One of 25 "Please touch, smell, hear, feel . . . me!" artworks from the exhibition BEYOND SEEING, ART CONNECTS BLIND AND SIGHTED PEOPLE, Admont 2012 - curated by: Michael Braunsteiner

 

. . . One unique feature of our growing collection in this area is the array of BEYOND SEEING works, created specifically for partially sighted and blind visitors that can also be enjoyed by the sighted on more than one sensory level . . .

 

www.stiftadmont.at/english/museum/museum/exhibitions.php

 

Karl Karner, 302 cm x 300 cm x 200 cm from the velvet box, MADE FOR ADMONT 2012

 

‘A sequence of digits from the velvet box series’ is Karner’s modest title

for his work that refers to a world in which dimensions represent a

verifiable reality. The image, based on the manipulative

misrepresentation of the stated specifications, can be interpreted in at

least two different ways. We can either choose to accept that the

dimensions are accurate and hence acknowledge that the physical limits

of the installation are thus extended or we need to assume that the rest of

the room is an integral element of it. The table, that seems to be

undergoing some form of dissolution, bears a comedic dark and

interconnected complex of biomorphic objects that together form a

deserted, ossified universe in which the laws of gravity and of

equilibrium appear to be engaged in a paradox game. Only by

incorporating the errors that occur during the complex casting process is

it possible to create a multifaceted whole in which the interactions can

develop to become harmony.

If, however, we replace the sense of sight with that of touch, a second

parallel world can be discovered that differs significantly from the first

and in which quite different rules apply. In this world, the recipient

endorses and contributes to the formation of a sphere of activity that

opens up a world of sound able to narrate its own stories.

‘302 cm x 300 cm x 200 cm aus Samtkasten’ is part of project series

designed to explore the systematic interconnections between space and

passivity and grapple with the concept of the ability to act. These include

the performances ‘alan greenspangrünspan’ and ‘Grünmakaken im

Staub’, developed in collaboration with Linda Samaraweerová, and the

sculpture series ‘Alan Greenspan’ and ‘aus dem Samtkasten’.

No pretendo hacer una apología sobre los funestos sucesos ocurridos hace cuatro décadas.

Pero aún surgen múltiples interrogantes en mi cabeza...

¿cuántas conmociones más son necesarias para que demos un paso adelante evitando estos crímenes?

¿tienen razón los que declaran "el fin de la historia"?

¿la actual sociedad posmoderna está ineludiblemente atada a la apatía generalizada?

La composición social actual, ¿permite seguir confiando en la utopía de que "otro mundo es posible"?

El mundo está en ruta de convertirse en una "aldea global".

Pero si aún no logramos generar sistemas idóneos de convivencia social en los estados nacionales actuales, ¿cómo lidiaremos con el colosal dominio de un eventual poder trans-continental?

Estas son algunas preguntas cuyas respuestas espero comprender en algún tiempo.

 

Cada año guardamos luto por los estudiantes muertos en

1968 (y por los muertos en las dos guerras mundiales, y por los muertos en los atentados terroristas en todo el mundo, etc.) pero este año yo no guardo luto solamente por los fallecidos aquél dantesco día.

Más bien, guardo un luto enorme por nuestra incapacidad colectiva para evitar que otras barbaries similares todavía sucedan en nuestra "aldea global"

 

video español

  

Every year we keep mourning for the students died in 1968 (and for the dead persons in two world wars, and for the dead persons in the terrorist attacks in the whole world, etc.) but this year I do not keep mourning only for the deceased that one dantesque day. Rather, I keep an enormous mourning for our collective incapability to prevent other similar barbarisms still from happening in our "global village"

  

forty years after the murder of hundreds of young students who were demonstrating pacifically, the Mexican government has not punished any aggressor, nobody is in the jail for these crimes, most of the photos and videos realized the evening of October 2, they remain secret to the public opinion. 4 decades later, our country still keeps on being a democratic farce.

  

please watch this

video english

more photos

policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/wealth-having-i...

 

THE EVER WIDENING GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR

A new study by Oxfam found that the richest 1% of the world's population will own 50% of the planet’s wealth by the year 2016! It shows the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor in capitalist countries. This contradiction is prevented from exploding through the following means: 1) an abundant technical capacity that is spent in the production and distribution of waste, planned obsolescence, environmental destruction, military products, space junk, cheap gadgets, low-cost technology, and affordable luxury goods that are spread to the broad strata of the Earth’s population, thereby increasing the overall standard of living but at the same time concealing the radical inequality and anarchy at the heart of the capitalist system; 2) the concentration and expansion of the police and military state to protect and preserve the wealthy elites as well as an anarchic and obsolete capitalist system is accomplished through the monopolization and mobilization of economic, political, and technological power, which is combined with a high degree of governmental intervention in the economy and in the private spheres of human life; 3) the passivity and indifference of the masses is further achieved through the scientific manipulation of private and group behavior, both at work and at leisure, including consciousness and the unconscious, for political and economic purposes by a massive propaganda machine that works day and night in support of the capitalist system (i.e., Internet, TV, news media, mass advertising for the latest and fastest gadgets and technology, satellite radio, Hollywood movies, constant political lies and manipulation, the spread of the so-called "terror" threat, atheist diversion from the class struggle, etc, etc,); 4) global neo-imperialism through the expansion of international corporations that are really owned and controlled by the very few, the global banking system that is continuously manipulated, and the so-called "peace and security" of world-wide military alliances between the capitalist superpowers forges the new world-wide class of exploiters.

 

YOU ARE THE 1%!

 

www.forbes.com/sites/garyshapiro/2012/05/30/we-are-the-wo...

 

The capitalist superpowers have become the new exploiting class. Bourgeoisification of the proletariat, or their integration into the capitalist system, occurs through the increase of their commodity consumption. The class struggle is no longer confined to national borders but is now of global proportions. Western neo-imperialism has created vast slave labor forces in the so-called "third world" to provide the "first world" with affordable commodities. The earth's new parasitic ruling class exploits and abuses its immense technostructure for private profit rather than for the satisfaction of human needs on an international scale.

 

www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

 

"Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day."

"At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day."

 

21,000 people die every day due to starvation, mainly children!

 

I keep coming back to these themes. Themes of passivity- and almost ignoring the good things around me. To me, this photo is another example of having beautiful things surrounding you, but not even bothering to appreciate them. Its about wallowing in self pity for the sake of feeling bad. Don't get me wrong, I know just getting out of things is not as easy as it seems. But I also think its not as hard as it seems.

 

I know I haven't done a black in white photo in like, forever... mostly because I can't stand to take away the colors, and a lot of the time my coloring is representative of the mood of the photo. And this flower field was just a beautiful yellow. But I just couldn't not do black and white on this one for some reason.

 

TUMBLR /// TO BUY PRINTS // INSTAGRAM

From the museum label:

 

In the late 19th century following the end of the Civil War in the United States, neurologists believed that neurasthenia, or the mental exhaustion of the nerves caused by overwork and industrialization, was affecting the men and women belonging to the upper and middle classes. In the beginning, neurasthenia predominantly was diagnosed in well-educated men who were experiencing an abundance of nervous energy brought on by modernity and new professional challenges. Women, on the other hand, were diagnosed with neurasthenia after socializing too much and spending time outside of the home too often. One treatment for women with this condition was the "rest cure," which required a patient to stay on bed rest, forbidden from pursuing any activities, even sewing, reading, writing, or receiving visitors. This "cure" became a form of social control, rejecting the contemporary notion of an independent, educated "new woman."

 

Painted and photographic representations of women in lassitude became more frequent as shifting perceptions of neurasthenia became one of a condition largely afflicting women. Rizzi's Study in White, seen here, shows common visual cues of the condition and the rest cure. In this personal and private scene, the woman is leaning back onto a sofa, and her eyes are looking down. She appears sickly and unable to hold herself up as the surrounding materials and fabrics absorb her body, emphasizing her perceived weakness and passivity as she lies down and rests.

*** Chapter 3 - σημαδιακός ***

  

} Cavendish Institute of Anthropology {

} Nottinghamshire, England {

 

“You, you, and you… keep your distances,” says Dr. Minerva, not too loudly.

 

Diana and Iris’ trip through the latter’s portal was instantaneous, with no mental resistance from the being whom Iris had invoked. It was evident, in fact, that this being called Epimetheus had been praying for their arrival long before Iris had, in the way they found him standing——in a manner that was equal parts stately and awkward——at Dr. Minerva’s desk; she, playing the principal, and he the delinquent.

 

He is an audacious head taller than Diana, and wears not but an armored skirt, greaves over his sandals, and a baldric which bears no weapon. His hair is young, disagreeing with the lines of his cheeks and mouth. His eyes are marbled like galaxies.

 

“Hello,” Epimetheus reflexively spouts to his allies, realizing a moment later that he would have liked to express a welcome of greater magnitude. He rebounds by promptly turning his back, and tries to appease Minerva.

 

“This… is Lady Diana, the one I mentioned…”

 

The study feels more like an extended mausoleum to Diana, what with every window’s curtains let down. One is boarded. Minerva’s library rises column after column: Dark leather spines, absorbing the minimal setting sunlight that could find its way in.

 

Minerva dips her chin to look over her spectacles with bloodshot eyes. “That’s Wonder Woman,” she deduces pointedly: Once again, not too loudly.

 

Epimetheus cringes from this. “Oh. I do see now. Using man’s name for her might have been more reassuring for you to hear.”

 

“No I don’t… care that it’s Wonder Woman…”

 

Minerva restarts, seeing Diana and Iris wanting to change the subject. “Sorry, this nice man introduced himself, to inform me he’s taking me to Hell. Think you could help a girl out?”

 

“What? He—” Diana gives Epimetheus a look of disbelief that makes him reflect on his verbiage. She clears her head. “Dr. Minerva, we need your help and our time runs short. The Golden Apple must be found.”

 

Minerva is unimpressed. “I couldn’t have guessed. Look, you aren’t the f—“

 

“Please, Minnie,” Epimetheus steps in, “you must trust Diana…”

 

“Oi, where are you getting ‘Minnie’ from?!” Minerva protests, looking him up and down.

 

Epimetheus stutters. “Pardon me, Eris told me it was your favored—“

 

“What ‘heiress’?”

 

“Barbara,” Diana uses this time.

 

Barbara sighs, at the plaque in front of her.

 

“The threat of the apple could be more grave than any of us fathom.”

 

“‘Dr. Minerva’,” Barbara insists rigidly. “We’re not mates. And besides I’ve earned it.”

 

The end of Iris’ staff clangs on the tile as she advances on Barbara. “If you have the faith in your discoveries that we do, and if the apple’s position in Hades is yet a mystery, you will allow us to help. You know of Wonder Woman, that she has fought wars alongside your nation. She will fight for you now.”

 

The others can see Barbara weighing them, in the vein of an outnumbered duelist. With Diana in the middle of another plea, the professor switches gears. She gives a marginal berth to Iris’ tufted wings——and a mystified peek to the very same——on her way to a particular section of her study, where she begins snatching book after book. Diana witnesses Barbara’s reservations receding, and giving way to the craving for knowledge which governed her more than cynicism ever could. This makes the Amazons' princess smile.

 

Barbara relocates some strands of hair from her vision, hunching over her load. “I have a lot to gather here. If we’re going to do this, and get it right.”

 

“We will get it right, and it is because we have you. … The manuscript?” asks Diana, noticing that in the sea of Barbara’s work on her desk, one bound parchment took pride of place. It appeared a longer read than the Iliad. She expected nothing less of Eris.

 

“The poem… is a nuisance. Most of it is reiterative, of the Underworld, broadly. If it has any answers for the apple’s precise coordinates, I do believe we will have to decode the wording through other texts. Only one line about its abandonment stood apart, in my mind.”

 

Barbara navigates the manuscript’s daunting pages for all of three seconds, then groans. “Oh sod it. … 'αλεπούδων,' 'κλαυθμός'… I-it was, ‘By the father’s hand, where the foxes’ cries are loudest.’”

 

“‘The father’s hand’…”

 

“Is that Iris? THAT Iris?” Barbara interrupts Diana’s brainstorming with a deep whisper.

 

Diana beams, surprised. “Mm.”

 

Not ready to be having fun just yet, Barbara relegates herself to a tilt of the neck and a casual: “This is a bloody trip.”

 

At this time, Iris has become a curiosity to Epimetheus also, as they stand away from the tomes and riddles being tackled by the other two. To satisfy this curiosity, the elder employs very little finesse.

 

“Haven’t we… I have seen you before—"

 

For eons, the goddess has wished not for this encounter, but Iris was informative, by nature, and the words she was to deliver were none too often her own. The few she has for Epimetheus are bold, and aggrieved, and he receives them now.

 

She refrains from eye contact. “Arke. You remember my sister Arke. She was loyal to your father and the others during the Titanomachy.”

 

With great strain, Epimetheus finds a response not wholly inconsiderate. “Forgive an old man. I’m sure that Arke’s loyalty is not forgotten to the others of my bloodline.”

 

“Of that, I am sure also. The Olympians had her cast into Tartarus with them.”

 

It is difficult to say which of the two wishes more that Iris’ bitter statement could be undone. Their overdue dialogue ends.

 

Barbara knocks on her desk, for Epimetheus’ ear. “Oi big man. You want to go and make sure you got all the Jerries, while we sort this?”

 

Diana does not think she hears correctly. “… German soldiers, here?” She turns for the corridor past Barbara’s workspace.

 

“The worst kind. It tried to say, before, I’ve had company here,” Barbara mentions critically. “They’ve had me cornered ever since I finally got my findings published… and that called for more than a few strings and teeth to be pulled. The first proper recognition I get for it, for realizing the Olympians were real players in our history, and it isn’t from the university, it’s from these fascists. That’d be my luck.”

 

Barbara takes a breath and cocks her head, whilst sifting through her papers. “… which is yet another reason to keep this short. They’re obsessive about the apple. They have this insane bitch with a mask… she’s tried to drug me into sharing more than I know.”

 

Diana freezes.

 

“Don’t be alarmed, Lady Diana,” Epimetheus tells her, with a timorous pride, “Eris brought me here herself, and I checked each room. Minn… —nerva’s tormentors are all accounted for; I asphyxiated them. Stealthily, you know.”

 

This does nothing to pacify the princess. “And this masked woman was among them?”

 

“Hm, well—”

 

“‘Eris’,” Barbara clutches her forehead, at the first of her two revelations. “Wait, did you just pop in here like these two did? They’ve had a perimeter outside! They’re going to be trying to radio every last blighter in here!”

 

Diana thrusts the pivotal manuscript into Barbara’s arms. “We must go, now. Iris…?”

 

“Go where? Wait! All my work—”

 

“I am sorry,” is Barbara’s compensation, “but we cannot linger here to collect everything.”

 

Barbara pulls out of Diana’s light grasp. “Oh yes we can; this is my life! I am not leaving it to—“

 

On cue, a commotion rings through the institute’s halls. Men, and boots, and the clacking of firearms. Diana’s attention flits from Barbara, to the shadows moving beyond the study’s surrounding curtains, to the vacant scabbard at Epimetheus’ side. In another swift hand-off, the Amazon has lent her own sword and shield to her estranged cousin. His reaction is timid.

 

“Oh, that would have been very, very good. I don’t… these things don’t always come to me…”

 

“Iris?” Diana prompts a second time, preparing both fists.

 

“I… can’t see her,” Iris reports. Her words and her staff both shake. “She will not answer!”

 

Diana curses Eris’ name. “… Take us to Olympus, then! To Zeus, to anyo—“

 

The initial strike is too fast for even Diana to counter. But not for Iris. The mild messenger of the gods suddenly swells with a kinetic rush and rotates her caduceus parallel with her arm, spinning off of the floor like a top to deflect a hazy, lavender blast unleashed from the hallway. This succeeds in defending Barbara, who stumbles into the bookcase to her back, meanwhile Iris’ interception robs her of balance; she contacts the study's tile on her side, gasping from the heat, of which there is plenty coursing through the staff that scorches her hand.

 

The second is dealt with by Diana, as Epimetheus inefficiently avails her shield. The bolt crackles past him, into the waiting vambraces of Wonder Woman; they clash together like the jaws of a bear trap, atomizing the shot. Her armor is able to withstand the residual heat unlike Iris, but one surge of energy escapes the vice, and scores a shoulder. The Amazon is brought to one knee. Through the stabbing pain, she isolates a voice——that of the attackers’ commander——reaching her pulsing eardrums as a garbled, but shrill,

 

“OAFS! You will kill the professor! Let her handle this.”

 

Diana grimaces. “Occult weaponry. Amplified by… cybernetics.”

 

She heaves like a workhorse to stand, cracking the masonry below her. Epimetheus again positions himself in front. The men are fast approaching, but with their cannon-like armaments aimed down. They are soldiers, nonuniform but identifiably-German, in remnants of raiment a fair decade out of style.

 

Diana takes Epimetheus’ shoulder. “No. Protect Minerva, and I will Iris.”

 

The two circle over, daring the wall of mercenaries with every step each side takes. Barbara retreats to a display shelf, hands behind her and feet together. Though she cannot even pick herself off the floor, to rescue their party, Iris unthinkingly and valiantly calls to the Olympians with her caduceus, only to feel the implement lock in place above her head in an invisible, iron grip that makes her own nearly crumple.

 

Diana senses the disturbance, and without fully turning her body from the more insistent threat of the soldiers, she lets fly her lasso at Iris’ hindrance. The enchanted rope clings to its mark, as its power over deception dispels some equally supernatural cloak on, first, an arm: Encrusted in an indigo armor with a constant, viscous animation to it. Then the body——a woman’s——dressed as aristocracy, but for a collared cape that speaks to an exceptional, outré conceit. The last of her disguise fizzles out as she anchors the lasso around her own shoulder. From the copper shell she has for a face comes the voice. It is an Indian intonation, distorted with the hum of servos, and inexorable hatred.

 

“If you protect her,” Doctor Cyber growls, “how will you run this time?”

 

The villainess pulls Diana off her feet and into a brutish blow from Iris’ staff; its owner has not let go still, and uses Cyber’s wild swing to win the tug-of-war. With her reclaimed weapon, Iris tumbles closer to some soldiers, as Diana’s flight ends in an explosion of dust and paper on the far wall. Cyber shows no interest in recapturing Barbara, who has but one guardian remaining. Cyber only has eyes for the Amazon.

 

Not wasting an ounce of momentum inadvertently given to her, Iris skids on one shin and braces the caduceus against her back to take the knees out from under three of the soldiers who did not anticipate the fight coming to them so abruptly. She kicks off a fourth’s chest to vault back to Epimetheus, who squares off with one impetuous colossus among the Germans: Per his orders, he is all too glad to lay down his gun, as it is an invitation to brawl with the similarly-statured Titan. Epimetheus’ abashed expression is the man’s downfall, for as he boldly tries to take the immortal’s gifted shield and hilt right out of his hands, Epimetheus shoves him the length of the hall from which he entered, and out the window at its end. Epimetheus clears his throat and conventionally points Diana’s sword at the next closest man.

 

Cyber whips the stolen Lasso of Truth around one arm, then absently aims the other behind herself, letting loose a cartridge from a mechanism on her wrist. It fractures close enough to Iris’ landing that it knocks the goddess flat on her back with its momentary, concussive burst of hard-light. Epimetheus’ shield catches most of the assault for him and he is blown back to Barbara, but stays upright. Unconcerned with her results, Cyber is not caught off guard by a revived Diana rocketing back into the fray. Awareness, however, is no match for the speed at which Diana plants a knee in Cyber’s torso, and bashes her mask with both fists clasped in a club. The Amazon tucks and rolls to come to Iris’ aid, who is set upon by two gunmen with clear shots. Diana, in desperation, punches straight through one’s weapon, spilling the blistering properties of its battery on all three of them. Three of them scream; Diana’s is the only one that lasts.

 

Not all of the men are dissuaded, now descending on both dazed women. Epimetheus is met with a dilemma; there is no time to consciously ignore his mission from Diana when he overhand lobs her shield to save her. The overlarge discus drops two soldiers at once, and gongs to the ground. Epimetheus takes the one step back to Barbara, who looks at him expectantly.

 

“I should’ve… I, thought I could throw it to make it come…”

 

Coping with her burns, Diana’s agony takes on a whole new life as she feels the ebb within the arteries of her neck and legs disobey her, slowing, then churning in an unseen storm. It is not powerful enough to move her unwillingly, but the heroine capitulates to the internal pull, tripping back toward Cyber. Wonder Woman’s foe is on her stomach from her bludgeoning: One of her hands extends to the princess to perpetuate the unearthly tractor field, and with the other, Cyber is menacing her own men via a claw swirling with a fearful vortex, to keep them from executing Diana.

 

“Fool. You were most generous with blood samples when we last parted.”

 

Another merciless yank from Cyber, and Diana almost topples. She can see out the corner of her eye that Iris stirs, but the goddess is again close to being seized. Just before it is out of her reach, Diana lofts with one arm the desk bearing all of Barbara’s pertinent research, ridding Iris of several assailants, and eliciting an anguished cry from Barbara. Diana falls the rest of the way into Cyber’s clutches, with the mad doctor’s left hand grabbing her right, and its armor sealing around them to ensure a close-quarters resolution.

 

“Don’t disappoint me now.”

 

Cyber batters the warrior princess with a gauntlet laden with the same energies as the soldiers’ weapons, alternating jabs into knees, then a rib, the underarm… but Diana’s capacity for pain has been met, tenfold, and the latest torment now revitalizes her. She flexes her right hand straight through the enveloping alloy, shattering Cyber’s fingers and the device bewitching her Amazon blood. Cyber screeches, slashing until she has Diana by the hair, and then activates thrusters on her upper arms. The pair is supersonic for that split-second of spiking into the floor, rattling both powerhouses a great deal.

 

With Cyber’s attrition at last coming to a valley, the air clears, and both sides realize the relative sloth of the battlefield, elsewhere. Epimetheus finds he is keeping less and less of the mob at bay, sans the shield, and Barbara——recognizing she is wanted alive——now reverses their positions, to guard him from gunfire. The Titan holds his blade with his arms coming around the woman’s head.

 

“This isn’t going to work for us,” Barbara infers.

 

Diana picks her head out of stone. The world passes for her in slow-motion: Across the room but considerably closer to their allies, Iris is on two feet, and a hand. Their alliance's only hope lay in her.

 

The Amazon’s shifting makes Cyber come to, who groggily takes the lasso and fastens it to her adversary’s neck. Her windpipe closing off, Diana is able to command: “TO IRIS!”

 

Epimetheus answers by collecting Barbara at the waist and feinting away from the attackers, while the messenger goddess slides her staff to the very limit of her grasp in order that she crack one last impinging soldier in the jaw. Iris falters once in straightening her legs, but summons the spirit to make one long stride, then another, for the bounding Epimetheus. She readies the caduceus, knowing full-well that Diana means to be left behind. It is natural for them both. In the millennia she has had as an agent in this universe, Iris’s function remains to be at the beck and call of her own kind, carrying out orders she despises, whether or not it comes from one she might name as a friend. Iris obeys, as always, so that in her own way, she can love.

 

It is then that the barbed spear, tossed from behind the soldiers’ ranks, pierces clean through the goddess’ chest. She startlingly falls to her knees, and errantly, Epimetheus stops running, out of shock. In this time, his and Barbara’s pursuers have converged, cordoning them from their would-be rescuer. Barbara rips herself from Epimetheus’ arm, charging vainly at the Germans; she puts a gash in one’s cheek, using a geode she pocketed from her own collection, but is predictably subdued.

 

The spear is rooted in the floor, drenched in gold by the blood of Iris’ ancestry. She is conscious, and so very still even as her biology panics for air. Her back stays straight while she stares, and thinks. Diana has seen now too, and through Cyber’s torture, she yells. Tears come next; as bare a response as any creature can surrender to, it is a fearsome sight when worn by an Amazon.

 

Iris’ final moments in the mortal plane are spent with pragmatism and much-earned self-interest, evenly, because in understanding that the caduceus she holds cannot be lost to Diana’s enemies——not even for the race to bestow the apple——the Goddess of Rainbows finds a silver lining for her own.

 

“I’m going to be with my sister, Diana,” she rasps with relief.

 

Iris’ winged shoulder takes one more shot from a soldier’s cannon, but she completes her staff’s motion in time, drawing and puncturing a hole in their dimension underneath herself to fall into Tartarus: Forbidden to her by Olympus for countless dawns, and where Arke has been calling, for an eternity. The goddess is swallowed up, untraceable, and the quiet of death is resonant throughout the institute.

 

Shining, black boots cross over to the murderous spear, and a beautiful hand dislodges it: All of this, belonging to the Baroness von Gunther. She is known to Diana, enough that the princess expects the sickeningly-pleased smile she currently boasts.

 

Epimetheus’ hands are figuratively tied, with his surviving comrades being placed further in check by guards at every passing second. Cyber has tethered Diana into a cumbersome bow by stamping the lasso’s ends under a plated heel. Smugly, Von Gunther takes her place beside the mechanical woman; that is, slightly in front of her, and not by mistake. The two nemeses tower over a grounded Diana.

 

“In all our happy altercations, Wonder Woman, have I failed to tell you what this is?” Von Gunther asks innocently, waving the spearhead under Diana’s chin. “… My birthright. A weapon passed down from my ancestors, die Walküre.”

 

Like a seasoned thespian, she paces her gloating to conclude as does her brief walk to Barbara. She regards Epimetheus’ wear along the way, in condescension.

 

“By my blood and this tool, it is my burden to decide who lives and dies in battle. Over mortals… or the other, die Walküre have dominion.”

 

Von Gunther turns her nose up at Barbara’s glower, backsteps, and runs Epimetheus through with her spear.

 

He yelps like he’s stubbed a toe, which deflates Diana and Barbara’s exclamations before they even begin. Securely staked into the library’s tile and unable to budge the baroness’ hold, Epimetheus nevertheless shows no signs of true injury, instead looking all around himself in a fit speaking mostly to embarrassment. No ichor spills from his body. Von Gunther jerks the stave as though its penetration were in question.

 

“No god can—“ she sputters.

 

The Titan of Afterthought smirks weakly.

 

Cyber is disgusted at Von Gunther’s inadequacy, so much so that her leash on Diana slackens. “The other, then, if you so need another body. The Amazon will know more than she could.”

 

Barbara’s teeth gnash. She strains against three pairs of hands.

 

“Let her alone,” comes Diana’s guttural bargain, “and I will help you. Harm them and you will know only my fury.”

 

Having been enjoying their present relation, Doctor Cyber scoffs. “Oh Wonder Woman. We both know it takes far less than one dead mongrel for you to become a butcher. Or is that just it? You’ve found your ‘nobility’. That’s why the winged one can die before your eyes, unavenged.”

 

“Play with your food later, Cyber,” Von Gunther obliviously criticizes. She releases Epimetheus, but the gun in the small of Barbara’s back makes certain his passivity.

 

“Allow Dr. Minerva her affects, or whatever is left of them. The Panzer has notified us; we leave for Greece.”

Donna Nook

 

Far out at sea

hazy blue merges into hazy blue,

only the tanker pinned to the invisible horizon,

waiting for the tide to turn,

indicates where ocean ends and sky begins.

 

There is no wind

and the unseasonable sun is warm.

A strange odour drifts ashore,

musty and musky, oily and slightly fishy,

a scent of blood and birth.

 

The beach belongs to the seals,

protected from the throngs of watchers by the fence,

the winter shadows of posts and people alike

cast long across the sands, striping the sleeping cows,

shading the newborn pups close to the dunes.

 

The beasts doze, apparently smiling in the November sun,

yawn, stretch, roll, and doze again, murmuring in their dreams

of fish shoals in the green depths, stir briefly to lumber,

clumsily, to muddy creek and back, wakening to call

their haunting, complaining moan, checking that their pups are close.

 

A wagtail runs along the creek, snapping at insects, a pipit

stalks the stunted vegetation, a magpie lurks with gulls,

seeking the red-splashed afterbirths.

Redshanks flute from distant pools,

but the beach belongs entirely to the breeding seals.

 

Confrontation arises suddenly:

a youngster has shuffled close to the wrong female,

its mother snarls at the unsuspecting cow,.

showing teeth and gaping pink mouth:

a brief scuffle ensues, more noise than action,

then both retreat as junior scuttles back into safe territory,

the cows resume their benevolent passivity,

settle back into the important business of slumber.

 

The short afternoon draws to a quiet close,

shadows lengthen, buckthorn berries glow

in the early dusk, the visitors trickle homewards,]

and the seals sleep on.

 

Published in Sarasvati June 2011.

 

#64 -- Horizon -- 118 Pictures in 2018

 

And for Studio 26, assignment on low graphic style

Low graphic elements:

--50 mm. lens

--Static balance, square frame, centered horizon line

--"Artless" impression, plainness of view -- which actually takes some searching around here, to find so flat a horizon line & view without dramatic diagonals

--Feeling of passivity, horizontal lines & symmetry broken only slightly by figures on horizon & one bare sloping area

--Muted color, provided by smoky skies

--Repetition of horizontal lines

--Subject matter -- hint at exploited landscape, with oil well in otherwise bucolic treeline

Our joyous TV Person, ready to inflict messages and passivity onto the unsuspecting public.

 

April 30, 2005: The Calgary Culture-Jammers put on some street theatre for TV Turnoff Week.

MARSYAS/MYSELF

MYSELF Diptych detail

   

Below is a transcription of the handwritten text on the detail pictured above:

 

Culture

Ambition—Recognition—Legacy

 

"And if I am forgotten? To be forgotten as my parents and their parents and their parents’ parents are forgotten—to be released—is this not freedom? The slow exhalation of definition—is this not charity? The blurring of possibility into the final erasure of regret—is this not tranquility? Though I cling still to stifled hope, the pain of the ultimate demise is anesthetized. I shall die as they have died but unlike those who preceded me, I confer no linearity. I am a segment...nothing more...a messy smear of obtuse angles and contradictions, recognized always for what I am not rather than for what I am. What others see is not what I seek. I seek the weakness of my enemy. Only that. To define that which seeks my erasure. I am not a victim. Having lived too long outside the safety of other artists’ possibilities, it is I who am the predator. I feed on the blood of ignorance. It is I who scoff at the rules and rituals of continuance...the dogma of immortality. I am a segment. I have accepted this and its freedom, self-imposed. I blame no one and nothing for this disconnection. My acceptance is freely given and from this detachment I have framed my life. I am suspect, bipolar and homosexual. I roam the periphery, prodding and probing all aspects of myself that affect the core. Hypocrisy is my prey. I can smell it like dead meat. The world reeks of it. I have sought to eliminate its stench from my life and to search out the rot of deceit. To this I have dedicated my life. Am I an artist? Is this the significance of Art? Is this the significance of Art now?...to speak from the core? Recently, I was asked if I thought I would, as an artist, leave a legacy. My answer was and is: “What do you think?” Legacies are not my concern. If I am to enjoy the freedom of segmentation, then I must accept the melancholy of endings...and the responsibility of beginnings. As I stumble toward the end of my life leaving bits and pieces of self-evidence, I sense no desperation. Whether I should or should not, did or did not have lost their intensity. They exist still, horizontal in fragmentation, but their edges are dulled. There is diminished regret. Still, to not have entered into collective memory stretches back into personal memory and touches a tear in the fabric of self that has never mended. That rent which became the festering wound of ambition has fed and bled the who and the what of me throughout all of remembered life. As a child, as an adult, the ugly stigmata has tormented and goaded. Without it, I could not have become—or at least not have become as I am—or produced so much or driven myself so far. Because of it, satisfaction and peace have eluded me. When madness arrives, I am recognized by others as its host. My guest is reflected in their eyes. I have no evidence of his presence. We are tenants of the same house and live as strangers in a shared space. There are only periods of exaggeration during which I am absent. As I review my life, I know it has always been so...unexplained moments which I view in retrospect with puzzled objectivity...he wears my face and commands my body. From here, too, have been produced great surges of energy and epiphany. How can I resent his tenancy? To have pursued this amalgam as the subject matter for the majority of my studio life has produced a multi-faceted documentation of selfness. I have used that which I know best and each new involvement has been a test of courage to delve further and objectify subjectivity. I require no audience for this process other than myself. Only I know if the truth is being told. This is my journey and I expect no other to accompany me or criticize my direction. I feel no conscious responsibility to history or to my time. I am a part of both whether I choose to be or not. I do not believe that this focus on myself is obsessive or narcissistic. Neither do I feel that it is a neurotic self-absorption or psychological confession in search of an audience. Rather, what I know it to be is a total commitment to transparency. To rid myself of obscurities, obfuscations and self-deception has been a brutalizing and invigorating process. It has also been isolating. I seem to exist in a vacuum, my work, blank pages in a book of cultural artifacts. In search of transparency, I have achieved transparency. I do not exist. Is this freedom? Am I rationalizing a position in which no artist would or should find himself? Limbo. Has been. Oblivion. What then should an artist want? Fame? Fortune? Visibility? Acknowledgement?...Respect?...Immortality? I think at this point I can, without reservation, say: I want not to want. To release myself from all of the fetters of audience... I remain needful of its ear and its eye. The most difficult opacity for me to overcome in terms of the audience (otherness) has been my sexuality. It has taken all of my life to accept intellectually and emotionally its power as a positive force in my work. Intellectually, I can support homosexuality’s evolutionary transcendency and emotionally I embrace my role in its evolution. To be of the most threatened and threatening elemental minority in the history of civilization has been a transcendent spiritual journey as well. To move beyond acculturated self-hatred into the rarified work-space of self-creation has been a limping, erratic, painful acceptance of responsibility for my survival as a person and an artist. Self-respect is a process rather than a possession. A verb rather than a noun. A never ending process of becoming. I have never forgiven my parents their instillation of bigotry. The poisoning of children is the greatest of generational crimes and the paradox, of course, is that without the crippling of children, there cannot exist linear continuity. History is a catalogue of repetition giving the illusion of change. Because homosexuality is the breaking of linearity, its nature is one of insurgency, a threat to the paradigm of illusion. Reality is a birth to death paradigm of individuation. The conflict and the reality of indivuation is the paradox of the human condition. This paradox is documented in what we call Art. That all Art is contemporary is the core of individuation. As homosexuality can appear at anytime, at any place, to anyone, under any condition, so, too, can Art. It is a capricious and serendipitous separating and segmenting of the illusions of linearity. It, too, is an insurgency. To accept its reality is to deny cultural linearity and enter into the finite space of self-creation. Misconceptions and impositions that promote the bigotry and illusions of linearity cannot be tolerated in the work-space of self-creation. The acceptance of the gestalt of segmentation changes all metaphors. Be it Art or homosexuality, both are the enemies of illusion. Rather than accept the negative discrimination of orthodoxy with its punishing verdict of exclusion, I have struggled to convert my personal indoctrination of self-hatred into a positive resource for a broader intellectual expansion of observation of the human condition. By not accepting the values of the linearity of repeat and confirmation which would paralyze, exile, and terminate my existence as a person and an artist, I have chosen to confront dogma which is my enemy. For me to equate Art with homosexuality in terms of segmentation is parallel to the culture-maker’s belief in art history. For me, Art and art are two entities diametrically opposed. Both depend on a belief system supported by emotional necessity. Segmentation and linearity are gestalts composed of metaphors and similies that seldom communicate. I have come to see that my sexuality is the source of my warrioring. The enemy of my Being is the gestalt of linearity...the illusions of infinite time. Though the sovereignty of my Being was established before birth, my acceptance of the responsibilities inherent in this sovereignty has been a process of triumphs and defeats worthy of any battlefield. My only arsenal has been a battery of questions. For me, the pursuit of the frontiers of Being has run parallel to the establishment of the borders of self. The process of making art has been the same process as creating self. Within the reality of segmentation, this is human life’s purpose, the attack of questions and the destruction of answers. Linearity sustains itself on the defense of answers. Its state is entropy. Selfness and Being, the Who and the What of me are not static entities; rather, they exist always as suppositions. If my sexuality has freed me from the linearity of repeat, then I must suppose that this freedom is for the viability of segmentation. This implies justification and responsibility, a moral and ethical code, the basis of which is honesty. Because my natural inclination has from the beginning been the representation of human imagery as my sole expression, my sexuality, in terms of the audience, has been problematic. Integrity is requisite to the process of making. Therefore, in terms of audience, I was faced with several dilemmas. My response to the female body has been clinical, intellectual, and objective in its representation. Except for the most nudaphobic of audiences, the exploitation of the naked female body has been acceptable and a viable resource for artists within the linear tradition of art history. Not so, the naked male. For the heterosexual male, the naked female form is an object of sexual desire whether presented in the guise of Marilyn Monroe or Mary Magdalene. Response, even on the level of prurience, is considered natural, normal, acceptable, and above all, unthreatening to traditional masculine values. Representational imagery for the male artist who is homosexual is a virtual minefield of reaction and response. If he deals with the male subject as the heterosexual male deals with the female, he is automatically involved in social, political, and religious polemics. Whether or not he chooses to leave the accepted frame of art, the sensuality evoked by the homosexual artist’s referencing of his love object will be found disturbing to the traditional audience. In contrast to the female body which shows no visual signs of sexual arousal, the male body exhibits its anatomical sexual function with the erected penis. In many cultures, the phallus or lingam is a symbol of fertility, a removal of the penis from its identification with sexuality and licentiousness into the realm of procreation and fecundity, an object of religious and social veneration for the worship of well-being and abundance. This has not been my choice. As I review my sexuality through the evolving imagery of my work, there is an acceptance of responsibility for its actuality. From a blurred avoidance of identification bordering on androgyny to explicit social, religious, and historical perspective, I now proclaim its viability. It has been an arduous and epiphanic journey. Accepted and acceptable reality is based on the lingam, a symbol of primitive necessity. Homosexuality is its greatest threat because it presents a constant and consistent alternative to its imperatives. Generation after generation after generation, its existence is indelible. It is in us and of us presenting ever and always the task of choice. As organs and structures become vestigial, so, too, symbols. The lingam is no longer a functional or honest icon of masculinity regardless of its pretense and insistence. Tribal mores and survival of the fittest theocracies have become toxic to the human experiment, relics of past realities. I have come to view my work as an act of defiance. I do not accept the structures and strictures of masculine deception. What once was is no more. Reality lies elsewhere. Because I objectify maleness in terms of sexual metaphor, there is effected a cosmic shift of gestalt within my frame of art. By replacing the traditional nudity of female passivity with naked male aggression, I am able to confront within my frame issues that my homosexuality would, traditionally, separate and place outside. Dealing directly with naked masculinity rather than feminine nudity in terms of subjective desire affords me great freedom of expression. Male homosexuality threatens the very foundation of masculinity from invention of god through its hierarchy of metaphors. By replacing the lingam with the penis in terms of symbolic representation, I have created a suppositional battlefield where-on the metaphorical masks of masculine gestalt are stripped away to reveal the stark nakedness of masculine reality: aggression, penetration, insemination, domination, and repression. Because I, too, am male by biological definition, my homosexuality affords me power over my object of desire. He fears me. I turn his verbs to nouns. As I move across the workbench of myself, adjusting and focussing the lens of my life, the audience has fallen into dissonance and distance. As I reflect, I sense a sweet sadness of loss as of the death of a love or the naivete of childhood. There is an inevitability about my course that is often startling and puzzling, like a blemish or a wrinkle caught unaware in my mirror. My penis is the measure of myself. It is average as I am average and is represented in biological proportionality in all of my presentations of masculine imagery. What a problem this bit of meat has been throughout the centuries of representation of the human body. My decision to represent it as it represents me is an intellectual resolution to emotional problems that the naked male presents to his viewer. By being biologically honest without pretense or prudery, the penis is permitted all of the prerogatives of nudity without undue consideration for the audience. In other words, the problem of the penis is delivered directly to the audience to be dealt with exactly as any other aspect of myself is dealt with within the context of Making. As I move into my eighth decade of living and my sixth decade of Making, I am confronted with the paradox of aging. Who I am and what I have become are a single reflection within the mirror of self. In spite of an accumulation of experiences and vast production of artifacts, my weight of being has remained unchanged, my dogged pursuit of the horizon static. Sitting in the theater of self watching the actor who is myself on a stage on which only the scenery changes with its cast of supporting characters places me constantly in the now. There is no past for the living, only the recurring present, only a constant changing of costume in the shifting light. How comfortable we are, each and every one of us wrapped tightly within the turgid repetition of a predetermined life. Our roles are set and their re-enactment establishes the illusion of the passage of time. We are each the main character in our own drama and a supporting actor locked into the scenery of everyone else. Only a total dismantling of the gestaltic stage, metaphor by metaphor, will permit the birth of a new reality...and if we do not dismantle the gestaltic stage, our drama of repetition will destroy us all in a final tragic act of mechanistic repeat. Inching forward in this self-portrait, I sense within me a desire to complete my Self in this final act of complexity. By will or by circumstance, I have positioned myself or been positioned outside the mainstream of linear flow. Fervidly atheistic, my religiosity favors objectivity. This I know: I am an artist. This, too, I know: no authority could have altered my course whether physical or metaphysical, pragmatic or philosophical. I serve no one exterior to myself and have been so rewarded. I am of no significance to the illusions of linearity or the consequences of repeat. No lessons can be learned from my journey for there has been no journey, no progression. I can only be viewed from the inside out and only I am positioned for this objectivity. I trust my honesty. Without audience, I have no temptation to illustrate myself other than as I am. Christopher Whitby persists. Of all the images that have wandered in and out of my production throughout the past fifty years, the child on his hobbyhorse has been the most insistently recurrent. It is the most commanding presence in this final self-portrait as well. Here, however, Christopher has progressed to his final disappearance. As I have aged, Christopher’s progression has been reductive. Oddly, we seem to be arriving at the same point on the horizon. We are both verging on absence."

 

Subsequent to the completion of STUDIO SECTION 2002-2005, Marsyas/Myself, the artist created another studio section, STUDIO SECTION 2005-2007, The Seven Deadly Sins and Three Diptychs from The Winter Notebooks. On Pages 7 and 8 of The Winter Notebooks he reprised MARSYAS/MYSELF in retrospect visual and verbal consideration and wrote the following excerpt about it:

 

"Marsyas/Myself was completed in 2005 and entered into the permanent collection of the Crocker Art Museum in November of that same year. My three year involvement with this studio section was epiphanic and liberating, the separation nearly complete. However, the song of the artist, the skin of Marsyas, hangs heavy and will not be silenced. It lingers still, as Myself lingers still, and will not be silenced. As long as artists create artifacts and as long as viewers persist in creating Art from these artifacts, the myth of Marsyas is the truth of the artist; his life, his pain, his ecstasy, and his fate. By subjection of myself as a particular artist in equation with the corpus of Marsyas, an attempt was made to recast the drama of art into an anti-fascisttic and non-authoritarian process; a complete reassignment of roles wherein the viewer becomes the sole creator of Art and all else is cultural rhetoric. It was also an attempt by this artist at total honesty. As we know virtually nothing about Marsyas, it was my intention to reveal everything about Myself even to the extent of confessional boredom. All information has been made available to the viewer. Setting the plight of Marsyas in his challenge of Apollo within the context of a contemporary sculptor’s studio establishes the parallel of the cautionary myth with all artists who would gamble their lives on a rigged contest. There is no drama greater than the artist’s struggle with his own mortality. The transmutation of mortal desire into material artifact into immortal response is the distinguishing principal of humanity and it is the artist who personifies this principal in its sublime purity. No challenge is greater, no reality more intense. Marsyas is the artist’s myth and it is to this myth all artists conform…."

  

STUDIO SECTION 2002-2005, Marsyas/Myself is a multi-part installation work that requires a space approximately 40' x 40' for exhibition in its entirety. It consists of free-standing sculptures, and large panels hanging on the walls and a combination of these and evenly divided into two metaphorical dimensions: "Marsyas" and "Myself."

 

Collection:

Crocker Art Museum

Sacramento, California

It was a fun RP and I recommend others to stop by and have a chat next week!

=======================================================================

 

Amara exits the elevator after an odd fumble with the buttons and waves to the sister. "Good evening Sister. How are you tonight?"

 

Darkness Odigaunt looked up from her book, "Hey, not too bad, you? Here for the class?"

 

David Valentino steps into the room and smiles at Darkness, approaching the desk and setting a shiny red apple on it, before winking and heading to a desk.

 

Amara nods, "Yes. Even brought something for notes." She'd tap her hip back which SL is not rezzing yet before taking a seat.

 

Myya Loire grins as she sees who the teacher's pet is, sitting all up in the first row, "This the adult education class?" she asks, eyeing the big kid in leather.

 

David Valentino turns and smiles at Myya, then shakes his head.

 

Darkness Odigaunt sat up and looked uneasily at the apple, "Is that going to explode like, halfway through class?" She nodded and stood up, "No notes tonight, really. Not for the first class. This is us, have a seat."

 

David Valentino: "Sorry..this is the Kama Sutra class. Adult education is down in the alley."

 

Myya Loire pops a squat and kicks David's chair "Oh... sorry... not..." she says, totally planning on all sorts of mischief, but then... she wasn't there to play, she was there to learn, "You don't have to be Christian for this class, right?" she asks the teacher.

 

David Valentino smiles at Darkness, "Naw..that's prime grade A apple. A serpent gave it to me, but I thought you could use it more."

 

Darkness Odigaunt shook her head, "Nope. We're going to start with that probably, but not stay just with one religion anyway."

 

Amara rolled her eyes at David. "Kama sutra...like you need to be a class for that. Be mindful not to be struck by lighting David; I will not try to revive you if the good Lord decides to punish you for that." Since the book was not needed, Amara placed it back in the bag and waited.

 

Myya Loire nods and tugs at the cross on her necklace that was so not appropriate, "Alright, cause, like I'm a Brooklyn Russian Jew, Bukharin and Russian... old school." she wanted to make that clear so that there wouldn't be any question as to which side of the debate she'd be falling on who Jesus died for... someone else's sins... not hers.

 

David Valentino laughs, "Naw..god and me got an understanding. he leaves me alone and I do the same for him." He then turns back to watch the good sister with humorous interest.

 

Darkness Odigaunt nodded, "Maybe you can help when we get to Judaism then." She smiled and checked the dial over the door, "We'll start soon, doesn't look like anyone else is coming."

 

David Valentino notices the quotes by T.S. Elliott and Poe on the wall and arches a brow.

 

Myya Loire fiddles with a bit of paper on her desk, tearing off little pieces and turning them into tiny projectiles. She lines them up along the edge and takes careful aim for the back of David's collar.

 

Amara asks, "So we'll be starting with Christianity today I assume, Sister? Or general discussion about religion as it were?"

 

Darkness Odigaunt looks back, "Okay! No, we're sort of just going to start generally. Like, how much people know." She leaned back on her desk, "So... how much do you know?"

 

David Valentino feels some mini paper projectiles bouncing off his collar and hitting his hair and frowns, hoping the good sister breaks out the ruler soon.

 

Teyh Saunders tries to slip into the classroom quietly, keeping to the back of the classroom as he tries to move along the back wall. Half way across, he would stop, folding his arms across his chest, listening closely and smiling at the Sister.

 

David Valentino raises a hand but doesn't wait to be called on, "Religion came about as ways to explain the unexplainable, then to give hope for an afterlife because of the fear of death, and finally, as a control method.”

 

Amara hummed. “My view of religion’s been more about finding guidance for things. The mentality of ‘What would this person do?’ in a certain scenario rather than strictly adhering to certain beliefs.”

 

Teyh Saunders began to put together from the various responses that the question was about religion, raising his hand from his standing spot in the back of the room and waiting quietly to be called upon.

 

David Valentino eyes Amara, "That sounds more like spirituality than religion."

 

Darkness Odigaunt nodded, "Pretty good. That's about the definition of general religion," to David. She pointed to the woman beside him, "That's good too. Still right, but a completely different right." She nodded to Teyh as he walked in, then to allow him to speak.

 

Amara nods. “I suppose it does. I've seen some times in life that make me question Christianity but at the same time accept it if that makes any sense. There are things out there that religion cannot explain, but a deeper belief can…or rather it tries to.” She turned behind her to see who the sister was nodding to.

 

Myya Loire has no idea anyone is behind her, doesn't think raising your hand is required in an adult education class and so just puts in "We're all going up the same mountain, just taking different paths."

 

Teyh Saunders lowers his hand slightly, closing his eyes as he speaks. "Religion is variant, it depends on the religion in question. Christianity is the worship of the 'Lord Jesus Christ' who sacrificed himself on the cross to absolve us for our sins...then you have Daoism, which is a religion as well yet has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and instead focuses on the Tao - the Great Mother - more of a state of being rather than a physical being. So in a sense, a religion is the ethics and morality that is within the minds of most human beings that they follow and relate most closely to. Typically involving worship of some kind, but not always." He himself was a Daoist, having converted long ago...yet he felt respect for other religions as well - thus why he was here.

 

Darkness Odigaunt turned and started writing the replies, hesitating and just writing just the last part of Teyh's, "Right, right. I liked the mountain analogy." She stepped back, the four different answers standing out against the fading chalk from classes past, "So, David, I think you said something about spirituality, right? So, what's the difference between spirituality and religion?"

 

David Valentino smiles, "Spirituality, is more of an inner essence, or set of morals and beliefs, while religion is more teachings, drilled in through repetition, and usually with punishments and rewards thrown in, in order for a few to control the many."

 

Darkness Odigaunt tapped her lip ring with the piece of chalk, "Interesting thought... Anyone have any others?"

 

Myya Loire: "Religion is a set of doctrines handed down along with dogma and traditions based on ancient text that's been re-interpreted with each generation," she chimes in.

 

Darkness Odigaunt nodded, "That's a little more objective."

 

Teyh Saunders thought for a moment, clearing his throat as he did. "Well...the line between spirituality and religion can at times be blurred and marred. If one follows the Christian God, the texts and the ethics set forth by said texts of their own volition...is that religion or spirituality?" He shifted his weight slightly, moving to the desk in front of him and leaning upon it. "Does the actions of the group associated with a religion or spiritual calling really determine which is which? Or is it instead the service that it renders upon those who follow it what determines that?"

 

Amara smiles. “I like how David worded that. I think spirituality warrants a broader sense of awareness where as religion sorta confines you to what is and what isn’t. Certain things cannot change and must not be meddled with in certain religions while in spiritual beliefs this restriction isn’t always there. I'm speaking in terms of most religions, not just Christianity.”

 

David Valentino nods to Amara in agreement, then turns toward Teyh, "Sadly..I think the longer a religion survives, the less it bumps up against spirituality. Though there are always exceptions. But mankind corrupts all eventually."

 

Myya Loire shakes her head, "There are different interpretations in all religions... those who conform and those who readjust the view based on their human experience..."

 

Darkness Odigaunt set the chalk down, then pointed Teyh to a desk, "It's going to be short tonight, but not that short." She leaned against one of the less chalked areas of the board, "This is a great discussion. They're similar, but there are certain things an established religion needs."

 

Teyh Saunders closes his eyes once more, letting off a small 'hmm' sound at David's words. He would shift into the seat, being a bit uncomfortable there. "Sorry...standing problem." He murmurs, looking up at the Sister now.

 

Amara chuckles, “Well what do the established religions have over spirituality movements…besides more followers and texts to be followed?”

 

David Valentino shrugs, "Power and money."

 

Myya Loire: "Tradition!" Myya adds, "And family history."

 

Amara shook her head. “No, it’s more than that. A corporation has money and power but ya don’t see people lining up on a given day to worship them, now do you? And folks can stray from their family traditions without losing faith in their religions. There’s something else that separates them.”

 

David Valentino arches a brow, "I see many people lining up to "worhsip" corporations every day."

 

Myya Loire adds, "You might think you break from your family traditions, but you're fooling yourself... what you grow up with stays with you forever."

 

David Valentino sighs, "Corporations just preach a different sermon than religions."

 

Darkness Odigaunt smiled, "Great guesses." She wrote the two on the board, "To be no longer considered a cult, a group needs a million followers." She hesitated, "Well, last I heard. I doubt it changes much. Laws are just a part of it. You can have a completely oral history and tradition and still be considered a religion." She shook her head at the next guess, "No, while it helps in the real world, in theory you can be a religion with no money or power. Granted, if a person had no money whatsoever." She smiled at the woman in the back, "Tradition is part of it, but it doesn't have to be. You don't have to bea religion to have those."

 

Myya Loire looks a bit confused..."You don't have to be a religion to have tradtions, but you can't be a religion without traditions... then it's just... what?"

 

David Valentino eyes Darkness, "Show me one religion that doesn't end up being about money or power. Even the small ones usually evolve into control..which equals power of a sort."

 

Teyh Saunders lifts his eyes up, shaking his head slightly. Most Daoist monks were poor folk, though they had their traditions and beliefs. "The force that can be forced is not the eternal force. Daoism doesn't focus itself on power or control, but instead in passivity. Searching for the inner peace within one self that allows us to be one with the Great Mother - Tao, which is all and nothing."

 

David Valentino mumbles, "Sounds like a spiritual calling or belief rather than an organized religion then. Eastern philosophy and all that stuff."

 

Myya Loire shakes her head... "Just gotta have folks... I guess."

 

Darkness Odigaunt shook her head, "Sorry, a bit nervous for my first class. Tradition falls in," she drew a circle and labeled it spirituality, inside, she drew smaller circles and labeled them 'religion', then wrote tradition out in spirituality. "It's here, I think." To David, she answered, "I said on paper. Besides, I don't think -any- are all about money and control. None of the ones that last, even something that asks you to pay a ton like scientology."

 

Teyh Saunders nods slightly. "Thus why I said it's marred and blurred between religion and spirituality. We have our holy grounds, our temples. But we do not say there is but one way to be one with the Great Mother..." He trailed off, allowing D to speak, keeping to himself now.

 

David Valentino shrugs, "As far back as the Summarians and Babylonians, the heads of religions used there followers to gain wealth and power. In some cases for political reasons. The rise of the Catholic religion is a prime example. They changed tenants as quickly as they were rewarded to do so in the middle ages and beyond. I don't mean to sound like religions don't do good as well. But they are flawed at their base level, because they are taught and decided upon by man. Spirituality is often a search within one's self..which is sounds like what the fellow in the back there is speaking of."

 

Myya Loire chuckles, "Yup... men... " is all she says.

 

Amara is quiet for some time as the others defend or debunk their views. "It's not always about money. In the end, you are just trying to get as many followers to see what you see. As a religion, a cult, a movement, or whatever, the base hope is that you get people to question themselves and reflect upon what they find."

 

Teyh Saunders leaned his head in his hand, sighing slightly. He wouldn't argue the point any further - that wasn't the point of why people were here today. He wasn't here to preach, but to observe

 

Darkness Odigaunt laughed at Myya and waved a hand, "It sounds like we're all coming from different views, but that's great. Civil debate's the best way to learn sometimes." She turned and wrote "morality", "But there's another concept that's related to these first two. What's your take on this one?"

 

Myya Loire couldn't help but quip, "Morality, it's what's for dinner."

 

Amara let out a sigh at the word written down. “This is what likely made me branch away from Christianity. I’m a scientist after all and I know first hand that those morals and the rules of morality can sometimes stand in the way of progressing things and bettering lives. At the same time, there are things I believe science is not meant to touch, even if theoretically it can. Morality in my opinion is how religion manage to keep their followers in line.”

 

David Valentino shrugs, "I think everyone has an iner voice, but I also think morality is taught from birth, and differently, depending upon your location, economic level and social boundaries."

 

David Valentino: *inner

 

Darkness Odigaunt raised an eye at Amara, "Uh... oh...kay." She nodded at David, "That's a good way of looking at it too."

 

Myya Loire flicks another bit of paper at David... "Rules are made to be broken... morals are made to bend and recover from..."

 

David Valentino expounds, "Morality two hundred years ago is far different than it is now for most of us. Twelve year old brides were not out of the norm. Now you would be a social and legal pariah…"

 

Darkness Odigaunt checked the time, "Why do you say that?" she asked Myya.

 

Myya Loire adds, "Well, Lot tried to sell his daughters so he could have a good nights sleep... and he was considered righteous by God... when Sarah turned back to witness the destruction of Gamora she got turned to salt... what's that about?"

 

Amara nods. "Back then, people didn't live that long either, David. Marrying young was normal. That view changed as humans started to live longer lives. You didn't need a young wife anymore but a virgin was still standard."

 

Darkness Odigaunt brushed the chalk off her butt, "Well, the Bible wasn't faxed down by God. She's," she headnodded at Amara, "Is right. A lot has changed since then. We don't know that God approved of Lot offering his virgin daughters to be raped was right, we know that Lot wanting to protect strangers in his home was."

 

David Valentino disagrees, "it was when a girl had her period and could breed. it was natural. But morals have changed over time to encompass the mental readiness of a bride as well. Morals change. We once looked upon black folks as animals, because it was taught to us to believe, morally, that we were superior. But times change as does or morality."

 

David Valentino smiles at Darkness, "The Old Testament is savage and brutal compared to the new…yet Christianity encompasses both."

 

Myya Loire quips..."Well, that's all biological... had to spread the seed... to make sure the kid was yours not someone elses you wanted a virgin and shit... " Myya backs up David a bit... and then adds..."um, from what little I've read of the new testament... the whole concept of questioning God or his minions is really really frowned upon... which is brutal in its own way."

 

Darkness Odigaunt shook her head, "You're thinking of the Old Testament. We can get into that next week though when we start on Christianity."

 

Myya Loire sneezed three times in a row, head tossed back, exhausted like she'd just had an orgasm... "Oh... anyone gots a tissue?"

 

Amara nods. "Yes, now we look at hybrids as animals, lower beings, or equals depending on our beliefs. I don't think the old Testament was brutal, Sister. Perhaps more honest..." She pulled a few sheets from her hip bag and offered them to the woman. "Bless you."

 

David Valentino hopes he doesn't have snot as well as spitwads on the back of his long coat.

 

David Valentino looks up at the good sister, "We do we search so desperately for answers? Why do we feel the need for religion? Won't all questions be answered when we die?"

 

Myya Loire dabs her nose with the tissue and wonders just how much longer the class was going to be as she had to leave soon.

 

Darkness Odigaunt erased a b it of the board, "Who's to say it's more honest?" She shrugged and walked back to her desk, "It's human nature. We wonder, we want answers now."

 

David Valentino nods, "And we fear. It's intriguing. And I apologize if I come across overly sarcastic. I envy true believers at times."

 

Amara leans forward. "Maybe it's because we are impatient, David. The dead stay silent about it ,and what happens after we pass away is something most of us want to know before we get there too."

 

Myya Loire tilts her head, "I envy idiots, life is so much simpler when you're ignorant..."

 

Darkness Odigaunt sat down, "Classtime is over. We can continue this disussion downstairs if you'd like, or next week."

 

Myya Loire: "Is there homework?"

 

David Valentino smiles to Amara, "I guess I'm more concerned about how I feel about myself here on earth than what waits beyind. I'll take the answers when i can see them and feel them, or go into sweet oblivion."

 

David Valentino nods to Darkness, "Thank you for giving us your time. I'll be more quiet next time..promise!"

 

David Valentino he stands and looks back at Myya and gives her a "bad girl" frown.

 

Amara starts to stand. "I don't believe we ever introduced ourselves to each other. i know David loosely, but that's it."

 

Darkness Odigaunt shook her head, "Bring a friend? I just want you to think about your religion, if you have one, your spirituality, and your morality. No problem, David, talking was always my favorite part of religion class in school

 

Darkness Odigaunt: ."

 

David Valentino snickers, "She said loosely"

 

Myya Loire waves, "Name's Myya, I run the bookshop up in Apoc... and I'm taking a couple of online college classes. I was hoping I could get you to sign a form or two so I can get credit for the class."

 

David Valentino nods to the good suister, "I'll try and round some folks up. Perhaps I can put a schedule up on at the bar. Lord knows most folks that come drinking could use some education."

 

Amara rolled her eyes. "Not in that fashion, you pervert. One of your lost children was an acquaintance of mine. Regardless, I’m Dr. Amara Dubois, CEO for the Ashagi Labs branch. Nice to meet you, Myya. I enjoyed this session and I will be sure to try and bring my wife along to the next class.”

 

Darkness Odigaunt nodded, "I can, if it'll do you any good, Myya." She nodded to David, "Adult's classes fridays at this time, kid's Wednesdays."

 

David Valentino nods, "I'll send Sally and Tunny your way then for the Wednesday classes."

 

Myya Loire pulls out the form and hands it over to the good sister, smiling sheepishly as she's getting college credit for not much... still, she would be getting her degree, first in her family, in a couple of years. "Thanks sister."

 

Darkness Odigaunt signs the form, "I'll keep them safe for a little while for you."

 

Amara weaves through the desks to call the elevator. "Until next Friday, Sister. Have a nice evening."

 

David Valentino moves toward the door, "The apple really is just an apple Sister. " He smiles at her letting the double meaning come in, then looks to Amara, "I loved your viewpoints. An intelligent and beautiful woman is enough to make me believe there truly is good. Well…almost."

 

Darkness Odigaunt pokes the apple again, "Cookies and milk for ya in the fridge downstairs. Thanks for coming."

 

8D8 is one of those figures kids got when there was nothing else available on the pegs. It's certainly difficult to imagine a kid clamouring for a figure of a droid depicted torturing another in the Star Wars equivalent of Abu Ghraib.

 

The droids in Star Wars had it tough. "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life," one of them observed. They may have been manufactured goods but they displayed courage and concern for each other, and felt fear, anger and even despair. Yet they were exploited like chattel, had restraining bolts placed on them, had their memories wiped and if they got uppity about any of this, they had a date with 8D8.

 

Still, it's nice to imagine a future in which droids are at humanity's beck and call to take on tedious, repetitive and dangerous tasks, and improve our overall quality of life.

 

The other scenario, in which humanity takes a backseat to technology, is less appealing. It's the scenario that sees corporations that prioritise profits and stock prices over human dignity reducing employees to the level of droids. People would be monitored for efficiency, constantly surveilled to ensure compliance and fired by algorithm for suboptimal performance. There's no reason to believe they would be happy with their lot.

 

Tech companies in pursuit of ever greater profits might collaborate with authoritarians using social cohesion as a pretext for shutting down protest and dissent. A repressive regime primarily concerned with maintaining the passivity of its populace might well have great need of 8D8's services.

www.messersmith.name/wordpress/2011/06/16/a-sentimental-j...

I think that somewhere between Buffalo, New York and Phoenix, Arizona I must have hit the bottom. The thing about the bottom is that only in retrospect can one tell if one has been there or not. It might not be recognized upon arrival. Asking one's self, "Is this the bottom?" is of no use. One never knows if it might be possible to slip lower still.

 

Indeed, I did not understand that I had hit the bottom and was on the way back up until I looked through the motley collage of images stored on my camera. I had forgotten about this one. If you have a few minutes, I'll tell you the story.

 

When I left Canada, I had no rational excuses for complaining. I had worked some things out. My immediate future was assured, insofar as one's future can ever be guaranteed. I had settled family obligations as well as a life-long black sheep absentee can ever do. I had visited, conversed with, made the right noises, put on the appropriate clothes and been effusively grateful for all of the kindnesses which seemed to spring from some bottomless well of good will. In short, I was ready for What Comes Next.

 

The problem was that I could not find reason for expectations. Hope is sometimes a cruel mistress. One becomes timid of the lashes meted out by life. To hope is to expose the stripped back once again to the vagaries of the universe. Where there is hope there is also the risk of pain and disappointment. It is feels safer to be seduced by feigned indifference and passivity, to allow oneself to be dragged along with the flow of happenstance. It is easier to sit there in a nameless airport lounge eating plastic food from a plastic bag and say that I don't really care any more. If I just keep telling myself that, it will be true. To sit and wait, not knowing for what.

 

At some convenience store on the way to the airport, Hans and I stopped for a last chance for cheap sustenance. Frugality prevents me from purchasing anything non-essential at an airport. In line with my mood I decided to discover how inexpensively I could fill my growling belly with sufficient bulk to tide me over until the next watering hole. As I perused the offerings my eye was caught by a familiar label from my impoverished youth:

 

Yes, for $1.86 I could tank up on calories and pump enough sugar into my blood to keep me from getting dizzy. My plan was to eat it in the departure lounge. What I failed to consider was the Spanish Inquisition of our day, the universally dreaded TSA.

 

Nobody interfered with my right to consume degrading food in a public place until I came to the station where one's most intimate body parts are displayed as if they were party favors on a giant x-ray screen. I dutifully removed my shoes, my $8.00 suit coat, my black fedora and unpacked my innocent Toshiba computer from its hidey-hole and placed them all in the plastic trays for their trip through the place of exposure. My ravioli caught the attention of the protectors of our security.

 

You know the drill. The TSA man stepped in front of me and asked, rather too sternly, I think, "Is this your back pack?" I freely admitted so. He proceeded to tell me that my can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli was contraband and could not be allowed to accompany me to the departure lounge. I told him that I was planning to eat it before I boarded the plane, where it might be considered genuinely dangerous to something other than my digestive system. As he walked away with the potential weapon I dedcided to live very dangerously and spoke the hazardous words, "It's sad when you're forced to take away an old man's breakfast." He seemed to stumble a little. When he returned a minute or so later, he said, "You can keep it."

 

At that point one of those crazy metaphors entered my head unannounced. I pictured a harmless forest animal cowering against a tree as a hunter pointed a gun at its head. When the trigger is pulled all that is heard is "CLICK". Picture a cartoon of it. That's what I saw in my head. Maybe that was the bottom. I don't know. I said, "That's very kind of you. Thank you."

 

And then there was Sedona. Have you seen the beautiful performance of Peter Sellers playing out his best roll in the movie, Being There?  This kind of surreal unexpected turn is what I'm talking about. Things start getting replaced by other things willy-nilly. Fear gives way to confidence, puzzlement to certainty. Laughter pushes sadness aside and depression is savaged by a soaring spirit. Doom and gloom begone! In the movie simple-mindedness was suddenly seen as profound. But Chance could not be transformed until he was released from the prison of pity in which he lived. His transformation was one of appearances and interpretation. Mine is real.

 

I heard about this old trunk and Grace's hope for its future when we first pulled into her garage where it has lived for some years in the quiet company of garden tools and old school records:

 

 

Grace's plan for the old trunk was to give it a purpose in life. She pictured it in a place where it could shine and be useful as an humble table for cool drinks in the toasty Arizona afternoons. I saw its beauty and its message under layers of rust and dust. As Grace insisted, paint was not the answer. It would only hide the story of the trunk. I began to formulate a title for my first Sedona art. It would be called Just Returned from a Sentimental Journey.  At this point is is only half finished. My plan is to find two pairs of boots, one pair of men's boots and one pair for a lady. I will fill them full of concrete and place bolts in the tops. I will then bolt the boots underneath the trunk, the woman's boots facing to the right on the right end of the trunk and the man's boots following on the left side walking in the same direction. This will make an amusing table for the patio. Sedona is a place where artistic inclinations can be allowed to run rampant. Nothing is too outrageous.

 

All around me is beauty. An otherwise mundane trip to the grocery store is made magical by God's Own Art:

 

Even ant hills pretend to be something they are not:

 

Lowly desert grasses speak of hidden resources of strength in the hard red soil that gives them life:

 

And I have not yet scratched the surface of the wealth of hard-living flora which speckle the deceptively barren landscape:

 

 

I have but a while to appreciate the austere beauty of this desert nearly a mile high in the thin atmosphere. No wonder I feel breathless most of the time.

 

Three years ago I was here visiting Grace with Eunie. I remember the holiday very well. We were consolidating our lives and planning for a sweet future of growing old together. We saw the Grand Canyon. I got my final tattoo, one I had been planning for a year. Many things have changed in my life since then. The loss of Eunie devastated me. I am still surprised that I survived it. It was a very close call. Along the worrisome way my new tattoo faded, the victim of my impatience to get it done quickly. I lost much ink when my arm swelled from the trauma of a too-quick job. I had in mind to return to the same shop to get it repaired:

 

 

The delightfully decorated young lady is a skin artist at Avatar Tat2 in Cottonwood, Arizona. Mery Bear is very skilled and has a deft touch. I would recommend her to anyone wishing to improve on God's handiwork. Mery did an excellent job of renewing the colours on my arm. It is now bright and cheery.

 

I am, in total, being renewed. In the process I am happy to find that the best of the past is coming along with me. Eunie is as fresh in my mind as if I had had breakfast with her this morning.

 

Is this real or am I going to wake up? Time will tell.

"Traffic in Women Collage" digital montage 1998

 

from my freshman year final paper that accompanies it:

 

montage brings out the recurring themes of the feminist poetry and prose that we read near the end of the quarter. At the very top is a quote from Andrea Dworkin which states that “sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social from of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination.” I found this quotation particularly relevant to the piece because an outcry against sexism is what these texts are built upon. Rubin’s essay addressed the idea of penis envy in a fresh and memorable way. On page 195, she says,

 

The girl never gets the phallus. It passes through her, and in its passage is transformed into a child. When she “recognizes her castration,” she acceded to the place of a woman in a phallic exchange network. She can “get” the phallusin intercourse, or as a childbut only as a gift from a man. She never gets to give it away.

 

With this in mind, I decided that it was a very important part of the essay, one definitely worth of visual interpretation. But how? As I read over the essay for the second time, I realized that the phallus as she describes it is a “symbolic token,” (Rubin, 194) “the set of meanings conferred upon the penis.” (190) I learned from studying the ideas of Freud and others of the psychoanalytic school that phallic symbols are ubiquitous in our society, whether in the form of skyscrapers, telephone poles, or even cigars. The image I finally selected for this is that of a golden baton being passed on from one male relay racer to another, the baton being the phallus. And superimposed upon them is the outstretched hand of an infant, reaching for the phallus yet not obtaining it. This symbolizes the Freudian Oedipal struggle of infancy. Beneath this I placed a picture of a female superhero who, although objectified in her skimpy costume, has obtained the phallus in the form of a sword.

 

Objectification is a recurring theme in the feminist poetry and prose, particularly in “The Venus Hottentot” and also in “The True Bride,” where the speaker describes his “ideal pornography”an army of hobbling invalid women “hunting for husbands.” (601) Objectification, the portrayal of women as sex objects, strips women of their humanity. Sadly, I found far too many visual examples of this. In the objectification portion of my collage, I use images that come from four different media: music, the internet, fashion, and the movie industry. Also included in this section is a poem that I wrote about being perceived as an object.

 

Marriage is almost always portrayed in these texts in a negative light, so I selected the image of bride and groom dolls bound together with twine. Also included, though not as greatly emphasized, are sex roe expectations and stereotypes. The stiff, unsmiling girl who seems displeased with her look-alike doll is an image of passivity while the pugnacious little boy in boxing gloves is an image of aggression.

 

published as preface to MESSAGIO GALORE take V by & as part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival, spring 2oo8

 

____________________________

MAID MANIFEST: FRAMING THE O

 

posited

 

music is a structured act of listening. regardless of the origin of the sound source – a rigidly-structured symphony for double orchestra & mixed choirs, say, or the next 4 minutes & 33 seconds of random air perturberances – it is that act of listening that imposes conceptual stavery on the aural recept.

 

the oral recept, in the other ear, though similarly informed by the same sets of intervalencies (pitch/timbre/duration), is subjected to a conceptual receipt that aims almost solely at semantic construction, the materiality of the sounds themselves all but transparent in servility to the carried content.

 

sound poetry exists in the wide expanse between & interpenetrating into music & literature. a focus on the materiality of language stretches all the way from our prelinguistic heights to well beyond the current fashionations of postmodern cacademicism. from inadvertent grunt when the rock conks yr block to highly sophisticated choral extravaganzæ, sound poetry resists static definition of its material malleability.

 

deposited

 

as much as sound poetry enjoys parametric freeplay through literary & musical semioses, fixing on the sounds themselves as product is only part of the equation, the score all but transparent to the listening.

 

sound poetry is synæsthesia at work, a process of sounding sight. while this can be said of reading words & music generally, sound poetry's formal malleability is not limited to its manifestations as sound but is equally delimited in terms of its scoring techniques, which can contain elements of musical, literary &or a variety of optophonetic notational systems (a score can also be simply a set of instructions (not unlike a recipe) or a photograph of a leafless tree, its branchings ripe with lettriste pickings).

 

reposited

 

sound poetry is genrificational sabotage, rupturing the passivity of somnolent audi(o)ence.

 

audience is activerbal, re(ac)quiring an intercourse of emotion & intellection that allows the recept the rapture of conception.

 

not deconstruction but reconstruction.

 

not demented but remented.

 

_________________

MESSAGIO GALORE

 

province

 

sound is always an aspect of any form of writing, deliberately or not. from interior devices such as alliteration & homophony through chant & concrete poetry to sound scored for one or more voices, even the overt avoidance of such fascinations describes an acute awareness of the connotative potential of sound as content. red allowed, sound fastenates.

 

provenance

 

if linear poetry, chant & soundscores can be read aloud, it stands to reason that other forms of non-unilinear writing can be subjected to optophonetic translation processes into sound. at latest as early as the 19teens, sound poetry was battering at the bafflements of the genteel poetry reading & has continued in development ever since, albeit marginalized (from whence came, it should be remembered, such wondrous sepses as the Carmina Burana).

 

despite this continuity, its marginalization has been equally continuous & there is not – now, in Canada – much in the way of public performances of sound poetry outside the occasional choral novelty & random inclusions in various writers' readings. as a willwishing audience to such work, this is somewhat less than satisfying.

 

providence

 

MESSAGIO GALORE is thetic: an examination of scoring, reading, sounding & hearing techniques across as wide a range as one person with scant resources finds possible to play with.

 

its function is as a sort of a personal/live/serial anthology of chameleonate content, utilizing my own archive of material & many friends willing to undergo the rigours of rehearsal. while serving as a forum for my own compositions, it has grown to include much historical material from a wide range of sources both Canadian & international, its reach extending from the prolonged present (there will be new works premiered each time around) back to the 6th century (sofar).

 

_______________________

ALEXANDER'S DARK BAND

 

participation

 

MESSAGIO GALORE is curated, directed, mainly arranged & performed, & partly written by jwcurry with the able assistance of many. it has been part of the study to perform particular pieces with a variety of people to hear how personality functions & modifies performance. thus far:

 

MESSAGIO GALORE: with Maria Erskine, 26 february 2oo4, Ottawa

MESSAGIO GALORE II: with Max Middle & Jennifer Books, 24 september 2oo5, Ottawa

MESSAGIO GALORE III: with Peter Norman, Ross Priddle & Laurie Fuhr, 21 july 2oo7, Calgary

MESSAGIO GALORE IV: with/as Alexander's Dark Band & Auxiliary, Trish Postle, 6 october 2oo7, Toronto

MESSAGIO GALORE V: with/as Alexander's Dark Band & Auxiliary, John Lavery & Carmel Purkis, 13 april 2oo8, Ottawa

 

particulation

 

Alexander's Dark Band consists of jwcurry, Maria Erskine, Nicholas Power & Rob Read

 

particularization

 

Alexander's Dark Band is the darker zone between primary & secondary rainbows, a light phonemenon Nicholas Power encountered in working on his manuscript of concrete poetry, The Theory of the Rainbow, in the early mid-'8os. he commented then on the potential aptness of the name for an ensemble, should he ever find himself part of one. during the delights of our gruelling rehearsals in Toronto, i was struck by the functionality of our working unit &, unanticipated by Nick, figured it made sense to have this specific collective be so-named & announced us as such.

 

post-performance, it was determined that we would be most interested in working further together on this project, honing & developing, expanding what might be possible with a fixed continity of personnel.

 

MESSAGIO GALORE will continue to explore other vocal apparati (both in terms of different ensembles & Alex's auxiliaries) but revels in the rewards of such a dedicated quartet

___________________________________________________________________________

 

part 1

 

1. Collaboration No. 2, Steve McCaffery (Canada, 1978?). duo: curry/Power

 

2. Hare Pronounced Hair, Rafael Barreto-Rivera/Paul Dutton/Steve McCaffery (Canada, 1977). trio: curry/Power/Read

 

3. IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, Frank Zappa (USA, 1964). full quartet

 

4. ears, Michelle April/jwcurry (Canada, 2oo6). solo: curry

 

5. Riryphur's rurrusur, jwcurry/Rob Read (Canada, 2oo8). full quartet

 

6. Generations, bpNichol (Canada, 1988). solo: curry

 

7. Alice in Wonderland, Sam Loyd (USA, 189-?). full quartet

 

8. Salmon River Soliloquy, David UU (Canada, 1973). solo: curry

 

9. SEVEN WAYS OF STARVING, jwcurry/Beverley Daurio (Canada, 199o?). full quartet

 

1o. "CRUX ", Venantius Fortunatus (Merovingia, c.53o-6oo). full quartet

 

11. der minister I, Jaap Blonk (Netherlands, 1992?). solo: curry

 

12. Devil-Trap Spiral, John Furnival (England, 1965?). solo: curry

 

13. KARAWANE, Hugo Ball (Switzerland, 1917). solo: curry

 

14. Monograms–Genealogy–Grammarology, bpNichol (Canada, 1988). full quartet

 

15. CRODZIAC DZÉGOUM APIR, Claude Gauvreau (Canada, 195-?). solo: curry

 

16. sweet suite suet, Ernst Jandl (Austria, 197o?). solo: curry

 

17. DAS GROSSE LALULA, Christian Morgenstern (Germany, 189o?). solo: curry

 

18. " end ant ", Wharton Hood (Canada, 1996). duo: Power/Read

 

19. WORM, Bob Cobbing (England, 1954). full quartet

 

2o. Forcible dislocation of personality, Herbert Stencil (Canada, 1994?). full quartet

 

21. WELTWEHE, August Stramm (Germany, 1914). solo: curry

 

22. KNOTS, jwcurry (Canada, 1982). duo: Erskine/Power

 

23. SHIFT 3, jwcurry/Peggy Lefler (Canada, 1982). intro: Power; duo: Erskine/Read

 

24. A LITTLE NASTINESS, Four Horsemen (Rafael Barreto-Rivera/Paul Dutton/Steve McCaffery/bpNichol; Canada, 1981). full quartet

 

25. The Tibetan Memory Trick, traditional/arranged by Howard Kaylan/Ian Underwood/Mark Volman (USA, 1975). full sextet with Alec's Socks

 

26. " Mon Olivine ", Claude Gauvreau (Canada, 196-?). solo: curry

 

27. " My Olivine ", Claude Gauvreau/translated by Ray Ellenwood (Canada, 197-?). solo: curry

 

28. SHE WAS A VISITOR, Robert Ashley (USA, 1967). full sextet with Alec's Socks

 

(intromissium)

 

part 2

 

29. Heights (Universal Language), Alexei Kruchenykh (Russia, 1919?). solo: curry

 

3o. Another Motive, Rafael Barreto-Rivera/bpNichol (Canada, 1979). full sextet with Alex's Socks

 

31. APPROXIMATE, Frank Zappa (USA, 1972?). full quartet

 

32. " kp'erioUM ", Raoul Hausmann (Germany, 1918)

 

33. OPIUM MARBLE, jwcurry (Canada, 198o). duo: curry/Read

 

34. THE MAN IN THE LOWER LEFT HAND CORNER OF THE PHOTOGRAPH, Mike Patton (USA, 1995). solo: curry

 

35. East Wind, bpNichol (Canada, 197-?). full quartet

 

36. Fury of Sneezing, Kurt Scwitters (England, 1946?). solo: curry

 

37. PLEASE SIGN MY CAST – NO, NOT THERE; HIGHER, jwcurry (Canada, 2oo8). full quartet

 

38. PAESAGGIO + TEMPORALE, Giacomo Balla (Italy, 1915). solo: curry

 

39. CANZONE RUMORISTA cantata in coro sui teatri d'Italia in ANICCAM del 2000, Fortunato Depero (Italy, 1916?). solo: curry

 

4o. Marcia futurista, F.T.Marinetti (Italy, 1916). solo: curry

 

41. CANZONE RUMORISTA (ritmo cinese), Fortunato Depero (Italy, 1916). solo: curry

 

42. Oiseautal, Raoul Hausmann (France, 1918?). solo: Read, simultaneous with

43. Super-Bird-Song, Kurt Schwitters (England, 1946?). solo: curry

 

44. B, François Dufrene (France, 1958). trio: curry/Power/Read

 

45. Pike-Fishing North Milne Lake, Gerry Shikatani (Canada, 1977?). full quartet

 

46. ONAN's NANOLECHCTURER, jwcurry (Canada, 2oo2). solo: curry

 

47. MUSHY PEAS, Steve McCaffery/bpNichol (England, 1978). duo: curry/Power

 

48. der minister II, Jaap Blonk (Netherlands, 1992?). solo: curry

 

49. Pieces Of Stop, bpNichol (Canada, 1978). full quartet

 

5o. TRACT, jwcurry (Canada, 1995). solo: curry

 

51. 16 Part Suite, Steve McCaffery/bpNichol (Canada, 1971-8?). duo: curry/Erskine

 

52. " pouadlé ", Václava Vokolka (Czechoslovakia, 198-?). full quartet

 

53. INTERRUPTED NAP a verbal/pre-verbal landscape, bpNichol (Canada, 1982). solo: curry

 

54. anacyclic poem with two shouts DHARMATHOUGHTS STUPAWARDS, Dom Sylvester Houédard (England, 1966). duo: Power/Read

 

55. WHITE TEXT SURE version ten, bpNichol (Canada, 1981). full quartet

 

56. Scomposizione I, Luigi Gallina (Italy, 1933). full quartet

 

57. Artikulationen, Franz Mon (Germany, 199o?). full quartet

 

58. TWO: Less Time, bpNichol (Canada, 1982?). full sextet with Alec's Socks

 

59. A THOUSAND MOODS A MINUTE, Shant Basmajian (Canada, 1992?). full sextet with Alec's Socks

 

6o. ma meeshka mow skwoz, Mike Patton (USA, 1995). solo: curry

 

61. "How The Pigs' Music Works", Frank Zappa (USA, 1994). trio: Erskine/Power/Read

 

___________________________________________________________________________

 

cover: Herbert Stencil (2o above)

___________________________________________________________________________

 

filmed by Josh Massey

___________________________________________________________________________

see also:

 

invitations:

www.flickr.com/photos/48593922@N04/8306764432/

www.flickr.com/photos/48593922@N04/8316345864/

 

photos:

www.flickr.com/photos/johnwmacdonald/2413412026/

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review:

pearlformance.livejournal.com/97847.html

 

publications:

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2005-2007

80" x48"

Colored pencil, modeling paste on wood panel

 

Below is a transcription of the handwritten words of GULA above:

 

Nothing fills me, satisfies me, binds my need. I hang bloated, an inflatable sack of gaseous inconsequence. Self-pity, self-loathing and disgust swell my perimeter. I consume everything and exhaust nothing. I have cannibalized all desire and packaged myself expandable. I am greed without anus. That which my sibling, Avaritia, cannot retain, I cannot expel. I am a single-holed hunger, a swollen toothless bladder of vast proportion My skin is moist with shit. I boil with the blessing of my punishment. Pity me. Pity me as I pity myself, with love and understanding. Let me devour your love. Afford me the sweets of your acceptance and loving understanding. Do not judge me repugnant and without merit. Enlarge me with your lack of judgement. Forsake punishment and retribution. I hang helpless of defense. Is there not some beauty in my dedication? A certain admiration for my capacity to retain? I have always been and will always be. As you swell my enormity with repetition, I will devour you generation upon layered generation; a vast compaction of obfuscation, a conspiracy of ignorance. Through your insatiable hunger and my infinite capacity, we will devour the earth. I require no change of diet. Repeat is the fare of the day and of all of the days. I am putrid with it and exalt in its exhilaration. The perfume of blood and shit expands my girth, gives measurement to my wastefulness. To eliminate unwelcome surprise or unpalatable experiment, let me list the menu: War—Only war—all else is a potpourri of surrogates and stuffing. Greed feeds me, expands my perimeter. I devour what he acquires. What he cannot retain, I contain. I am the reticule of avarice. Nothing escapes me save the stench of layered repetition. I hang heavy with it, crucified by consumption. Pity me. The menu never varies. I have no taste for it, but can stomach no other. In symbiotic stagnation, I serve my purpose with passive accumulation. Though what I hold is never used, the very weight of me is proof of our existence, our triangulation. Gula, Acedia, Avaritia. We three, in symbiotic triangulation, illustrate the entelechy of mankind; but it is I, only I, Gula, who is passive. I hang and I hold, absent of anus in constant and tractable expansion. A balloon of infinite compaction. My layered weight and weighted expansion is shaped and molded to the contours of war. I am what I eat: rape, torture, horror, suffering, torn flesh, burning flesh, rotten flesh...I am full of it, suppurated by it, hanging and twisting like a fragrant pudding. I am the right flank of Acedia, sloth, follower of dogma, ritual, and recipe, sleeper of dreamless sleep. It is Acedia who scribed the menu adding, perhaps, subtle variations depending on shifting taste and available condiments. Avaritia stuffs me like a goose’s gullet. Generation after generation after generation I have been crammed with the rot and spoils of war: Like carrion, works of art, raped and pillaged, putrefy my core. Screams and wailing waft my bowels. Base laughter and jeering fill the leaded chambers of my heart. I reek with piety and deceit, the stench of hypocrisy. I am stuffed to bursting—and yet I do not burst. My expansion is infinite—or so it seems. Acedia sustains me. In passivity I accept all things given. In suspension I hang heavy with the nothingness of belief. I accept all things. I accept all things save one: Absence. Absence is never proffered, never interred or contained. My expansion is secure. Contradiction hinders not my dedication. My crucifixion is assured...the ecstasy of my torment, self-hatred and pity, assured. What Avaritia feeds me suspends me, increases me, intensities my hunger. Greed feeds me and so I hang, swollen with self-satisfaction and contempt. All precious things are artifacts, man-made, artificial, indigestible—. I hang heavy with them. Precious ideas, precious objects, precious dogmas and manifestoes. I contain them all. Layer upon layer of them. Millennium upon millennium, I am bloated with their flatulence. Avaritia stuffs me with his plunder...Gods and rituals, jewels and gold, paintings and sculpture. Boundaries. Things. Manufactured values. Realities, gaseous and pervasive. Beliefs, metaphors, poetry. Greed feeds me, over-feeds me, stuffs me with illusion. I hang heavy in duplication. Stuffed with pretense, superstition, and lies. Only compassionate history forgives this gluttony, for it, too, lies within me. It is in me and of me and is me, for only history can contain the weight and volume of this layered repetition, this gluttony of repeat, this unchanging menu of greed. I am what I eat, the rotting spoils of masculine entelechy. But there are certain divertimeni, certain unexpected interludes of frivolity and license that lighten my bowels of the heavy wheat and potatoes of war. Though the menu never changes, the means of acquisition add flavor to my layering distension The Inquisition was one of Acedia’s finest diversions. Sincere, dedicated, passionate, it delivered unto me unselfishly, without pretension, expansion in the name of the salvation of souls. Ambitious, slothful Torquemada, in all the purity of Acedia’s sleep, delivered unto me a sumptuous feast of souls. There could be no greater fare than this. Gula eats, no matter who or what the provider. The layering proceeds without discrimination. War, holocausts, inquisitions, whatever guise the provider, whatever size the provision, Gula eats. My sin is accommodation, my distension, layered by Avaritia’s taking and Acedia’s slumber. These two, war and religion, greed and sloth, create me, distend me. I am history, a fabrication of man’s making, frangible and artificial, mythical and metaphorical, a layering repetition of man’s image of himself in frantic desperation to create himself viable. All that was written and remembered, I contain, repeat upon layered repeat. I am his reality, his proof of existence and yet I am not real, I am his interpretation of reality and reality itself is an artifact created out of the compulsion to endure and to prevail. I am swollen by conflict, bloated with competition, layer upon layer I fill and distend. In Acedia’s slumber, men compete to be first. I am puffed to bursting with fame and acclaim, awards and rewards. Names remembered and names forgotten stud my accumulation. Bodiless without axis or armature they lay draped across obscene ambition, prudishly covering their whorishness. What need forces this dedication? It can only be endemic, endemic to masculine entelechy. Men layer me with their dedication To be first! To make history! To kill and conquer and conquer and kill in an endless repetitious obsessive linearity of Acedia’s sleep. This is my accumulation. This is my expansion. But my expansion is no longer finite. I have become finite and terminal. Acedia stirs and Avaritia’s consumption abates. We succumb to chaos. There is a sense of famine and deprivation. My layering has become agitated and frenetic. Like a pig drowning in shit, there is a thrashing about in passed realties. All the metaphors have changed and this is known but unrecognized. Still, Acedia sleeps—with lids forced shut. But now he dreams. He dreams of death. He dreams of death and the end of repeat. He clings to his sleep in desperation with otiose religiosity. Fear shapes his dream and trembles his complacency. He is afraid. He is trapped in gluttony. I have swallowed him whole. Our conspiracy falters. That which was absolute has become transitory as mankind and all his metaphors slide into past tense. I, Gula, have become quaint, a hope chest filled with trinkets and ornaments for a future that must never come. Would that I could simply clamp shut my mouth and preclude repetition. As he has layered me in to redundancy, he, too, has become redundant. Even Avaritia with his consuming catholic appetite has become cautious of toxicity. We are over-whelmed by paradox and inevitability. If Acedia wakes, we will die. If Acedia sleeps, we will die. Sloth controls us all. What has provoked this dilemma? What suddenness has brought us to conclusion? I cannot accept my ending. After all these centuries of accumulation, to be now suddenly absurd is unbearable. Self-deprecation is not in me or of me. I, above all artifacts, am to be respected. Am I not sacred? Is not man’s memory of Acedia’s sleep and Avaritia’s greedy accomplishments magnificent? My enormity and longevity alone should ignite awe and yet I am threatened. My layering ingestion presumes conclusion. I have swallowed my end. I am become the product of conclusion. My forever ness has become momentary. I have eaten fear and am poisoned by it. Avaritia has destroyed me. By forcing one last layer of repetition, he has doomed me finite. Infinity exists now only within Acedia’s fevered sleep. Mankind’s triad of dominance has concluded. My mouth is sealed. My death is immanent. Embedded in Gula’s gut is war’s diffusion and history; the glut of me hangs heavy in completion. War, the meat and potatoes of Avaritia, has transferred its significance from Avaritia’s greed to Acedia’s slumber. It hovers in supposition. The date 8/6/45 turned men into boys and clamped shut forever the mouth of Gula. The history of mankind hangs reified in Gula’s gut. Layer after layer of Avaritia’s hunter has bloated me with weaponry. Boundaries moved forward and back by sheer force of innovation, borders erased and redrawn through death and dissemination. Whole countries and continents devoured and reconfigured by replacing one man with another. Gula is a history of death and regurgitation Trapped in the depths of Acedia’s sleep, mankind has blundered itself into suicide and disappearance. All humankind is at the disposal of one man-child. This seeming suddenness is the product of Acedia’s sleep. His otiose slumber. His sloth. His isness. Layer upon layer, Acedia has required nothing of me other than that I be filled, stuffed, and silenced by the stuffing. He has neither seen nor tasted the poison of his slumber. As he simply is, he expects Avaritia to do what he does and I, Gula, have to ingest it all. But I am become finite, finished, redundant. I await my layering but nothing comes. My mouth is clamped against it. 8/6/45 lies within me. Avaritia is stunned. He is become child’s play, all rhetoric and redundancy on an empty stage. The weeping and wailing of women, heroism, patriotism, the blood and gore of it all has become the laughter of little boys. There is no place for laughter in Gula’s gut. I am built of sterner stuff, neither mockery nor self-deprecation are stored here. Since 8/6/45 history has been sealed against games posturing as repeat. The layering of me is either real or it is not. In war, to withhold a weapon out of fear is a contradiction unworthy of recordation. Mankind has forsaken tragedy for farce, only the masks remain as time and space are compressed on a stage of finite proportion Humankind has increasingly become audience, leaving the stage to bad acting and foolery. As the stage shrinks so, too, the appreciation of the audience leaving apathy to occupy the emptied space. And so I hang layered by verbs and shifting boundaries, mouth clamped shut against light and other impossibilities. I am beyond complete. My death is immanent. Filtering down through my millennia of layered verbs, art, war,, and religion dominate my distension. I am swollen with them. In review, only war has achieved progression, only war increased through repeat, only war and the shifting of boundaries has brought me to conclusion, only war has wrought me finite...only war. In this brief hiatus before completion, all nouns await extinction There is a strange quiet amidst the mayhem of repetition, a curious awareness, a listening for that which is to come, a final visitation or a burst of light, a signal of arrival, a sign of fulfillment. Silence now is only the absence of laughter. My mouth is shut against it. Religion thrives. Carried along by rote and self-fulfilling prophecies, it is the noisome droning of Acedia’s sleep and the genius of Gula’s layering accumulation. Through memory, I have reified verbs into nouns and frozen moments of chaos into dogmatic linearity, denying questions and demanding answers—the same answers—to questions unproposed. This, religion does and does so well in the layering of Gula’s gut. Only my completion has created nullity. In all the weight of my distension, I am porous of significance. Religion is Acedia’s glory, the proudest and most profound depth of slumber, the complete absence of light in all its paralyzing stimulation. It pacifies me, comforts me, abets my laying repetition; and now it has sealed me whole. I hand in absurdity awaiting implosion. As I remember (I am doomed to remember) the layering of weaponry and the shifting of boundaries, I hold compacted within me that which escapes me—that which has always escaped me, and escapes me still—those verbs encapsulated in artifacts that elicit awakened response. Even in hiatus, even now in the depths of completion, they elicit response, the torn open eyes of Acedia, the death of sloth. As Avaritia’s relentless progression through laying repeat shifted the paradigm of weaponry from one kills one to one kills all, from murder to suicide, Art has remained singular in its ambition, fluctuating only in repose. Unlike war which transitions from verb to noun, Art’s transposition is from noun to verb, the transmutation of artifact into orgasm, the creation of silence. I, Gula, am fatted with noise, layer upon layer of it. It is Acedia’s lullaby and Avaritia’s appetite. I contain the applause of Genius and chicanery, the screaming futility of women in war, the snapping crackling flames of Inquisition and holocaust, the suicide’s horrific whimper. All, all lay layered within me. How I love the layering repetition of sounds. They adorn and define me, marking beginnings and ends from the chaste cries of birth to the gurgling chuckles of death. All the hellos and goodbyes that accompany repeat. They confirm me, distend me, make me whole. Without sounds, I would hang heavy with boredom, deathly interminable repetition. I have harbored throughout the layering centuries the layering cries of absence, the songs of departure, the melting sighs of glaciers and the volcanic rhetoric of rebirth and revolution. This is my storage, the layering variations of repetition. I am Gula. I am Gluttony. I am history. I am all the stacked and vaunted puffery of man’s reflection in tiresome feckless supposition. I would not speak of Art here. It is unsettling. I will say only this: Neither Avaritia’s plunder nor Acedia’s slumber has stuffed my gut with Art. It exists elsewhere. It lies not within me. It is a verb, active and ahistorical. It does not lie static within me. It is in and of the moment of response. The over and over ness of my filling has leaded me with conclusion. I am become finite in distension. Through extrusion I hand now in self-awareness of repeat. Repetition no longer describes my layering. I am become parody. In pause, in this hiatus between immanence and imminence, infinite and finite, I have only deception to deflect perception. I am bloated with noise, blinded by it, crucified by it. I hang senseless with mouth forced open to accept laughter, the final poison. Avaritia continues his blind consumption filling that which resists filling, filing that which can no longer be recorded, a clamorous froth of self-absorption. Acedia sleeps with eyes clamped shut and lids thinned transparent by evolution. How vapid and futile are all our metaphors! Our triad is no longer viable. We have become too simplistic for the vastness and complexity of it all. That which we have sought to diminish through sloth and avarice is not containable. We have cast our crucible too frail and our golden prophecies have become lead. Our incessant drumming of the present into the conformities of repetition no longer circumscribes the abstractions of Desire. Avaritia is hollow noise and Acedia is mindless slumber. My distension has been clamped shut against them. Our death is imminent. I long to release myself, to drain history of Avaritia’s layering plunder and Acedia’s dreamless sleep. Even in my earliest layering, I knew our end. The process of man’s completion through the technology of death rests now within me. His end is accomplished. All his feckless fearless metaphors of war have brought me to fulfillment. I can tolerate no more of him. 8/6/45 marks the end of history, the end of Gula, the end of gluttony. I can eat no more. Nothing can subsume Avaritia. He exists now, like Acedia, in exaggeration. Both are magnified by desperation. Cast large in the awesome victory of his accomplishment, Avaritia’s shadow has embraced the earth. Nothing can grow in this lightless place, nothing save the anxious expectancy of the final repeat, the great light that will lay waste all shadow. How clever was Acedia to write his slumber in the process of inevitability, his metaphors, in passive verbs, to make repetitive that which was irreversible, to make rote that which was endemic. Like all mystagogues, he created sin in order to forgive it and so he stalls, he procrastinates, he forgives it. He sleeps on because he has no dreams, because he is fearful of awakening, because he cannot, must not, awaken because if he awakens we will die. The triad and all man’s metaphors will die frozen in oblivion and I, Gula, will hang heavy with it all, a rotten pudding of narcissistic repeat. All, all will finally and forever revert to what it has always been: gluttony. I pity, if I were capable of pity, Avaritia. His mindless rapacious appetite has brought us to conclusion. And I envy Avaritia.. His senseless anusless consumption makes him incapable of retention and history has served him well. I, Gula, have served him well, as does Acedia’s blessed sleep. We, the triad of man’s reality, will die by virtue of Acedia’s sleep. I record now only the inevitabilities of epilogue.

 

Collection:

Crocker Art Museum

Sacramento, California

The Last Judgment is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo covering the whole altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It is a depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgment by God of all humanity. The dead rise and descend to their fates, as judged by Christ who is surrounded by prominent saints. Altogether there are over 300 figures, with nearly all the males and angels originally shown as nudes; many were later partly covered up by painted draperies, of which some remain after recent cleaning and restoration.

The work took over four years to complete between 1536 and 1541 (preparation of the altar wall began in 1535). Michelangelo began working on it 25 years after having finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and was nearly 67 at its completion. He had originally accepted the commission from Pope Clement VII, but it was completed under Pope Paul III whose stronger reforming views probably affected the final treatment.

In the lower part of the fresco, Michelangelo followed tradition in showing the saved ascending at the left and the damned descending at the right. In the upper part, the inhabitants of Heaven are joined by the newly saved. The fresco is more monochromatic than the ceiling frescoes and is dominated by the tones of flesh and sky. The cleaning and restoration of the fresco, however, revealed a greater chromatic range than previously apparent. Orange, green, yellow, and blue are scattered throughout, animating and unifying the complex scene.

The reception of the painting was mixed from the start, with much praise but also criticism on both religious and artistic grounds. Both the amount of nudity and the muscular style of the bodies has been one area of contention, and the overall composition another.

Where traditional compositions generally contrast an ordered, harmonious heavenly world above with the tumultuous events taking place in the earthly zone below, in Michelangelo's conception the arrangement and posing of the figures across the entire painting give an impression of agitation and excitement, and even in the upper parts there is "a profound disturbance, tension and commotion" in the figures. Sydney J. Freedberg interprets their "complex responses" as "those of giant powers here made powerless, bound by racking spiritual anxiety", as their role of intercessors with the deity had come to an end, and perhaps they regret some of the verdicts. There is an impression that all the groups of figures are circling the central figure of Christ in a huge rotary movement.

At the centre of the work is Christ, shown as the individual verdicts of the Last Judgment are pronounced; he looks down towards the damned. He is beardless, and "compounded from antique conceptions of Hercules, Apollo, and Jupiter Fulminator", probably, in particular, the Belvedere Apollo, brought to the Vatican by Pope Julius II. However, there are parallels for his pose in earlier Last Judgments, especially one in the Camposanto of Pisa, which Michelangelo would have known; here the raised hand is part of a gesture of ostentatio vulnerum ("display of the wounds"), where the resurrected Christ reveals the wounds of his Crucifixion, which can be seen on Michelangelo's figure.

To the left of Christ is his mother, Virgin Mary, who turns her head to look down towards the Saved, though her pose also suggests resignation. It appears that the moment has passed for her to exercise her traditional role of pleading on behalf of the dead; with John the Baptist this Deesis is a regular motif in earlier compositions. Preparatory drawings show her standing and facing Christ with arms outstretched, in a more traditional intercessory posture.

Surrounding Christ are large numbers of figures, the saints and the rest of the elect. On a similar scale to Christ are John the Baptist on the left, and on the right Saint Peter, holding the keys of Heaven and perhaps offering them back to Christ, as they will no longer be needed. Several of the main saints appear to be showing Christ their attributes, the evidence of their martyrdom. This used to be interpreted as the saints calling for the damnation of those who had not served the cause of Christ, but other interpretations have become more common, including that the saints are themselves not certain of their own verdicts, and try at the last moment to remind Christ of their sufferings.

Other prominent saints include Saint Bartholomew below Peter, holding the attribute of his martyrdom, his own flayed skin. The face on the skin is usually recognized as being a self-portrait of Michelangelo. St. Lawrence is also present, along with the gridiron on which he was roasted. Also depicted is St. Catherine with a portion of the wheel on which she was broken. Many others, even of the larger saints, are difficult to identify. Ascanio Condivi, Michelangelo's tame authorized biographer, says that all Twelve Apostles are shown around Christ, "but he does not attempt to name them and would probably have had a difficult time doing so". In the upper right corner, in the group ascending to heaven, there are three male couples embracing and kissing.

The movements of the resurrected reflect the traditional pattern. They arise from their graves at bottom left, and some continue upwards, helped in several cases by angels in the air (mostly without wings) or others on clouds, pulling them up. Others, the damned, apparently pass over to the right, though none are quite shown doing so; there is a zone in the lower middle that is empty of persons. A boat rowed by an aggressive Charon, who ferried souls to the Underworld in classical mythology (and Dante), brings them to land beside the entrance to Hell; his threatening them with his oar is a direct borrowing from Dante. Satan, the traditional Christian devil, is not shown but another classical figure, Minos, supervises the admission of the Damned into Hell; this was his role in Dante's Inferno. He is generally agreed to have been given the features of Biagio da Cesena, a critic of Michelangelo in the Papal court.

In the centre above Charon is a group of angels on clouds, seven blowing trumpets (as in the Book of Revelation), others holding books that record the names of the Saved and Damned. To their right is a larger figure who has just realized that he is damned, and appears paralyzed with horror. Two devils are pulling him downwards. To the right of this devils pull down others; some are being pushed down by angels above them.

he Last Judgment was a traditional subject for large church frescos, but it was unusual to place it at the east end, over the altar. The traditional position was on the west wall, over the main doors at the back of a church, so that the congregation took this reminder of their options away with them on leaving. It might be either painted on the interior, as for example by Giotto at the Arena Chapel, or in a sculpted tympanum on the exterior. However, a number of late medieval panel paintings, mostly altarpieces, were based on the subject with similar compositions, although adapted to a horizontal picture space. These include the Beaune Altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden and ones by artists such as Fra Angelico, Hans Memling and Hieronymus Bosch. Many aspects of Michelangelo's composition reflect the well-established traditional Western depiction, but with a fresh and original approach.

Most traditional versions have a figure of Christ in Majesty in about the same position as Michelangelo's, and even larger than his, with a greater disproportion in scale to the other figures. As here, compositions contain large numbers of figures, divided between angels and saints around Christ at the top, and the dead being judged below. Typically there is a strong contrast between the ordered ranks of figures in the top part, and chaotic and frenzied activity below, especially on the right side that leads to Hell. The procession of the judged usually begins at the bottom (viewer's) left, as here, as the resurrected rise from their graves and move towards judgment. Some pass judgment and continue upwards to join the company in heaven, while others pass over to Christ's left hand and then downwards towards Hell in the bottom right corner (compositions had difficulty incorporating Purgatory visually). The damned may be shown naked, as a mark of their humiliation as devils carry them off, and sometimes the newly-resurrected too, but angels and those in Heaven are fully dressed, their clothing a main clue to the identity of groups and individuals.

The project was a long time in gestation. It was probably first proposed in 1533, but was not then attractive to Michelangelo. A number of letters and other sources describe the original subject as a "Resurrection", but it seems most likely that this was always meant in the sense of the General Resurrection of the Dead, followed in Christian eschatology by the Last Judgment, rather than the Resurrection of Jesus. Other scholars believe there was indeed a substitution of the more sombre final subject, reflecting the emerging mood of the Counter-Reformation, and an increase in the area of the wall to be covered. A number of Michelangelo's drawings from the early 1530s develop a Resurrection of Jesus.

Vasari, alone among contemporary sources, says that originally Michelangelo intended to paint the other end wall with a Fall of the Rebel Angels to match. By April 1535 the preparation of the wall was begun, but it was over a year before painting began. Michelangelo stipulated the filling-in of two narrow windows, the removal of three cornices, and building the surface increasingly forward as it rises, to give a single uninterrupted wall surface slightly leaning out, by about 11 inches over the height of the fresco.

The preparation of the wall led to the end of more than twenty years of friendship between Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo, who tried to persuade the Pope and Michelangelo to do the painting in his preferred technique of oil on plaster, and managed to get the smooth plaster finish needed for this applied. It is possible that around this stage the idea was floated that Sebastiano would do the actual painting, to Michelangelo's designs, as they had collaborated nearly 20 years earlier. After, according to Vasari, some months of passivity, Michelangelo furiously insisted that it should be in fresco, and had the wall re-plastered in the rough arriccio needed as a base for fresco. It was on this occasion that he famously said that oil painting was "an art for women and for leisurely and idle people like Fra Sebastiano".

The new fresco required, unlike his Sistine Chapel ceiling, considerable destruction of existing art. There was an altarpiece of the Assumption of Mary by Pietro Perugino above the altar, for which a drawing survives in the Albertina, flanked by tapestries to designs by Raphael; these, of course, could just be used elsewhere. Above this zone, there were two paintings from the 15th-century cycles of Moses and Christ which still occupy the middle zone of the side walls. These were probably Perugino's Finding of Moses and the Adoration of the Kings, beginning both cycles. Above them were the first of the series of standing popes in niches, including Saint Peter himself, probably as well as a Saint Paul and a central figure of Christ. Finally, the project required the destruction of two lunettes with the first two Ancestors of Christ from Michelangelo's own ceiling scheme. However, some of these works may have already been damaged by an accident in April 1525, when the altar curtains went on fire; the damage done to the wall is unclear.

The structure of the chapel, built in a great hurry in the 1470s, had given trouble from the start, with frequent cracks appearing. At Christmas in 1525 a Swiss Guard was killed while entering the chapel with the pope when the stone lintel to the doorway split and fell on him. The site is on sandy soil, draining a large area, and the preceding "Great Chapel" had had similar problems.

The new scheme for the altar wall and other changes necessitated by structural problems led to a loss of symmetry and "continuity of window-rhythms and cornices", as well as some of the most important parts of the previous iconographical schemes. As shown by drawings, the initial conception for the Last Judgment was to leave the existing altarpiece and work round it, stopping the composition below the frescos of Moses and Christ.

The Sistine Chapel was dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, which had been the subject of Perugino's altarpiece. Once it was decided to remove this, it appears that a tapestry of the Coronation of the Virgin, a subject often linked to the Assumption, was commissioned, which was hung above the altar for important liturgical occasions in the 18th century, and perhaps from the 1540s until then. The tapestry has a vertical format (it is 4.3 by 3 metres (14.1 by 9.8 ft)), and is still in the Vatican Museums. A print of 1582 shows the chapel in use, with a large cloth of roughly this shape hanging behind the altar, and a canopy over it. The cloth is shown as plain, but the artist also omits the paintings below the ceiling, and may well not have been present himself, but working from prints and descriptions.

The Last Judgment became controversial as soon as it was seen, with disputes between critics in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and supporters of the genius of the artist and the style of the painting. Michelangelo was accused of being insensitive to proper decorum, in respect of nudity and other aspects of the work, and of pursuing artistic effect over following the scriptural description of the event.

On a preview visit with Paul III, before the work was complete, the pope's Master of Ceremonies Biagio da Cesena is reported by Vasari as saying that: "it was most disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns". Michelangelo immediately worked Cesena's face from memory into the scene as Minos, judge of the underworld (far bottom-right corner of the painting) with donkey ears (i.e. indicating foolishness), while his nudity is covered by a coiled snake. It is said that when Cesena complained to the Pope, the pontiff joked that his jurisdiction did not extend to Hell, so the portrait would have to remain. Pope Paul III himself was attacked by some for commissioning and protecting the work, and came under pressure to alter if not entirely remove the Last Judgment, which continued under his successors.

There were objections to the mixing of figures from pagan mythology into depictions of Christian subject matter. Besides the figures of Charon and Minos and wingless angels, the very classicized Christ was suspect: beardless Christs had in fact only finally disappeared from Christian art some four centuries earlier, but Michelangelo's figure is unmistakably Apollonian.

Further objections related to failures to follow the scriptural references. The angels blowing trumpets are all in one group, whereas in the Book of Revelation they are sent to "the four corners of the earth". Christ is not seated on a throne, contrary to Scripture. Such draperies as Michelangelo painted are often shown as blown by wind, but it was claimed that all weather would cease on the Day of Judgment. The resurrected are in mixed condition, some skeletons but most appearing with their flesh intact. All these objections were eventually collected in a book, the Due Dialogi published just after Michelangelo's death in 1564, by the Dominican theologian Giovanni Andrea Gilio (da Fabriano), who had become one of several theologians policing art during and after the Council of Trent. As well as theological objections, Gilio objected to artistic devices like foreshortening that puzzled or distracted untrained viewers. The copy by Marcello Venusti added the dove of the Holy Spirit above Christ, perhaps in response to Gilio's complaint that Michelangelo should have shown all the Trinity.

Two decades after the fresco was completed, the final session of the Council of Trent in 1563 finally enacted a form of words that reflected the Counter-Reformation attitudes to art that had been growing in strength in the Church for some decades. The Council's decree (drafted at the last minute and generally very short and inexplicit) reads in part:

Every superstition shall be removed, ... all lasciviousness be avoided; in such wise that figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting to lust, ... there be nothing seen that is disorderly, or that is unbecomingly or confusedly arranged, nothing that is profane, nothing indecorous, seeing that holiness becometh the house of God. And that these things may be the more faithfully observed, the holy Synod ordains, that no one be allowed to place, or cause to be placed, any unusual image, in any place, or church, howsoever exempted, except that image have been approved of by the bishop.

There was an explicit decree that: "The pictures in the Apostolic Chapel should be covered over, and those in other churches should be destroyed, if they display anything that is obscene or clearly false".

The defences by Vasari and others of the painting evidently made some impact on clerical thinking. In 1573, when Paolo Veronese was summoned before the Venetian Inquisition to justify his inclusion of "buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities" in what was then called a painting of the Last Supper (later renamed as The Feast in the House of Levi), he tried to implicate Michelangelo in a comparable breach of decorum, but was promptly rebuffed by the inquisitors, as the transcript records:

Q. Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities?

A. Certainly not.

Q. Then why have you done it?

A. I did it on the supposition that those people were outside the room in which the Supper was taking place.

Q. Do you not know that in Germany and other countries infested by heresy, it is habitual, by means of pictures full of absurdities, to vilify and turn to ridicule the things of the Holy Catholic Church, in order to teach false doctrine to ignorant people who have no common sense?

A. I agree that it is wrong, but I repeat what I have said, that it is my duty to follow the examples given me by my masters.

Q. Well, what did your masters paint? Things of this kind, perhaps?

A. In Rome, in the Pope's Chapel, Michelangelo has represented Our Lord, His Mother, Saint John, Saint Peter, and the celestial court; and he has represented all these personages nude, including the Virgin Mary [this last not true], and in various attitudes not inspired by the most profound religious feeling.

Q. Do you not understand that in representing the Last Judgment, in which it is a mistake to suppose that clothes are worn, there was no reason for painting any? But in these figures what is there that is not inspired by the Holy Spirit? There are neither buffoons, dogs, weapons, nor other absurdities. ...

Some action to meet the criticism and enact the decision of the council had become inevitable, and the genitalia in the fresco were painted over with drapery by the Mannerist painter Daniele da Volterra, probably mostly after Michelangelo died in 1564. Daniele was "a sincere and fervent admirer of Michelangelo" who kept his changes to a minimum, and had to be ordered to go back and add more, and for his trouble got the nickname "Il Braghettone", meaning "the breeches maker". He also chiseled away and entirely repainted the larger part of Saint Catherine and the entire figure of Saint Blaise behind her. This was done because in the original version Blaise had appeared to look at Catherine's naked behind, and because to some observers the position of their bodies suggested sexual intercourse. The repainted version shows Blaise looking away from Saint Catherine, upward towards Christ.

His work, beginning in the upper parts of the wall, was interrupted when Pope Pius IV died in December 1565 and the chapel needed to be free of scaffolding for the funeral and conclave to elect the next pope. El Greco had made a helpful offer to repaint the entire wall with a fresco that was "modest and decent, and no less well painted than the other". Further campaigns of overpainting, often "less discreet or respectful", followed in later reigns, and "the threat of total destruction ... re-surfaced in the pontificates of Pius V, Gregory XIII, and probably again of Clement VIII". According to Anthony Blunt, "rumours were current in 1936 that Pius XI intended to continue the work". In total, nearly 40 figures had drapery added, apart from the two repainted. These additions were in "dry" fresco, which made them easier to remove in the most recent restoration (1990–1994), when about 15 were removed, from those added after 1600. It was decided to leave 16th-century changes.

At a relatively early date, probably in the 16th century, a strip of about 18 inches was lost across the whole width of the bottom of the fresco, as the altar and its backing was modified.

As well as the criticism on moral and religious grounds, there was from the start considerable criticism based on purely aesthetic considerations, which had hardly been seen at all in initial reactions to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. Two key figures in the first wave of criticism were Pietro Aretino and his friend Lodovico Dolce, a prolific Venetian humanist. Aretino had made considerable efforts to become as close to Michelangelo as he was to Titian, but had always been rebuffed; "in 1545 his patience gave way, and he wrote to Michelangelo that letter on the Last Judgment which is now famous as an example of insincere prudishness", a letter written with a view to publication. Aretino had not in fact seen the finished painting, and based his criticisms on one of the prints that had been quickly brought to market. He "purports to represent the simple folk" in this new wider audience. However, it appears that at least the print-buying public preferred the uncensored version of the paintings, as most prints showed this well into the 17th century.

Vasari responded to this and other criticisms in the 1st edition of his Life of Michelangelo in 1550. Dolce followed up in 1557, the year after Aretino died, with a published dialogue, L'Aretino, almost certainly a collaborative effort with his friend. Many of the arguments of the theologian critics are repeated, but now in the name of decorum rather than religion, emphasizing that the particular and very prominent location of the fresco made the amount of nudity unacceptable; a convenient argument for Aretino, some of whose projects were frankly pornographic, but intended for private audiences. Dolce also complains that Michelangelo's female figures are hard to distinguish from males, and his figures show "anatomical exhibitionism", criticisms many have echoed.

On these points, a long-lasting rhetorical comparison of Michelangelo and Raphael developed, in which even supporters of Michelangelo such as Vasari participated. Raphael is held up as the exemplar of all the grace and decorum found lacking in Michelangelo, whose outstanding quality was called by Vasari his terribiltà, the awesome, sublime or (the literal meaning) terror-inducing quality of his art. Vasari came to partly share this view by the time of the expanded 2nd edition of his Lives, published in 1568, though he explicitly defended the fresco on several points raised by the attackers (without mentioning them), such as the decorum of the fresco and "amazing diversity of the figures", and asserted it was "directly inspired by God", and a credit to the Pope and his "future renown".

In many respects, modern art historians discuss the same aspects of the work as 16th-century writers: the general grouping of the figures and rendering of space and movement, the distinctive depiction of anatomy, the nudity and use of colour, and sometimes the theological implications of the fresco. However, Bernadine Barnes points out that no 16th-century critic echoes in the slightest the view of Anthony Blunt that: "This fresco is the work of a man shaken out of his secure position, no longer at ease with the world, and unable to face it directly. Michelangelo does not now deal directly with the visible beauty of the physical world." At the time, continues Barnes, "it was censured as the work of an arrogant man, and it was justified as a work that made celestial figures more beautiful than natural". Many other modern critics take approaches similar to Blunt's, emphasizing Michelangelo's "tendency away from the material and towards the things of the spirit" in his last decades.

In theology, the Second Coming of Christ ended space and time. Despite this, "Michelangelo’s curious representation of space", where "the characters inhabit individual spaces that cannot be combined consistently", is often commented on.

Quite apart from the question of decorum, the rendering of anatomy has been often discussed. Writing of "energy" in the nude figure, Kenneth Clark has:

The twist into depth, the struggle to escape from the here and now of the picture plane, which had always distinguished Michelangelo from the Greeks, became the dominating rhythm of his later works. That colossal nightmare, the Last Judgment, is made up of such struggles. It is the most overpowering accumulation in all art of bodies in violent movement"

Of the figure of Christ, Clark says: "Michelangelo has not tried to resist that strange compulsion which made him thicken a torso until it is almost square."

S.J. Freedberg commented that "The vast repertory of anatomies that Michelangelo conceived for the Last Judgment seems often to have been determined more by the requirements of art than by compelling needs of meaning, ... meant not just to entertain but to overpower us with their effects. Often, too, the figures assume attitudes of which a major sense is one of ornament." He notes that the two frescos in the Cappella Paolina, Michelangelo's last paintings begun in November 1542 almost immediately after the Last Judgment, show from the start a major change in style, away from grace and aesthetic effect to an exclusive concern with illustrating the narrative, with no regard for beauty.

Early appreciations of the fresco had focused on the colours, especially in small details, but over the centuries the build-up of dirt on the surface had largely hidden these. The built-out wall led to extra deposition of soot from candles on the altar. In 1953 (admittedly in November) Bernard Berenson put in his diary: "The ceiling looks dark, gloomy. The Last Judgment even more so; ... how difficult to make up our minds that these Sistine frescoes are nowadays scarcely enjoyable in the original and much more so in photographs".

The fresco was restored along with the Sistine vault between 1980 and 1994 under the supervision of Fabrizio Mancinelli, the curator of post-classical collections of the Vatican Museums and Gianluigi Colalucci, head restorer at the Vatican laboratory. During the course of the restoration, about half of the censorship of the "Fig-Leaf Campaign" was removed. Numerous pieces of buried details, caught under the smoke and grime of scores of years, were revealed after the restoration. It was discovered that the fresco of Biagio de Cesena as Minos with donkey ears was being bitten in the genitalia by a coiled snake.

Most writers agree that Michelangelo depicted his own face in the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew (see the illustration above). Edgar Wind saw this as "a prayer for redemption, that through the ugliness the outward man might be thrown off, and the inward man resurrected pure", in a Neoplatonist mood, one that Aretino detected and objected to. One of Michelangelo's poems had used the metaphor of a snake shedding its old skin for his hope for a new life after his death. Bernadine Barnes writes that "recent viewers ... have found in [the flayed skin] evidence of Michelangelo's self-doubt, since the lifeless skin is held precariously over Hell. However, no sixteenth-century critic noticed it [as Michelangelo's face]."

The bearded figure of Saint Bartholomew holding the skin was sometimes thought to have the features of Aretino, but open conflict between Michelangelo and Aretino did not occur until 1545, several years after the fresco's completion.[82] "Even Aretino's good friend Vasari did not recognize him."

 

Die Häutung ist für Spinnen, wie für alle anderen Arthropoden auch, eine äußerst sensible und Kraft raubende Phase im Leben. Sie sind während der Häutung bis zur anschließenden Aushärtung des neuen Exoskeletts schutzlos Fressfeinden ausgeliefert.

Bei großen Vogelspinnen kann der Häutungsvorgang bis zu 10 Stunden dauern und die anschließende Aushärtung 1 – 2 Wochen in Anspruch nehmen.

Die Häutung kündigt sich in der Regel durch eine zunehmende Passivität und Nahrungsverweigerung an. Beutetiere werden nicht mehr gefressen, sondern vertrieben. In dieser Zeit wird unter der alten Haut eine neue Cuticula angelegt, die noch stark gefaltet ist.

Vogelspinnen legen sich dann, wenn es an der Zeit ist, zum Häuten auf den Rücken. Die meisten Arten spinnen vorher Häutungsteppiche auf denen der Vorgang statt findet. Diese Art kleidet die Ränder des Teppichs noch zusätzlich mit Brennhaaren aus, die sie vom Hinterleib abstreift. Das bietet einen zusätzlichen Schutz.

Durch die Erhöhung des Hämolymphdruckes im Vorderkörper (die Hämolymphe ist das Spinnenblut) reißt er an Sollbruchstellen auf und trennt den „Vorderkörperdeckel“ (Carapax) vom Unterteil. Der Riss zieht sich seitlich weiter bis zu den Spinnwarzen des Hinterleibes. Der weichhäutige Hinterleib erscheint nun faltig.

Durch alternierende Bewegungen schieben sich nun langsam alle Extremitäten von den Kiefernklauen, über die Taster bis zu den Beinen aus der alten Haut heraus

Nach der Beendigung der Häutung bleibt die Spinne noch eine Weile auf den Rücken liegen und macht Gymnastik. Dadurch bleiben die Gelenkhäute geschmeidig und härten nicht aus.

Die adulten Männchen dieser Art sind ausgesprochen bunt gefärbt und haben eine Körperlänge von 4 – 5 cm. Die Weibchen sind deutlich größer, bis zu 9 cm Körperlänge (ohne Cheliceren) und einheitlich hell- bis dunkelbraun befärbt.

Weibliche Vogelspinnen können je nach Art und Gattung bis zu 25 Jahre und älter werden. Die Kerle haben nur eine geringe Halbwertszeit. Nach der Geschlechtsreife leben sie noch (je nach Art) ein halbes bis zu einem Jahr, selten länger.

 

English:

For spiders, as for all other arthropods, moulting is an extremely sensitive and powerful phase in life. During the moulting process until the new exoskeleton hardens, they are at the mercy of defenceless predators.

For large tarantulas, the moulting process can take up to 10 hours and the subsequent hardening takes 1-2 weeks.

The moulting is usually announced by increasing passivity and refusal to eat. Prey animals are no longer eaten, but driven out. During this time, a new cuticle is applied under the old skin, which is still strongly folded.

Tarantulas lie down on their backs when the time comes to skin them. Most species spin skin rugs on which the process takes place. This species additionally coats the edges of the carpet with burning hairs, which she wipes off from the abdomen. This provides additional protection.

By increasing the haemolymph pressure in the front part of the body (the haemolymph is the spider blood), it tears open at predetermined breaking points and separates the "front part of the body" (Carapax) from the lower part. The tear continues sideways to the spinal warts of the abdomen. The soft-skinned abdomen now appears wrinkled.

Through alternating movements, all extremities are now slowly sliding from the jaw claws to the palpebars and beyond the legs out of the old skin.

After the skinning has ended, the spider stays on its back for a while and does gymnastics. As a result, the joint membranes remain supple and do not harden.

The adult males of this species are markedly coloured and have a body length of 4 - 5 cm. The females are clearly larger, up to 9 cm body length (without chelicerene) and uniformly light to dark brown colored.

Depending on the species and genus, female tarantulas can grow up to 25 years and older. These guys only have a low half-life. After sexual maturity, they still live (depending on the species) half to one year, rarely longer.

  

,

 

Memorial street name and marble name plaque to the Jews who were deported from this former ghetto area of Rome (Italy) on October 16th, 1943 during World War 2.

 

This plaque, made in the traditional style of all street name plaques in Rome, gives the name of a little square (Largo) on one side of via del Portico d'Ottavia, close to the River Tiber (Fiume Tevere). It does not translate easily into English but literally it is the 'Little Square [of] October 16th 1943. Deportation of the Jews of Rome'. ('R.XI' refers to the district of Rome where this square lies.)

 

I didn't take a picture of the square itself mainly because there was a lot of repair and restoration work going on nearby in the street and on the buildings. To see the location, and a short explanation (in Italian) of the commemoration, see Roberto1956's <a href="http://flic.kr/p/7yNFtW" rel="photo. His explanation is an acknowledged quotation from F. Cohen, 16 ottobre 1943. La grande razzia degli ebrei di Roma

 

BACKGROUND

 

Rome was occupied by the Germans on this date during WW2, and the German military were responsible for this deportation of some 1000 people from this immediate area, a traditionally Jewish quarter, to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Only 15 are known to have survived. Other groups of Jews were deported from elsewhere in Rome, the total figure being about 8000.

 

The full history of the Rome deportations is complicated, but has a wider historical significance. Although in the context of the sheer scale of the Europe-wide Nazi extermination programme, the deportation commemorated in the street name here was a small one (though no less tragic in human terms), the underlying historical issue of major interest, has been that of the reigning Pope Pius XII's position on the Nazi extermination programme in general. And here in Rome, this particular deportation took place right under the Pope's nose (the Vatican is only a few hundred metres from this square). Many have said that it could have been prevented in various ways by Vatican policy, Vatican personnel and the Pope himself. After much debate, rife with vested interests, the balance of genuine historical research, though cautious on outright blame, supports the view that a combination of Vatican passivity, and more deliberate but not overt obstruction, resulted in its inaction over the deportation here, as well of course as inaction over the Nazis' wider extermination programme.

 

I often think that there are ultimately only different kinds of loser in wars and in the actions arising from them, whatever side people are on, and that war protagonists are rarely (as many fondly believe) simply ranged into 'baddies' (in this case Germans) and 'goodies' (in this case, German-occupied Italians and the Allies who, significantly, were geographically close to Rome at the time). The history behind this plaque shows that all the German officials in Rome were unanimously opposed to the deportation, though they were eventually overruled, while there were Italians (notably of the Catholic Church) who did nothing to oppose or prevent the deportation. Frontline battles to the S of Rome held up Allied advances on Rome. Rome was an 'open city' at this time, so could be entered without military action once the German lines beyond the city had been defeated. This happened just a few months after the deportations.

 

----- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII_and_the_Roman_razzia

----- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Campaign_%28World_War_II%29

 

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LONDON - PARIS - CATANIA - ROME - LONDON ----- DAY 8

 

Photo from the eighth day of our crazy long distance rail trip from home (London) to Sicily. We had had an unscheduled but happy first night stopover in Paris because our Eurostar train out of London was badly delayed due to 'a fatality [unexplained - perhaps fortunately] on the train'. We therefore missed our onward sleeper train connection to Rome, so spent our second day in Paris. We left Paris that evening, on the equivalent sleeper train service a day later. We reached Rome during the third day, where we changed to a daytime train for Catania, Sicily, arriving there the same evening. Our fourth day was our first full day in Sicily, and we spent this in the centre of Catania itself. We spent our fifth day on an excursion to Mount Etna run by GeoEtnaExplorer. We chose this tour company because the guides are geologists. Our particular tour went high up on the flanks on the summit, but not to the summit proper. For this sixth day, our final full day in Sicily, we took the bus from Catania (our base) to Siracusa, in search of Ancient Greek remains, while also getting distracted by other interesting sights, and some excellent ice cream, at various points in the day. But perhaps the most spectacular thing was the huge thunderstorm which hit us in the early part of the afternoon. The seventh day was the start of our homeward journey, for which we took our sixth train of the trip, from Catania and ending with an overnight stop in Rome. We spent the eighth day on a long walk through the heart of Rome, where we hadn't been back since I worked there briefly many years ago, before continuing our way home to London by catching a sleeper train that evening to Paris.

 

By the end of the whole holiday trip we had seen things and sites from ancient Greek time to modern, so the trip felt like a mini Grand Tour. Or given the rich mythology of Sicily, Etna and the Straits of Messina (Odysseus, the Cyclops, Scylla & Charybdis, etc.) perhaps our trip was like a modern mini Odyssey of our times. Odysseus took ten years to get home. It took us ten trains - but no monsters.

 

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Photo

Darkroom Daze

© Creative Commons.

If you would like to use or refer to this image, please attribute.

ID: DSC_6846 - Version 2

Snow Geese, Pond. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell - all rights reserved.

 

A flock of snow geese stands in a shallow wetland pond.

 

This is a somewhat different photograph of geese than I might usually make. More often I photograph them in flight or in huge flocks, either landed or flying, and quite often the photographs feature Ross's geese. This group is none of those things. When I came to this spot — and, yes, I was looking for big flocks — I found small groups of geese (and other birds) that were mostly quietly tending to their business in these shallow ponds. There wasn't a lot of flying, a lot of noise, or much else.

 

However, their relative passivity did give me a chance to make some photographs that can (especially when viewed larger than these web images permit) reveal some of the individuality of the birds in the group. Their heads are up, which often indicates that they are aware of something that focuses their attention, possibly a potential danger of some sort. (It could have been me, but I was using a long lens and was pretty far away.) Because of their erect bearing, we get to see the juxtaposition of all those heads and beaks, pointing in various directions. It is also possible (again, in a larger version of the photo) the tell-tale "grin" pattern on the sides of the beaks that characterizes snow geese. (It is easy to mistake them for Ross's geese and vice versa, and the indicators can be a bit subtle.) In addition, contrary to our expectation that such bird will all look pretty much the same, among the members of this group you can spot some significant variations in appearance. For example, note the two birds with darker feathers or the several with distinctly yellow features on their heads.

  

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, "California's Fall Color: A Photographer's Guide to Autumn in the Sierra" is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

  

Dear Muslim sister, Assalaamu ‘alaykum wa Rahmatullaahi wa Barakaatuh

 

Raising children is a weighty responsibility and a sublime art that is not perfected by all parents despite its importance and necessity. It seriously affects the children's direction and the formation of their personality. Consequently, it affects their future and their role in the family and society. Based on the Prophetic Hadeeth that speaks about sincerely advising others, I offer you the following advice, dear sister.

Favoritism is Destructive

Some mothers commit a gross mistake in the way they bring up their daughters by favoring the boys over the girls. This attitude may not be felt initially, but it sometimes comes spontaneously. Mothers do not pay attention to it and girls dare not discuss it. In the course of time, the attitude becomes a deep-rooted and serious issue. It may even develop into a social issue that has negative consequences on the girls as well as on the whole family.

 

Perhaps it is acceptable at times, when considering human nature, that a mother who gives birth to a boy after a number of girls is extremely happy at his arrival and might pamper him in many different ways. However, it is totally unacceptable to give him the absolute authority to beat and abuse his sisters, even those who are older than him. Unfortunately, some families are afflicted with this problem. In addition to the tangible chaos that the little pampered emperor makes at home, there is the psychological chaos that he creates in the life of his sisters. The mother forces them to serve him, coddle him and never hurt his feelings, even if he mistreats them.

 

This kind of treatment has negative effects on the girls’ life, and is also raw material and a scheme for making a young tyrant or an arrogant and wicked man. If he misses his future turn of crime, he will at least be aggressive and cruel, especially with the weak and the poor. This would not be amazing as he was raised in this manner. The real cause of this problem is the mother's inconsideration of her daughters' feelings and her unbounded love for her son. This sort of love unfortunately leads to dire consequences, and Allaah The Almighty prevents this through the words of His Prophet, sallallaahu `alayhi wa sallam ( may Allaah exalt his mention ), who did justice to girls when he said: "Whosoever has a daughter and does not bury her alive, insult her, or favor his son over her, Allaah will admit him into Paradise."[Al-Haakim – Authentic]

 

Beware of Violence

There are many mothers who perpetrate violence against their daughters and even against their sons, considering it the correct way to raise them. I am stunned to see some mothers biting their daughters and others beating them savagely. Some mothers burden their daughters with housework that is beyond their capacity. They do so under the pretext of teaching them something for their own benefit and for their future.

 

Dear sister, the children's upbringing, in its correct sense, infers great compassion, care and sound direction. It also means everlasting love, sound direction in instilling values and principles, and differentiation between the lawful and the unlawful, and between the permissible and the forbidden in a subtle yet effective manner.

 

Being violent when raising children is very dangerous. It buries their childhood alive when they are young and buries their happiness alive when they grow up. The girl always remembers the insults and humiliation that she suffered during all of the stages of her life. It should also be noted that the constant fear of punishment makes one commit a lot of mistakes or fear to take initiative. This consequently leads to total or incomplete passivity in the present as well as in the future.

 

What is even graver and what a lot of mothers do not know is that frightening the girl and destroying her personality and subjugating her make her an irresolute girl with a weak personality. It even makes her thirsty for love and compassion. She would then seek love from anyone, regardless of who he is. Cruel treatment has been the reason, in many cases, that made girls fall in love with the family chauffeur or the domestic servant. Also, fear was also the reason, in many cases, that made the girls give up the most precious thing that they possess because of being suppressed and because their families did not allow them to have an entity, which led to them having no sense of honor.

 

We and the Western Women

Unfortunately, many Arab women are extremely keen on imitating Western women in the way they live, the way they dress, the way they wear makeup, the way the have their hair cut and the way they walk. Nevertheless, they totally forget to imitate them in raising children, in their consideration of their children’s psychology, and in providing them with emotional stock since their birth. Why?

 

Although we do not at all approve of this imitation of non-Muslim women, we do think that if you are going to imitate them, then why do you imitate them in useless matters only? Why do you not imitate the good way in which they raise their children?

 

Why should you imitate them in what is vain, dear sisters, when you are better and more knowledgeable than them? You know about the Quran and the Sunnah. Our religion is a religion of mercy, so please reflect and learn. There are many Muslim mothers who give their children the finest and greatest of upbringings. Try to learn from them and follow the methods they use in raising children. Also, try to learn from them their keenness in giving their girls an education and protecting them and their chastity.

 

In conclusion, I would like to say that all human beings commit errors. Therefore, dear sisters, try to correct your mistakes, seek help from Allaah The Almighty and then from your merciful Muslim sisters. Embrace your daughters and instill in them values anew. Do not be unfair, for wrongdoing will be darkness on the Day of Resurrection.

 

Established at the confluence of the Seine and a small tributary, the Gambon, the Château-Gaillard whose function was to prohibit use of the Rouen road and monitor the Vexin, disputed between the dukes of Normandy and the kings of France and recklessly conceded by Richard to Philippe Auguste in 1195. The castle was in fact only the keystone of a vast presence locking the Seine Valley and including strong advances, the ramparts of the large villages (bourgs) of Vieil Andeli Petit Andeli, a fortified bridge and the royal manor on an island in the river.

 

Built on a spur of the right bank of the river, cut off on three sides, the structure presented revolutionary innovations that made it a masterpiece of military architecture. In particular the deeper extension of the defences on a unique junction: the keep, provided with a spur and solid buttresses bearing the first machicolation; connected to its flanks, its elliptic chemise wall with a enveloped profile to eliminate any dead angles; then a trapezoidal curtain wall flanked by four large round towers, these two outer walls one fitting into the other; and finally, at the weakest point, an enormous triangular fortress, supported by high corner towers and reinforced at its tip by the powerful bastion of the Mint (la Monnaie).

 

This Bastille; a sort of shield made inaccessible by a deep moat; stood facing the plateau, from where attacks would originate. It is naturally on this terrain that Philippe Auguste installed his siege equipment, his archers and his sappers at the end of the summer of 1203. On 6 March of the following year the Bastille capitulated, opening the road to Rouen and Normandy to the King. The death of Richard in 1199, the passivity of John Landless, the insufficiency of the garrison, but also the presence of the neighbouring plateau, where the enemy was able to place its troops, was the reason for the formidable and successive defences of the Château. Despite everything, this constitutes a sort of conclusion of the Romanesque military architecture and introduced a new age of fortified castles, marked by the tight and concentric formation of the fortifications and the contraction of the defensive perimeter.

Motherwort....The genus name Leonurus is derived from a Latin word, leo meaning 'lions' and a Greek word oura, meaning 'tail', in reference to the leaf's shaggy shape - like a lion's tail.

 

The species name, cardiaca is from the Greek word kardiaca, meaning.... 'Heart'....

  

Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) is an herbaceous perennial plant in the mint family, Lamiaceae. Other common names include Throw-wort, Lion's Ear, and Lion's Tail.

 

The latter two are also common names for Leonotis leonurus. Originally from Central Asia it is now found worldwide, spread largely due to its use as a herbal remedy.

 

The plant has shallow root system with many fibrous roots. 4-angled ridged erect stems arise from the roots, reaching the height of about 3 feet. They are covered with short hairs, as well as the whole plant. Motherwort leaves are opposite; they all have long petioles. Those at the base of the herb are quite large with 5 cleft lobes and coarse teeth. Those situated at the middle of the stem are smaller, being divided into 3 toothed lobes. The upper leaves are usually toothed, but oblong-ovate in shape. The leaves are also characterized with conspicuous veins.

 

The tubular flowers of Motherwort are situated in bunches around the stems on their middle and upper parts in the axils of the leaves. They are pink and very hairy. Each flower consists of two lips: the upper one is undivided, the lower one has 3 lobes with purple dots on them. The seeds of the plant develop in the three-sided reddish or brown nutlets.

  

Motherwort has a long history of use as an herb in traditional medicine in Central Europe, Asia and North America. Like many other plants, it has been used for a variety of ills, and consumed. Midwives use it for a variety of purposes, including uterine tonic and prevention of uterine infection in women, hence the name Motherwort.

 

In a literal translation of its Chinese name, yi mu coa, motherwort means “benefit mother herb” and the leaves are very popular among Chinese women as a treatment for menstrual difficulties.

 

One more constituent of Motherwort known as vasodilator is responsible for keeping the muscles relaxed preventing cases of hypertension.

 

True to its Latin description as cardiaca, motherwort stabilizes the heart. This herb is a useful addition to any strengthening and supportive heart tonic.

 

German research has noted that motherwort has tranquilizing qualities similar to valerian; it's helpful in easing heart palpitations and other conditions due to nervous system.

 

Other essential uses of Motherwort include prevention of uterine infection, fighting off stress; prevent hemorrhage and complications during the crucial stages of pregnancy, and to promote relaxation during the development of the fetus and the entire duration of the pregnancy. The largest concentration of active constituents is found in the plant when it is in full bloom.

Contents such as iridoid, glycosides, terpenoids, flavonoids, tannins, volatile oils and vitamin A are responsible for this great effects and positive contribution to the mother’s health.

Studies have shown, however, that Motherwort should not be taken during pregnancy for it regulates menstruation.

 

During the ancient times in China and as used as traditional Chinese medicine, it was used to ease stomach pain and gas, to prevent menopausal problems, reduce cramping, and insomnia. It is best for calming down nervous irritability and promoting passivity of the entire nervous system.

 

Other medicinal wonders of Motherwort includes strengthening the heart which is a good cure for hysterical complaints, rapid heart rate and fast palpitations, and because of its relaxing effects it reduces the possibility of fainting. Also, it is a good tonic for spinal diseases, neuralgia and recovery from fevers where other tonics are not advisable for intake.

 

Motherwort tea has helped reduce the risk of postpartum depression. As a cardio tonic, it is proven to prevent the formation of blood clots that improves blood flow and reduces the risk of heart attack, stroke and other diseases.

 

Motherwort is also useful preventing low blood sugar, thyroid diseases, headaches, and vertigo. Also, it has proven to relieve one of lung problems, asthma and bronchitis.

 

All aerial parts of the plant are used medicinally; even the rough stem is suitable for making remedies. The herb is harvested and dried when in full bloom.

 

Motherwort tea is created by infusing the herb in boiling water. In fact, the Japanese consider Motherwort tea to be a drink benefiting longevity, thus the expression, "Drink motherwort to the despair of your heirs". The Japanese have a Motherwort festival on the ninth day of the ninth month called Kikousouki. During this time Motherwort flowers are eaten in rice and added to saki.

 

Culpepper wrote of Motherwort:

 

'Venus owns this herb and it is under Leo. There is no better herb to drive melancholy vapours from the heart, to strengthen it and make the mind cheerful, blithe and merry. May be kept in a syrup, or conserve, therefore the Latins call it cardiaca.... It cleansethe the chest of cold phlegm, oppressing it and killeth worms in the belly. It is of good use to warm and dry up the cold humours, to digest and disperse them that are settled in the veins, joints and sinews of the body and to help cramps and convulsions.'

 

youtu.be/Q_2gS1YTzkk

 

 

Do You Wish That We Show Up?

 

Date Published: 2006-05-22

 

Whoever transmitted this translated message to you is irrelevant, and should remain anonymous in your mind. It is what you will do with this message which matters

 

Each one of you wishes to exercise her/his free will and experience happiness. These are attributes that were shown to us and to which we now have access. Your free will depends upon the knowledge you have of your own power. Your happiness depends upon the love that you give and receive.Like all conscious races at this stage of progress, you may feel isolated on your planet. This impression makes you sure of your destiny. Yet, you are at the brink of big upheavals of which only a minority is aware. It is not our responsibility to modify your future without you choosing it. Consider this message as a worldwide referendum, and your answer as a ballot!

  

1. Who are we ?

 

Neither your scientists nor your religious representatives speak unanimously about the unexplained celestial events that mankind has witnessed for thousands of years. To know the truth, one must face it without the filter of one's beliefs, however respectable they may be. A growing number of anonymous researchers of yours are exploring new knowledge paths and are getting very close to reality. Today, your civilization is flooded with an ocean of information of which only a tiny part, the less upsetting one, is notably diffused. What in your history seemed ridiculous or improbable has often become possible, then realized, in particular in the last fifty years. Be aware that the future will be even more surprising. You will discover the worst as well as the best. Like billions of others in this galaxy, we are conscious creatures that some name "extra-terrestrials", even though reality is subtler.

 

There is no fundamental difference between you and us, save for the experience of certain stages of evolution. Like in any other organized structure, hierarchy exists in our internal relationships. Ours is based upon the wisdom of several races. It is with the approval of this hierarchy that we turn to you. Like most of you, we are in the quest of the Supreme Being. Therefore we are not gods or lesser gods but virtually your equals in the Cosmic Brotherhood.

 

Physically, we are somewhat different from you but for most of us humanoid-shaped. Our existence is a reality but the majority of you do not perceive it yet. We are not mere observations, we are consciences just like you. You fail to apprehend us because we remain invisible to your senses and measure instruments most of the time. We wish to fill this void at this moment in your history. We made this collective decision but this is not enough. We need yours. Through this message, you become the decision-makers ! You personally. We have no human representative on Earth who could guide your decision.

  

2.Why aren't we visible ?

 

At certain stages of evolution, cosmic "humanities" discover new forms of science beyond the apparent control of matter. Structured dematerialization and materialization are part of them. This is what your humanity has reached in a few laboratories in close collaboration with other "extra-terrestrial" creatures at the cost of hazardous compromises, that remain purposely hidden from you by some of your representatives. Apart from the aerial or spatial objects or phenomena known about by your scientific community, that you call 'UFOs, there are essentially multidimensional manufactured spaceships that apply these capacities. Many human beings have been in visual, auditory, tactile or psychic contact with such ships, some of which are under occult powers that "govern" you. The scarcity of your observations is due to the outstanding advantages provided by the dematerialised state of these ships.

 

By not witnessing them by yourself, you cannot believe in their existence. We fully understand this. The majority of these observations are made on an individual basis so as to touch the soul and not to modify any organised system. This is deliberate from the races that surround you but for very different reasons and results. For negative multidimensional beings that play a part in the exercise of power in the shadow of human oligarchy, discretion is motivated by their will to keep their existence and seizure unknown. For us, discretion is motivated by the respect of the human free will that people can exercise to manage their own affairs so that they can reach technical and spiritual maturity on their own. Humankind's entrance into the family of galactic civilisations is greatly expected.

 

We can appear in broad daylight and help you attain this union. We haven't done it so far, as too few of you have genuinely desired it, because of ignorance, indifference or fear, and because the emergency of the situation did not justify it. Many of those who study our appearances count the lights in the night without lighting the way. Often they think in terms of objects when it is all about conscious beings.

  

3. Who are you?

 

You are the offspring of many traditions that throughout time have been mutually enriched by each others' contributions. The same applies to the races at the surface of the Earth. Your goal is to unite in the respect of these roots to accomplish a common project. The appearance of your cultures seems to keep you separated because you substitute it to your deeper being. Shape is now more important than the essence of your subtle nature. For the powers in place, this prevalence of the shape constitutes the ramparts against any form of jeopardy.

 

You are being called on to overcome shape while still respecting it for its richness and beauty. Understanding the conscience of shape makes us love men in their diversity. Peace does not mean not making war, it consists in becoming what you are in reality: a same Fraternity. To understand this, the number of solutions within your reach are decreasing. One of them consists in contact with another race that would reflect the image of what you are in reality.

  

4. What is your situation ?

 

Except for rare occasions, our interventions always had very little incidence on your capacity to make collective and individual decisions about your own future. This is motivated by our knowledge of your deep psychological mechanisms. We reached the conclusion that freedom is built every day as a being becomes aware of himself and of his environment, getting progressively rid of constraints and inertias, whatever they may be. Despite the numerous, brave and willing human consciences, those inertias are artificially maintained for the profit of a growing centralizing power.

 

Until recently, mankind lived a satisfying control of its decisions. But it is losing more and more the control of its own fate because of the growing use of advanced technologies, which lethal consequences on the earthly and human ecosystems become irreversible. You are slowly but surely losing your extraordinary capacity to make life desirable. Your resilience will artificially decrease, independently of your own will. Such technologies exist that affect your body as well as your mind. Such plans are on their way. This can change as long as you keep this creative power in you, even if it cohabits with the dark intentions of your potential lords. This is the reason why we remain invisible. This individual power is doomed to vanish should a collective reaction of great magnitude not happen. The period to come is that of rupture, whichever it may be.

 

But should you wait for the last moment to find solutions ? Should you anticipate or undergo pain ? Your history has never ceased to be marked by encounters between peoples who had to discover one another in conditions that were often conflictual. Conquests almost always happened to the detriment of others. Earth has now become a village where everyone knows everyone else but still conflicts persist and threats of all kinds get worse in duration and intensity.

 

Although a Human being as an individual, yet having many potential capacities, cannot exercise them with dignity. This is the case for the biggest majority of you for reasons that are essentially geopolitical. There are several billion of you. The education of your children and your living conditions, as well as the conditions of numerous animals and much plant life are nevertheless under the thumb of a small number of your political, financial, military and religious representatives.

 

Your thoughts and beliefs are modelled after partisan interests to turn you into slaves while at the same time giving you the feeling that you are in total control of your destiny, which in essence is the reality. But there is a long way between a wish and a fact when the true rules of the game at hand are unknown. This time, you are not the conqueror. Biasing information is a millenary strategy for human beings. Inducting thoughts, emotions or organisms that do not belong to you via ad hoc technologies is an even older a strategy. Wonderful opportunities of progress stand close to big subdual and destruction threats. These dangers and opportunities exist now. However, you can only perceive what is being shown to you. The end of natural resources is programmed whereas no long-term collective project has been launched.

 

Ecosystem exhaustion mechanisms have exceeded irreversible limits. The scarcity of resources and their unfair distribution - resources which entry price will rise day after day - will bring about fratricide fights at a large scale, but also at the very heart of your cities and countrysides. Hatred grows bigger but so does love. That is what keeps you confident in your ability to find solutions. But the critical mass is insufficient and a sabotage work is cleverly being carried out. Human behaviours, formed from past habits and trainings, have such an inertia that this perspective leads you to a dead end. You entrust these problems to representatives, whose conscience of common well-being slowly fades away in front of corporatist interests, with those difficulties. They are always debating on the form but rarely on the content.

 

Just at the moment of action, delays will accumulate to the point when you have to submit rather than choose. This is the reason why, more than ever in your history, your decisions of today will directly and significantly impact your survival of tomorrow.

What event could radically modify this inertia that is typical of any civilization ? Where will a collective and unifying awareness c

ome from, that will stop this blind rushing ahead ? Tribes, populations and human nations have always encountered and interacted with one another. Faced with the threats weighing upon the human family, it is perhaps time that a greater interaction occurred. A great roller wave is on the verge of emerging. It mixes very positive but also very negative aspects.

  

5. Who are the "third party" ?

 

There are two ways to establish a cosmic contact with another civilization: via its standing representatives or directly with individuals without distinction. The first way entails fights of interests, the second way brings awareness.

 

The first way was chosen by a group of races motivated by keeping mankind in slavery, thereby controlling Earth resources, the gene pool and human emotional energy. The second way was chosen by a group of races allied with the cause of the Spirit of service. We have, at our end, subscribed to this disinterested cause and introduced ourselves a few years ago to representatives of the human power who refused our outstretched hand on the pretext of incompatible interests with their strategic vision.

 

That is why today individuals are to make this choice by themselves without any representative interfering. What we proposed in the past to those whom we believed were in a capacity to contribute to your happiness, we propose now to ... you!

 

Most of you ignore that non-human creatures took part in the exercise of those centralizing powers without them being neither suspected nor accessible to your senses. This is so true that they have almost very subtly taken control. They do not necessarily stand on your material plan, and that is precisely what could make them extremely efficient and frightening in the near future. However, be aware that a large number of your representatives are fighting this danger ! Be aware that not all abductions are made against you. It is difficult to recognize the truth ! How could you under such conditions exercise your free will when it is so much manipulated ? What are you really free of ? Peace and reunification of your peoples would be a first step toward the harmony with civilisations other than yours.

 

That is precisely what those who manipulate you behind the scenes want to avoid at all cost because, by dividing, they reign! They also reign over those who govern you. Their strength comes from their capacity to distillate mistrust and fear into you. This considerably harms your very cosmic nature. This message would be of no interest if these manipulators' tutorate did not reach its peak and if their misleading and murderous plans did not materialize in a few years from now. Their deadlines are close and mankind will undergo unprecedented torments for the next ten cycles.

 

To defend yourselves against this aggression that bears no face, you need at least to have enough information that leads to the solution. As is also the case with humans, resistance exists amongst those dominant races. Here again, appearance will not be enough to tell the dominator from the ally. At your current state of psychism, it is extremely difficult for you to distinguish between them. In addition to your intuition, training will be necessary when the time has come. Being aware of the priceless value of free will, we are inviting you to an alternative.

  

6. What can we offer ?

 

We can offer you a more holistic vision of the universe and of life, constructive interactions, the experience of fair and fraternal relationships, liberating technical knowledge, eradication of suffering, controlled exercise of individual powers, the access to new forms of energy and, finally, a better comprehension of consciousness. We cannot help you overcome your individual and collective fears, or bring you laws that you would not have chosen, work on your own selves, individual and collective effort to build the world you desire, the spirit of quest to new skies.

  

7. What would we receive ?

 

Should you decide that such a contact takes place, we would rejoice over the safeguarding of fraternal equilibrium in this region of the universe, fruitful diplomatic exchanges, and the intense Joy of knowing that you are united to accomplish that which you are capable. The feeling of Joy is strongly sought in the universe for its energy is divine.

  

8. What is the question we ask you ?

 

"DO YOU WISH THAT WE SHOW UP ?"

  

9.How can you answer this question ?

 

The truth of soul can be read by telepathy. You only need to clearly ask yourself this question and give your answer as clearly, on your own or in a group, as you wish. Being in the heart of a city or in the middle of a desert does not impact the efficiency of your answer, YES or NO, IMMEDIATELY AFTER ASKING THE QUESTION! Just do it as if you were speaking to yourself but thinking about the message. This is a universal question and these mere few words, put in their context, have a powerful meaning. You should not let hesitation in the way. This is why you should calmly think about it, in all conscience. In order to perfectly associate your answer with the question, it is recommended that you answer right after another reading of this message.

 

Do not rush to answer. Breathe and let all the power of your own free will penetrate you. Be proud of what you are ! The problems that you may have weaken you. Forget about them for a few minutes to be yourselves. Feel the force that springs up in you. You are in control of yourselves ! A single thought, a single answer can drastically change your near future, in one way as in another.

 

Your individual decision of asking in your inner self that we show up on your material plan and in broad daylight is precious and essential to us. Even though you can choose the way that best suits you, rituals are essentially useless. A sincere request made with your heart and your own will always be perceived by those of us whom it is sent to. In your own private polling booth of your secret will, you will determine the future.

  

10. What is the lever effect ?

 

This decision should be made by the greatest number among you, even though it might seem like a minority. It is recommended to spread this message, in all envisageable fashions, in as many languages as possible, to those around you, whether or not they seem receptive to this new vision of the future. Do it using in a humorous tone or derision if that can help you. You can even openly and publicly make fun of it if it makes you feel more comfortable but do not be indifferent for at least you will have exercised your free will.

 

Forget about the false prophets and the beliefs that have been transmitted to you about us. This request is one of the most intimate that can be asked to you. Making a decision by yourself, as an individual, is your right as well as your responsibility !

Passivity only leads to the absence of freedom. Similarly, indecision is never efficient. If you really want to cling to your beliefs, which is something that we understand, then say NO. If you do not know what to choose, do not say YES because of mere curiosity. This is not a show, this is real daily life, WE ARE ALIVE ! And living !

 

Your history has plenty of episodes when determined men and women were able to influence the thread of events in spite of their small number.

 

Just like a small number is enough to take temporal power on Earth and influence the future of the majority, a small number of you can radically change your fate as an answer to the impotence in face of so much inertia and hurdles ! You can ease the mankind's birth to Brotherhood. One of your thinkers once said: "Give me a hand-hold and I'll raise the Earth". Spreading this message will then be the hand-hold to strengthen. We will be the light-years long lever, you will be the craftsmen to ..... raise the Earth as a consequence of our appearance.

 

What would be the consequences of a positive decision ? For us, the immediate consequence of a collective favourable decision would be the materialization of many ships, in your sky and on Earth. For you, the direct effect would be the rapid abandoning of many certitudes and beliefs. A simple conclusive visual contact would have huge repercussions on your future. Much knowledge would be modified forever. The organization of your societies would be deeply up heaved for ever, in all fields of activity. Power would become individual because you would see for yourself that we are living. Concretely, you would change the scale of your values ! The most important thing for us is that humankind would form a single family in front of this "unknown" we would represent !

Danger would slowly melt away from your homes because you would indirectly force the undesirable ones, those we name the "third party", to show up and vanish. You would all bear the same name and share the same roots: Mankind !

 

Later on, peaceful and respectful exchanges would be thus possible if such is your wish. For now, he who is hungry cannot smile, he who is fearful cannot welcome us. We are sad to see men, women and children suffering to such a degree in their flesh and in their hearts when they bear such an inner light. This light can be your future. Our relationships could be progressive. Several stages of several years or decades would occur: demonstrative appearance of our ships, physical appearance beside human beings, collaboration in your technical and spiritual evolution, discovery of parts of the galaxy.

 

Every time, new choices would be offered to you. You would then decide by yourself to cross new stages if you think it necessary to your external and inner well-being. No interference would be decided upon unilaterally. We would leave as soon as you would collectively wish that we do. Depending upon the speed to spread the message across the world, several weeks, or even several months will be necessary before our "great appearance", if such is the decision made by the majority of those who will have used their capacity to choose, and if this message receives the necessary support. The main difference between your daily prayers to entities of a strictly spiritual nature and your current decision is extremely simple :

we are technically equipped to materialize!

  

11. Why such a historical dilemma ?

 

We know that "foreigners" are considered as enemies as long as they embody the "unknown". In a first stage, the emotion that our appearance will generate will strengthen your relationships on a worldwide scale. How could you know whether our arrival is the consequence of your collective choice ? For the simple reason that we would have otherwise been already there for a long time at your level of existence ! If we are not there yet, it is because you have not made such a decision explicitly.

 

Some among you might think that we would make you believe in a deliberate choice of yours so as to legitimate our arrival, though this would not be true. What interest would we have to openly offer you what you haven't got any access to yet, for the benefit of the greatest number of you ? How could you be certain that this is not yet another subtle maneuver of the "third party" to better enslave you ? Because one always more efficiently fights something that is identified than the contrary. Isn't the terrorism that corrodes you a blatant example ?

 

Whatever, you are the sole judge in your own heart and soul ! Whatever your choice, it would be respectable and respected ! In the absence of human representatives who could potentially seduce into error you ignore everything about us as well as from those who manipulate you without your consent. In your situation, the precautionary principle that consists in not trying to discover us does no longer prevail. You are already in the Pandora's box that the "third party" has created around you. Whatever your decision may be you will have to get out of it.

 

In the ace of such a dilemma, one ignorance against another, you need to ask your intuition. Do you want to see us with your own eyes, or simply believe what your thinkers say ? That is the real question!After thousands of years, one day, this choice was going to be inevitable: choosing between two unknowns.

  

12. Why spread such a message among yourselves ?

 

Translate and spread this message widely. This action will affect your future in an irreversible and historical way at the scale of milleniums, otherwise, it will postpone a new opportunity to choose to several years later, at least one generation, if it can survive.

Not choosing, stands for undergoing other people's choice. Not informing others stands for running the risk of obtaining a result that is contrary to one's expectations. Remaining indifferent means giving up one's free will.

It is all about your future. It is all about your evolution.

 

It is possible that this invitation does not receive your collective assent and that, because of a lack of information, it will be disregarded. Nevertheless no individual desire goes unheeded in the universe. Imagine our arrival tomorrow. Thousands of ships. A unique cultural shock in today's mankind's history. It will then be too late to regret about not making a choice and spreading the message because this discovery will be irreversible. We do insist that you do not rush into it, but do think about it ! And decide !

 

The big medias will not be necessarily interested in spreading this message. It is therefore your task, as an anonymous yet an extraordinary thinking and loving being, to transmit it. You are still the architects of your own fate...

"DO YOU WISH THAT WE SHOW UP ?"

 

* * * * * * *

 

You are free to publish, reproduce and copy this message as you like !

on the contrary, you are invited to do it...

but don't modify or cut the message, please.

The species name, cardiaca is from the Greek word kardiaca, meaning.... 'Heart'....

   

Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) is an herbaceous perennial plant in the mint family, Lamiaceae. Other common names include Throw-wort, Lion's Ear, and Lion's Tail.

 

The latter two are also common names for Leonotis leonurus. Originally from Central Asia it is now found worldwide, spread largely due to its use as a herbal remedy.

 

The plant has shallow root system with many fibrous roots. 4-angled ridged erect stems arise from the roots, reaching the height of about 3 feet. They are covered with short hairs, as well as the whole plant. Motherwort leaves are opposite; they all have long petioles. Those at the base of the herb are quite large with 5 cleft lobes and coarse teeth. Those situated at the middle of the stem are smaller, being divided into 3 toothed lobes. The upper leaves are usually toothed, but oblong-ovate in shape. The leaves are also characterized with conspicuous veins.

 

The tubular flowers of Motherwort are situated in bunches around the stems on their middle and upper parts in the axils of the leaves. They are pink and very hairy. Each flower consists of two lips: the upper one is undivided, the lower one has 3 lobes with purple dots on them. The seeds of the plant develop in the three-sided reddish or brown nutlets.

  

Motherwort has a long history of use as an herb in traditional medicine in Central Europe, Asia and North America. Like many other plants, it has been used for a variety of ills, and consumed. Midwives use it for a variety of purposes, including uterine tonic and prevention of uterine infection in women, hence the name Motherwort.

 

In a literal translation of its Chinese name, yi mu coa, motherwort means “benefit mother herb” and the leaves are very popular among Chinese women as a treatment for menstrual difficulties.

 

One more constituent of Motherwort known as vasodilator is responsible for keeping the muscles relaxed preventing cases of hypertension.

 

True to its Latin description as cardiaca, motherwort stabilizes the heart. This herb is a useful addition to any strengthening and supportive heart tonic.

 

German research has noted that motherwort has tranquilizing qualities similar to valerian; it's helpful in easing heart palpitations and other conditions due to nervous system.

 

Other essential uses of Motherwort include prevention of uterine infection, fighting off stress; prevent hemorrhage and complications during the crucial stages of pregnancy, and to promote relaxation during the development of the fetus and the entire duration of the pregnancy. The largest concentration of active constituents is found in the plant when it is in full bloom.

Contents such as iridoid, glycosides, terpenoids, flavonoids, tannins, volatile oils and vitamin A are responsible for this great effects and positive contribution to the mother’s health.

Studies have shown, however, that Motherwort should not be taken during pregnancy for it regulates menstruation.

 

During the ancient times in China and as used as traditional Chinese medicine, it was used to ease stomach pain and gas, to prevent menopausal problems, reduce cramping, and insomnia. It is best for calming down nervous irritability and promoting passivity of the entire nervous system.

 

Other medicinal wonders of Motherwort includes strengthening the heart which is a good cure for hysterical complaints, rapid heart rate and fast palpitations, and because of its relaxing effects it reduces the possibility of fainting. Also, it is a good tonic for spinal diseases, neuralgia and recovery from fevers where other tonics are not advisable for intake.

 

Motherwort tea has helped reduce the risk of postpartum depression. As a cardio tonic, it is proven to prevent the formation of blood clots that improves blood flow and reduces the risk of heart attack, stroke and other diseases.

 

Motherwort is also useful preventing low blood sugar, thyroid diseases, headaches, and vertigo. Also, it has proven to relieve one of lung problems, asthma and bronchitis.

 

All aerial parts of the plant are used medicinally; even the rough stem is suitable for making remedies. The herb is harvested and dried when in full bloom.

 

Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture/Berlinische Galerie

 

View On Black

How unresolved fear and anger can lead to passive aggressive behavior.

At one pole of communication stands passivity: not speaking out for fear of adverse consequences. At the other end stands aggressiveness: voicing negative sentiments without restraint or regard for their effect on others. In...

 

howdoidate.com/personal-development/resolve-passive-aggre...

 

Do You Wish That We Show Up?

 

Date Published: 2006-05-22

 

Whoever transmitted this translated message to you is irrelevant, and should remain anonymous in your mind. It is what you will do with this message which matters

 

Each one of you wishes to exercise her/his free will and experience happiness. These are attributes that were shown to us and to which we now have access. Your free will depends upon the knowledge you have of your own power. Your happiness depends upon the love that you give and receive.Like all conscious races at this stage of progress, you may feel isolated on your planet. This impression makes you sure of your destiny. Yet, you are at the brink of big upheavals of which only a minority is aware. It is not our responsibility to modify your future without you choosing it. Consider this message as a worldwide referendum, and your answer as a ballot!

  

1. Who are we ?

 

Neither your scientists nor your religious representatives speak unanimously about the unexplained celestial events that mankind has witnessed for thousands of years. To know the truth, one must face it without the filter of one's beliefs, however respectable they may be. A growing number of anonymous researchers of yours are exploring new knowledge paths and are getting very close to reality. Today, your civilization is flooded with an ocean of information of which only a tiny part, the less upsetting one, is notably diffused. What in your history seemed ridiculous or improbable has often become possible, then realized, in particular in the last fifty years. Be aware that the future will be even more surprising. You will discover the worst as well as the best. Like billions of others in this galaxy, we are conscious creatures that some name "extra-terrestrials", even though reality is subtler.

 

There is no fundamental difference between you and us, save for the experience of certain stages of evolution. Like in any other organized structure, hierarchy exists in our internal relationships. Ours is based upon the wisdom of several races. It is with the approval of this hierarchy that we turn to you. Like most of you, we are in the quest of the Supreme Being. Therefore we are not gods or lesser gods but virtually your equals in the Cosmic Brotherhood.

 

Physically, we are somewhat different from you but for most of us humanoid-shaped. Our existence is a reality but the majority of you do not perceive it yet. We are not mere observations, we are consciences just like you. You fail to apprehend us because we remain invisible to your senses and measure instruments most of the time. We wish to fill this void at this moment in your history. We made this collective decision but this is not enough. We need yours. Through this message, you become the decision-makers ! You personally. We have no human representative on Earth who could guide your decision.

  

2.Why aren't we visible ?

 

At certain stages of evolution, cosmic "humanities" discover new forms of science beyond the apparent control of matter. Structured dematerialization and materialization are part of them. This is what your humanity has reached in a few laboratories in close collaboration with other "extra-terrestrial" creatures at the cost of hazardous compromises, that remain purposely hidden from you by some of your representatives. Apart from the aerial or spatial objects or phenomena known about by your scientific community, that you call 'UFOs, there are essentially multidimensional manufactured spaceships that apply these capacities. Many human beings have been in visual, auditory, tactile or psychic contact with such ships, some of which are under occult powers that "govern" you. The scarcity of your observations is due to the outstanding advantages provided by the dematerialised state of these ships.

 

By not witnessing them by yourself, you cannot believe in their existence. We fully understand this. The majority of these observations are made on an individual basis so as to touch the soul and not to modify any organised system. This is deliberate from the races that surround you but for very different reasons and results. For negative multidimensional beings that play a part in the exercise of power in the shadow of human oligarchy, discretion is motivated by their will to keep their existence and seizure unknown. For us, discretion is motivated by the respect of the human free will that people can exercise to manage their own affairs so that they can reach technical and spiritual maturity on their own. Humankind's entrance into the family of galactic civilisations is greatly expected.

 

We can appear in broad daylight and help you attain this union. We haven't done it so far, as too few of you have genuinely desired it, because of ignorance, indifference or fear, and because the emergency of the situation did not justify it. Many of those who study our appearances count the lights in the night without lighting the way. Often they think in terms of objects when it is all about conscious beings.

  

3. Who are you?

 

You are the offspring of many traditions that throughout time have been mutually enriched by each others' contributions. The same applies to the races at the surface of the Earth. Your goal is to unite in the respect of these roots to accomplish a common project. The appearance of your cultures seems to keep you separated because you substitute it to your deeper being. Shape is now more important than the essence of your subtle nature. For the powers in place, this prevalence of the shape constitutes the ramparts against any form of jeopardy.

 

You are being called on to overcome shape while still respecting it for its richness and beauty. Understanding the conscience of shape makes us love men in their diversity. Peace does not mean not making war, it consists in becoming what you are in reality: a same Fraternity. To understand this, the number of solutions within your reach are decreasing. One of them consists in contact with another race that would reflect the image of what you are in reality.

  

4. What is your situation ?

 

Except for rare occasions, our interventions always had very little incidence on your capacity to make collective and individual decisions about your own future. This is motivated by our knowledge of your deep psychological mechanisms. We reached the conclusion that freedom is built every day as a being becomes aware of himself and of his environment, getting progressively rid of constraints and inertias, whatever they may be. Despite the numerous, brave and willing human consciences, those inertias are artificially maintained for the profit of a growing centralizing power.

 

Until recently, mankind lived a satisfying control of its decisions. But it is losing more and more the control of its own fate because of the growing use of advanced technologies, which lethal consequences on the earthly and human ecosystems become irreversible. You are slowly but surely losing your extraordinary capacity to make life desirable. Your resilience will artificially decrease, independently of your own will. Such technologies exist that affect your body as well as your mind. Such plans are on their way. This can change as long as you keep this creative power in you, even if it cohabits with the dark intentions of your potential lords. This is the reason why we remain invisible. This individual power is doomed to vanish should a collective reaction of great magnitude not happen. The period to come is that of rupture, whichever it may be.

 

But should you wait for the last moment to find solutions ? Should you anticipate or undergo pain ? Your history has never ceased to be marked by encounters between peoples who had to discover one another in conditions that were often conflictual. Conquests almost always happened to the detriment of others. Earth has now become a village where everyone knows everyone else but still conflicts persist and threats of all kinds get worse in duration and intensity.

 

Although a Human being as an individual, yet having many potential capacities, cannot exercise them with dignity. This is the case for the biggest majority of you for reasons that are essentially geopolitical. There are several billion of you. The education of your children and your living conditions, as well as the conditions of numerous animals and much plant life are nevertheless under the thumb of a small number of your political, financial, military and religious representatives.

 

Your thoughts and beliefs are modelled after partisan interests to turn you into slaves while at the same time giving you the feeling that you are in total control of your destiny, which in essence is the reality. But there is a long way between a wish and a fact when the true rules of the game at hand are unknown. This time, you are not the conqueror. Biasing information is a millenary strategy for human beings. Inducting thoughts, emotions or organisms that do not belong to you via ad hoc technologies is an even older a strategy. Wonderful opportunities of progress stand close to big subdual and destruction threats. These dangers and opportunities exist now. However, you can only perceive what is being shown to you. The end of natural resources is programmed whereas no long-term collective project has been launched.

 

Ecosystem exhaustion mechanisms have exceeded irreversible limits. The scarcity of resources and their unfair distribution - resources which entry price will rise day after day - will bring about fratricide fights at a large scale, but also at the very heart of your cities and countrysides. Hatred grows bigger but so does love. That is what keeps you confident in your ability to find solutions. But the critical mass is insufficient and a sabotage work is cleverly being carried out. Human behaviours, formed from past habits and trainings, have such an inertia that this perspective leads you to a dead end. You entrust these problems to representatives, whose conscience of common well-being slowly fades away in front of corporatist interests, with those difficulties. They are always debating on the form but rarely on the content.

 

Just at the moment of action, delays will accumulate to the point when you have to submit rather than choose. This is the reason why, more than ever in your history, your decisions of today will directly and significantly impact your survival of tomorrow.

What event could radically modify this inertia that is typical of any civilization ? Where will a collective and unifying awareness c

ome from, that will stop this blind rushing ahead ? Tribes, populations and human nations have always encountered and interacted with one another. Faced with the threats weighing upon the human family, it is perhaps time that a greater interaction occurred. A great roller wave is on the verge of emerging. It mixes very positive but also very negative aspects.

  

5. Who are the "third party" ?

 

There are two ways to establish a cosmic contact with another civilization: via its standing representatives or directly with individuals without distinction. The first way entails fights of interests, the second way brings awareness.

 

The first way was chosen by a group of races motivated by keeping mankind in slavery, thereby controlling Earth resources, the gene pool and human emotional energy. The second way was chosen by a group of races allied with the cause of the Spirit of service. We have, at our end, subscribed to this disinterested cause and introduced ourselves a few years ago to representatives of the human power who refused our outstretched hand on the pretext of incompatible interests with their strategic vision.

 

That is why today individuals are to make this choice by themselves without any representative interfering. What we proposed in the past to those whom we believed were in a capacity to contribute to your happiness, we propose now to ... you!

 

Most of you ignore that non-human creatures took part in the exercise of those centralizing powers without them being neither suspected nor accessible to your senses. This is so true that they have almost very subtly taken control. They do not necessarily stand on your material plan, and that is precisely what could make them extremely efficient and frightening in the near future. However, be aware that a large number of your representatives are fighting this danger ! Be aware that not all abductions are made against you. It is difficult to recognize the truth ! How could you under such conditions exercise your free will when it is so much manipulated ? What are you really free of ? Peace and reunification of your peoples would be a first step toward the harmony with civilisations other than yours.

 

That is precisely what those who manipulate you behind the scenes want to avoid at all cost because, by dividing, they reign! They also reign over those who govern you. Their strength comes from their capacity to distillate mistrust and fear into you. This considerably harms your very cosmic nature. This message would be of no interest if these manipulators' tutorate did not reach its peak and if their misleading and murderous plans did not materialize in a few years from now. Their deadlines are close and mankind will undergo unprecedented torments for the next ten cycles.

 

To defend yourselves against this aggression that bears no face, you need at least to have enough information that leads to the solution. As is also the case with humans, resistance exists amongst those dominant races. Here again, appearance will not be enough to tell the dominator from the ally. At your current state of psychism, it is extremely difficult for you to distinguish between them. In addition to your intuition, training will be necessary when the time has come. Being aware of the priceless value of free will, we are inviting you to an alternative.

  

6. What can we offer ?

 

We can offer you a more holistic vision of the universe and of life, constructive interactions, the experience of fair and fraternal relationships, liberating technical knowledge, eradication of suffering, controlled exercise of individual powers, the access to new forms of energy and, finally, a better comprehension of consciousness. We cannot help you overcome your individual and collective fears, or bring you laws that you would not have chosen, work on your own selves, individual and collective effort to build the world you desire, the spirit of quest to new skies.

  

7. What would we receive ?

 

Should you decide that such a contact takes place, we would rejoice over the safeguarding of fraternal equilibrium in this region of the universe, fruitful diplomatic exchanges, and the intense Joy of knowing that you are united to accomplish that which you are capable. The feeling of Joy is strongly sought in the universe for its energy is divine.

  

8. What is the question we ask you ?

 

"DO YOU WISH THAT WE SHOW UP ?"

  

9.How can you answer this question ?

 

The truth of soul can be read by telepathy. You only need to clearly ask yourself this question and give your answer as clearly, on your own or in a group, as you wish. Being in the heart of a city or in the middle of a desert does not impact the efficiency of your answer, YES or NO, IMMEDIATELY AFTER ASKING THE QUESTION! Just do it as if you were speaking to yourself but thinking about the message. This is a universal question and these mere few words, put in their context, have a powerful meaning. You should not let hesitation in the way. This is why you should calmly think about it, in all conscience. In order to perfectly associate your answer with the question, it is recommended that you answer right after another reading of this message.

 

Do not rush to answer. Breathe and let all the power of your own free will penetrate you. Be proud of what you are ! The problems that you may have weaken you. Forget about them for a few minutes to be yourselves. Feel the force that springs up in you. You are in control of yourselves ! A single thought, a single answer can drastically change your near future, in one way as in another.

 

Your individual decision of asking in your inner self that we show up on your material plan and in broad daylight is precious and essential to us. Even though you can choose the way that best suits you, rituals are essentially useless. A sincere request made with your heart and your own will always be perceived by those of us whom it is sent to. In your own private polling booth of your secret will, you will determine the future.

  

10. What is the lever effect ?

 

This decision should be made by the greatest number among you, even though it might seem like a minority. It is recommended to spread this message, in all envisageable fashions, in as many languages as possible, to those around you, whether or not they seem receptive to this new vision of the future. Do it using in a humorous tone or derision if that can help you. You can even openly and publicly make fun of it if it makes you feel more comfortable but do not be indifferent for at least you will have exercised your free will.

 

Forget about the false prophets and the beliefs that have been transmitted to you about us. This request is one of the most intimate that can be asked to you. Making a decision by yourself, as an individual, is your right as well as your responsibility !

Passivity only leads to the absence of freedom. Similarly, indecision is never efficient. If you really want to cling to your beliefs, which is something that we understand, then say NO. If you do not know what to choose, do not say YES because of mere curiosity. This is not a show, this is real daily life, WE ARE ALIVE ! And living !

 

Your history has plenty of episodes when determined men and women were able to influence the thread of events in spite of their small number.

 

Just like a small number is enough to take temporal power on Earth and influence the future of the majority, a small number of you can radically change your fate as an answer to the impotence in face of so much inertia and hurdles ! You can ease the mankind's birth to Brotherhood. One of your thinkers once said: "Give me a hand-hold and I'll raise the Earth". Spreading this message will then be the hand-hold to strengthen. We will be the light-years long lever, you will be the craftsmen to ..... raise the Earth as a consequence of our appearance.

 

What would be the consequences of a positive decision ? For us, the immediate consequence of a collective favourable decision would be the materialization of many ships, in your sky and on Earth. For you, the direct effect would be the rapid abandoning of many certitudes and beliefs. A simple conclusive visual contact would have huge repercussions on your future. Much knowledge would be modified forever. The organization of your societies would be deeply up heaved for ever, in all fields of activity. Power would become individual because you would see for yourself that we are living. Concretely, you would change the scale of your values ! The most important thing for us is that humankind would form a single family in front of this "unknown" we would represent !

Danger would slowly melt away from your homes because you would indirectly force the undesirable ones, those we name the "third party", to show up and vanish. You would all bear the same name and share the same roots: Mankind !

 

Later on, peaceful and respectful exchanges would be thus possible if such is your wish. For now, he who is hungry cannot smile, he who is fearful cannot welcome us. We are sad to see men, women and children suffering to such a degree in their flesh and in their hearts when they bear such an inner light. This light can be your future. Our relationships could be progressive. Several stages of several years or decades would occur: demonstrative appearance of our ships, physical appearance beside human beings, collaboration in your technical and spiritual evolution, discovery of parts of the galaxy.

 

Every time, new choices would be offered to you. You would then decide by yourself to cross new stages if you think it necessary to your external and inner well-being. No interference would be decided upon unilaterally. We would leave as soon as you would collectively wish that we do. Depending upon the speed to spread the message across the world, several weeks, or even several months will be necessary before our "great appearance", if such is the decision made by the majority of those who will have used their capacity to choose, and if this message receives the necessary support. The main difference between your daily prayers to entities of a strictly spiritual nature and your current decision is extremely simple :

we are technically equipped to materialize!

  

11. Why such a historical dilemma ?

 

We know that "foreigners" are considered as enemies as long as they embody the "unknown". In a first stage, the emotion that our appearance will generate will strengthen your relationships on a worldwide scale. How could you know whether our arrival is the consequence of your collective choice ? For the simple reason that we would have otherwise been already there for a long time at your level of existence ! If we are not there yet, it is because you have not made such a decision explicitly.

 

Some among you might think that we would make you believe in a deliberate choice of yours so as to legitimate our arrival, though this would not be true. What interest would we have to openly offer you what you haven't got any access to yet, for the benefit of the greatest number of you ? How could you be certain that this is not yet another subtle maneuver of the "third party" to better enslave you ? Because one always more efficiently fights something that is identified than the contrary. Isn't the terrorism that corrodes you a blatant example ?

 

Whatever, you are the sole judge in your own heart and soul ! Whatever your choice, it would be respectable and respected ! In the absence of human representatives who could potentially seduce into error you ignore everything about us as well as from those who manipulate you without your consent. In your situation, the precautionary principle that consists in not trying to discover us does no longer prevail. You are already in the Pandora's box that the "third party" has created around you. Whatever your decision may be you will have to get out of it.

 

In the ace of such a dilemma, one ignorance against another, you need to ask your intuition. Do you want to see us with your own eyes, or simply believe what your thinkers say ? That is the real question!After thousands of years, one day, this choice was going to be inevitable: choosing between two unknowns.

  

12. Why spread such a message among yourselves ?

 

Translate and spread this message widely. This action will affect your future in an irreversible and historical way at the scale of milleniums, otherwise, it will postpone a new opportunity to choose to several years later, at least one generation, if it can survive.

Not choosing, stands for undergoing other people's choice. Not informing others stands for running the risk of obtaining a result that is contrary to one's expectations. Remaining indifferent means giving up one's free will.

It is all about your future. It is all about your evolution.

 

It is possible that this invitation does not receive your collective assent and that, because of a lack of information, it will be disregarded. Nevertheless no individual desire goes unheeded in the universe. Imagine our arrival tomorrow. Thousands of ships. A unique cultural shock in today's mankind's history. It will then be too late to regret about not making a choice and spreading the message because this discovery will be irreversible. We do insist that you do not rush into it, but do think about it ! And decide !

 

The big medias will not be necessarily interested in spreading this message. It is therefore your task, as an anonymous yet an extraordinary thinking and loving being, to transmit it. You are still the architects of your own fate...

"DO YOU WISH THAT WE SHOW UP ?"

 

* * * * * * *

 

You are free to publish, reproduce and copy this message as you like !

on the contrary, you are invited to do it...

but don't modify or cut the message, please.

<3 these 2 Goddesses. The cards were at Melissa's house.

 

IV. POWER: FREYJA Associated with the Suit of Staves

 

Freyja, the Norse goddess of creativity, love and beauty, shows that true power lies in the ability to discriminate between aggression and passivity – and the ability to choose between them at the right time.

 

Meanings: The ability to use power wisely. Awareness of one’s power. The ability to lead and inspire others. Knowledge of how to “work the system.” Reversed: Oppresed by another’s power and authority. Insecurity. Loss of personal power.

 

VI. LOVE: VENUS Associated with the Suit of Cups

 

Created from the happy union of sea and sky. Venus, the Roman goddess of love, has been described by many as the queen of pleasure and passion.

 

Meanings: A renewed awareness of the nature of passionate love and what is needed to encourage it. Artistic creativity. Sexuality. Integration of the masculine and feminine. A new, important relationship. Reversed: Manipulating others with sexuality. Inability to find a loving partner.

 

SOURCE for the pic & commentary, Goddess Tarot Deck, by Kris Waldherr, US Games, 1997.

 

Kris Waldherr's flickr Photostream.

Ordinary dynamism vs. Stunning passivity

John Robert Lewis (born February 21, 1940) is the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district, serving since 1987. He was a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), playing a key role in the struggle to end segregation. He is a member of the Democratic Party and is one of the most liberal legislators.

 

Lewis was born in Troy, Alabama, the third son of Willie Mae (née Carter) and Eddie Lewis. His parents were sharecroppers. Lewis was educated at the Pike County Training High School, Brundidge, Alabama and also American Baptist Theological Seminary and at Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tennessee, where he became active in the local sit-in movement. As a student he made a systematic study of the techniques and philosophy of nonviolence, and with his fellow students prepared thoroughly for their first actions. He participated in the Freedom Rides to desegregate the South, and was a national leader in the struggle for civil rights. In an interview John Lewis said "I saw racial discrimination as a young child. I saw those signs that said "White Men, Colored Men, White Women, Colored Women."..."I remember as a young child with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins going down to the public library trying to get library cards, trying to check some books out, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for "coloreds." John Lewis followed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Rosa Parks on the radio. He and his family supported the Montgomery bus boycott.

 

John Lewis was an influential SNCC leader and is recognized by most as one of the important leaders of the civil rights movement as a whole. He was a hard-working young man who overcame poverty and political disenfranchisement to educate himself.

 

In 1961, Lewis joined SNCC in the Freedom Rides. Riders traveled the South challenging segregation at interstate bus terminals. Lewis and others received death threats and were severely beaten by angry mobs. In 1963, when Chuck McDew stepped down as SNCC chairman, Lewis was quickly elected to take over. Lewis' experience at that point was already widely respected—he had been arrested 24 times as a result of his activism. He held the post of chairman until 1966.

 

In 1963, Lewis helped plan and took part in the March on Washington. At the age of 23, he was a keynote speaker at the historic event. In 1965, he led 525 marchers across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. State troopers attacked the marchers in a violent incident that later became known as "Bloody Sunday". In 1981, Lewis was elected to his first official government office as an Atlanta City Council member. In 1986, he was elected to Congress, where he is currently serving his 13th term.

 

Historian Howard Zinn wrote: "At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), John Lewis, speaking to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, was prepared to ask the right question: 'Which side is the federal government on?’ That sentence was eliminated from his speech by organizers of the March to avoid offending the Kennedy Administration. But Lewis and his fellow SNCC workers had experienced, again and again, the strange passivity of the national government in the face of Southern violence."

 

In October 2008, Lewis generated significant controversy by issuing a statement criticizing the campaign of John McCain and Sarah Palin and comparing their actions to those of certain segregationists, specifically George Wallace, during the Civil Rights Movement, stating that "What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. [Sarah] Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse." As the controversy surrounding his statements escalated, Lewis quickly re-issued a subsequent statement claiming that he never intended to compare McCain and Palin to Wallace himself, rather that his early statement was simply a "reminder to all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior."

 

Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders

és o quê? testemunha, vítima ou cúmplice?

 

@ 29ª Bienal de Arte de São Paulo

Viroqua, Wisconsin, epi-Center of the Driftless Region

 

www.macastat.com

Marlene Dumas, Open End, Palazzo Grassi, Venice

 

Snowwhite and the

Next Generation

1988, oil on canvas, 140 x 200 cm

Central Museum, Utrecht

 

In the late 1980s, feeling that the

nude had become a worn-out and

misrepresented subject in painting

and advertising, Dumas endeavored

to make a relevant painting about a

female nude. In her exhibition Waiting

for Meaning (1988), she combined

female passivity, the nude, and

aspects of the Snow White figure to

create her own witches' brew. Snow

White was originally a nineteenth-

century German fairy tale by the

Brothers Grimm that warned against

the dangers of vanity. In 1937 it was

also the subject of the first feature-

length animation film produced by the

Walt Disney Studio.

 

Dumas does not see whiteness

as the fairest of them all, but as a

dangerous and desperate ideology

when used as a political category.

In this painting the dwarves of

the next generation are not the jolly

chaps they used to be in the old story.

cleaning out my mom's stuff from my closet, there isn't really anything to say

well i could say it but

i don't know

you can ask me a hundred questions and i do not feel satisfied with my answers

i don't feel like i signed up to explain racism to people who barely have a concept of it

i do not understand this shit myself

i feel awkward trying to explain to my extended family (or anyone, as if i was actually a source that could possibly explain anything)

anything about anything anything anything

i guess i should care more about this

but the crust of your dinner looks like a crème brûlée

and that feels more realistic to discuss

because at least i can articulate that

i just want to stare at the ground i don't really want to go anywhere

i guess i should assume that if you ask a question and don't wait to hear the response

that you don't really care about the response

so i should feel less like i have a responsibility to embody an encyclopedia of where i have just been

and then also shuffle your feet through the woods to take a series of pictures of semi-green leaves and it is not raining but there is water falling on your head

the trees are melting, and, the streets are wet

there are no crowds but the idea of them sounds scary

i have never said to myself more in my entire life "you shouldn't feel this way"

"you don't need to feel this way"

helping my mom with everyday chores feels like passivity

it probably is

think about poets who like to say that inanimate objects are pregnant with something

to conjure ideas about possibility, sexual notions, what the fuck ever

i can't believe what you said to me in the car

that hurt, sort of, like i did something to you just by going where i went

i can't believe you said that

you are one of my best friends

i am tired

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung reports a seminal dream in his discovery of the collective unconscious.

Very interesting article! I never thought about archetypes being possibly destructive ! One of my most frequently presented archetypes is wallet, purse, and so on! Does anyone know what it represents?!

Allan Raymond Cohen Reply

I found it very dificult to get a hold on the esence – here is mine:-

Level 1 the top floor – Being accepted

Level 2 the ground floor PATERNAL – Notice me; MATERNAL – Victim.

Level 3 the cellar – Small town mentality

Level 4 the cave – Jewish wanderer – always looking

need some help to intergrate it

 

I was in a house I did not know, which had two storeys. It was “my house”. I found myself in the upper storey, where there was a kind of salon furnished with fine old pieces in Rococo style. On the walls hung a number of precious, old paintings. I wondered that this should be my house and thought, “Not bad”. But then it occurred to me that I did not know what the lower floor looked like. Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There everything was much older. I realised that this part of the house must date from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The furnishings were medieval, the floors were of red brick. Everywhere it was rather dark. I went from one room to another, thinking, “Now I really must explore the whole house.” I came upon a heavy door and opened it. Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into a cellar. Descending again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room which looked exceedingly ancient. Examining the walls, I discovered layers of brick among the ordinary stone blocks, and chips of brick in the mortar. As soon as I saw this, I knew that the walls dated from Roman times. My interest by now was intense. I looked more closely at the floor. It was of stone slabs and in one of these I discovered a ring. When I pulled it, the stone slab lifted and again I saw a stairway of narrow stone steps leading down to the depths. These, too, I descended and entered a low cave cut into rock. Thick dust lay on the floor and in the dust were scattered bones and broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture. I discovered two human skulls, obviously very old, and half disintegrated. Then I awoke.[1]

Jung presented the dream to Freud, who he was working very closely with at the time, but dissatisfied with his (Freud’s) reading of it[2] Jung independently interpreted the dream along the following lines: the house was a symbol of his psyche or psychology. Our homes being amongst the most primal of our collective symbols. The home is where the heart is, as the old saying goes. Our homes are our castles (irrespective of how modest they may be), our sanctuaries. They are sacred ground. The border of the home constitutes a boundary between me and mine and “the world”, “the others”. Its boundaries are designed to keep the unwelcome out and admit the welcome by my invitation. In my home (ideally) I feel contained, safe, held. The home symbolically is an extended psychic body, a manifestation of my soul in the world. And inasmuch as it holds me it is also a symbol of the mother. This symbolic significance explains much of the cultural rituals and protocols around our homes and their status in our society. Once you become a guest in my home there is a subtle but significant shift in your status from someone-out-there to someone-one-in-here. The beliefs and cultural norms of the Bedouin tribes are particularly telling in this regard. This also goes some way to explaining the lasting psychological trauma of a home invasion and the frequent need to relocate.

 

And in the dream Jung is clear that it is not just any house but his house, “my house”. Once one is armed with the concept of the collective unconscious the rest follows fairly organically. Of course Jung himself wasn’t, so the reading he birthed is a testament to his genius. As he descends the various layers of his house, he is descending the layers of his own psychology, psyche or soul. What he discovers is that each successive layer connects him with an earlier time in man’s history and the history of his ancestral line and also casts an increasingly wide net so that his interconnectedness to his fellow man is increased. Or perhaps it is better stated to say he is increasingly connected to an ever wider group of fellow human beings who share, at the various levels, his ancestry. Such that he begins in his personal living space on the upper floor and ends in the shared prehistoric roots of all mankind.

 

Discovering your own archetypal home

 

Using the symbolic structure of Jung’s dream house I want you to consider the ancestral impulses and archetypal inhabitants of your own psychology. To do this we borrow quite strictly from Jung’s conceptual apparatus of the collective unconscious and archetypes, but more liberally with respect to the particularities of his dream house. In other words we might say that Jung was visited by what the shamans call a “big dream”. A dream that wasn’t as much his personal property (no pun intended) as it was the property of all mankind –a message from the dream gods if you will.

 

In order to utilise this image in your investigation (and hopefully discovery) of your own archetypal home, I want you to adopt the following classification of the respective levels or internal structures of the house.

 

Following Jung’s trajectory we will move from the top (the personal) to the base (the transpersonal). At each level I want you to identify a governing archetype (or spirit).

 

Level 1 the top floor of your house is concerned with your personal narrative. The archetype you are looking for here is the one that governs your own personal life, your own narrative or life journey to date. Naturally you are going to be able to indentify multiple possibilities here and choosing one is bound to be challenging. Nevertheless, select only one concept, idea, archetype that has been present throughout your life like the mythological red thread, irrespective of whether you could always see it or not, or followed it or not.

 

Level 2 the ground floor of your house is concerned with the family you were born into. Identify in each of your parents same gender lineage a governing archetype. In the case of your paternal line consider: your father, your bothers, sons, uncles, male cousins and grandfather – all in the paternal line; in the case of your maternal line consider: your mother, sisters, aunts, cousins and grandmother. So, on this level you should identify two archetypes, one from each of your paternal and the maternal lines respectively.

 

Level 3 the cellar of your house is concerned with the culture in which you live and are identified with. This is open to interpretation because a number of complicating factors come into play. The culture you grew up in, the culture in which you currently live, distinct cultural and racial groups in the country in which you live, considerations of communal or group sub-cultures and so on. For most of us there will be a number of distinct group, social and cultural influences. Each of these groups will incarnate a particular archetype. Nevertheless for the sake of the application select one archetype from amongst these groups with which you most closely identify.

 

Level 4 the cave under your house is concerned with the ancestral line from which you emerge. This could be singular or multiple depending on your personal ancestry. Here you want to reflect on the spirit (or archetype) of “the people” you are descended from.

 

Using myself as an example:

 

Level 1: consciousness (although my life has been filled with different and quite distinct impulses, asked to select a single one I think consciousness – the pursuit of, would be a likely candidate).

 

Level 2: paternal: the will to power; maternal: melancholy

 

Level 3: I identify myself very much as a South African and even more specifically as a white South African (the political incorrectness of such an admission notwithstanding) and the spirit that I see living in white South Africans in contemporary culture is one of entrepreneurship.

 

Level 4: I emerge from two ancestral lines, the Lebanese and the Afrikaners. In my reading of the Lebanese a good candidate for their dominant trait or archetype is: trader (they are and historically have always been traders). The Afrikaners, when I think about them what come out for me is that they are pioneers – they exhibit a pioneering spirit.

 

So I find the following archetypes living in my own psychology: consciousness, will to power, melancholy, entrepreneurship, trader, and pioneer. Here it seems a synthesis can be realised between: trader – entrepreneur (these two seem to share a very similar archetypal basis). As such I narrow my list down to: entrepreneur, consciousness, will to power, melancholy, and pioneer. I think there is a case for a synthesis between pioneer and consciousness as well (consciousness being the consequence of pioneering into unchartered territories). Nevertheless I think the distinctions between these two archetypes are sufficient that they are best left intact and independent if obviously related.

 

The bivalent nature of archetypes

 

It is important when considering the archetypes that emerged for you during this application to reflect on both their productive and destructive aspects. This is something that Jung emphasised in relation to archetypes – their bivalent nature. E.g. the mother (archetype) can be nurturing or consuming and so on. Considering three of my own archetypes this is what I see:

 

Trader-entrepreneur

 

Constructive: able to successfully trade, negotiate, do business, create new opportunities, think creatively, navigate the world etc.

 

Destructive: unproductive (a trader can produce nothing and still be a very successful trader), manipulative, exploitative, depersonalise and commoditise the other, greedy, avaricious etc.

 

Consciousness

 

Constructive: Jung had it that consciousness has infinite value and possibly nothing further need be said on the scale of the positive, although I cannot resist adding Socrates aphorism, ‘The unconsidered life is not worth living’.

 

Destructive: passivity, inaction, analysis paralysis, consciousness can be substituted for the actual process and joy of life, and so on.

 

Melancholy

 

Productive: soulfulness, reflection, the true state of every genuine philosopher, empathetic, feeling, caring, a mytho-poetic sense or lens, and so on.

 

Destructive: sadness, apathy, fatalism, joyless, sourness etc.

 

It is important to realise that every archetype has both the constructive and destructive capacities, not one or the other. And Jung would suggest that when one is consciously constellated its opposite is unconsciously constellated. The very significant implication of this idea being that consciousness is best served by being aware of both the productive and destructive characteristics of the archetype in your own psychology.

 

Understanding you own myth

 

Armed with this knowledge the next question to consider is what possible story could be told with these archetypal characters? This is, I believe, what Jung means when he asks of us to identify our own myth. This is the ‘next step’ in the process, beyond the classical mapping of your story onto a collective myth or fable. In other words the archetypal characters in your psychology are characters on the stage of your life and your personal life story is their story, the story they tell. Now stories, as we know from literary theory, follow certain typical (or in Jungian terms: archetypal) forms. Your archetypes create a natural structure in which your story can be told, in which your myth can unfold. This structure has a natural form and limitation; its possibilities are not infinite. However there are, if not infinite, certainly a multiplicity of different forms, shades and hues of personal narrative that these archetypal characters can create and be part of. Understanding what your myth may be is about reflecting on what this story may look like or could look like; knowing what it is, beyond speculation, is the business of living this life and discovering what story emerges.

 

appliedjung.com/jungs-dream-house/

 

 

Do You Wish That We Show Up?

 

Date Published: 2006-05-22

 

Whoever transmitted this translated message to you is irrelevant, and should remain anonymous in your mind. It is what you will do with this message which matters

 

Each one of you wishes to exercise her/his free will and experience happiness. These are attributes that were shown to us and to which we now have access. Your free will depends upon the knowledge you have of your own power. Your happiness depends upon the love that you give and receive.Like all conscious races at this stage of progress, you may feel isolated on your planet. This impression makes you sure of your destiny. Yet, you are at the brink of big upheavals of which only a minority is aware. It is not our responsibility to modify your future without you choosing it. Consider this message as a worldwide referendum, and your answer as a ballot!

  

1. Who are we ?

 

Neither your scientists nor your religious representatives speak unanimously about the unexplained celestial events that mankind has witnessed for thousands of years. To know the truth, one must face it without the filter of one's beliefs, however respectable they may be. A growing number of anonymous researchers of yours are exploring new knowledge paths and are getting very close to reality. Today, your civilization is flooded with an ocean of information of which only a tiny part, the less upsetting one, is notably diffused. What in your history seemed ridiculous or improbable has often become possible, then realized, in particular in the last fifty years. Be aware that the future will be even more surprising. You will discover the worst as well as the best. Like billions of others in this galaxy, we are conscious creatures that some name "extra-terrestrials", even though reality is subtler.

 

There is no fundamental difference between you and us, save for the experience of certain stages of evolution. Like in any other organized structure, hierarchy exists in our internal relationships. Ours is based upon the wisdom of several races. It is with the approval of this hierarchy that we turn to you. Like most of you, we are in the quest of the Supreme Being. Therefore we are not gods or lesser gods but virtually your equals in the Cosmic Brotherhood.

 

Physically, we are somewhat different from you but for most of us humanoid-shaped. Our existence is a reality but the majority of you do not perceive it yet. We are not mere observations, we are consciences just like you. You fail to apprehend us because we remain invisible to your senses and measure instruments most of the time. We wish to fill this void at this moment in your history. We made this collective decision but this is not enough. We need yours. Through this message, you become the decision-makers ! You personally. We have no human representative on Earth who could guide your decision.

  

2.Why aren't we visible ?

 

At certain stages of evolution, cosmic "humanities" discover new forms of science beyond the apparent control of matter. Structured dematerialization and materialization are part of them. This is what your humanity has reached in a few laboratories in close collaboration with other "extra-terrestrial" creatures at the cost of hazardous compromises, that remain purposely hidden from you by some of your representatives. Apart from the aerial or spatial objects or phenomena known about by your scientific community, that you call 'UFOs, there are essentially multidimensional manufactured spaceships that apply these capacities. Many human beings have been in visual, auditory, tactile or psychic contact with such ships, some of which are under occult powers that "govern" you. The scarcity of your observations is due to the outstanding advantages provided by the dematerialised state of these ships.

 

By not witnessing them by yourself, you cannot believe in their existence. We fully understand this. The majority of these observations are made on an individual basis so as to touch the soul and not to modify any organised system. This is deliberate from the races that surround you but for very different reasons and results. For negative multidimensional beings that play a part in the exercise of power in the shadow of human oligarchy, discretion is motivated by their will to keep their existence and seizure unknown. For us, discretion is motivated by the respect of the human free will that people can exercise to manage their own affairs so that they can reach technical and spiritual maturity on their own. Humankind's entrance into the family of galactic civilisations is greatly expected.

 

We can appear in broad daylight and help you attain this union. We haven't done it so far, as too few of you have genuinely desired it, because of ignorance, indifference or fear, and because the emergency of the situation did not justify it. Many of those who study our appearances count the lights in the night without lighting the way. Often they think in terms of objects when it is all about conscious beings.

  

3. Who are you?

 

You are the offspring of many traditions that throughout time have been mutually enriched by each others' contributions. The same applies to the races at the surface of the Earth. Your goal is to unite in the respect of these roots to accomplish a common project. The appearance of your cultures seems to keep you separated because you substitute it to your deeper being. Shape is now more important than the essence of your subtle nature. For the powers in place, this prevalence of the shape constitutes the ramparts against any form of jeopardy.

 

You are being called on to overcome shape while still respecting it for its richness and beauty. Understanding the conscience of shape makes us love men in their diversity. Peace does not mean not making war, it consists in becoming what you are in reality: a same Fraternity. To understand this, the number of solutions within your reach are decreasing. One of them consists in contact with another race that would reflect the image of what you are in reality.

  

4. What is your situation ?

 

Except for rare occasions, our interventions always had very little incidence on your capacity to make collective and individual decisions about your own future. This is motivated by our knowledge of your deep psychological mechanisms. We reached the conclusion that freedom is built every day as a being becomes aware of himself and of his environment, getting progressively rid of constraints and inertias, whatever they may be. Despite the numerous, brave and willing human consciences, those inertias are artificially maintained for the profit of a growing centralizing power.

 

Until recently, mankind lived a satisfying control of its decisions. But it is losing more and more the control of its own fate because of the growing use of advanced technologies, which lethal consequences on the earthly and human ecosystems become irreversible. You are slowly but surely losing your extraordinary capacity to make life desirable. Your resilience will artificially decrease, independently of your own will. Such technologies exist that affect your body as well as your mind. Such plans are on their way. This can change as long as you keep this creative power in you, even if it cohabits with the dark intentions of your potential lords. This is the reason why we remain invisible. This individual power is doomed to vanish should a collective reaction of great magnitude not happen. The period to come is that of rupture, whichever it may be.

 

But should you wait for the last moment to find solutions ? Should you anticipate or undergo pain ? Your history has never ceased to be marked by encounters between peoples who had to discover one another in conditions that were often conflictual. Conquests almost always happened to the detriment of others. Earth has now become a village where everyone knows everyone else but still conflicts persist and threats of all kinds get worse in duration and intensity.

 

Although a Human being as an individual, yet having many potential capacities, cannot exercise them with dignity. This is the case for the biggest majority of you for reasons that are essentially geopolitical. There are several billion of you. The education of your children and your living conditions, as well as the conditions of numerous animals and much plant life are nevertheless under the thumb of a small number of your political, financial, military and religious representatives.

 

Your thoughts and beliefs are modelled after partisan interests to turn you into slaves while at the same time giving you the feeling that you are in total control of your destiny, which in essence is the reality. But there is a long way between a wish and a fact when the true rules of the game at hand are unknown. This time, you are not the conqueror. Biasing information is a millenary strategy for human beings. Inducting thoughts, emotions or organisms that do not belong to you via ad hoc technologies is an even older a strategy. Wonderful opportunities of progress stand close to big subdual and destruction threats. These dangers and opportunities exist now. However, you can only perceive what is being shown to you. The end of natural resources is programmed whereas no long-term collective project has been launched.

 

Ecosystem exhaustion mechanisms have exceeded irreversible limits. The scarcity of resources and their unfair distribution - resources which entry price will rise day after day - will bring about fratricide fights at a large scale, but also at the very heart of your cities and countrysides. Hatred grows bigger but so does love. That is what keeps you confident in your ability to find solutions. But the critical mass is insufficient and a sabotage work is cleverly being carried out. Human behaviours, formed from past habits and trainings, have such an inertia that this perspective leads you to a dead end. You entrust these problems to representatives, whose conscience of common well-being slowly fades away in front of corporatist interests, with those difficulties. They are always debating on the form but rarely on the content.

 

Just at the moment of action, delays will accumulate to the point when you have to submit rather than choose. This is the reason why, more than ever in your history, your decisions of today will directly and significantly impact your survival of tomorrow.

What event could radically modify this inertia that is typical of any civilization ? Where will a collective and unifying awareness c

ome from, that will stop this blind rushing ahead ? Tribes, populations and human nations have always encountered and interacted with one another. Faced with the threats weighing upon the human family, it is perhaps time that a greater interaction occurred. A great roller wave is on the verge of emerging. It mixes very positive but also very negative aspects.

  

5. Who are the "third party" ?

 

There are two ways to establish a cosmic contact with another civilization: via its standing representatives or directly with individuals without distinction. The first way entails fights of interests, the second way brings awareness.

 

The first way was chosen by a group of races motivated by keeping mankind in slavery, thereby controlling Earth resources, the gene pool and human emotional energy. The second way was chosen by a group of races allied with the cause of the Spirit of service. We have, at our end, subscribed to this disinterested cause and introduced ourselves a few years ago to representatives of the human power who refused our outstretched hand on the pretext of incompatible interests with their strategic vision.

 

That is why today individuals are to make this choice by themselves without any representative interfering. What we proposed in the past to those whom we believed were in a capacity to contribute to your happiness, we propose now to ... you!

 

Most of you ignore that non-human creatures took part in the exercise of those centralizing powers without them being neither suspected nor accessible to your senses. This is so true that they have almost very subtly taken control. They do not necessarily stand on your material plan, and that is precisely what could make them extremely efficient and frightening in the near future. However, be aware that a large number of your representatives are fighting this danger ! Be aware that not all abductions are made against you. It is difficult to recognize the truth ! How could you under such conditions exercise your free will when it is so much manipulated ? What are you really free of ? Peace and reunification of your peoples would be a first step toward the harmony with civilisations other than yours.

 

That is precisely what those who manipulate you behind the scenes want to avoid at all cost because, by dividing, they reign! They also reign over those who govern you. Their strength comes from their capacity to distillate mistrust and fear into you. This considerably harms your very cosmic nature. This message would be of no interest if these manipulators' tutorate did not reach its peak and if their misleading and murderous plans did not materialize in a few years from now. Their deadlines are close and mankind will undergo unprecedented torments for the next ten cycles.

 

To defend yourselves against this aggression that bears no face, you need at least to have enough information that leads to the solution. As is also the case with humans, resistance exists amongst those dominant races. Here again, appearance will not be enough to tell the dominator from the ally. At your current state of psychism, it is extremely difficult for you to distinguish between them. In addition to your intuition, training will be necessary when the time has come. Being aware of the priceless value of free will, we are inviting you to an alternative.

  

6. What can we offer ?

 

We can offer you a more holistic vision of the universe and of life, constructive interactions, the experience of fair and fraternal relationships, liberating technical knowledge, eradication of suffering, controlled exercise of individual powers, the access to new forms of energy and, finally, a better comprehension of consciousness. We cannot help you overcome your individual and collective fears, or bring you laws that you would not have chosen, work on your own selves, individual and collective effort to build the world you desire, the spirit of quest to new skies.

  

7. What would we receive ?

 

Should you decide that such a contact takes place, we would rejoice over the safeguarding of fraternal equilibrium in this region of the universe, fruitful diplomatic exchanges, and the intense Joy of knowing that you are united to accomplish that which you are capable. The feeling of Joy is strongly sought in the universe for its energy is divine.

  

8. What is the question we ask you ?

 

"DO YOU WISH THAT WE SHOW UP ?"

  

9.How can you answer this question ?

 

The truth of soul can be read by telepathy. You only need to clearly ask yourself this question and give your answer as clearly, on your own or in a group, as you wish. Being in the heart of a city or in the middle of a desert does not impact the efficiency of your answer, YES or NO, IMMEDIATELY AFTER ASKING THE QUESTION! Just do it as if you were speaking to yourself but thinking about the message. This is a universal question and these mere few words, put in their context, have a powerful meaning. You should not let hesitation in the way. This is why you should calmly think about it, in all conscience. In order to perfectly associate your answer with the question, it is recommended that you answer right after another reading of this message.

 

Do not rush to answer. Breathe and let all the power of your own free will penetrate you. Be proud of what you are ! The problems that you may have weaken you. Forget about them for a few minutes to be yourselves. Feel the force that springs up in you. You are in control of yourselves ! A single thought, a single answer can drastically change your near future, in one way as in another.

 

Your individual decision of asking in your inner self that we show up on your material plan and in broad daylight is precious and essential to us. Even though you can choose the way that best suits you, rituals are essentially useless. A sincere request made with your heart and your own will always be perceived by those of us whom it is sent to. In your own private polling booth of your secret will, you will determine the future.

  

10. What is the lever effect ?

 

This decision should be made by the greatest number among you, even though it might seem like a minority. It is recommended to spread this message, in all envisageable fashions, in as many languages as possible, to those around you, whether or not they seem receptive to this new vision of the future. Do it using in a humorous tone or derision if that can help you. You can even openly and publicly make fun of it if it makes you feel more comfortable but do not be indifferent for at least you will have exercised your free will.

 

Forget about the false prophets and the beliefs that have been transmitted to you about us. This request is one of the most intimate that can be asked to you. Making a decision by yourself, as an individual, is your right as well as your responsibility !

Passivity only leads to the absence of freedom. Similarly, indecision is never efficient. If you really want to cling to your beliefs, which is something that we understand, then say NO. If you do not know what to choose, do not say YES because of mere curiosity. This is not a show, this is real daily life, WE ARE ALIVE ! And living !

 

Your history has plenty of episodes when determined men and women were able to influence the thread of events in spite of their small number.

 

Just like a small number is enough to take temporal power on Earth and influence the future of the majority, a small number of you can radically change your fate as an answer to the impotence in face of so much inertia and hurdles ! You can ease the mankind's birth to Brotherhood. One of your thinkers once said: "Give me a hand-hold and I'll raise the Earth". Spreading this message will then be the hand-hold to strengthen. We will be the light-years long lever, you will be the craftsmen to ..... raise the Earth as a consequence of our appearance.

 

What would be the consequences of a positive decision ? For us, the immediate consequence of a collective favourable decision would be the materialization of many ships, in your sky and on Earth. For you, the direct effect would be the rapid abandoning of many certitudes and beliefs. A simple conclusive visual contact would have huge repercussions on your future. Much knowledge would be modified forever. The organization of your societies would be deeply up heaved for ever, in all fields of activity. Power would become individual because you would see for yourself that we are living. Concretely, you would change the scale of your values ! The most important thing for us is that humankind would form a single family in front of this "unknown" we would represent !

Danger would slowly melt away from your homes because you would indirectly force the undesirable ones, those we name the "third party", to show up and vanish. You would all bear the same name and share the same roots: Mankind !

 

Later on, peaceful and respectful exchanges would be thus possible if such is your wish. For now, he who is hungry cannot smile, he who is fearful cannot welcome us. We are sad to see men, women and children suffering to such a degree in their flesh and in their hearts when they bear such an inner light. This light can be your future. Our relationships could be progressive. Several stages of several years or decades would occur: demonstrative appearance of our ships, physical appearance beside human beings, collaboration in your technical and spiritual evolution, discovery of parts of the galaxy.

 

Every time, new choices would be offered to you. You would then decide by yourself to cross new stages if you think it necessary to your external and inner well-being. No interference would be decided upon unilaterally. We would leave as soon as you would collectively wish that we do. Depending upon the speed to spread the message across the world, several weeks, or even several months will be necessary before our "great appearance", if such is the decision made by the majority of those who will have used their capacity to choose, and if this message receives the necessary support. The main difference between your daily prayers to entities of a strictly spiritual nature and your current decision is extremely simple :

we are technically equipped to materialize!

  

11. Why such a historical dilemma ?

 

We know that "foreigners" are considered as enemies as long as they embody the "unknown". In a first stage, the emotion that our appearance will generate will strengthen your relationships on a worldwide scale. How could you know whether our arrival is the consequence of your collective choice ? For the simple reason that we would have otherwise been already there for a long time at your level of existence ! If we are not there yet, it is because you have not made such a decision explicitly.

 

Some among you might think that we would make you believe in a deliberate choice of yours so as to legitimate our arrival, though this would not be true. What interest would we have to openly offer you what you haven't got any access to yet, for the benefit of the greatest number of you ? How could you be certain that this is not yet another subtle maneuver of the "third party" to better enslave you ? Because one always more efficiently fights something that is identified than the contrary. Isn't the terrorism that corrodes you a blatant example ?

 

Whatever, you are the sole judge in your own heart and soul ! Whatever your choice, it would be respectable and respected ! In the absence of human representatives who could potentially seduce into error you ignore everything about us as well as from those who manipulate you without your consent. In your situation, the precautionary principle that consists in not trying to discover us does no longer prevail. You are already in the Pandora's box that the "third party" has created around you. Whatever your decision may be you will have to get out of it.

 

In the ace of such a dilemma, one ignorance against another, you need to ask your intuition. Do you want to see us with your own eyes, or simply believe what your thinkers say ? That is the real question!After thousands of years, one day, this choice was going to be inevitable: choosing between two unknowns.

  

12. Why spread such a message among yourselves ?

 

Translate and spread this message widely. This action will affect your future in an irreversible and historical way at the scale of milleniums, otherwise, it will postpone a new opportunity to choose to several years later, at least one generation, if it can survive.

Not choosing, stands for undergoing other people's choice. Not informing others stands for running the risk of obtaining a result that is contrary to one's expectations. Remaining indifferent means giving up one's free will.

It is all about your future. It is all about your evolution.

 

It is possible that this invitation does not receive your collective assent and that, because of a lack of information, it will be disregarded. Nevertheless no individual desire goes unheeded in the universe. Imagine our arrival tomorrow. Thousands of ships. A unique cultural shock in today's mankind's history. It will then be too late to regret about not making a choice and spreading the message because this discovery will be irreversible. We do insist that you do not rush into it, but do think about it ! And decide !

 

The big medias will not be necessarily interested in spreading this message. It is therefore your task, as an anonymous yet an extraordinary thinking and loving being, to transmit it. You are still the architects of your own fate...

"DO YOU WISH THAT WE SHOW UP ?"

 

* * * * * * *

 

You are free to publish, reproduce and copy this message as you like !

on the contrary, you are invited to do it...

but don't modify or cut the message, please.

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 28 - I am grateful for all the people, all over the world, who care about and are struggling for peace, love, and truth, in all the ways that matter. In the past year, with all the bad news and disasters, I have learned that there are more of us than ever – thank you for love in action!

 

Dorothy Thompson: Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of faith, strength, energy, will, sympathy, justice, imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.

 

H. H. The Dalai Lama: I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one's own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.

 

. . . Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.

 

 

Do You Wish That We Show Up?

 

Date Published: 2006-05-22

 

Whoever transmitted this translated message to you is irrelevant, and should remain anonymous in your mind. It is what you will do with this message which matters

 

Each one of you wishes to exercise her/his free will and experience happiness. These are attributes that were shown to us and to which we now have access. Your free will depends upon the knowledge you have of your own power. Your happiness depends upon the love that you give and receive.Like all conscious races at this stage of progress, you may feel isolated on your planet. This impression makes you sure of your destiny. Yet, you are at the brink of big upheavals of which only a minority is aware. It is not our responsibility to modify your future without you choosing it. Consider this message as a worldwide referendum, and your answer as a ballot!

  

1. Who are we ?

 

Neither your scientists nor your religious representatives speak unanimously about the unexplained celestial events that mankind has witnessed for thousands of years. To know the truth, one must face it without the filter of one's beliefs, however respectable they may be. A growing number of anonymous researchers of yours are exploring new knowledge paths and are getting very close to reality. Today, your civilization is flooded with an ocean of information of which only a tiny part, the less upsetting one, is notably diffused. What in your history seemed ridiculous or improbable has often become possible, then realized, in particular in the last fifty years. Be aware that the future will be even more surprising. You will discover the worst as well as the best. Like billions of others in this galaxy, we are conscious creatures that some name "extra-terrestrials", even though reality is subtler.

 

There is no fundamental difference between you and us, save for the experience of certain stages of evolution. Like in any other organized structure, hierarchy exists in our internal relationships. Ours is based upon the wisdom of several races. It is with the approval of this hierarchy that we turn to you. Like most of you, we are in the quest of the Supreme Being. Therefore we are not gods or lesser gods but virtually your equals in the Cosmic Brotherhood.

 

Physically, we are somewhat different from you but for most of us humanoid-shaped. Our existence is a reality but the majority of you do not perceive it yet. We are not mere observations, we are consciences just like you. You fail to apprehend us because we remain invisible to your senses and measure instruments most of the time. We wish to fill this void at this moment in your history. We made this collective decision but this is not enough. We need yours. Through this message, you become the decision-makers ! You personally. We have no human representative on Earth who could guide your decision.

  

2.Why aren't we visible ?

 

At certain stages of evolution, cosmic "humanities" discover new forms of science beyond the apparent control of matter. Structured dematerialization and materialization are part of them. This is what your humanity has reached in a few laboratories in close collaboration with other "extra-terrestrial" creatures at the cost of hazardous compromises, that remain purposely hidden from you by some of your representatives. Apart from the aerial or spatial objects or phenomena known about by your scientific community, that you call 'UFOs, there are essentially multidimensional manufactured spaceships that apply these capacities. Many human beings have been in visual, auditory, tactile or psychic contact with such ships, some of which are under occult powers that "govern" you. The scarcity of your observations is due to the outstanding advantages provided by the dematerialised state of these ships.

 

By not witnessing them by yourself, you cannot believe in their existence. We fully understand this. The majority of these observations are made on an individual basis so as to touch the soul and not to modify any organised system. This is deliberate from the races that surround you but for very different reasons and results. For negative multidimensional beings that play a part in the exercise of power in the shadow of human oligarchy, discretion is motivated by their will to keep their existence and seizure unknown. For us, discretion is motivated by the respect of the human free will that people can exercise to manage their own affairs so that they can reach technical and spiritual maturity on their own. Humankind's entrance into the family of galactic civilisations is greatly expected.

 

We can appear in broad daylight and help you attain this union. We haven't done it so far, as too few of you have genuinely desired it, because of ignorance, indifference or fear, and because the emergency of the situation did not justify it. Many of those who study our appearances count the lights in the night without lighting the way. Often they think in terms of objects when it is all about conscious beings.

  

3. Who are you?

 

You are the offspring of many traditions that throughout time have been mutually enriched by each others' contributions. The same applies to the races at the surface of the Earth. Your goal is to unite in the respect of these roots to accomplish a common project. The appearance of your cultures seems to keep you separated because you substitute it to your deeper being. Shape is now more important than the essence of your subtle nature. For the powers in place, this prevalence of the shape constitutes the ramparts against any form of jeopardy.

 

You are being called on to overcome shape while still respecting it for its richness and beauty. Understanding the conscience of shape makes us love men in their diversity. Peace does not mean not making war, it consists in becoming what you are in reality: a same Fraternity. To understand this, the number of solutions within your reach are decreasing. One of them consists in contact with another race that would reflect the image of what you are in reality.

  

4. What is your situation ?

 

Except for rare occasions, our interventions always had very little incidence on your capacity to make collective and individual decisions about your own future. This is motivated by our knowledge of your deep psychological mechanisms. We reached the conclusion that freedom is built every day as a being becomes aware of himself and of his environment, getting progressively rid of constraints and inertias, whatever they may be. Despite the numerous, brave and willing human consciences, those inertias are artificially maintained for the profit of a growing centralizing power.

 

Until recently, mankind lived a satisfying control of its decisions. But it is losing more and more the control of its own fate because of the growing use of advanced technologies, which lethal consequences on the earthly and human ecosystems become irreversible. You are slowly but surely losing your extraordinary capacity to make life desirable. Your resilience will artificially decrease, independently of your own will. Such technologies exist that affect your body as well as your mind. Such plans are on their way. This can change as long as you keep this creative power in you, even if it cohabits with the dark intentions of your potential lords. This is the reason why we remain invisible. This individual power is doomed to vanish should a collective reaction of great magnitude not happen. The period to come is that of rupture, whichever it may be.

 

But should you wait for the last moment to find solutions ? Should you anticipate or undergo pain ? Your history has never ceased to be marked by encounters between peoples who had to discover one another in conditions that were often conflictual. Conquests almost always happened to the detriment of others. Earth has now become a village where everyone knows everyone else but still conflicts persist and threats of all kinds get worse in duration and intensity.

 

Although a Human being as an individual, yet having many potential capacities, cannot exercise them with dignity. This is the case for the biggest majority of you for reasons that are essentially geopolitical. There are several billion of you. The education of your children and your living conditions, as well as the conditions of numerous animals and much plant life are nevertheless under the thumb of a small number of your political, financial, military and religious representatives.

 

Your thoughts and beliefs are modelled after partisan interests to turn you into slaves while at the same time giving you the feeling that you are in total control of your destiny, which in essence is the reality. But there is a long way between a wish and a fact when the true rules of the game at hand are unknown. This time, you are not the conqueror. Biasing information is a millenary strategy for human beings. Inducting thoughts, emotions or organisms that do not belong to you via ad hoc technologies is an even older a strategy. Wonderful opportunities of progress stand close to big subdual and destruction threats. These dangers and opportunities exist now. However, you can only perceive what is being shown to you. The end of natural resources is programmed whereas no long-term collective project has been launched.

 

Ecosystem exhaustion mechanisms have exceeded irreversible limits. The scarcity of resources and their unfair distribution - resources which entry price will rise day after day - will bring about fratricide fights at a large scale, but also at the very heart of your cities and countrysides. Hatred grows bigger but so does love. That is what keeps you confident in your ability to find solutions. But the critical mass is insufficient and a sabotage work is cleverly being carried out. Human behaviours, formed from past habits and trainings, have such an inertia that this perspective leads you to a dead end. You entrust these problems to representatives, whose conscience of common well-being slowly fades away in front of corporatist interests, with those difficulties. They are always debating on the form but rarely on the content.

 

Just at the moment of action, delays will accumulate to the point when you have to submit rather than choose. This is the reason why, more than ever in your history, your decisions of today will directly and significantly impact your survival of tomorrow.

What event could radically modify this inertia that is typical of any civilization ? Where will a collective and unifying awareness c

ome from, that will stop this blind rushing ahead ? Tribes, populations and human nations have always encountered and interacted with one another. Faced with the threats weighing upon the human family, it is perhaps time that a greater interaction occurred. A great roller wave is on the verge of emerging. It mixes very positive but also very negative aspects.

  

5. Who are the "third party" ?

 

There are two ways to establish a cosmic contact with another civilization: via its standing representatives or directly with individuals without distinction. The first way entails fights of interests, the second way brings awareness.

 

The first way was chosen by a group of races motivated by keeping mankind in slavery, thereby controlling Earth resources, the gene pool and human emotional energy. The second way was chosen by a group of races allied with the cause of the Spirit of service. We have, at our end, subscribed to this disinterested cause and introduced ourselves a few years ago to representatives of the human power who refused our outstretched hand on the pretext of incompatible interests with their strategic vision.

 

That is why today individuals are to make this choice by themselves without any representative interfering. What we proposed in the past to those whom we believed were in a capacity to contribute to your happiness, we propose now to ... you!

 

Most of you ignore that non-human creatures took part in the exercise of those centralizing powers without them being neither suspected nor accessible to your senses. This is so true that they have almost very subtly taken control. They do not necessarily stand on your material plan, and that is precisely what could make them extremely efficient and frightening in the near future. However, be aware that a large number of your representatives are fighting this danger ! Be aware that not all abductions are made against you. It is difficult to recognize the truth ! How could you under such conditions exercise your free will when it is so much manipulated ? What are you really free of ? Peace and reunification of your peoples would be a first step toward the harmony with civilisations other than yours.

 

That is precisely what those who manipulate you behind the scenes want to avoid at all cost because, by dividing, they reign! They also reign over those who govern you. Their strength comes from their capacity to distillate mistrust and fear into you. This considerably harms your very cosmic nature. This message would be of no interest if these manipulators' tutorate did not reach its peak and if their misleading and murderous plans did not materialize in a few years from now. Their deadlines are close and mankind will undergo unprecedented torments for the next ten cycles.

 

To defend yourselves against this aggression that bears no face, you need at least to have enough information that leads to the solution. As is also the case with humans, resistance exists amongst those dominant races. Here again, appearance will not be enough to tell the dominator from the ally. At your current state of psychism, it is extremely difficult for you to distinguish between them. In addition to your intuition, training will be necessary when the time has come. Being aware of the priceless value of free will, we are inviting you to an alternative.

  

6. What can we offer ?

 

We can offer you a more holistic vision of the universe and of life, constructive interactions, the experience of fair and fraternal relationships, liberating technical knowledge, eradication of suffering, controlled exercise of individual powers, the access to new forms of energy and, finally, a better comprehension of consciousness. We cannot help you overcome your individual and collective fears, or bring you laws that you would not have chosen, work on your own selves, individual and collective effort to build the world you desire, the spirit of quest to new skies.

  

7. What would we receive ?

 

Should you decide that such a contact takes place, we would rejoice over the safeguarding of fraternal equilibrium in this region of the universe, fruitful diplomatic exchanges, and the intense Joy of knowing that you are united to accomplish that which you are capable. The feeling of Joy is strongly sought in the universe for its energy is divine.

  

8. What is the question we ask you ?

 

"DO YOU WISH THAT WE SHOW UP ?"

  

9.How can you answer this question ?

 

The truth of soul can be read by telepathy. You only need to clearly ask yourself this question and give your answer as clearly, on your own or in a group, as you wish. Being in the heart of a city or in the middle of a desert does not impact the efficiency of your answer, YES or NO, IMMEDIATELY AFTER ASKING THE QUESTION! Just do it as if you were speaking to yourself but thinking about the message. This is a universal question and these mere few words, put in their context, have a powerful meaning. You should not let hesitation in the way. This is why you should calmly think about it, in all conscience. In order to perfectly associate your answer with the question, it is recommended that you answer right after another reading of this message.

 

Do not rush to answer. Breathe and let all the power of your own free will penetrate you. Be proud of what you are ! The problems that you may have weaken you. Forget about them for a few minutes to be yourselves. Feel the force that springs up in you. You are in control of yourselves ! A single thought, a single answer can drastically change your near future, in one way as in another.

 

Your individual decision of asking in your inner self that we show up on your material plan and in broad daylight is precious and essential to us. Even though you can choose the way that best suits you, rituals are essentially useless. A sincere request made with your heart and your own will always be perceived by those of us whom it is sent to. In your own private polling booth of your secret will, you will determine the future.

  

10. What is the lever effect ?

 

This decision should be made by the greatest number among you, even though it might seem like a minority. It is recommended to spread this message, in all envisageable fashions, in as many languages as possible, to those around you, whether or not they seem receptive to this new vision of the future. Do it using in a humorous tone or derision if that can help you. You can even openly and publicly make fun of it if it makes you feel more comfortable but do not be indifferent for at least you will have exercised your free will.

 

Forget about the false prophets and the beliefs that have been transmitted to you about us. This request is one of the most intimate that can be asked to you. Making a decision by yourself, as an individual, is your right as well as your responsibility !

Passivity only leads to the absence of freedom. Similarly, indecision is never efficient. If you really want to cling to your beliefs, which is something that we understand, then say NO. If you do not know what to choose, do not say YES because of mere curiosity. This is not a show, this is real daily life, WE ARE ALIVE ! And living !

 

Your history has plenty of episodes when determined men and women were able to influence the thread of events in spite of their small number.

 

Just like a small number is enough to take temporal power on Earth and influence the future of the majority, a small number of you can radically change your fate as an answer to the impotence in face of so much inertia and hurdles ! You can ease the mankind's birth to Brotherhood. One of your thinkers once said: "Give me a hand-hold and I'll raise the Earth". Spreading this message will then be the hand-hold to strengthen. We will be the light-years long lever, you will be the craftsmen to ..... raise the Earth as a consequence of our appearance.

 

What would be the consequences of a positive decision ? For us, the immediate consequence of a collective favourable decision would be the materialization of many ships, in your sky and on Earth. For you, the direct effect would be the rapid abandoning of many certitudes and beliefs. A simple conclusive visual contact would have huge repercussions on your future. Much knowledge would be modified forever. The organization of your societies would be deeply up heaved for ever, in all fields of activity. Power would become individual because you would see for yourself that we are living. Concretely, you would change the scale of your values ! The most important thing for us is that humankind would form a single family in front of this "unknown" we would represent !

Danger would slowly melt away from your homes because you would indirectly force the undesirable ones, those we name the "third party", to show up and vanish. You would all bear the same name and share the same roots: Mankind !

 

Later on, peaceful and respectful exchanges would be thus possible if such is your wish. For now, he who is hungry cannot smile, he who is fearful cannot welcome us. We are sad to see men, women and children suffering to such a degree in their flesh and in their hearts when they bear such an inner light. This light can be your future. Our relationships could be progressive. Several stages of several years or decades would occur: demonstrative appearance of our ships, physical appearance beside human beings, collaboration in your technical and spiritual evolution, discovery of parts of the galaxy.

 

Every time, new choices would be offered to you. You would then decide by yourself to cross new stages if you think it necessary to your external and inner well-being. No interference would be decided upon unilaterally. We would leave as soon as you would collectively wish that we do. Depending upon the speed to spread the message across the world, several weeks, or even several months will be necessary before our "great appearance", if such is the decision made by the majority of those who will have used their capacity to choose, and if this message receives the necessary support. The main difference between your daily prayers to entities of a strictly spiritual nature and your current decision is extremely simple :

we are technically equipped to materialize!

  

11. Why such a historical dilemma ?

 

We know that "foreigners" are considered as enemies as long as they embody the "unknown". In a first stage, the emotion that our appearance will generate will strengthen your relationships on a worldwide scale. How could you know whether our arrival is the consequence of your collective choice ? For the simple reason that we would have otherwise been already there for a long time at your level of existence ! If we are not there yet, it is because you have not made such a decision explicitly.

 

Some among you might think that we would make you believe in a deliberate choice of yours so as to legitimate our arrival, though this would not be true. What interest would we have to openly offer you what you haven't got any access to yet, for the benefit of the greatest number of you ? How could you be certain that this is not yet another subtle maneuver of the "third party" to better enslave you ? Because one always more efficiently fights something that is identified than the contrary. Isn't the terrorism that corrodes you a blatant example ?

 

Whatever, you are the sole judge in your own heart and soul ! Whatever your choice, it would be respectable and respected ! In the absence of human representatives who could potentially seduce into error you ignore everything about us as well as from those who manipulate you without your consent. In your situation, the precautionary principle that consists in not trying to discover us does no longer prevail. You are already in the Pandora's box that the "third party" has created around you. Whatever your decision may be you will have to get out of it.

 

In the ace of such a dilemma, one ignorance against another, you need to ask your intuition. Do you want to see us with your own eyes, or simply believe what your thinkers say ? That is the real question!After thousands of years, one day, this choice was going to be inevitable: choosing between two unknowns.

  

12. Why spread such a message among yourselves ?

 

Translate and spread this message widely. This action will affect your future in an irreversible and historical way at the scale of milleniums, otherwise, it will postpone a new opportunity to choose to several years later, at least one generation, if it can survive.

Not choosing, stands for undergoing other people's choice. Not informing others stands for running the risk of obtaining a result that is contrary to one's expectations. Remaining indifferent means giving up one's free will.

It is all about your future. It is all about your evolution.

 

It is possible that this invitation does not receive your collective assent and that, because of a lack of information, it will be disregarded. Nevertheless no individual desire goes unheeded in the universe. Imagine our arrival tomorrow. Thousands of ships. A unique cultural shock in today's mankind's history. It will then be too late to regret about not making a choice and spreading the message because this discovery will be irreversible. We do insist that you do not rush into it, but do think about it ! And decide !

 

The big medias will not be necessarily interested in spreading this message. It is therefore your task, as an anonymous yet an extraordinary thinking and loving being, to transmit it. You are still the architects of your own fate...

"DO YOU WISH THAT WE SHOW UP ?"

 

* * * * * * *

 

You are free to publish, reproduce and copy this message as you like !

on the contrary, you are invited to do it...

but don't modify or cut the message, please.

Unnerving, strange movie.

India is one of those few developing countries today that still sees its women being given inferior treatment due to the interplay of various caste system dynamics & an unprogressive value system that seeks to suppress the spirit of the Indian woman. The phenomenon is rampant in rural areas, where illiteracy & obsolete religious practices place considerable restrictions on the upbringing of the girl child, by depriving her of opportunities to grow as an individual through education and confining her to the four walls of her family, conditioned to think and understand marriage to be her only goal. The urban metropolitan life presents a stark contrast to the realities of rural India. The urban Indian woman is encouraged to pursue her dreams, while maintaining a balance between her professional aspirations and Indian values, thus blending the best of both worlds. This juxtaposition of the urban broadminded Indian and the rural simpleton continues to be a challenge in sowing the seeds of gender equality.

 

The country has come a long way from its days of evil sati practices that required widows to jump into the funeral pyres of their husbands, or be denied the right to remarry. However, there is a vast bridge to gap in order to truly bring about a change in the status of women in rural India. Female infanticide, being denied the right to be educated, women being deprived of maternal health benefits; these are still serious issues an Indian woman has to contend with. The Constitutional framework of India bestows positive discrimination upon women, by lucidly stating in their various provisions, that women would always be given priority treatment in all respects. A reality check however proves otherwise. A lot of this can be attributed to the psychological implications of the discriminatory practices observed over a period of time, so much so, that it has become a norm. Women have been passive, when their rights have been threatened, and that has only encouraged the perpetrators who commit acts of injustice or crimes against them. A two-fold catalyst that combines education & awareness would play a vital role in arousing women from this state of apathy towards themselves. It would not only influence them positively and foster a sense of identity, but also help them work towards greater independence & self-sufficiency.

 

Listed below are few of the constitutional provisions that bestow positive discrimination on women

 

Article 14 in the Indian Constitution ensures equality in political, economic and social spheres.

 

Article 15 prohibits discrimination against any citizen on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex etc.

 

Article 15 (3) of the Indian Constitution allows the State to make any special provision for women and children

 

Article 16 provides for equality of opportunities in matters of public appointment for all citizens.

 

Article 23 prohibits trafficking & forced labor

 

Article 39 (c) ensures equal pay for equal work.

 

Article 42 makes provisions for just and humane conditions of work and maternity relief.

 

Other legislative Acts such as the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, Sati Prevention Act, Dowry Prohibition Act and Indecent Representation of Women (Prevention) Act protect women from crimes of rape, abduction, dowry, torture, molestation, sexual harassment and trafficking. Despite such clear legal provisions for the protection and empowerment of women, there seems to be little improvement in their status in society today, from the rural perspective, as most of these problems are faced by girls and women coming from the economically backward classes. Dowry crimes, are however an exception, as it’s applicable to educated, financially independent girls also. It's not only disheartening to know that parents of such an educated generation such as ours, actually demand dowry, its plain pathetic and lowly that marriage alliances are even rejected if the requisite amount isn't paid, making women akin to objects or items put up on auction, only that the buyer doesn't have to pay anything, he gets both the item and the price from the seller!!!!!

 

Ironically, the ancient Vedic period, saw a very progressive India, when it came to a woman's social status. She was allowed to be educated till whatever age she wished, she studied the Vedas & even attained the status of a scholar in the community. She enjoyed the liberty to choose when she wanted to submit herself to the institution of matrimony & even choose her groom. Ancient Vedic scriptures mention the names of many women sages, and seers, indicating that a woman had the liberty to choose her status in life, and was respected for her choice. The Vedic period saw India at its progressive best, with a rich and educated civilization sprouting forth. However, after the Manusmriti (another scriptural work), along with the Islamic invasion of the Mughal empire in India, the status of women in society degraded considerably, with many restrictions being placed upon her freedoms, which she readily enjoyed in the Vedic period.

 

Fast forward to the 21st century, the Urban Indian woman is no less different from her once glorious Vedic counterpart, but the scars of a submissive era, still remain part of her psyche; which explains why many women who bear the brunt of violent marriages and abusive husbands, choose to remain silent rather than do something about it. Because doing something about it, say divorce, or separation entails a social stigma, which really doesn't help, especially when parents of such daughters themselves suggest passivity as a remedy. The rural parts of India, still witness gruesome practices such as honor killings, and sati, practices that are banned by all the laws in the country. They might be isolated incidents, or perhaps we hear only of those who have had the courage to speak out loud, but the fact remains, that women in these areas are vulnerable, and without courage. The society must take a stand together, if these problems have to be effectively dealt with. But first, the women of the country need to learn to stand up for themselves, one who cannot help herself, cannot possibly be helped.

 

pas⋅sion  [pash-uhn]

–noun

1. A powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger.

2.a. Ardent love.

b. Strong sexual desire; lust.

c. The object of such love or desire.

3.a. Boundless enthusiasm: His skills as a player don't quite match his passion for the game.

b. The object of such enthusiasm: Soccer is her passion.

4. An abandoned display of emotion, especially of anger: He's been known to fly into a passion without warning.

5. a. The sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper and including the Crucifixion, as related in the New Testament.

b. A narrative, musical setting, or pictorial representation of Jesus's sufferings.

6. Archaic Martyrdom.

7. Archaic Passivity.

 

@ the music concert by paremeshwar hegde music academy during their 17th gurupurnima celebrations

by jokuti ift.tt/1NMyana

Scottish Backhold Wrestling at Cowal Gathering 2013 with Frazer Hirsch performing an outside stroke with is evaded by George Reid.

 

Scottish Wrestling Bond - Rules for Competition

 

1.Every fall shall be decided by two Judges and a Referee, or by special permission applied for and granted by the General Secretary, by a Referee only.

2.The Referee shall be appealed to if the Judges disagree and his decision shall be final, and further he shall be empowered to decide any point not provided in these rules.

3.On taking hold the wrestlers stand up chest to chest, each placing his chin on his opponent's right shoulder and grasping him round the body, each placing his left arm above the right arm of his opponent.

4.Thirty seconds shall be allowed in which to take hold.

5.After the first fall the referee is empowered to stop the bout at any point if in his opinion a wrestler or both wrestlers are not serious in their attempt to take hold.

6.The time clock shall be started when the wrestlers shake hands.

7.In the event of the hold not being obtained, the Referee shall compel the contestants to take hold across a back. The wrestler refusing to take hold shall be disqualified.

8.When both men have got hold and are fairly on their guard the referee shall call "hold" and the wrestling will commence, with the exception of kicking, the wrestlers are allowed to use every legitimate means to throw each other. To strike with the side of the foot shall not be deemed kicking.

9.If either party breaks his hold, that is, loose his grip, though not on the ground, and the other still retains his hold, the one leaving loose shall be declared the loser.

10.Deliberately striking at an opponents hands in looseholds to open them is not permitted and if successful is not considered a fall.

11.If either man touches the ground with one knee only or other part of his body, though he may still retain his hold, he shall not be allowed to recover himself but shall be deemed the loser.

12.If both fall to the ground, the man who is first down or falls under the other shall be the loser, but if they fall side by side or otherwise so that the Officials cannot decide which was first on the ground, it shall be termed a "dog fall" and shall be wrestled over again.

13.The wrestlers shall compete in their stockinged feet or by permission of the referee on barefeet.

14.Wearing of sweaters is forbidden.

15.Only one upper garment is permitted which should be sleeveless.

16.A fall is defined as touching the ground with any part of the person, the feet excepted.

17.The referee shall disqualify any wrestler using unfair means who has been twice previously cautioned.

 

Mat Competitions

 

18.The competition area when indoors shall be a mat of 12m diameter or 12m x 12m square, the outer two metres shall be the protection area, a further one metre warning area shall be marked in red

19.The warning area is provided for the purpose of revealing the passive wrestler, of doing away with systematic wrestling on the edge of the mat, as well as thoughtless departures from the wrestling area.

20.If wrestlers stop their action in the warning area and stay there without any action, the referee will interrupt the bout and return the wrestlers to the centre of the mat, without prejudice to the application of the rules on passivity.

21.In all cases when there is one foot outside the wrestling area the referee will stop the bout.

  

Passivity Rules to be Applied:

 

22.When a wrestler refuses to attempt to wrestle.

23.When a wrestler deliberately pushes his opponent off the mat

24.When a wrestler backs off the mat.

25.When a wrestler deliberately backs towards the edge of the mat and continues to wrestle with his back towards the edge of the mat.

  

Fleeing the Mat and Fleeing the Hold

 

26.A wrestler who flees the mat to evade a hold will have a fall awarded against him and receive a warning.

27.Wrestlers will be disqualified for passivity after receiving three warnings.

28.Disqualifications and warnings must be by a majority vote of the three officials.

29.In all such cases the officer in charge must consult the other officials and if necessary call a vote.

 

Competition Systems

 

30.Competitions may be decided by the "Round Robin" system where there are five or fewer wrestlers in a weight category.

31.Where two wrestlers in a Round Robin have won the same number of bouts, the higher placing will be given to the wrestler who won the bout involving both wrestlers.

32.When three or more wrestlers in a Round Robin have won the same number of bouts they must then wrestle again for one fall only (sudden death) to decide placings.

33.Competitions may be decided by the pool system when there are six or more wrestlers in a weight category.

34.There must be a cross over repechage system i.e., the winner of pool A wrestles the second of pool B and the winner of pool B wrestles the second of pool A, these are the semi finals.

35.All bouts shall be best of five falls

36.In certain circumstances it may not be practical to wrestle every bout best of five. In these circumstances the match officials are empowered to change to the best of three with the following exceptions.

37.All finals and semi-finals must be best of five.

   

Another poor quality photo, but is shows the massive kitchen fireplace and the way through to the substantial drum-tower built on the north-east corner of the ‘palace block’.

  

It would appear that Lord Pitsligo was not attainted for his share in the ‘Fifteen. He returned to Scotland in 1720, and resided here at Pitsligo Castle, staying away from public affairs and “gaining, through his charity, kindness and benevolence, the respect and affection of all around him”. At the heart of his attitude to life and his fellow man were his Quietist beliefs.

 

Quietism was a Christian philosophy that became popular in the late 17th century, particularly in France. The Quietists believed that “by reaching a state of intellectual stillness and interior passivity they could reach such a degree of perfection as to become utterly sinless.” These days of course, we would call this meditation! Quietism was a form of mysticism in that it ultimately pursued an awareness of God through direct experience, intuition, or insight. The Catholic church proscribed Quietism as heretical, believing that it had an undermining effect on Church unity and discipline. The last thing the church hierarchy needed was the unwashed masses making contact with God without using the proper channels – them! The irony of this was that many of its proponents were amongst the Catholic world’s most shining examples of piety. To them, it was simply a refined form of prayer.

 

Although not a new idea, Quietist thinking was further developed by a French widow by the name of Madam Guyon who published her thoughts and achieved a considerable following amongst the enlightened thinkers of the day – including some from the highest ranks of the church, such as Archbishop Fenelon of Cambrai. The State however supported the official church line, and Madam Guyon was eventually imprisoned in 1695 and not released from the Bastille until 1703. It was in this post-Bastille period of her life, while she was living quietly in the country, that she was visited by Lord Pitsligo.

 

As a devotee, Lord Pitsligo took Quietism back with him to Aberdeenshire, where he introduced it to his friends – Pitsligo Castle becoming almost a retreat for religious meditation right through until 1745. This explains and supports my translation of the Latin motto “HAEC • CORP • SYDERA • MENTEM” over the main gate (first photo) as “Here the body, in the stars the mind”!

 

Date: 03/11/2006 Time: 08:40 PM Visits: 15

Unburden to Unlearn Photography

Pictures are happening every minute you dont need to search through the eye of your camera, the camera eye is deceptive you shoot one thing,it shows you another thing..this is not the passivity of a potographic emulsion.

If a poet resides in your soul it does ,you have to really work on bringing it out and new arenas and vistas start opening up..I remember being a loner as a photograher ..the group at Vasai fort a unique place hidden in a fishing village and ramparts built by the Portuguese and graves and a chapel.. all in ruins crumbling unforgotten.. I would wander and footsteps around me disturbed the moment of my minds imprisonment I turned back and saw this lady trailing me I was terribly upset and lashed out at her..her word s and I am ashamed I was new to the medium still reverbrate ..she said" Firoze Sir I want to shoot pictures like you..I am learning and new to Photography.".I snubbed her and went away..as I neared the boats and the beach I realised my nastiness I went back to her, apologized and till date I am a fan of her picture taking.maybe I taught her nothing but she taught me a lesson in life thats called Unlearning Photography.Her name is Kalpana Shah she is very active at the Photographic Society Of India..

I am a life member..there a grand dame of a 65 year old institution.. history called PSI Mumbai.

Even when I spoke about the Blog and Buzznet and you guys from the podium, she took my picture and I posted it all dressed in leopards skin..

Marc commented on it too..

And we all want to shoot like someone else and its good later on we will develop our quirks and that will become style..

My mentor the great Mr K G Maheswari shoots high key flawlessly and low key in the deathly shades of grey and people dont take to kindly to his Yousuf Karsh style but its not easy doing the same thing and still portraying it differently..

My othe mentor Prof B W Jatkar shoots nature, nudes landscapes is an artist in black and white wet lab techniques.. he taught me the most..shooting sea gulls but I taught him how I would lie on the deck of the boat and shoot seagulls shooting against light and getting fabulous details in the wings..diffused natural lighting.. he could not do that due to inhibitions and arthritis of a one track mind.

Todays kids ..no they are not kids at all and I am not kidding..they are masters innovators and they come up with ideas that would put reasoning to shame...

The underprivileged kids of Mumbai studying in municipal schools are given disposable cameras free by Kodak India through the Mumbai Municipality my other teacher Mr Shrikant Malushte guides them..he at the start takes them to a photography exhibition.. they know nothing..zilch..no lighting only fighting..

 

Then with their cameras he lets them lose in the Municipal zoo.. and you got to see the results, then they watch their pictures at a gallery that showcases top photographers at the amateur level of photography and subject Mumbai..and as you cruise through this gallery you see these underprivileged guys and what they shot..these guys that have no electricity in their homes..hawkers children, mothers maidservants.. no money for further education..this is unlearning photography ..for once I can tell you I learnt to see like them and while hitting the trigger tried to be like them.. see the way they would have seen it and that's what makes my pictures different an alloy of humanity and pain of the underprivileged.

This is written from the heart of an unlearning photographer.. I have left their world but they have not left mine..at the zoo I was their model for a portrait session.. and my eyes are moist the Future of India shooting a derelict of a past of a Photographer.. the punishing poses they made me enact.. this was the most rigorous stage as an up coming model.. being shot by a child the true father of Man.

The blog made me Photographer No1..your love

made me a humane a sensitive PN NO1.

 

Photographer no 1