-round of the numbered whole.

 

"Books were to her not an end in themselves but a substitute for living. She raced through folios because she was forbidden to scamper on the grass." Virginia Woolf on Aurora Leigh

 

so much information to be deposited elsewhere keeps coming at you and very little manages to stick and make you think better. things can move better and be possible, only when you are in a state of grace, when deep channels are open throughout; deeply stirred balance maintained. but ignorance can quickly hold us as whole, at most of the times, like no knowing can; because in this shelled ignorance lies body-edged joy brought in quickly, not even giving a fortnight of chance to the story of patience - that which can ripen as the joy of an enduring kind - a story about river meeting it's sea. instead our story becomes like sea channels that needs regular dredging to stay open and that cannot happen by staying shrouded in mystery.

 

futzing around ever since,

a story about story-lessness,

or to become of worthlessness

or ideas left to stew in

vat of pulpy esoteric stew.

again, a fear to lose the face,

in those staircase encounters,

where unsettled ghosts linger.

formlessness of the darkness

living an austere life, existence

you hardly even acknowledge

eyes of others; felt ambivalence

as time passes distance grows

leaves a couple of points undefined.

 

until you really stop to examine

the progression and coherence,

the dreary analytical lines can spin

into excess; inhibiting the soul-work.

an afterthought to character development

wasn’t really addressing any

of the questions that really drew me,

a muffled voice says within & still mumbling

 

lines follow shifts in the thoughts and feelings

with no break in the texture and flow

homogeneous passages maddeningly ambiguous

dense & abstract aesthetic, return to form

emotionlessly transposing world into word.

to make the thought sound more deep than it is.

 

looking to address such battles

of the negligible music; with a narrative

from the timbre of his voice

every story wants every vile human impulse

to be transformed through care; and,

in case you forget who i am, do not

forget the common ground, just plowed

grief isn’t fresh but it’s ongoing

confounds but deepen us

the glimmers of hope deep inside you

grateful, not hateful.

enter the harvest time

.

 

"most of our problems proceed from our inability

to sit quietly in a small room." — pascal.

 

solving one problem by creating other problems is not the way to do things... don't you see?

 

feeling discouraged as well as judgmental, how much overwhelming information would be flitting around the mind? still the plans for the road ahead were always ditched for the earliest fixations of the mind - a way to grapple with un-grappable feelings as well as tendency to crumble in pressure situations. with nothing at stake, the relief-joy moments are delineated'; merry - no - round, there is an unseen hole in this illusory sense of whole and unable to deal with the painful and prosaic realities of life. the relief-wisdom, if at all gained in the process, may never get beyond just being good - becoming a lengthy as well as single monotonous line without a melody.

 

“I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.” ― Sylvia Plath

 

“Growth in painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”

 

in such a state of inconsequential affairs, when one's heart is fettered with memories and when one's heart does not really get moved, the strident hinged door opens up certain promising techniques of the times. the cross is, basically, that the portrait of the soul loses many wholes with frontal light of such techniques. such techniques like mindfulness to the present moment and other quick-fix ways will never fill the void within nor answer a lot of questions about 'right affection'. continuing our discordant chorus, the fulfillment of heart never really happens as one switches between the light and dark moments without much rhyme or reason. after a peak of body-edged joy trying to fill the bottomless ego, there is a rapidly decreasing taste of enjoyment as the senses are blunted to some extent. momentarily stumped and yet to forget the queasy feelings and as an act of coping mechanism, one is pulled in to that same cycle of relief-joy and then feeling rather stung by the pleasure. if it was treasured time, why that became a trash time? why you grew more and more despondent? why ashamed to see what you leave in your wake? inured to stress, as if the side-lined efforts were for nought - the factor by which nothing will multiply and fickleness of eyes never saturated; now, never eager to receive the grace of the Purest who can enlighten the earnest eyes.

 

"a shrug says sorry" and you stay near but elsewhere; and you delude yourself to exist trouble-free in same plane of thoughts but not able to see how the grace can end the suffering created by struggle between truth consciousness and unconsciousness of peace-making pathways. in over-trying to do things in own mind's dominant reaction to difficult situations, you forget to establish the rhythm formed in the pathway charted through fortitude, and a graceful rhythm as being greatly reflected in the Purest Heart.

 

everything the heart needed appears in that moment of belonging to the Heart breathing the truth of devotion, and then recedes as the delusion in own mind also intensifies when crisscrossing the landscapes of momentary belonging is a journey to pass into days of dust. near to the wild heart, with this mindset of giving all-or-nothing and letting time slip in rolls-royce ecstasy, till when can one wait to have the courage for surrendering to the compassionate Truth? and travel through gates of vulnerability before the scorpion tells the truth? is it that when eyes ache, then only it can be seen that the self which resisted baring is going to fail? shouldn't the methods of living life as learned behavior of unawareness and unwanted urges, expose the hollowness in one or another area, till the collective trauma of the profound personal loss is not addressed by going to the source? to see what blesses and sustains us at the source level. it is definitely some grace received to find that inner alignment and rhythm and then asking the right questions.

 

"Days pass when I forget the mystery." — Denise Levertov

 

steeped in comfort, till when can you continue to secure a favorable or transcendent narrative to camouflage unscrupulous deeds? isn't it too taxing to maintain our pretenses with the ugly tedium of explanatory justifications? of commanding cerebral experiences? of disparaging cliches? when will you stop the inflationary use of the compensatory and positive words that are not a stitch in time to save nine? don't you see that these words of suffocating clarity trickle down and gets stuck in your heart like a thorn? when will that understanding happen to see - why you've been protecting yourself, wearing a hat always in style, instead of wholeheartedly working on protecting the truth? don't you know that only the pencil will support your weight without leaving an indelible scar? how will you navigate your own self-doubts and misgivings? are you really interrogating the nature of your fears or just becoming more weaker with the fear of questions? will not, adding here of one more thing, to the list of interfering questions, create more disconnection and disorientation and cast doubt across decades; or are these questions stepping in stones to meet the hurtful part of self? to see how deterioration started by collusion with this gradual process of enticement. how long will you entertain false-hearted guests to your thought process? don't you see that every little comment from them just chips away at your confidence.

 

ventriloquizing of a voice dreaded throughout from an ingrained identity but not from purity of a soul? forced to question when you are ruing the lost time? are these self-obsessed questions another form of resistance - a daily resistance to death (or reluctance to let go) and an embrace of life? or are these tea-time questions, a sign of sugar full of procrastination to indefinite prolongation and beyond? a sign of inveterate tendency to overlook the course of action? can just asking more of such unconsidered questions fill your ravenous soul? soul that is increasingly being alienated from own purpose and true self. would you like when someone quizzes you about your irrecoverable unemployment? ignoring the many ways of associative knowing, life destroyed by silent-natured embarrassing relationships and obliterated by subsequent incidences of missing the deeper and subtler eye to see through such awkward involvements. can you read your personal, intimate book? incapable of deep-reading, eliminating the mystifying features of the study days; alienated and demystified from natural world and natural order to study, you only exclude learning and wonder pathways and become hardened to integrate them. unsure but hopeful, in the end, are these spiritual questions limbering up or just the magnitude of cerebral questions in which you feel cleaving of mind between intimacy and distance for the same concepts seen in limited observation of the mind shining through flashbacks of fragmentary memories; maybe, like Emily since the ancient times, cannot explain with a delicate-as-lace sentences poem:

 

The Lost Thought

 

I felt a cleaving in my mind

As if my brain had split;

I tried to match it, seam by seam,

But could not make them fit.

 

The thought behind I strove to join

Unto the thought before, ,

But sequence ravelled out of reach

Like balls upon a floor.

 

Emily Dickinson (can you see if Emily in you retreated further into herself or emerged out open to big change?) she saw deeply and so could also see that something was missing. unfortunately, she couldn't put her finger on what that was. She definitely did not had a cursory way of looking at grief.

 

imprisoned within the shrinking confines of a conscribed life, to read the questions straight through will further tangle the mind. and it is difficult to read these questions and "difficult" is a different thing from "incomprehensible". the ego has a false belief that everything will cohere somehow or other, because it all comes from you! to take the next right step, something always gets missed, you say with a sinking voice. a voice which asks, "does not the fragmented structure of the thought process echo your mental state? the general tenor of all but querulous...

 

mind to soul and soul to mind, each preaching to the choir and so the honest question was never attempted from the very beginning. only ego massage by seemingly big questions and then nothing. the honest question to ask the self mirror is - how principles once rigidly followed become fluid when it becomes expedient? the golden principles can only be truly lived, right from the start, if one is truthful in love, but not by who feigns love for selfish reasons. please do not have a convenient follow up to these questions with a band-aid to plug a deluge.

 

“when the sky cries, things start to bloom. so, let those tears flow. it's good for you too. all things which greatly hurt me greatly teach me. often, it’s the deepest pain which empowers you to grow into your highest self.” ~ ― karen salmonsohn

 

grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.

it’s all the love you want to give, but cannot.

all that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest.

grief is just love with no place to go.

 

jamie anderson

 

les nuages dans ma tête. going à travers a baffling phase in own life and impossible to act in the moment when thinking diverges into abstractness, it takes extraordinary acts of metamorphosis by fostering qualities of courage and engagement in shaking the self, to get the self looking through after the initial breakthrough - a look for cathartic value in the continuum of life in everyday and of pathways that create better connection to your intermediate stages in journey; bridging through metaphors and similes and the grateful connection to grand continuum. in this act of listening in care, what does being fully present to the moment mean? it is when one brings parts of self together (who had been put up with each other and so had not communicated with each other for long), so that they listen to each other. worth the pain, "i feel so gutted" for the gain of affection; it is then, when one begins to heal and find how the pain hurts so less than subdued grief of regret; and then you listen to your true source in pursuit of the sublime.

 

did you see this as a fallow period which is now copiously bestowed with the ripening is because of trust of 'Eterna-Oski' who is so steadfast and believing? Tears...

 

looking into the sea of your eyes, tears broke through me, through my fears, the way frozen river break open after the arrival of spring. once you find your breakthrough moment, rivers of yearning, rivers of reaching... comes through

 

it is this continuum wholeness where clouds become witness to a graceful sight – leaf joyfully breathes the wind —

 

looking into the eyes of love in the clouds, what is seen, is a beautiful journey of training as an apprentice with alertness and dedication, to achieve the continuum of consciousness, that is observing – with equanimity and not living from behind the positioned ego, that creates barriers to being fully present.

.

 

Meditation 2: returning with wonder. the pitch and purpose of this peaceful reflection is 'spiritual openness' as a source of clarity and compassion, about how we love.

 

"But to say, I know—is there any touch in it?

To be there; to listen; not invade. Another solitude ..."

 

— Jean Valentine

 

being fully present in the moment is never about being in middle of nowhere. meaning of a word is its use in the language coming from the Heart. shapes of preciousness. ton histoire commence par un voyage. must press on for one last battle, gentle warrior of mine, revisiting the arc - not just a point we’ve arrived at but a direction of travel:

 

of truly "seeing" where you belong, the vantage point offered, beyond being an oddball; this seeing in essence, becomes a simple yet generative story of mine, of finding a closure - closure to body-edged drifting of self, along the great tendencies of 'nakara' self who always craved to get the crumbs of fairy-tale joy; such an urge, felt by the untested self; felt without stronger feelings due to heartstrings stretched in every direction in the fleeting moments. interplay of disorder and order as day and night follows in a worn world. steering the strong waves with own mind as rudder, between all the competing voices pulling us here, pushing us there, this vantage point of life offering a steady beacon of light by which you can navigate to your authentic self and devote truly in love.

 

a small bowl

in my hands like the nest

 

/- joseph fasano

 

lumière divine sur toi, this vantage point of life - an attachment formed via wonder of the soul to love the dweller inside the inner garden, two doors away and the shrine eight outer barriers away; bringing the purest and golden transformation of self. la caresse, a guide and a gift, an invitation at the same time into yourself and beyond yourself; whispering woods - this secret, no longer held between shadow and light present in every vanishing page of life. everything unfolds from the center with no boundaries of affection.

 

once a true love is recognized, it takes tremendous courage to make a connection with right affection and completely trust your journey to it, with it. beauty of love that is challenging and comforting at the same time - expanding thoughts to meaning, healing, order, respect, rhythm and timeless calm. compassion you have for those of us who "try" earnestly, humbly and transparently. very taken by this innocence of friendship at its most glorious and by nourishing care, to be lost in contemplation in the grateful wonder of this garden .. following the great footsteps, this homecoming filling the void of the soul at the feelings level, relevant and true - of experiencing 'Eterna Tenderness' of Purest Hearts.

 

a thought under my pillow, glowing in the morning's dark

 

now all the efforts surf on 'finesse et légèreté'/fineness & lightness. performing the poetry of such tenderness together, of nurturing one another, a great joy comes when we re-imagine our world together united as one. nourished wisdom that plants seeds of Tenderness... of beauty and light. the more generously we love, the more blessed we lead our lives and get to flourish. compelling honesty cast like dandelions upon the air of thoughts; with such ease, and such care that only true friendship can do. companionship thought buds toward devotion, blossoming with tender honesty and deeper truths.

 

Dear Heart, do not be stymied by what you consider as mistakes. keep growing in our joy of togetherness.

 

when i'm not thinking about anything else, that’s joy forever. heart is no longer vacant of dreams; yet, never a wish for something more, now, every dream i have, transcends me to same garden of the Heart where I see the Form behind the light. one stays amazed in this magical dream so truthful, and from that moment, the time was enfolded in the act of being fully present to unfold the bundles of conversational joy with a steadfast companion; and now the earthly glow responds with saintliness to blossom the flowers of peace for one and all - a wish, highest of all.

Glowing in the light of a golden new day, Star assumes the Upavistha Januparivrttasana posture (or so she tells me...for all I know it could be a poor imitation...not to mention that I had to accept her word for it on the spelling) to maximize the contemplative and meditative benefits that she so vigorously maintains only yoga provides.

 

I tend to believe her, since she has effectively argued that the concept of a cat having nine lives is not really a myth, but a confused view of the fact that the cat is the only species who long ago attained the highest levels of evolutionary spiritual enlightenment, pointing out that one never hears reference to a dog having more than one life...or a clam...or even a human. Thus, having reached this stage, a cat can of its own volition choose to return to earth (or not) and show not the slightest distress or concern with its surroundings or situation, whatever they may be.

 

Certainly explains a lot to me...

   

Architect: Brad Cloepfil, Weiden + Kennedy HQ, Portland Oregon

“It seems like the chaos of this world is accelerating, but so is the beauty in the consciousness of more and more people.” ~ Anthony Kiedis

Consciousness

 

HKD

 

Ansichtssache

Thema Nr. 11

 

Was sind meine Ansichten über Tod, Transzendenz und Erlösung?

 

Alle Erscheinungen finden – man denke an einen Traum – im Bewusstsein statt. Alle Phänomene sind vom Bewusstsein abhängig, denn der träumende Geist erzeugt alle Erscheinungen, den Träumer und die um ihn erscheinenden Objekte. Alles sind bedingte und vorübergehende, sich wieder im Bewusstsein auflösende Dinge. Alles verschwindet schließlich im Nichts des nicht mehr träumenden Geistes.

Der Geist an sich (analog zu Gott) ist der Erzeuger und dieser ist ohne Anfang und ohne Ende, unabhängig. Er ist vergleichbar mit dem Buddha-Geist, Allah, dem Geliebten, dem Tao, dem Heiligen Geist und zahlreicher weiterer Begriffe, die versuchen, das Höchste zu umschreiben.

Der zu einer menschlichen Existenz verdichtete Geist, der sich in der Realität (der Matrix) davon überzeugt hat, dass er ein bedingtes und beschränktes Wesen ist, verlässt diese „Vorstellung“ oder „Illusion“ und kehrt zurück in den Zustand, der vor der Geburt (des Lebenstraumes) herrschte.

Ich bringe meine Ansichten noch einmal auf den Punkt, um aus dieser Perspektive das Thema Tod und Transzendenz zu bespiegeln:

Die alltäglichen Erfahrungen oder das Alltagsleben beruhen auf einem spezifisch eingestellten Bewusstseinszustand und dieser lässt die Realität als das erscheinen, was man gerade wahrnimmt. Diesen Bewusstseinszustand bezeichne ich auch als Inkarnation. Das Ende einer Inkarnation ist für mich der Tod.

Aus meiner Sicht bedeutet Erlösung des Menschen die Rückkehr in den unbedingten oder göttlichen Zustand des Geistes. Keine Träume. Keine Objekte. Alles vereint. Vollkommene Bewusstheit, reines Bewusstsein oder „weißes Licht“.

Ich sehe den Tod als das Ende der Illusion der Matrix. Man mag das auch als Erlösung, Befreiung oder je nach heutigem Standpunkt bezeichnen.

Geburt ist für mich Inkarnation und Hineintauchen in die Matrix – das Alltagsleben.

Bewusstsein kreiert eine „Traumfigur“ und Bewusstsein löst die „Traumfigur“ wieder auf. Geburt und Tod sind vom Bewusstsein (Gott, Buddha, Tao etc.) hervorgebrachte Phänomene. Aus der Perspektive des höheren Bewusstseins (Selbst, Gott usw.) gibt es weder Geburt noch Tod.

Für mich ist Transzendenz der Weg vom Ego ins Selbst. Das Selbst (analog zu Gott) ist das Transzendente. Das Ego-Leben ist der persönliche Lebensfilm – die Matrix.

Das Transzendente steht hinter dem Leben und den Dingen.

Aus dem Transzendenten werden alle Erscheinungen geboren.

Das Transzendente ist für mich eine Umschreibung für Gott.

Es werde Licht…

 

HKD

 

Digital Art – own resources

 

HKD

 

Probably 99 % of you will not read this. So be it!

 

But truly one of the greatest books on one of the most

Universal of themes was written by E Becker and who won the PULITZER for it.

 

For any philosophically, psychologically minded person

it is an essential book.

 

The fear of DEATH that we can't even feel the terror knowing we will die since we are mortal makes us DENY it!

 

The book’s basic premise is that human civilization is a defense mechanism against the knowledge that we will die.

 

Becker argues that humans live in both a physical world of objects and a symbolic world of meaning. The symbolic part of human life engages in what Becker calls an “immortality project.” People try to create or become part of something which they believe will last forever—art, music, literature, religion, nation-states, social and political movements, etc. Such connections, they believe, give their lives meaning.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

Furthermore, lacking such a project reminds us of our mortality. He also argued that schizophrenia results from not having defense mechanisms against mortality, causing sufferers to create their own reality.

 

Moreover, Becker believed that conflicts between contradictory immortality projects, especially religious ones, is the main cause of wars, bigotry, genocide, racism, nationalism. Our particular immortality projects are so important to us, that we can’t tolerate others suggesting that our beliefs are misguided. But, Becker argued, religion no longer offers convincing arguments for immortality or meaning in life. Unfortunately, for most people, science doesn’t fill the void.

 

In response, Becker suggests that we need new comforting “illusions” to give life meaning. He doesn’t know what these new illusions will be, but he hoped that having them might help us create a better world.

 

Still, deep in our bones, we know that we are mortal.

 

This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self--expression—and with all this yet to die.

  

Orissa

  

Photography’s new conscience

linktr.ee/GlennLosack

linktr.ee/GlennLosack

  

glosack.wixsite.com/tbws

 

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Has it ever happened to you, your mind awakens, but your body still sleeps...you scream but no one hears you. It has to me, not a very pleasant experience. This is how I interpreted the thought. Slipping from unconscious to consciousness..

There it was… a geological marvel, an inspiration by any definition. Standing in awe, my ears heard the summer wind whistle through Navajo Mountain canyons and the eyes saw how rocks were carved for ages to form what now crosses over the little creek leading to the mighty Colorado River. But it is not only the creek that it bridges. It bridges time, traditions, cultures, emotions, beliefs and above all, it bridges opposites. Sitting beneath its sacred presence, I felt that these opposites are our own and are often paired in vain. There is flickering anxiety with every hope, an apology for every prejudice, a dash of disdain for every bow in front of weird whims, a silent laughter of renouncement for every tear… I could go on. Our consciousness is captivated in opposites. We are hypocritical in the sense that we manifest ourselves taking every care to hide the internal dichotomy. We smile but hide the pain. We talk but speak nothing of the silence. We yell but look away when eyes tear up… never will you find a moment when opposites don’t define it. Perhaps our consciousness would not appear so enigmatic if we did not disown our dilemmas so fastidiously.

In all my thoughts, I did not notice when the canyon wind had picked up a distant Navajo tune and the clouds had broken to let the midday sun through to those holy rocks. And it was then I felt the rainbow… or, as the young Navajo lady on the boat had said, I felt Nonnezoshe, the rainbow that had turned stone. Perhaps long ago it was a big boulder of sandstone… like us, rigid and pretentious. Years of sorrow flowing as a tiny river deep within has carved those contradictions away leaving it in harmony with its opposites. Perhaps, if I let my pain run its course, I too will find my Nonnezoshe… my peace.

 

-----------------------------------

 

This was shot with Canon EOS Ti on Kodak Chrome 200 in 2004 and was recently digitized. We do not have written accounts of how native Indians feel about this monument, but my brief interaction with few locals left me in no doubt that this place means a lot to them. That is how it has been for ages. If you have an hour that needs to be killed, then read this travel account from 1913.

watch the details closer.

 

Here's my new drawing. Drawn on A4-sized craft paper sheet, using 0.20 & 0.25 mm Sakura Micron ink pens and two white Crown gel pens. Took me about three weeks to finish it.

 

This original piece is up for sale. Contact me if you’re interested.

 

more info: www.86era.org/blog/?p=156

1. If you separate yourself from the body and abide at ease in Consciousness you will become one (the sole Reality), everything else appearing (insignificant) Like grass.

 

2. After knowing that by which you know this (world) turn the mind inward and then you will see clearly the effulgence of the Self.

 

3. O Raghava, that by which you recognize sound, taste, form and smell, know that as your Self, the Supreme Brahman, the Lord of lords.

 

4. , O Raghava, that in which beings vibrate, that which creates them, know that Self to be your real Self.

 

5. After rejecting, through reasoning, all that can be known as ' non-truth ' what remains as pure Consciousness-regard that as your real Self.

 

6. Knowledge is not separate from you and that which is known is not separate from knowledge. Hence there is nothing other than the Self, nothing separate from it.

 

7. 'All that Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Indra and others always do is done by me, the embodiment of Consciousness' - think in this manner.

 

8. 'I am the whole universe. I am the undecaying Supreme Self. There is neither past norfuture apart from me '-reflect in this manner.

 

9. 'Everything is the One Brahman, pure Consciousness, the Self of all, indivisible and immutable `-reflect in this manner.

 

10. 'There is neither I nor any other thing. Only Brahman exists always full of bliss everywhere.'- meditate on this calmly.

 

11. The sense of perceiver and perceived is common to all embodied beings, but the Yogi worships the One Self.

 

---

 

Yoga Vasishta Sara - SELECTED VERSES - Worship of the Self

  

---

 

Painting by Petrus Christus (La Virgen del arbol seco, c. 1465)

El Romeral, Toledo.Spain

Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission.

My photos are © all rights reserved. Please e-mail me if you would like to use these photos.

Well, maybe not, but it makes a good title.

- West Fork Little Colorado River, White Mountains, Arizona

 

{ L } Lightbox view is best

 

© All Rights Reserved

 

 

vivid consciousness - of time long past.

 

Unintentionally - this is the sister to THIS photo :)

 

Another photo from the NYC meetup! This is the gorgeous Anna. We found this area next to a small playground while trying to escape the rain. Needless to say - we made it work! Stay tuned for more from the meetup ♥

   

Facebook | Tumblr | Twitter | instagram: @ValerieKasinski

Pentax Espio 80 Delta 400 EcoPro 1+1 11/26/2023

When the world collapsed.

There's a veil, a density of mind between you and the universe,

and that is dissolving now in you.

And that is the liberation, the arising of the new consciousness.

It's not necessarily a spectacular event with drums and trumpets.

It's a very still thing . . .

Eckhart Tolle

  

texture magic veil

Consciousness, Attitude. Engagement.....all this on behalf of the environmental preservation that makes us alive. Cambára do Sul, RS, Brazil

Active Assignment Weekly:

 

I was at a Halloween street party tonight, looking for things that might represent my personality. When I saw these balloon lanterns, I knew they captured who I am. I am a very colorful person, but my moods can switch easily, represented by all the different sized orbs. I also love to dance (the disco ball in the background). There are so many different sides to me, but I mostly feel like spirit, instead of body. I don't take myself too seriously. I feel that my consciousness is more important than my appearance or personality, so it's really what's inside of these round lanterns that encompasses me the most.

The more you know about consciousness

the more you know about Buddha or God.

 

The Universe lies in yourself.

  

HKD

 

Das Universum liegt in dir

 

Wenn der Faktor Bewusstsein die Hauptrolle in der eigenen Weltanschauung übernimmt, tritt der Faktor Materie als Erscheinungsform des Bewusstseins an die zweite Stelle. Materie wird dann als eine energetische Erscheinung wahrgenommen, ein Umstand, der von der Physik belegt wird. Es kommt auf die Veranlagung des Beobachters an.

Das kosmische Bewusstsein sieht alle Erscheinung als Manifestationen des Geistes an. Manifestationen, wie sie in einem Traum erscheinen. Das eigentlich Phantastische ist das Leben, das als absolut reale Wahrnehmung erscheint. Je intensiver die Realität als eine solche erfahren wird, umso stärker ist das Bewusstsein auf den Alltag fixiert. In meditativ ausgerichteten Klöstern suchte und sucht man sich von der praktischen Seite her aus dieser Fixierung zu lösen. Vom profanen in den kosmischen oder göttlichen Bewusstseinszustand.

  

HKD

 

Consciousness is a fundamental feature of physical matter in which every single particle in existence has a simple form of awareness and mindfulness. These particles come together to form more complex forms of consciousness, similar to humans’ subjective experiences. Particles don’t have a coherent worldview or actively think, yet there is an inherent subjective experience of consciousness in even the tiniest particle. Panpsychism is the doctrine that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness. Panpsychism does not suggest that every inanimate object is conscious. Tables and other artifacts are not conscious as a whole, but the table is a collection of particles that each have their own very simple form of consciousness which work together to create the form of a table. Likewise, the consciousness of nature spirits ranges from elementary to complex depending on the work required by the environment.

denniscordell.zenfolio.com

 

www.elephantjournal.com/2020/12/some-notes-on-nature-spir...

Shpongle

 

©2009 EKCaptures. All Rights Reserved.

Causal interaction

Reduced physical

Perception processes

 

~anon.

 

hector proves this to be true time and time again.

Just liked how sharp this new lens is! Just a selfie, nothing special!!

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