rizzed up animoo skin for the M4 Mars & BOM body, go buy yeet

marketplace.secondlife.com/p/ODIN-I-Protagonist-Skin/2465...

original by Mr Protagonist

With unknown characters, unknown conversation,

drama happens everywhere,

in ambiguity of darkness, allegory of night.

(A possible speech among them could be "Move aside , a vehicle is coming." :P )

Started this one back in November...

Roland Deschain, main protagonist of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. The last of gunslinger (a kind of diplomat/peacekeeper/knight) in a world that has moved on. We first find him chasing down "The Man in Black", questing for the semi-mythical Dark Tower, the axis upon which all worlds spin.

Roland's appearance is based largely on Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" character from Sergio Leone's Westerns and also described as looking like Stephen King himself. I put a lot of research into this figure, so I imagine the following will be quite long…

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A few overall descriptions of Roland appear throughout the books, starting with:

"A hide waterbag was slung around his middle like a bloated sausage. […] The two belts crisscrossed above his crotch. The holsters were oiled too deeply for even this Philistine sun to crack. The stocks of the guns were sandalwood, yellow and finely grained. Rawhide tie-downs held the holsters loosely to his thighs, and they swung a bit with his step; they had rubbed away the bluing of his jeans (and thinned the cloth) in a pair of arcs that looked almost like smiles. […] His shirt, the no-color of rain or dust, was open at the throat, with a rawhide thong dangling loosely in hand-punched eyelets."

I originally assumed the "shirt, the no-color of rain or dust" was a dirty white, or at least a light shade, and designed it accordingly. Later though, I discovered a further description of his clothing:

"He wore dark clothes of some homespun material; the shirt, its sleeves rolled up, was a black faded almost to gray, the pants something that looked like bluejeans."

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I also assumed, as stated in the opening pages of the book, "His hat was gone", but there are numerous descriptions of him having a hat earlier:

"The gunslinger touched the brim of his hat."

"The gunslinger took off his hat and wiped his forehead."

"[she] turned to watch him get his hat. He clapped it on his head"

Which would lead you to assume that at some point he lost it. Except that in the second book, his hat is mentioned:

"the rawhide thong from the gunslinger's hat"

"The gunslinger had removed his own hat"

"Roland removed his hat, armed sweat from his brow, then replaced it."

"A fresh gust of wind flipped his hat from his head and into Susannah's face. She grabbed it and jammed it down all the way to his ears, giving Roland the look of a half-crazed hillbilly."

Fine, I think, he got another hat from somewhere and it just isn't mentioned. Except that he doesn't go anywhere he could have acquired one. As there is no other mention of his hat being gone, I had to assume that King specifying no hat was an error, especially in light of the endless mentions of his hat throughout the series. Also, what kind of gunslinger doesn't have a hat! :)

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The next big thing in his appearance is a coat. Almost all artwork of Roland, and particularly the recent Marvel comics, has him wearing a big, long coat. Obviously this is great visually, and is a staple of the Western genre, but I could not find a single direct or indirect reference to a coat in the text. For example, when Eddie first comes through the door on the beach and sees Roland, the description states that the sleeves of his shirt are rolled up, which obviously you wouldn't be able to see if he was wearing a coat.

In the last book of the series, Roland and Susannah do make "a vest, a pair of leggings, and a coat. They also had a pair of mittens each." from deerskin, and Roland does wear this coat until the end of the book: "He grabbed a fold of Roland's coat and twisted him off-true." So I guess at some point, Roland does wear a coat, but for the majority of the series he is coatless. As a final point on the coat matter, why would he need to make a one with Susannah if he already had one?

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Roland also carries a bag, his "gunna":

"He gestured toward a cracked leather bag lying on the sand. It looked more like a big packsack than a purse, the kind of thing you expected to see hippies carrying as they made their way along the Appalachian trail, [...] except this looked like the real thing, not just a prop for some airhead's self-image; something that had done years and years of hard, maybe desperate, travelling."

This bag contains all sorts of things, the contents never fully revealed, and remains with Roland for the vast majority of the story.

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Well, that was pretty long! I hope you like the fig, and let me know how closely this matches with the Roland in your head :)

DISNEY COLLECTION GRAND JESTER STUDIOS

Rapunzel is a fictional character and the protagonist of Walt Disney Pictures' 2010 computer-animated feature film, Tangled.

Movie: Tangled

Height: 19 cm - 7.48" Width: 9,5 cm - 3.54" Depth: 9 cm - 3.54"

Numbered Limited Edition of 3,000

Designed by Patrick Romandy-Simmons

Toronto Transit Commission GM General Motors Canada New Look Fishbowl protagonist leader

Jacqueline ''Jenny'' Chevalier is one of the three protagonists and titular character of a future brickfilm called; ''Jacqueline's letter''. She's a Jewish girl who went into hiding after the Nazi's occupied French.

Background

Jacqueline was born in the city of Paris before the rise of the Nazi's. Her father owned a shop, while her mother was just a housewife. Both of them were born Jewish, but they didn't really practise their faith according to the books. Jacqueline was a happy girl with a happy childhood, but that changed when Nazi-Germany invaded France. Once French felt, Jacqueline's mother decided to join the French Resistance, while Jacqueline and her father stayed behind. Life for both of them were hard as they weren't allowed to do anything. The father knew that something was going to happen and contacted the underground resistance.

He wrote Jacqueline a letter, but she's only allowed to read it when she came across a ''friendly'' soldier. A few minutes after he wrote her the letter. Their door got kicked in and her father order her to leave through the backdoor which she did. She never saw her father again. She then stumbled to a friend who was a member of the resistance and send her off to a unknown location far away from the horrors in Paris.

She spended the three years under a basement hiding from the Nazi's, until one day bombs felt on the house she was hiding. Her caretakers were killed by the bombings and she was found by a US soldier named Lt. Ryan Oswald. A cooky and grumpy bitter man At first he didn't want her to go with him, but he eventually gave in. Soon after they met a German soldier named Kurt, a forced deserter. a fight broke loose, but they eventually work together to survive inside enemy lines. But they eventually grow fond of each other after many fights. And both of them promise to find her father, without realising that both of them became somewhat of a father figure to her.

Jacqueline is the most noble and forgiving of the group, she was the one who wanted to spare the life of Kurt despite what the Germans did to her father. She’s also the one who try to break off fights between Ryan and Kurt. She has a shy personality and doesn’t talk to the two at all. Kurt assumed that she was Jewish because of her hair colour and how she looks. But it doesn't really matter if she talked as she only spoke French. Despite this she can still understand both of them through voice tones and body language. Of the three protagonists, Jacqueline was the most affected by the war.

Jacqueline’s design is simple, but it still pops out. She holds a m1911 pistol as a defensive weapon she got from Ryan after he grabbed it of Kurt, because he took it as a war trophy. She also holds the letter in this shot, because it’s her most cherish possession.

I choose her last name ''Chevalier'' with a reason, because she's might look shy from the outside. She's a noble knight from the inside.

She will make a cameo appearance in my upcoming brickfilm and a leading role in my future brickfilm. Called Jacqueline’s Letter.

Link to the Cameo:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TXgoKBT03Q

Link to Jacqueline’s Letter.

TBA

Custom M1911: Brickarms

.

Causewayed enclosures

In this illustration, we see a foreground of sedentary locals (settled protagonists in the Neolithic revolution) gathering to watch and listen to the arrivals of Transport Dragons (vestige clans and groups, each of which retain movement within their distinct and logically contradictory collective mythologies). The local crofters listen to the songs, and perhaps see shadows of dancing. They will visit the circle over the coming week to either watch theatre, dance, song, technical demonstration or speech; to trade and even to witness to local judgements, as these 'ancients' attempt to retain hierarchy over the landscape that they have travelled and learned through great ages. Some have become saltimbanque, others trade raw or finished goods, some trade wisdom, some trade promise of protection from bandits or simply heavy lifting, and one gathering may differ qualitatively from another.

There are no shocks or surprises, and this is not an image of misunderstanding, implicit distrust and incomprehension – just two ways of being which probably had an significant amount of blur between. For example, Transport Dragons that made summer camps for several months (as was common in the Mesolithic) and sedentary crofters that retained a ritual memory of a past Transport Dragon and its qualities. Many new populations without a Transport Dragon mythology must also have existed.

Both 'styles' of being are in regular contact, synergy and, at times dispute. At a time when permanent fixtures and markers were increasingly impressed onto the landscape, the Transport Dragons joined the spirit of the age and turned many of their regular meeting spots into a series of concentric ripples in the Earth's surface. Today we term the category of British site a 'Causewayed Enclosure'.

Causeways tend to be raised and go from an A to a B, and I have never understood why the mounds should not be the 'causeways', rather than the breaches for which it is said. In this illustration the earthworks are projected as 'Pedestal Rings', reminding all that even when the 'Transport Dragon' was not locally present their undulation on the landscape would not forget, and I will continue to use my descriptive term for this earthwork style.

The covered frame structures I term 'Transport Dragons' (features of Homo Sapiens that were so important in helping him navigate through extremes - for example Ice Age and mega predator) had become increasingly meaningless as the Neolithic package tied man to a fixed pastoral landscape. Despite the incongruity of just such a protective carry device in increasingly mild conditions, and without great predators, a mix of inertia, stubbornness and applied speciality will have kept a vivid percentage of their number in movement - in movement and aside today's archaeological record. Nodes where the new generation of pastoral crofters could meet these applied residuals from man's deep past being a way for the new and the old to retain dialogue and mutual support.

In central Europe, variants of Causewayed Enclosures can be called 'Rondels' (70-110m in diameter) and we can easily put forward a hypothesis. Between 4900 and the limits of 4800 BC, mutually beneficial fixed points on the landscape were recognised for meetings between sedentary populations and residual Transport Drangons, and these areas were carved and built into the landscape as 'Pedestal Circles'. In central Europe, sedentary Neolithic populations finally arrived with speed, and took over prime spots on riverbanks and aside lakes. As these new locals, with their striking wooden 'long houses' and 'linear band keramik' (LBK) turned clan allotment into local power, they would dispute the importance of the decisions taken by the Transport Dragon collectives, and as the free passage aside the rivers stuttered to a close, with the rapidly increasing number of LBK homesteads and fences, the Transport Dragons failed to witness mutual trust, exchange or benefit. By 4700 BC, the peoples of the Rondels were categorically rejecting token LBK advances. LBK were seen to be clearly undermining the greater laws of 'mythical' people, and landscape, and they could even be seen seeking trade and ideas from the river's flow rather than from its littoral, the inland flux and detailed landscape knowledge. The bounce and chatter from the now decimated littoral highways had all but gone from central Europe and beyond. A rupture of confidence and goodwill had occurred. To resolve the rupture, the Rondels became 'military'; the Transport Dragons were converted into fighting 'machines', and the long house LBK culture was purged. The Transport Dragons had fire power, defence, combined raw power and otherworldly surprise. Some evidence of fire is always to be expected, as things can burn, but some of the evidence of burn from this period may be from warfare as this became the period of Kilianstadten, Herxheim and Talheim, known today as perhaps the first real evidence of war between man.

Currently theories try to believe that the LBK auto-destructed, with hypothetical arguments that seem to require an a priori that there was a sudden loss of both IQ and common sense. Not easy to imagine in a society still dominated by seasons. The auto destruction was said to have been powered by younger brothers moving on to find new land, and that the point of saturation 'auto exploded' the whole social network, unthreading the LBK's sense of social stability, function and 'culture'. This same principle of younger male sibling expansion can be seen to have pushed farmsteads to well above the 1000m altitude in mountain ranges such as the Pyrenees. This example includes descriptions from living memories and helps account for some of the derelict high altitude farms. Severe weather, every few years, caused rupture and failure - real local level problems, but no auto destruction of the whole rural lifestyle: and land opportunities were still fertile back during the latter LBK periods, certainly for minds open to a little imagination within demographics that were still very low for the species - so this hypothesis of a population saturation tipping point that fed into a total auto-destruction seems to carry a great weight on very thin ice. The argument is explained on a Youtube by Stefan Milo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF664B27aBo

Returning to the Causewayed Enclosures of Britain, and we see again that they were a feature of early Neolithic interface, which for this geography corresponded to a building frenzy within the slot of time from 3700-3625 BC (precise dates from Professor Alasdair Whittle, of Cardiff University) so perhaps just 400 years after the arrival of the Neolithic package, and at the very least 100 examples of earthwork being built over a period of just 75 years. Here in Britain, turning flat meeting-grounds into varietal 'Rondels' might have been seen as a way of communicating that either 'we' get to keep littorals free, movement free, trade and respect for our mythical Dragons, or, our earthwork loci will turn against you. People told each other the stories of life, and in the ages prior to writing, stories could last - including stories of a first 'war'! It might be that from 3625 BC, more neutral gathering sites were favoured, with a sudden agreed change opening curtains on the rise of the cursus (see drawing linked below), henge, stone circle, and long barrow. For stability, it may have been that the standing stones of later circles had a preferred flexibility to represent both new leaderships of sedentary arrivals, new leaderships of new Transport Dragons, and older leaderships from traditional Transport Dragons and post Mesolithic neo-sedentarism.

With today's internet there are plenty of ways of bathing in visions of Prehistory, and one statement offered as a 'given fact' can be juxtaposed here to see if slots into our hypothesis and puzzle:

“The Stone Age was a series of tiny city states run by oppressive class of totalitarian priests” Historia Civilis.

"?!" AJ

A few words on details and form: one circle could gain new outer circles of 'pedestals', with this increase in size over time simple showing how success breeds success. The site at Whitehawk in Sussex appears to have finished with four concentric rings of pedestals that seem to be tailored for different sizes of Transport Dragon: from the self referential neo one-man Medjed-esque/Bosch-esque/ jester-esque, all the way up to long walking trains of linked 'wagon' sections. The ditches (key to making the pedestal), may also have served a formal taboo. Anyone approaching from a ditch (the exterior side) might put themselves in danger, with the two ends guarded by hospitality and protocol, and the inner side of the Transport Dragon rolled up with attention facing inwards for interaction. With some late Transport Dragons dedicated to trade of goods, just such a taboo would make sense. There is evidence of year to year upkeep of the pedestal and ditch. In good order, rain would run away from the base of the Transport Dragon, and in conditions of high wind, the transport dragons could be walked to the centre for mutual protection. Some examples (especially Rondels) may have had wooden central palisades, and functions from stopping song from being 'blown away' to providing a sense of dedicated space. Occasionally ditches had stone walls reinforcing their structure (French examples) and some of these were in use for such a long time that phase changes may have occurred. As might be expected, a general detritus of life was found in the ditches.

If we were to criticise my drawing, the tree pole is too large and some of the gaps are a little large and the exterior ditches are not greatly obvious. The mix of late Transport Dragons also seems to be too varied, with a Sphinx-like formal mythological example aside a Trojan-horse like 'pro domestication' wicker and stretch model, some phantasmagorical examples and some more measured and functional examples perhaps closer to early bronze age carts.

With Causewayed Enclosures predating by decades the long barrows (for example West Kennet), and by over 1000 years Woodhenge, they are important early earthworks for an Isle that went on to deliver a festival of diverse henges, circles, cursus, mound and enclosure.

AJM 07.12.21

Fight scenes decorate the cover of this kylix: an Amazonomachy with Heracles as protagonist, is followed by groups of hoplites fighting around the bodies of fallen companions. On the cover right side, Herakles, wearing his Nemean lion skin, leonthe, and armed with the club, is defeating an Amazon wearing an oriental costume; the blood flows copiously from the wounds of the female warrior. Further on, in counterclockwise, there are two fully armed hoplites fighting; a naked warrior, armed with a spear, has fallen at their feet. A white painted leg decorates one of their shields. Beside them, a draped figure is standing. Further on, a group of two fighting warriors; a naked adversary, stretched out at their feet, faces down on the ground. A flying white bird decorates one of their shields, the other shows a star created by crossed triangles. Further on, a new draped figure; finally, a group of three fully armed hoplites.

The medallion on the lid center shows an erotic scene: a naked man, kneeling, raises in his arms and leans a naked woman on his thighs.

Boeotian black figured white ground kylix

High 8 cm. – Diam. 19 cm

Late 6th century BC

From Tanagra, Boeotia

Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. n. 408

epson prints and collage, approx 50in x 60in, 2018

Copyright Luz Rovira-All rights reserved

die Bildbetrachterin schaut auf ein Bild von Wim Wenders.

..Anders als beim Film, wo er ein Pionier des digitalen Kinos ist, fotografiert Wenders konsequent analog und bearbeitet die Bilder auch nicht. "Als Fotograf bin ich hinter dem Mond", sagte Wenders am Donnerstag in Düsseldorf bei der Vorstellung der Schau. "Ich finde diesen Planeten so aufregend, dass ich für meinen Teil nichts dazu erfinden muss." Als Fotograf arbeite er komplett allein und reise durch die Weltgeschichte. Nie aber sei er an Orte gefahren, nur weil er sie fotografieren wollte. "Ich fahre grundsätzlich der Nase nach und verlasse mich auf meinen siebten Sinn."

Er lässt Orte Geschichten erzählen

Wenders' Bilder zeigen oft menschenleere Landschaften, Straßen und Städte. Protagonisten sind Orte, aber nicht Menschen. Im Film erzähle er eine Geschichte, in der Fotografie sei es umgekehrt. Da lasse er die Orte Geschichten erzählen.

In Slavic fairy-tales the protagonist is sometimes given a magic clew of wool that leads them to a particular destination or out of somewhere by unfolding itself. I am pretty sure this is originally connected with or has the same origin as the Greek myth about Theseus and the thread of Ariadne, that lead him out of the Minotaur's labyrinth.

But what if this magic clew does not show you the way out, what if instead of saving you it just traps you even more?

Kyiv is now covered with snow. I did a couple of photoshoots outside and I hope I did not catch a cold. My models had even a tougher challenge as one of them was topless and the other was wearing a vintage dress and both had to pose knee-deep in snow. The results are coming later.

Any comments are appreciated,

Yours, Andrii

Model Avgust Korneev

ask me anything

my official web

Des de arriba. La busqueda del tesoro

Pinocchio - Puppet protagonist of the novel by Carlo Collodi

"The adventures of Pinocchio". Masterpiece of children's literature, not only Italian but worldwide (first edition of the book is dated 1883)

Legal wall, Beverly, MA

Real good day

Ode to Bodé

Who's protagonist or which is ??

台南市後壁區 - 卡多良食故事館 / 五十年代 - 電影的主角

Houbi district of Tainan - Cadozea storyhouse / Fifties - The protagonist of the film

Houbi distrito de Tainan - Cadozea storyhouse / Fifties - El protagonista de la película

台南市後壁区 - カード多良食ストーリ館 / フィフティーズ - 映画の主人公

Houbi Bezirk Tainan - Cadozea Geschichtenhaus / Fünfziger - Der Protagonist des Films

Houbi district de Tainan - Cadozea storyhouse / Fifties - Le protagoniste du film

Tainan Taiwan / Tainan Taiwán / 台灣台南

管樂小集 2016/12/31 台南孔子廟 Confucian temple Tainan performances 1080P

{ 漂浪之女 Wandering girl 波の女性に漂います }

{View large size on fluidr / 觀看大圖}

{My Blog / 管樂小集精彩演出-觸動你的心}

{My Blog / Great Music The splendid performance touches your heart}

{My Blog / 管楽小集すばらしい公演-はあなたの心を心を打ちます}

{Mi blog / La gran música el funcionamiento espléndido toca su corazón}

{Mein Blog / Große Musik die herrliche Leistung berührt Ihr Herz}

{Mon blog / La grande musique l'exécution splendide touche votre coeur}

Melody 曲:JAPAN / Words 詞:Sheesen / Singing : Sheesen

{ 夢旅人 1990 Dream Traveler 1990 }

家住安南鹽溪邊

The family lives in nearby the Annan salt river

隔壁就是聽雨軒

The next door listens to the rain porch

一旦落日照大員

The sunset Shineing to the Taiwan at once

左岸青龍飛九天

The left bank white dragon flying in the sky

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7ZNC8h8Mmw

My protagonist in Louise and The Men of Transit tries taking an all-TTC route home. A long line of streetcars greets her at St Clair station! Her story: my.w.tt/i2Uvlc22QR

My New Novel

B♭ (B Flat)

Feel free to read on and explore more. 😃

(Of course, this is not the final draft.)

Important 😅

The female protagonist was originally written as a married woman.

However, as the story unfolded, the constraints of that setting became too restrictive.

Therefore, I have changed her status to single, now living with her partner.

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Scene: Los Angeles – The Beaudry – Majid Hamza

1:47 p.m. The heat of downtown Los Angeles drifted between buildings, and the dry air shimmered above the asphalt, warping the ground like a mirage. The midday sun poured vertically into the canyon of skyscrapers.

The façade of The Beaudry reflected the sunlight like a cold mirror, casting flickering shards of light into the eyes of passersby.

The Beaudry, standing in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, is a modern high-rise residential tower. Though its exterior is cold and inorganic, the building boasts luxury amenities. It faces Wilshire Boulevard and 7th Street, just steps from the 7th Street Metro station, offering exceptional convenience in an area where the business district intersects with the city's creative scene—a location in high demand.

960 W 7th Street. For a weekday afternoon, the area was oddly still. Though the office district bustled just a few blocks away, this particular corner seemed wrapped in a strange stagnation of air. Only two or three office workers passed by, presumably out for lunch.

A line of black Ubers honked briefly, then vanished down the road.

The glass-paneled entrance hall was as silent as a gallery. Behind the reception desk, a sculptural white lighting fixture floated like a piece of minimalist art.

Only residents or prospective tenants accompanied by real estate agents came and went. Visitors were rare. No one made eye contact. Everyone stared into the glow of their phones.

Majid, seated on a bench beside the bus stop with a few others, gently touched the mute-reader inside his bag. Subconsciously checking his surroundings, he connected the outdated smartphone—disconnected from the internet—to a tablet that operated only over Wi-Fi.

A few days earlier, he had received a single line from Rafi:

“July 24, 3 p.m. Look for the ‘♭’ mark at the bottom of mellow-echo.net.”

Majid quietly opened his browser. mellow-echo.net—the abandoned official site of a defunct indie music label. Its HTML pages hadn’t been updated in over a decade, but they still floated in some forgotten corner of the internet.

He scrolled to the very bottom. Against a gray background, an image of a musical note, slightly fuzzed with digital noise, lay embedded on the page.

At first glance, it looked like a mere piece of decoration. But when Majid held the mute-reader’s lens to the screen, a deep-layer QR code rose to the surface.

The scan took 0.7 seconds. A short encrypted sentence appeared:

"LA, 7/26, 21:00. Underground. Contact P. K1 → 38.91n / 118.40w"

Seconds later, the message vanished. The device powered down. Its memory wiped to zero. The QR code deleted itself from the server.

Majid’s screen now displayed the interface for a C4 detonation signal.

On the black display, a quiet message blinked once:

“C4-ID: Vanta+Core / Ready.”

He carefully lifted a thin directional antenna from the bag, aligning it along the seam of his trousers, resting it on his lap.

The C4 embedded deep within the pillar of The Beaudry awaited his signal.

This high-rise tower was built with hypersteel structural columns. According to the laws of engineering, if a single critical point was destroyed, the entire building would collapse upon itself like a tower of sand. Five years ago, under instructions from Rafi Gannam—then a student of architecture at the Islamic University—Majid had worked at the construction site and planted the charge. Los Angeles had been his responsibility. The East Coast buildings were under Rafi and Amir’s domain.

Majid took a single deep breath, then slid his finger across the screen.

0.7 seconds later, without a sound, the center of the tower gave a faint shudder. No one noticed. But in the next instant—

A snap. Or something like it.

The Beaudry began to fold in on itself, like a spine silently snapping. From the columns to the floors, from the ceilings to the walls—a silent avalanche of collapsing structures, all engulfed in pale dust. What had been standing just seconds before was now vanishing into the canyon of the city in a swirl of white fog.

A wind blew through the street. The building's mass, once so tangible, dissolved as if it had never existed. Only a soundless death cry remained, shivering the air with a cold, invisible tension.

The collapsed building lay frozen, silenced, severed from the city’s murmurs.

Majid adjusted the silver rim of his glasses and stood. Ignoring the rising chaos around him, he walked slowly toward the subway.

Even the sound of his footsteps was not erased by the thunder behind him.

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(iPhone 13 Pro shot)

motosuka Beach. Kujukuri Coast. Sanmu City. Chiba Prefecture. Japan. 2024. … 1 / 1

(Today's photo. It has not been released yet.)

Images.

Ellegarden - Sliding Door

youtu.be/rM1D8SikWsk?si=FGa2sAIckb49jvoi

My new novel:

B♭ (B-flat)

There’s still more to come. 😃

(This is not the final draft.)

Set in New York City.

4

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54653035442/in/dateposted...

3

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54639396885/in/dateposted...

2

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54628511025/in/dateposted...

1

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54599616429/in/dateposted...

Soundtrack.

music.apple.com/jp/playlist/b-my-novel-soundtrack/pl.u-47...

Note: I gave a brief explanation of this novel in the following video:

youtu.be/3w65lqUF-YI?si=yG7qy6TPeCL9xRJV

iTunes Playlist Link::

music.apple.com/jp/playlist/b/pl.u-47DJGhopxMD

Notes

1. "Bombay Blood Type (hh type)"

•Characteristics: A rare blood type that lacks the usual ABO antigens — cannot be classified as A, B, or O.

•Discovery: First identified in 1952 in Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay).

•Prevalence: Roughly 1 in 10,000 people in India; globally, about 1 in 2.5 million.

•Transfusion Compatibility: Only compatible with blood from other Bombay type donors.

2. 2024 Harvard University Valedictorian Speech – The Power of Not Knowing

youtu.be/SOUH8iVqSOI?si=Ju-Y728irtcWR71K

3. Shots Fired at Trump Rally

youtu.be/1ejfAkzjEhk?si=ASqJwEmkY-2rW_hT

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僕の新しい小説。

　B♭　（ビーフラット）

さらにさらにどうぞ。😃

(もちろん最終稿ではありません。)

重要😅

主人公の女性は、当初、既婚者でしたが、物語の展開上、制約が大きすぎたため、独身とし、同棲している設定へ変更しました。

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場面　ロサンゼルス　ボードリー　マジード・ハムザ

　午後1時47分。ダウンタウンの熱気がビルの隙間を吹き抜け、乾いた空気がアスファルトの表面を歪ませていた。真昼の太陽が、ダウンタウンの谷間に垂直に降り注いでいる。

　ザ・ボードリーのファサードは、まるで冷たい鏡のように白く光を跳ね返し、通りを歩く人々の視界をちらつかせている。

　ロサンゼルスにあるザ・ボードリーは、 ダウンタウン・ロサンゼルスの中心に位置する高層の住宅タワーで、建物自体は近代的で無機質な外観だが、ラグジュアリーな設備を備えたビルだ。ウィルシャー通りや7th通りに面しており、地下鉄の7thストリートからもすぐそばだ。便性が高く、ビジネス街と芸術系エリアが交錯する地点でとても人気が高い。

　960 W 7thストリート。その一帯は、週日の昼間にしては静かだった。オフィス街の喧噪がほんの数ブロック先にあるにもかかわらず、この一角には妙な“空気の滞り”があった。人通りはまばらで、ランチのために出てきた会社員が2～3人歩き去るだけだ。

　ビル前に停められた黒いUberの車列が、短くクラクションを鳴らし、すぐに消えた。

　ガラス張りのエントランスホールは、まるで展示室のように無音で、受付の背後には白い彫刻のような照明装置が浮かんでいる。

　建物に出入りするのは、住人か、不動産エージェントに連れられた見学者ばかりで、訪問者の数は極端に少ない。誰もが互いを見ない。誰もがスマートフォンの画面を見つめている。

　上階のバルコニーにふと視線を上げると、午後の光に照らされたグレーの植栽と、黒いラウンジチェアが無人のまま置かれている。

　ここは、人の気配があるのに「音」が存在しない、そんな場所だった。

　遠くで、清掃車のローラーが道路をゆっくりと転がしていく音が響いた。

　数人が腰掛けていたバス停のベンチに並んで座ったマジードは、バッグの中の“ミュートリーダー”にそっと手を触れた。無意識に周囲を確認しながら、手元の旧式スマートフォン──ネット非接続の「ミュートリーダー」をWi-Fi専用のタブレットに接続した。

　数日前、ラフィから一文だけが届いていた。

　「7月24日、午後3時。mellow-echo.netの最下部にある“♭（フラット）”マークを見ろ」

　マジードは静かにブラウザを開いた。mellow-echo.net──それは廃業したインディーズ音楽レーベルの公式サイトで、十年以上更新されていないHTMLが、今でもネットの片隅に残っている。

　マジードはページ最下部にスクロールした。グレイの背景に、わずかにノイズがかかった音符記号の画像が埋め込まれている。

　一見すると、ただのデザイン装飾にしか見えない。しかし「ミュートリーダー」のカメラでレンズをかざすと、そこにディープレイヤーQRコードが浮かび上がった。

　0.7秒のスキャンだ。画面に表示されたのは、暗号化された短い一文──

　「LA, 7/26, 21:00。地下。Pへ接触。K1→38.91n/118.40w」

　数秒後、表示は消え、端末はシャットダウンした。記憶領域はゼロ化され、QRコードはサーバーから自動削除された。

　マジードの手元のデバイスには、C4起爆用の信号送信画面が表示されている。

　“C4-ID:Vanta+Core/Ready.” と表示された黒い画面が、一度だけ微かに明滅した。

　マジードはバッグの中から細く仕込まれた指向性アンテナをそっと持ち上げ、ズボンの縫い目に沿わせるようにして膝の上に置いた。

　　ザ・ボードリーの柱の中心に埋め込まれたC４は、マジードの信号を待っていた。

　この高層ビルは、ハイパースチール製の柱が内部フレームに組み込まれており、一点を壊せば残りは構造力学に従って“砂の塔”のように自己崩壊する設計だ。5年前、イスラム大学で建築学を学んだラフィ・ガンナムの指示で建築現場で働き、仕込んだものだ。マジードはロサンゼルスを当時任されていた。東海岸の建築物についてはラフィとアミールが仕切った。

　マジードは一度だけ深呼吸し、画面に指を滑らせた。

　0.7秒後、何の音もなく、まずビルの中心がわずかに揺れた。誰も気づかない振動だ。だが次の瞬間──

「──ッ」

　高層建築そのものが骨の中心、まるで背骨を折られたように、ボードリーのボディは静かに沈み始めた。柱からフロアへ、天井から壁へ、粉塵とともに連鎖する沈黙の断崖──

　破片は内側に吸い込まれるように崩れ落ち、つい数秒前まで“存在していたもの”は、白い霧とともに都市の谷間に吸い込まれていった。

　通りに風が吹き抜けた。そこにあったはずの質量は、まるで最初から虚構だったかのように失われていった。音のない断末魔だけが、辺りの空気を冷たく震わせた。

　崩れ去った建物は、凍りついたまま沈黙し、都市のざわめきから切り離されていた。

　マジードは、銀色の眼鏡の縁を掛け直すと、静かに立ち上がった。騒然とし始めた周囲を無視し、マジードは地下鉄へ向け、ゆっくり歩き出した。彼が残した足音さえ、爆音にかき消されることはなかった。

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( iPhone 13 pro shot )

本須賀海岸。九十九里浜。山武市。千葉県。日本。2024. … 1 / 1

(今日の写真。それは未発表です。）

Images.

Ellegarden - Sliding Door

youtu.be/rM1D8SikWsk?si=FGa2sAIckb49jvoi

僕の新しい小説。

　B♭　（ビーフラット）

舞台はニューヨークです。

4

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54653035442/in/dateposted...

3

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54639396885/in/dateposted...

2

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54628511025/in/dateposted...

1

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54599616429/in/dateposted...

Soundtrack.

music.apple.com/jp/playlist/b-my-novel-soundtrack/pl.u-47...

追記　この小説を多少説明しました。

youtu.be/3w65lqUF-YI?si=yG7qy6TPeCL9xRJV

メモ

1

「Bombay型（ボンベイ型、hh型）」

•特徴：通常のABO血液型を持たない（A、B、Oに分類されない）特殊な型。

•発見地：1952年、インド・ムンバイ（旧ボンベイ）で初めて確認。

•発生頻度：インドでは1万人に1人程度だが、世界的には約250万人に1人とも。

•輸血制限：同じBombay型しか輸血できない。

2

2024年ハーバード大学首席の卒業式スピーチ『知らないことの力』

youtu.be/SOUH8iVqSOI?si=Ju-Y728irtcWR71K

3

Shots fired at Trump rally

youtu.be/1ejfAkzjEhk?si=ASqJwEmkY-2rW_hT

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It’s closing time for gardens in the west - Jayne Dyer & Wayne Warren

Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would

simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.1

The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin2 follows the protagonist’s attempts to

correct his mistakes when given a chance to relive his past. He

discovers that human choices tend to be mechanical, and to change

the outcome of one’s actions is extremely difficult. Are we doomed to

repeat the same mistakes over and over? In the final chapter the

shocking realization of the nature of existence, and its consequences,

alludes to Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence, and is the

platform for It’s closing time for gardens of the west.

It’s closing time for gardens of the west presents a blueprint to a

possible future world... We are taken out of the everyday and enter

into a disruptive phenomenological space, that offers a reflection on

the long term effects of human behavior in relation to a global

environment with dwindling natural resources.

Our installation is ironic and evasive, reflecting on the underlying

dualities and ambivalences that influence decisions and actions. It

has both associative utopian and dystopia references, and presents

conflicting notions of continuity and rupture, stability, collapse,

suspension, preservation, transience, time and materiality.

We have a working relationship that shares a curiosity in archetypes

that have an aspirational historical context and precedent; and are par-

ticularly interested in the currency of the tower, the wing and the knot.

To Matthew Wells tall towers are built with an idealism and a

symbolic value; an aspect of the sublime. 3 Historically the tower,

minaret and spire have stretched buildings skyward. The contempo-

rary version, a seemingly weightless skyscraper, can simultaneously

invoke contrary senses of timelessness, awe and progress. But

skyscrapers are greedy. Supported on massive foundations; they are

resource heavy monoliths that use vast amounts of steel, concrete

and glass, with a high end utilities upkeep that suck resources dry.

The wing is an irresistible motif, it propels us into the future, whatever

that future might be. Rapture? Apocalypse? the wing plunges us

headlong somewhere, and time, progress, history are forces that we

cannot halt or perhaps even adequately represent.

Think of an intractable problem. Imagine ways to disentangle this impos-

sible knot. To ‘cut the Gordian knot’ means discovering a bold solution to

a complicated problem. What if the knot remains steadfastly intact....?

This century has a peculiar resonance, akin to a discordant music score.

Notions of pure form that embody the fundamental characteristics of a

thing; or a collectively-inherited unconscious idea or pattern of thought

just don’t hold water as structures are built to fall apart, borders are

increasingly ambiguous and nature is pushed to the point of dissolution,

and at its extreme, destruction. We ask: is human endeavour engineered

to fail? Consider a skewed tower, an odd, almost mutant wing form, an

inexplicable sliver of pure white light, an unwieldy knot, strange tubes

that spew unidentified but darkly uncomfortable things—as we reflect

on our implicated relationship with an increasingly frail environment.

1. Friedrich Nietzche, The Wanderer and his Shadow, 1880, p323

2. P. D. Ouspensky, The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, 1915

3. Matthew Wells, Skyscrapers: structure and design, 2005

PLUS

The Fall. The Light and darkness – Daniel Gallianao

In The Fall, I wanted to address the issue of crowds on a large

surface, with characters in real scale. The work, made up of eight

canvases, has been painted with oil pigments. The signature style of

the work is dictated by the speed of execution, which always started

from the luminescence of hairstyles, made with quick definitive

strokes using a brush with sparse, widely-spaced bristles. Then I go

on to paint the clothes and bodies, using flat brushes in a clean and

precise manner, without any second thoughts nor further refinements,

that then disappear into the dark.

The crowding of people in The Fall generates a feeling of vertigo and

alienation. The characters are as if suspended, yet slowly and

imperceptibly sinking into a thick black muck which encompasses and

surrounds them in a whirling motion. The perspective is distorted by

these centripetal forces.

The scene is pervaded by a ritual conventionality, despite the informal

nature of the meeting. The subjects are young adults involved in their

social role, convinced that they are moving in complete freedom and

self-determination. In this sense, for the crowd, the fall is that of

effortlessly abandoning oneself to any revelry. It is a diminution of

individuality, a renunciation of the solitude, meditation, and quiet

contemplation that brings a person closer to their true self.

What interests me, however, is to portray this scene as an observer

and admirer of beauty with a particular passion for the light reflecting

on humanity in its collective dimension. For years, in fact, I have been

exploring the aesthetics of crowds, in their most diverse and

controversial forms. My intent is to describe the infinite variety of

wonderful and radiant creatures, all sacred in that they are concrete,

each with their own personality and their own shining light. They say

that for Whitman “every human look, every human characteristic,

would become the subject for mystically poetizing, like a torch that

randomly lights the scattered faces of a crowd”

" the ancient painting workshop of Carlo Siligato, still existing, in via Teatro Greco, in Taormina."

“l'antica bottega di pittura di Carlo Siligato, ancora esistente, in via Teatro Greco, a Taormina.”

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click to activate the icon of slideshow: the small triangle inscribed in the small rectangle, at the top right, in the photostream;

or…. Press the “L” button to zoom in the image;

clicca sulla piccola icona per attivare lo slideshow: sulla facciata principale del photostream, in alto a destra c'è un piccolo rettangolo (rappresenta il monitor) con dentro un piccolo triangolo nero;

oppure…. premi il tasto “L” per ingrandire l'immagine;

Qi Bo's photos on Fluidr

Qi Bo's photos on Flickriver

www.worldphoto.org/sony-world-photography-awards/winners-...

www.fotografidigitali.it/gallery/2726/opere-italiane-segn...

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A history of Taormina: chronicles of a forbidden love and its great secret (not only Paolo and Francesca) with an unexpected "scoop".

This story is an integral part of the story previously told, the historical period is the same, the place is the same, the various characters often meet each other because they know each other; Taormina, between the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, in an ever increasing growth, became the place of residence of elite tourism, thanks to the international interest aroused by writers and artists, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , or great personalities like Lady Florence Trevelyan: Taormina becomes so famous, thanks to the paintings of the painter Otto Geleng and the photographs of the young Sicilian models by Wilhelm von Gloeden; in the air of Taormina there is a sense of libertine, its famous and histrionic visitors never fail to create scandal, even surpassing the famous Capri, in which, to cite just one example, the German gunsmith Krupp, trying to recreate the he environment of Arcadia that one breathed in Taormina (thanks to the photos of von Gloeden) was overwhelmed by the scandal for homosexuality, and took his own life. Taormina thus becomes a heavenly-like place, far from industrial civilizations, where you can freely live your life and sexuality; this is the socio-cultural environment in which the two protagonists of this story move, the British painter Robert Hawthorn Kitson (1873 - 1947) and the painter Carlo Siligato (born in Taormina in 1875, and died there in 1959). Robert H. Kitson, born in Leeds in England, belonged to a more than wealthy family, as a young engineer he had begun to replace his father in the family locomotive construction company (Kitson & Co.), on the death of his father in 1899 sells everything and decides to move very rich in Sicily to Taormina (he had been there the previous year with a trip made with his parents, here he had met, in addition to Baron von Gloeden, also the writer and poet Oscar Wilde who came to Italy, immediately after having served two years in prison in forced labor, on charges of sodomy); Kitson settled there because he was suffering from a severe form of rheumatic fever (like von Gloeden was advised to treat himself in the Mediterranean climate milder), and because as a homosexual, he leaves England because the Labouchere amendment considered homosexuality a crime. The other protagonist of this story is Carlo Siligato, he was from Taormina, he had attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, a very gifted painter, he was very good at oil painting (he exhibited his paintings in an art workshop, even now existing, in via Teatro Greco in Taormina), the meeting with the painter Robert Kitson, led him to adopt the watercolor technique: almost to relive Dante's verses on Paolo and Francesca "Galeotto was the book and who wrote it" the common passion for painting led the two artists to live an intense love story. Kitson built his home in the "Cuseni" district of Taormina, called for this "Casa Cuseni", the house was built between 1900 and 1905, its decorations were entrusted to the artists Alfred East (realist landscape painter, president of the Royal Society ), and Frank Brangwyn (painter, decorator, designer), he was a pupil of William Morris, leader of the English movement "Arts and Crafts" which spread to England in the second half of the nineteenth century (the Arts and Crafts was a response to the industrialization of Europe, of mass production operated by factories, all this at the expense of traditional craftsmanship, from this movement originated the Art Nouveau, in Italy also known as Liberty Style or Floral Style, which distinguished itself for having been a artistic and philosophical movement, which developed between the end of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, whose style spread in such a way as to be present everywhere). Casa Cuseni has kept a secret for 100 years that goes far beyond the forbidden love lived by Robert and Carlo, a secret hidden inside the "secret room", that dinning room that was reopened in 2012; entering the dining room, you can witness a series of murals painted on the four walls by Frank Brangwyn, in Art Nouveau style, which portray the life and love story between the painter Robert Kitson, and his life partner, the Carlo Siligato from Taormina, but the thing that makes these murals even more special, full of tenderness and sweetness, is that "their secret" (!) is represented in them, it is described visually, as in an "episodic" story that really happened in their lives: Messina (and Reggio Calabria) are destroyed by the terrible earthquake with a tsunami on December 28, 1908, Carlo Siligato, Robert Kitson, Wilhelm von Gloeden and Anatole France leave for Messina, to see and document in person the tragedy, the city was a pile of rubble, many dead, Robert and Carlo see a baby, Francesco, he is alone in the world, without parents who died in the earthquake, abandoned to a certain and sad destiny, a deep desire for protection is born in the two of them, a maternal and paternal desire is born, they decide to takes that little child with them even knowing that they are risking a lot ... (!), what they want to do is something absolutely unthinkable in that historical period, they are a homosexual couple, what they are about to do is absolutely forbidden ..(!) but now there is Francesco in their life, thus becoming, in fact, the first homogenitorial family (with a more generic term, rainbow family) in world history: hence the need to keep the whole story absolutely hidden, both from an artistic point of view , represented by the murals (for more than 100 years, the "dinning room" will be kept hidden), both of what happens in real life, with little Francesco cared for lovingly, but with great risk or. I have allegorically inserted, in the photographic story, some photographs of the artists of the company "Casa del Musical", who came to Taormina to perform during the Christmas period: today as yesterday, Taormina has always been (starting from the last 20 years of the 19th century) center of a crossroads of artists and great personalities, Casa Cuseni also in this has an enormous palmares of illustrious guests, too long to state. The young boys painted on the murals of Casa Cuseni, wear white, this is a sign of purity, they wanted to represent their ideal homosexual world, fighting against the figure dressed in black, short in stature, disturbing, which acquires a negative value, an allegorical figure of the English society of the time, indicating the Victorian morality that did not hesitate to condemn Oscar Wilde, depriving him of all his assets and rights, even preventing him from giving the surname to his children. The boys are inspired by the young Sicilian models photographed by Wilhelm von Gloeden, dressed in white tunics, with their heads surrounded by local flowers. The only female figure present has given rise to various interpretations, one could be Kitson's detachment from his motherland, or his detachment from his mother. On the third wall we witness the birth of the homogenitorial family, both (allegorically Carlo and Kitson with the child in their arms) are in profile, they are walking, the younger man has a long, Greek-style robe, placed on the front, next to him behind him, the sturdier companion holds and gently protects the little child in his arms, as if to spare the companion the effort of a long and uncertain journey, there is in the representation of the family the idea of a long journey, in fact the man holding the child wears heavy shoes, their faces are full of apprehension and concern: in front of them an empty wall, so deliberately left by Frank Brangwin, since their future is unknown, in front of them they have a destiny full of unknowns (at the same time, their path points east, they go towards the rising sun: opening the large window the sun floods everything in the room). In the "secret room" there is the picture painted in 1912 by Alfred E. East, an oil on canvas, representing Lake Bourget. Carlo Siligato later married Costanza, she was my father's grandmother's sister, they had a son, Nino, who for many years lived and worked as a merchant in his father's art workshop. I sincerely thank my colleague Dr. Francesco Spadaro, doctor and esteemed surgeon, owner and director of the "Casa Cuseni" House-Garden-Museum, who, affectionately acting as a guide, gave me the precious opportunity to create "this photographic tour" inside the house- museum and in the "metaphysical garden" of Casa Cuseni. … And the scoop that I announced in the title ..? After photographing the tomb of Carlo Siligato, in the Catholic cemetery of Taormina, I started looking for that of Robert Kitson, in the non-Catholic cemetery of Taormina: when I finally found it (with him lies his niece Daphne Phelps, buried later in 2005) ... I felt a very strong emotion, first of all I was expecting a mausoleum, instead I found a small, very modest tomb on this is not a photo of him, not an epitaph, not a Cross, not a praying Angel to point it out, but ... unexpectedly for a funerary tombstone ... a small bas-relief carved on marble (or stone) depicting ... the Birth ... (!), obviously , having chosen her could have a very specific meaning: a desire to transmit a message, something very profound about him, his tomb thus testified that in his soul, what was really important in life was having a family, with Carlo and baby Francesco, certainly beloved, saved from a certain and sad fate, in the terrible Messina earthquake-tsunami of 28 December 1908 ... almost recalling in an absolute synthesis, at the end of his life, what had already been told in the "secret murals" of Casa Cuseni.

…………………………………………………………………..

Una storia di Taormina: cronache di un amore proibito e del suo grande segreto (non solo Paolo e Francesca) con inaspettato “scoop”.

Questa storia fa parte integrante della storia precedentemente raccontata, il periodo storico è lo stesso, il luogo è lo stesso, i vari personaggi spesso si frequentano tra loro poiché si conoscono; Taormina, tra la fine dell’800 e l’inizio del’900, in un sempre maggiore crescendo, diventa luogo di residenza del turismo d’élite, grazie all’interesse internazionale suscitato ad opera di scrittori ed artisti, come Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, o grandi personalità come Lady Florence Trevelyan: Taormina diventa così famosa, complici i quadri del pittore Otto Geleng e le fotografie dei giovani modelli siciliani di Wilhelm von Gloeden; nell’aria di Taormina si respira un che di libertino, i suoi famosi ed istrionici frequentatori non mancano mai di creare scandalo, superando persino la famosa Capri, nella quale, per citare solo un esempio, l’armiere tedesco Krupp, cercando di ricreare l’ambiente dell’Arcadia che si respirava a Taormina (grazie alle foto di von Gloeden) viene travolto dallo scandalo per omosessualità, e si toglie la vita. Taormina diviene quindi un luogo simil-paradisiaco, lontana dalle civiltà industriali, nella quale poter vivere liberamente la propria vita e la propria sessualità; questo è l’ambiente socio-culturale nel quale si muovono i due protagonisti di questa vicenda, il pittore britannico Robert Hawthorn Kitson (1873 – 1947) ed il pittore Carlo Siligato (nato a Taormina nel 1875, ed ivi morto nel 1959). Robert H. Kitson, nacque a Leeds in Inghilterra, apparteneva ad una famiglia più che benestante, da giovane ingegnere aveva cominciato a sostituire il padre nell’impresa familiare di costruzioni di locomotive (la Kitson & Co.), alla morte del padre nel 1899 vende tutto e decide di trasferirsi ricchissimo in Sicilia a Taormina (vi era stato l’anno precedente con un viaggio fatto coi suoi genitori, qui aveva conosciuto, oltre al barone von Gloeden, anche lo scrittore e poeta Oscar Wilde venuto in Italia, subito dopo aver scontato due anni di prigione ai lavori forzati, con l’accusa di sodomia); Kitson vi si stabilisce perché affetto da una grave forma di febbre reumatica (come von Gloeden gli fu consigliato di curarsi nel clima mediterraneo più mite), sia perché in quanto omosessuale, lascia l’Inghilterra perché l’emendamento Labouchere considerava l’omosessualità un crimine. L’altro protagonista di questa storia è Carlo Siligato, egli era taorminese, aveva frequentato l’Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, pittore molto dotato, era bravissimo nel dipingere ad olio (esponeva i suoi quadri in una bottega d’arte, ancora adesso esistente, in via Teatro Greco a Taormina), l’incontro col pittore Robert Kitson, lo portò ad adottare la tecnica dell’acquarello: quasi a rivivere i versi di Dante su Paolo e Francesca “Galeotto fu ‘l libro e chi lo scrisse” la comune passione per la pittura condusse i due artisti a vivere una intensa storia d’amore. Kitson costruì nel quartiere “Cuseni” di Taormina la sua abitazione, detta per questo “Casa Cuseni”, la casa fu costruita tra il 1900 ed il 1905, le sue decorazioni furono affidate agli artisti Alfred East (pittore verista paesaggista, presidente della Royal Society), e Frank Brangwyn (pittore, decoratore, designer, progettista), egli era allievo di William Morris, leader del movimento inglese “Arts and Crafts” (Arti e Mestieri) che si diffuse in Inghilterra nella seconda metà del XIX secolo (l’Arts and Crafts era una risposta alla industrializzazione dell’Europa, della produzione in massa operata dalle fabbriche, tutto ciò a scapito dell’artigianato tradizionale, da questo movimento ebbe origine l’Art Nouveau, in Italia conosciuta anche come Stile Liberty o Stile Floreale, che si distinse per essere stata un movimento artistico e filosofico, che si sviluppò tra la fine dell’800 ed il primo decennio del ‘900, il cui stile si diffuse in tal modo da essere presente dappertutto). Casa Cuseni ha custodito per 100 anni un segreto che va ben oltre quell’amore proibito vissuto da Robert e Carlo, segreto celato all’interno della “stanza segreta”, quella dinning room che è stata riaperta nel 2012; entrando nella sala da pranzo, si assiste ad una serie di murales realizzati sulle quattro pareti da Frank Brangwyn, in stile Art Nouveau, che ritraggono la vita e la storia d’amore tra il pittore Robert Kitson, ed il suo compagno di vita, il pittore taorminese Carlo Siligato, ma la cosa che rende questi murales ancora più particolari, carichi di tenerezza e dolcezza, è che in essi viene rappresentato “il loro segreto” (!), viene descritto visivamente, come in un racconto “ad episodi” quello che è realmente avvenuto nella loro vita: Messina (e Reggio Calabria) vengono distrutte dal terribile sisma con maremoto il 28 dicembre del 1908, partono per Messina, Carlo Siligato, Robert Kitson, Wilhelm von Gloeden ed Anatole France, per vedere e documentare di persona la tragedia, la città era un cumulo di macerie, moltissimi i morti, Robert e Carlo vedono un piccolo bimbo, Francesco, egli è solo al mondo, privo dei genitori periti nel terremoto, abbandonato ad un certo e triste destino, nasce in loro due un profondo desiderio di protezione, nasce un desiderio materno e paterno, decidono di prende quel piccolo bimbo con loro pur sapendo che stanno rischiando moltissimo…(!) , quello che vogliono fare è una cosa assolutamente impensabile in quel periodo storico, loro sono una coppia omosessuale, quello che stanno per fare è assolutamente proibito..(!) ma oramai c’è Francesco nella loro vita, divenendo così, di fatto, la prima famiglia omogenitoriale (con termine più generico, famiglia arcobaleno) nella storia mondiale: da qui la necessità di tenere assolutamente nascosta tutta la vicenda, sia dal punto di vista artistico, rappresentata dai murales (per più di 100 anni, la “dinning room” verrà tenuta nascosta), sia di quanto accade nella vita reale, col piccolo Francesco accudito amorevolmente, ma con grandissimo rischio. Ho inserito allegoricamente, nel racconto fotografico, alcune fotografie degli artisti della compagnia “Casa del Musical”, giunti a Taormina per esibirsi durante il periodo natalizio: oggi come ieri, Taormina è sempre stata (a partire dagli ultimi 20 anni dell’800) al centro di un crocevia di artisti e grandi personalità, Casa Cuseni anche in questo ha un enorme palmares di ospiti illustri, troppo lungo da enunciare. I giovani ragazzi dipinti sui murales di Casa Cuseni, vestono di bianco, questo è segno di purezza, si è voluto in tal modo rappresentare il loro mondo ideale omosessuale, in lotta contro la figura vestita di nero, bassa di statura, inquietante, che acquista un valore negativo, figura allegorica della società inglese dell’epoca, indicante la morale Vittoriana che non ha esitato a condannare Oscar Wilde, privandolo di tutti i suoi beni e diritti, impedendogli persino di dare il cognome ai suoi figli. I ragazzi sono ispirati ai giovani modelli siciliani fotografati da Wilhelm von Gloeden, vestiti con tuniche bianche, col capo cinto dei fiori locali. L’unica figura femminile presente, ha dato spunto a varie interpretazioni, una potrebbe essere il distacco da parte di Kitson dalla sua madre patria, oppure il distacco da sua madre. Sulla terza parete si assiste alla nascita della famiglia omogenitoriale, entrambi (allegoricamente Carlo e Kitson col bimbo in braccio) sono di profilo, sono in cammino, l’uomo più giovane ha una veste lunga, alla greca, posto sul davanti, accanto a lui, alle sue spalle, il compagno più robusto sostiene in braccio e protegge con dolcezza il piccolo bimbo, quasi a voler risparmiare al compagno la fatica di un lungo ed incerto percorso, vi è nella rappresentazione della famiglia l’idea di un lungo percorso, infatti l’uomo che regge il bimbo indossa delle calzature pesanti, i loro volti sono carichi di apprensione e preoccupazione: davanti a loro una parete vuota, così volutamente lasciata da Frank Brangwin, poiché il loro futuro è ignoto, davanti hanno un destino pieno di incognite (al tempo stesso, il loro cammino indica l’est, vanno verso il sole nascente: aprendo la grande finestra il sole inonda ogni cosa nella stanza).

Nella “stanza segreta” c’è il quadro dipinto nel 1912 da Alfred E. East, un olio su tela, rappresentante il lago Bourget.

Carlo Siligato, successivamente si sposò con Costanza, una sorella della nonna di mio padre, da lei ebbe un figlio, Nino, il quale per tantissimi anni ha vissuto e lavorato come commerciante nella bottega d’arte del padre. Ringrazio di cuore il mio collega dott. Francesco Spadaro, medico e stimato chirurgo, proprietario e direttore della Casa-Giardino-Museo “Casa Cuseni”, il quale, facendomi affettuosamente da cicerone, mi ha dato la preziosa opportunità di realizzare “questo tour fotografico” all’interno dell’abitazione-museo e nel “giardino-metafisico” di Casa Cuseni.

…E lo scoop che ho annunciato nel titolo..? Dopo aver fotografato la tomba di Carlo Siligato, nel cimitero cattolico di Taormina, mi sono messo alla ricerca di quella di Robert Kitson, nel cimitero acattolico di Taormina: quando finalmente l’ho trovata (insieme a lui giace sua nipote Daphne Phelps, seppellita successivamente nel 2005)…ho provato una fortissima commozione, innanzitutto mi aspettavo un mausoleo, invece ho trovato una tomba piccola, molto modesta, su questa non una sua foto, non un epitaffio, non una Croce, non un Angelo pregante ad indicarla, ma … inaspettatamente per una lapide funeraria…un piccolo bassorilievo scolpito su marmo (o su pietra) raffigurante…la Natalità…(!), evidentemente, l’averla scelta potrebbe avere un significato ben preciso: un desiderio di trasmettere un messaggio, qualcosa di molto profondo di lui, la sua tomba testimoniava così che nel suo animo, ciò che in vita fu davvero importante fu l’aver avuto una famiglia, con Carlo e col piccolo Francesco, certamente amatissimo, salvato da un molto probabile triste destino, nel terribile terremoto-maremoto di Messina del 28 dicembre del 1908…quasi rievocando in una sintesi assoluta, al termine della sua vita, ciò che era già stato raccontato nei “murales segreti” di Casa Cuseni.

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Wonderful World

by the Cinquini brothers.

Nelson Mandela, the protagonist of the float, sacrificed 27 years of his life locked up in a small cell, nurturing the hope of

demonstrating to humanity that the world is actually a wonderful place. The message left to us by him is stronger today than ever.

We are only realizing this now, after being locked in a house for several months of self-isolation.

On the giant Noah's Ark, the smiling face of Nelson Mandela enters the carnival. A new biblical boat needed to escape the flood of intolerance, ignorance, and hatred in search of a better world where everyone can exist freely without fear of living their own lives. On a large boat, you can see the emblems of culture and human progress of each era.

Minolta XG7

Ilford HP5+

Ilfosol 3

50mm

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Qi Bo's photos on Fluidr

Qi Bo's photos on Flickriver

www.worldphoto.org/sony-world-photography-awards/winners-...

www.fotografidigitali.it/gallery/2726/opere-italiane-segn...

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This is a photographic story of two traditional Sicilian feasts that have in common the devotion to St. Philip, He is depicted in "black" color because a legend sees him as the protagonist in a fight in the Underworld against Lucifer, from whose fight He came out covered in soot . St. Philip is much celebrated in Sicily, but also in the Salerno area, in Calabria (following a path he made in life) up to Malta. The proximity to "my" Taormina with the towns of Calatabiano and Limina made my task easier, both as regards the feast of Calatabiano (CT), which I present here "on the descent", then eight days later "the ascent" of the Saint, that the feast of Limina (ME), and which I will present next time, “with the Saint taken to the Murazzo village", then eight days later "with the Saint taken up to Calvario mountain”. In the town of Calatabiano St. Philip acquires the appellation of "Siriaco", infact He came from Syria, while in the town of Limina he acquires the appellation "d'Agira", from the name of the town, in the province of Enna, where he will die, but it is always the same Saint. In this story done in Calatabiano (Catania) there are photographs of the "Calata (descent)" and of the "Acchianata (ascent), inserted not using a "chronological criterion", but according to a criterion that I would dare to define as "emotional-dynamic narrative" . Now a few brief notes on the life of this Saint, also to try to understand how the cult of Him was born in these (but also other) countries. There are two sources talking about of St. Philip, called "the Chronicles of Eusebio d'Agira" and "the Chronicles of Athanasius", these chronicles are largely discordant with each other, except for the descriptions on His characteristics as a priest and miracle worker, on His ability to perform exorcisms by driving out demons from the possessed (a metaphor of his latter ability is precisely in the movements of the devotees, who " that make the float dance and pirouette” with the saint at Limina, while in Calatabiano the same meaning is ascribed to the speed imprinted on the heavy float). He was probably born in Thrace (south-eastern region of the Balkan peninsula in 40 AD (?), at the time it was a Roman province, in the time of Arcadius, Eastern Roman emperor, born of a Syrian father and a Roman mother, during his childhood he was educated to the principles of Christianity which was spreading also in those territories. He comes from Thrace to Rome, is ordained a priest by Peter, and He is sent by Him to Sicily (pagan land under Roman rule), with the task of evangelizing those places and to perform exorcisms; He lands at “Capo Faro” in Messina starting His mandate immediately, then He travels the eastern part of Sicily heading south (hence Limina and Calatabiano, affected by his passage, thanks to His abilities as a healer and exorcist , they become devoted to Him); thus he reaches the town of Agira (Enna), where He dies there after forty years of Apostolate on the island. Let's go back to today's times, this "double descent-ascent story", was realized in the month of May of this year 2022, every year (except last two years due to the pandemic) during the Saturday eve of the third Sunday of May, in the church of “SS. Cross to the Castle”, there are the women who take care of the dressing, at dawn on Saturday they go to the church and decorate the float with flowers that will remain until the end of the feast, when the devotees will take them away with them, because they are blessed flowers; the “calata (descent)” comes to life at 18.30 sharp, it is a spectacular descent, certainly not without dangers, complicated both by the very heavy float (13 quintals) bearing the reliquary bust of the Saint supported by the devotees, and by the long and very steep - tortuous - slippery - very steep, path, which is traveled at a brisk pace (every year the greater or lesser speed of the gait is commented on), which foresees a very angled curve along the tormented path, and since in the past in this point the very heavy float skidded until it overturned, killing a young "carrier", since then this point, marked with a small altar, has been called by the popular imagination "death curve" (here the float must be able to make a sharp turn at the end of the steepest and steepest path and which shows all the expertise of the bearers, always with the leader of the float in the lead, who gives orders to his bearers; the float thus reaches the gates of the town, in the place called "of the First Cross", where the race ends here with a brief stop during which the Saint is dressed in gold, then the float is taken to the Mother Church of the town of Calatabiano. The following Sunday, the so-called "octave" (similar to the feast of San Filippo d'Agira of Limina - Messina) the ritual comes back to life, with the bearers who, at 7.00 pm sharp, leave from the Mother Church to go up to the top of Castle Mountain (so called due to the presence of a well-preserved Norman medieval castle), thus bringing the very heavy float back to its Church of the SS. Cross, located immediately below the castle. The "calata" and "l'acchianata" respectively the "descent" and the "ascent", are carried out at a brisk pace (it is not a race, as it is sometimes defined) to echo the vehemence of the Holy Exorcist in casting out demons. The devotees awaiting the descent and ascent crowd the hill above the path, many of them adorn themselves with intertwined ribbons of the three colors red-yellow-green (every year the colors of the bearers' shirts change, reporting each time one of the three colours), these ribbons or "measures" represent the hair of the Saint's beard, in fact legend has it that the young Philip descended into the Underworld to bind the devil with the hair of his beard.

The statue of the Saint is depicted with a book in his left hand, one is led to think that that book is the Gospel, in reality it is a manuscript released to Him by Pope Peter, with an "apotropaic" meaning (which cancels or removes evil influences) to help Him in his mandate in Sicily against the Evil Spirits, instead the raised right hand can have the double meaning of imparting the blessing or the culminating moment in performing an exorcism.

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Questo è un racconto fotografico di due feste tradizionali siciliane che hanno in comune la devozione verso San Filippo, egli viene raffigurato di colore “nero” poiché una leggenda lo vede protagonista di una lotta negli Inferi contro Lucifero, dalla cui lotta ne venne fuori ricoperto di fuliggine. San Filippo è molto festeggiato in Sicilia, ma lo è anche nel salernitano, in Calabria (seguendo un suo percorso fatto in vita) fino ad arrivare al suo culto presente nell’isola di Malta. La vicinanza con la “mia” Taormina coi paesi di Calatabiano e di Limina, mi ha facilitato il compito; la festa di Calatabiano (CT) si svolge in due giornate, la prima viene chiamata “la Calata” (la discesa), poi a otto giorni di distanza c’è “a Acchianata” (la risalita) della vara delSanto, analogamente per la festa di Limina (ME), che presenterò la prossima volta, ci sarà anche li una prima giornata col Santo portato “al borgo Murazzo”, poi a otto giorni di distanza, col Santo portato fino al “Monte Calvario”. Nel paese di Calatabiano San Filippo acquista l’appellativo di “Siriaco”, cioè proveniente dalla Siria, mentre nel paese di Limina Egli acquista l’appellativo “d’Agira”, dal nome del paese, in provincia di Enna, dove egli morirà: è sempre lo stesso santo. In questo attuale racconto fatto a Calatabiano (Catania) vi sono sia le fotografie della “Calata (discesa)” che della “Acchianata (salita), inserite non utilizzando un “criterio cronologico”, ma secondo un criterio che vorrei definire “narrativo emozionale-dinamico”. Ora qualche breve cenno sulla vita di questo santo, anche per cercare di capire come nasce il suo culto in questi (ma anche in altri) paesi. Le fonti che parlano di San Filippo sono due, chiamate “le Cronache di Eusebio d’Agira” e “le Cronache di Atanasio”, queste cronache tra loro sono in buona parte discordanti, tranne le descrizioni sulle sue caratteristiche di sacerdote e di taumaturgo, sulle sue capacità di compiere esorcismi scacciando i demoni dagli impossessati (su quest’ultima sua capacità una metafora è proprio nelle movenze dei devoti, che “fanno ballare-piroettare” la vara col santo a Limina, mentre lo stesso significato a Calatabiano è legato alla velocità impressa alla pesante vara). Egli nacque probabilmente in Tracia (regione sud-orientale della penisola balcanica nel 40 d.C. (?), all’epoca era una provincia romana, ai tempi d’Arcadio, imperatore romano d’Oriente, nato da padre siriano e da madre romana, nella sua infanzia fu educato ai principi del Cristianesimo che andava propagandosi anche in quelle terre. Egli giunge dalla Tracia a Roma, viene ordinato sacerdote da Pietro, ed è proprio da Lui che viene mandato in Sicilia (terra pagana sotto il dominio Romano), col compito di evangelizzare quei luoghi e compiere esorcismi; sbarca a Capo Faro a Messina iniziando fin da subito il suo mandato, poi percorre la fascia orientale della Sicilia dirigendosi a sud verso l’Etna (ecco che Limina e Calatabiano, interessati dal suo passaggio, grazie alle sue capacità di guaritore ed esorcista, gli divengono devoti); giunge così al paese di Agira (Enna), dove lì muore dopo quarant’anni di Apostolato nell’isola. Torniamo ai tempi odierni, questo “doppio racconto discesa-risalita”, è stato realizzato nel mese di maggio di quest’anno, ogni anno (ad eccezione della pandemia che ha fermato questa tradizione per due anni), durante il sabato vigilia della terza domenica di Maggio, nella chiesa del SS. Crocifisso al Castello, la mattina le donne salgono per adornare con fiori la vara, i cui fiori alla fine della tradizionale discesa e poi quando avverrà la risalita, vengono presi dai devoti poiché sono fiori benedetti; alle 18,30 in punto del sabato, dopo che sono stati sparati “tre colpi a cannone” inizia l’avventurosissima “Calata”, si tratta di una spettacolare discesa, non certo esente da pericoli, complicata sia dal pesantissimo fercolo (13 quintali) recante il busto reliquiario del Santo sostenuto dai devoti, sia dal lungo e ripidissimo, tortuoso, scivoloso, molto scosceso, sentiero, che viene percorso a passo molto sostenuto (ogni anno viene commentata la maggiore o minore velocità dell'andatura), che prevede lungo il tormentato percorso una curva molto angolata, e poiché in passato in questo punto la pesantissima vara sbandò fino a ribaltarsi, uccidendo un giovane “portatore”, da allora questo punto, segnato con un piccolo altare, viene chiamato dalla fantasia popolare “curva della morte” (qui la vara deve poter compiere una brusca virata al termine del percorso più ripido e scosceso e che mostra tutta la perizia dei portatori, con sempre in testa il capovara, che impartisce ordini ai suoi portatori; la vara giunge così alle porte del paese, nel luogo denominato "della Prima Croce", ove qui la corsa termina con una breve sosta durante la quale il Santo viene vestito con oro, poi il fercolo viene portato alla Chiesa Madre del paese di Calatabiano. La domenica successiva, la cosiddetta "ottava", riprende vita il rito, coi portatori che, alle 19,00 in punto partono dalla Chiesa Madre per risalire fin sopra al Monte Castello (così chiamato per la presenza di un ben conservato castello medioevale Normanno), riportando così il pesantissimo fercolo nella sua Chiesa del SS. Crocifisso, ubicata subito sotto il castello. I devoti in attesa della discesa e della risalita, si assiepano numerosissimi sulla collina sovrastante il percorso, moltissimi di loro si adornano con dei nastrini intrecciati dei tre colori rosso-giallo-verde (ogni anno i colori delle magliette dei portatori cambiano, riportando ogni volta uno dei tre colori), tali nastrini o "misure" rappresentano i peli della barba del Santo, infatti la leggenda narra che il giovane Filippo discese negli Inferi per legare il demonio coi peli della sua barba.

La statua del Santo viene raffigurata con un libro nella mano sinistra, si è portati a pensare che quel libro sia il Vangelo, in realtà è un manoscritto rilasciatogli dal Papa Pietro, dal significato "apotropaico" (che annulla o allontana gli influssi maligni) per aiutarlo nel suo mandato in Sicilia contro gli Spiriti Demoniaci, invece la mano destra alzata può avere il doppio significato di chi imparte la benedizione oppure il momento culminante di chi esegue un esorcismo nel momento in cui scaccia via il Maligno.

Two exhibitions opening today: 6 - 9 pm!

"Bigger Picture(s)" and "The Deposition Project"

At Aurora Public Arts - 44 E Downer Place - 3rd Floor

in Aurora, Illinois

1) Bigger Picture(s) is an exhibition of 8 of my larger paintings of my daughter Temma, including the one pictured here titled "Dear Protagonist". This exhibition runs through July 19.

2) The "Deposition Project": an exhibition that I developed / curated of images poetically, symbolically, metaphorically–but not directly–related to Temma. These images were made by the following artists:

Conrad Bakker

Greta Bisandola @gretabisandola

Jeremy Botts

Nik Burkhart @nikburkhart

Steven Carrelli @stevencarrellipittore

Nick Clark - @nickclarknickclark

Katie Cooper - @kakakakaaatie

Sarah Crow -

Megan Foldenauer @meganfoldenauercreative

Adam Benjamin Fung @adamfung.art

Emma Hadži-Antich - @e.hadzi

Christina Haglid - @christinahaglid

Susan Hall Art - @susanhall

Tim Hawkinson - @inkdripdrawings

Daniela Kovacic Muzio @kovacicart

Louise LeBourgeois, Artist @louiselebourgeois

Alex Maczkowski - @alexmaczkowskiartist

Vittorio Marella @vittorio.marella

Richard Meyer - @richardmeyerart

Mary Porterfield - @mary.porterfield

Leyli Rashidi Rauf - @leylirashidi_rauf

Kylee Snow - @kyleesnowart

Timothy van Laar - @timothy.vanlaar

Ali Warren - @aliwarrenlife

Patty Wickman - @pattywickman

From the 'Persephone' show on Virgin Voyages; 'Resiliant Lady'

My protagonist in Louise and The Men of Transit looks to help customers. It all gets to be a bit confusing between numbers for names, and lack of exit signs, and real life customers thinking in a non-TTC way. It also gets dangerous for Louise. Her story: my.w.tt/i2Uvlc22QR

I’m continuing my Twitter account for Louise - @LouiseTransit - to keep posting TTC pictures because it’s fun. I need some way to offload the rage TTC induces in just trying to get somewhere. Some sarcasm may creep in to her tweets. 😏

My protagonist in Louise and The Men of Transit looks to help customers. It all gets to be a bit confusing between numbers for names, and lack of exit signs, and real life customers thinking in a non-TTC way. It also gets dangerous for Louise. Her story: my.w.tt/i2Uvlc22QR

I’m continuing my Twitter account for Louise - @LouiseTransit - to keep posting TTC pictures because it’s fun. I need some way to offload the rage TTC induces in just trying to get somewhere. Some sarcasm may creep in to her tweets. 😏

Lord Rama - Protagonist of the Hindu epic Ramayana :D

Designed and folded by me from 50 cm square sheet of tracing paper.

Finished Size : 22 cm

48X48 grid box-pleating

I had to rush this model,the reason being I wanted 2 models done before Diwali - a pretty huge festival for Indians - Oct 30. I'll be posting the 2nd model soon. Please watch out for it !! I think it's at least 10x better than this ;P Also if you guys want, I can make the CP for this model, although it has many faults. But I think the asymmetry is unique here. It could be helpful for designing many other models.

Hope you all like it :)

Trivia : Rama also possessed tremendous strength, as he was easily able to lift the mighty bow of Shiva which required 5000 strong men to pull it.

Title: The Protagonists.

Author: James Barlow.

Publisher: Pan Books.

Date: 1959.

Artist: de Marco.

Invisible Man (Salute)

2018

Blackened cast aluminum and mirror-polished steel.

— Glenn Kaino

American, born 1972

Courtyard of the High Museum of Art.

Atlanta (Midtown), Georgia, USA.

26 May 2019.

▶ Reverse view: here.

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▶ "Invisible Man (Salute) is a life-size likeness of Tommie Smith made of blackened aluminum and mirrored stainless steel. From the back, the sculpture is a detailed likeness of Smith's tracksuit-clad figure. From the front, visitors see themselves reflected in a mirrored plane.

The title Invisible Man alludes both to Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel about the social invisibility of black people in white society and to Smith's feeling of invincibility while wearing sunglasses during competitions. Interpreted by white media in the 1960s as nonconformist and provocative, Smith's sunglasses recall Ellison's protagonist, who wears sunglasses as a way of adapting to white society at the cost of his own identity."

— High Museum placard

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▶ The museum's placard describes the sculpture but ignores the significance of Mr. Smith's pose. Here, from Wikipedia:

"During their medal ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City on October 16, 1968, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who had won gold and bronze medals respectively in the 200-meter running event of the 1968 Summer Olympics, each raised a black-gloved fist during the playing of the US national anthem, 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' In his autobiography, "Silent Gesture," Smith stated that the gesture was not a "Black Power" salute but rather a 'human rights' salute.' "

▶ The 'house' beyond is High III, a Roy Lichtenstein work. The lines of the High Museum behind it are not misaligned but lens-compressed portions of two proximate walls.

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▶ Photo by Yours For Good Fermentables.com.

▶ For a larger image, type 'L' (without the quotation marks).

— Follow on Facebook: YoursForGoodFermentables.

— Follow on Instagram: @tcizauskas.

▶ Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1.

---> Lens: Canon 50mm ƒ/1.4 FD

---> Focal length: 50 mm

---> Aperture: ƒ/8

---> Shutter speed: 1/50

---> ISO: 200

---> Neutral density filter: 0.9

▶ Commercial use requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.

On my last day went for a few hours of birdwatching and visited a spot I thought was good for raptors. Have seen Booted Eagle nearby before. I was proved right when a pair of Bonelli's Eagles came out and started circling, hunting. They gave a good show and then moved on.

In Pakistan it is resident and widespread but not that common.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonelli%27s_eagle

Conservation status

Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)[1]

The Bonelli's eagle (Aquila fasciata) is a large bird of prey. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae.

It breeds in southern Europe, Africa both north and south of the Sahara Desert and across the Middle East and South Asia to Indonesia. It is usually a resident breeder.[1]

The Bonelli's eagle is found in hilly or mountainous habitats, with rocky walls or crags and open to wooded land, in arid to semi-moist climate, from sea level to 1500 m.[1]

Recent DNA research resulted in this species being moved, in 2014,[2] to the genus Aquila from Hieraaetus.[3]

The common name of the bird commemorates the Italian ornithologist and collector Franco Andrea Bonelli.

Description

This is a medium to great sized eagle at 55–65 cm (22–26 in) in length, with a wingspan of about 150 cm (59 in). The upperparts of the adult are dark brown with a white patch between the wings. From below, the body is white with dark stripes, and the wings are blackish. The long tail is grey on top and white below and has a single broad black terminal band. The feet and eyes are yellow. Immature birds have deep buff underparts and underwing coverts, and have fine barring on the tail without the terminal band.[5]

The Bonelli's eagle is usually silent except near the nest.

Behaviour and ecology

Breeding

Bonelli's eagle breeds on crags or large trees, in nests up to 2 m in diameter built up with wood sticks, re-used for many years. The breeding season, in the western part of its range, is from January to July.

Feeding

Bonelli's eagle usually feeds on small to medium-sized birds, but sometimes also on mammals, reptiles, insects and carrion.[1] It usually hunts from cover by a quick dash from inside a tree, but it will also catch prey by quartering hill slopes like other eagles, or make a stoop from a soaring position. Most prey is taken on the ground.[citation needed]

This eagle takes large prey items, usually mammals or birds. Mammals up to the size of a hare are regularly taken, and birds up to guineafowl size.[citation needed]

Conservation and rehabilitation

Bonelli's eagles will foster orphaned chicks of the same species in an empty nest, but only if egg or chick loss has happened a few hours earlier. Also they will foster chicks during the post-fledging dependence period, and this conservation strategy may be applicable to other raptor species provided that siblicide is not common in the host species.[6]

In popular culture

In the action-adventure stealth video game, Assassin's Creed Origins, the game's protagonist, Bayek, has a companion named Senu who is a Bonelli's eagle.

Georg Loewit ( Austria )

Protagonisten aus den 'Cars'-Animationsfilmen von Disney auf einer Wieslocher Wiese, 2018

My New Novel

B♭ (B Flat)

Feel free to read on and explore more. 😃

(Of course, this is not the final draft.)

Important 😅

The female protagonist was originally written as a married woman.

However, as the story unfolded, the constraints of that setting became too restrictive.

Therefore, I have changed her status to single, now living with her partner.

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Scene: Los Angeles – The Beaudry – Majid Hamza

1:47 p.m. The heat of downtown Los Angeles drifted between buildings, and the dry air shimmered above the asphalt, warping the ground like a mirage. The midday sun poured vertically into the canyon of skyscrapers.

The façade of The Beaudry reflected the sunlight like a cold mirror, casting flickering shards of light into the eyes of passersby.

The Beaudry, standing in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, is a modern high-rise residential tower. Though its exterior is cold and inorganic, the building boasts luxury amenities. It faces Wilshire Boulevard and 7th Street, just steps from the 7th Street Metro station, offering exceptional convenience in an area where the business district intersects with the city's creative scene—a location in high demand.

960 W 7th Street. For a weekday afternoon, the area was oddly still. Though the office district bustled just a few blocks away, this particular corner seemed wrapped in a strange stagnation of air. Only two or three office workers passed by, presumably out for lunch.

A line of black Ubers honked briefly, then vanished down the road.

The glass-paneled entrance hall was as silent as a gallery. Behind the reception desk, a sculptural white lighting fixture floated like a piece of minimalist art.

Only residents or prospective tenants accompanied by real estate agents came and went. Visitors were rare. No one made eye contact. Everyone stared into the glow of their phones.

Majid, seated on a bench beside the bus stop with a few others, gently touched the mute-reader inside his bag. Subconsciously checking his surroundings, he connected the outdated smartphone—disconnected from the internet—to a tablet that operated only over Wi-Fi.

A few days earlier, he had received a single line from Rafi:

“July 24, 3 p.m. Look for the ‘♭’ mark at the bottom of mellow-echo.net.”

Majid quietly opened his browser. mellow-echo.net—the abandoned official site of a defunct indie music label. Its HTML pages hadn’t been updated in over a decade, but they still floated in some forgotten corner of the internet.

He scrolled to the very bottom. Against a gray background, an image of a musical note, slightly fuzzed with digital noise, lay embedded on the page.

At first glance, it looked like a mere piece of decoration. But when Majid held the mute-reader’s lens to the screen, a deep-layer QR code rose to the surface.

The scan took 0.7 seconds. A short encrypted sentence appeared:

"LA, 7/26, 21:00. Underground. Contact P. K1 → 38.91n / 118.40w"

Seconds later, the message vanished. The device powered down. Its memory wiped to zero. The QR code deleted itself from the server.

Majid’s screen now displayed the interface for a C4 detonation signal.

On the black display, a quiet message blinked once:

“C4-ID: Vanta+Core / Ready.”

He carefully lifted a thin directional antenna from the bag, aligning it along the seam of his trousers, resting it on his lap.

The C4 embedded deep within the pillar of The Beaudry awaited his signal.

This high-rise tower was built with hypersteel structural columns. According to the laws of engineering, if a single critical point was destroyed, the entire building would collapse upon itself like a tower of sand. Five years ago, under instructions from Rafi Gannam—then a student of architecture at the Islamic University—Majid had worked at the construction site and planted the charge. Los Angeles had been his responsibility. The East Coast buildings were under Rafi and Amir’s domain.

Majid took a single deep breath, then slid his finger across the screen.

0.7 seconds later, without a sound, the center of the tower gave a faint shudder. No one noticed. But in the next instant—

A snap. Or something like it.

The Beaudry began to fold in on itself, like a spine silently snapping. From the columns to the floors, from the ceilings to the walls—a silent avalanche of collapsing structures, all engulfed in pale dust. What had been standing just seconds before was now vanishing into the canyon of the city in a swirl of white fog.

A wind blew through the street. The building's mass, once so tangible, dissolved as if it had never existed. Only a soundless death cry remained, shivering the air with a cold, invisible tension.

The collapsed building lay frozen, silenced, severed from the city’s murmurs.

Majid adjusted the silver rim of his glasses and stood. Ignoring the rising chaos around him, he walked slowly toward the subway.

Even the sound of his footsteps was not erased by the thunder behind him.

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( Nikon Coolpix 8700 shot )

Manhattan. United States. 2007. … 2 / 7

(This is today’s photo. It has not been published before.)

Images

ELLEGARDEN - Lonesome

youtu.be/bceHbxUuJcY?si=a0xByYam9H9ydgJW

My new novel:

B♭ (B-flat)

There’s still more to come. 😃

(This is not the final draft.)

Set in New York City.

4

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54653035442/in/dateposted...

3

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54639396885/in/dateposted...

2

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54628511025/in/dateposted...

1

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54599616429/in/dateposted...

Soundtrack.

music.apple.com/jp/playlist/b-my-novel-soundtrack/pl.u-47...

Note: I gave a brief explanation of this novel in the following video:

youtu.be/3w65lqUF-YI?si=yG7qy6TPeCL9xRJV

iTunes Playlist Link::

music.apple.com/jp/playlist/b/pl.u-47DJGhopxMD

Notes

1. "Bombay Blood Type (hh type)"

•Characteristics: A rare blood type that lacks the usual ABO antigens — cannot be classified as A, B, or O.

•Discovery: First identified in 1952 in Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay).

•Prevalence: Roughly 1 in 10,000 people in India; globally, about 1 in 2.5 million.

•Transfusion Compatibility: Only compatible with blood from other Bombay type donors.

2. 2024 Harvard University Valedictorian Speech – The Power of Not Knowing

youtu.be/SOUH8iVqSOI?si=Ju-Y728irtcWR71K

3. Shots Fired at Trump Rally

youtu.be/1ejfAkzjEhk?si=ASqJwEmkY-2rW_hT

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僕の新しい小説。

　B♭　（ビーフラット）

さらにさらにどうぞ。😃

(もちろん最終稿ではありません。)

重要😅

主人公の女性は、当初、既婚者でしたが、物語の展開上、制約が大きすぎたため、独身とし、同棲している設定へ変更しました。

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場面　ロサンゼルス　ボードリー　マジード・ハムザ

　午後1時47分。ダウンタウンの熱気がビルの隙間を吹き抜け、乾いた空気がアスファルトの表面を歪ませていた。真昼の太陽が、ダウンタウンの谷間に垂直に降り注いでいる。

　ザ・ボードリーのファサードは、まるで冷たい鏡のように白く光を跳ね返し、通りを歩く人々の視界をちらつかせている。

　ロサンゼルスにあるザ・ボードリーは、 ダウンタウン・ロサンゼルスの中心に位置する高層の住宅タワーで、建物自体は近代的で無機質な外観だが、ラグジュアリーな設備を備えたビルだ。ウィルシャー通りや7th通りに面しており、地下鉄の7thストリートからもすぐそばだ。便性が高く、ビジネス街と芸術系エリアが交錯する地点でとても人気が高い。

　960 W 7thストリート。その一帯は、週日の昼間にしては静かだった。オフィス街の喧噪がほんの数ブロック先にあるにもかかわらず、この一角には妙な“空気の滞り”があった。人通りはまばらで、ランチのために出てきた会社員が2～3人歩き去るだけだ。

　ビル前に停められた黒いUberの車列が、短くクラクションを鳴らし、すぐに消えた。

　ガラス張りのエントランスホールは、まるで展示室のように無音で、受付の背後には白い彫刻のような照明装置が浮かんでいる。

　建物に出入りするのは、住人か、不動産エージェントに連れられた見学者ばかりで、訪問者の数は極端に少ない。誰もが互いを見ない。誰もがスマートフォンの画面を見つめている。

　上階のバルコニーにふと視線を上げると、午後の光に照らされたグレーの植栽と、黒いラウンジチェアが無人のまま置かれている。

　ここは、人の気配があるのに「音」が存在しない、そんな場所だった。

　遠くで、清掃車のローラーが道路をゆっくりと転がしていく音が響いた。

　数人が腰掛けていたバス停のベンチに並んで座ったマジードは、バッグの中の“ミュートリーダー”にそっと手を触れた。無意識に周囲を確認しながら、手元の旧式スマートフォン──ネット非接続の「ミュートリーダー」をWi-Fi専用のタブレットに接続した。

　数日前、ラフィから一文だけが届いていた。

　「7月24日、午後3時。mellow-echo.netの最下部にある“♭（フラット）”マークを見ろ」

　マジードは静かにブラウザを開いた。mellow-echo.net──それは廃業したインディーズ音楽レーベルの公式サイトで、十年以上更新されていないHTMLが、今でもネットの片隅に残っている。

　マジードはページ最下部にスクロールした。グレイの背景に、わずかにノイズがかかった音符記号の画像が埋め込まれている。

　一見すると、ただのデザイン装飾にしか見えない。しかし「ミュートリーダー」のカメラでレンズをかざすと、そこにディープレイヤーQRコードが浮かび上がった。

　0.7秒のスキャンだ。画面に表示されたのは、暗号化された短い一文──

　「LA, 7/26, 21:00。地下。Pへ接触。K1→38.91n/118.40w」

　数秒後、表示は消え、端末はシャットダウンした。記憶領域はゼロ化され、QRコードはサーバーから自動削除された。

　マジードの手元のデバイスには、C4起爆用の信号送信画面が表示されている。

　“C4-ID:Vanta+Core/Ready.” と表示された黒い画面が、一度だけ微かに明滅した。

　マジードはバッグの中から細く仕込まれた指向性アンテナをそっと持ち上げ、ズボンの縫い目に沿わせるようにして膝の上に置いた。

　　ザ・ボードリーの柱の中心に埋め込まれたC４は、マジードの信号を待っていた。

　この高層ビルは、ハイパースチール製の柱が内部フレームに組み込まれており、一点を壊せば残りは構造力学に従って“砂の塔”のように自己崩壊する設計だ。5年前、イスラム大学で建築学を学んだラフィ・ガンナムの指示で建築現場で働き、仕込んだものだ。マジードはロサンゼルスを当時任されていた。東海岸の建築物についてはラフィとアミールが仕切った。

　マジードは一度だけ深呼吸し、画面に指を滑らせた。

　0.7秒後、何の音もなく、まずビルの中心がわずかに揺れた。誰も気づかない振動だ。だが次の瞬間──

「──ッ」

　高層建築そのものが骨の中心、まるで背骨を折られたように、ボードリーのボディは静かに沈み始めた。柱からフロアへ、天井から壁へ、粉塵とともに連鎖する沈黙の断崖──

　破片は内側に吸い込まれるように崩れ落ち、つい数秒前まで“存在していたもの”は、白い霧とともに都市の谷間に吸い込まれていった。

　通りに風が吹き抜けた。そこにあったはずの質量は、まるで最初から虚構だったかのように失われていった。音のない断末魔だけが、辺りの空気を冷たく震わせた。

　崩れ去った建物は、凍りついたまま沈黙し、都市のざわめきから切り離されていた。

　マジードは、銀色の眼鏡の縁を掛け直すと、静かに立ち上がった。騒然とし始めた周囲を無視し、マジードは地下鉄へ向け、ゆっくり歩き出した。彼が残した足音さえ、爆音にかき消されることはなかった。

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( Nikon coolpix8700 shot )

マンハッタン。ニューヨーク。アメリカ。2007. … 2 / 7

(今日の写真。それは未発表です。）

Images

ELLEGARDEN - Lonesome

youtu.be/bceHbxUuJcY?si=ESrstOEy7mrfmOIe

僕の新しい小説。

　B♭　（ビーフラット）

舞台はニューヨークです。

4

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54653035442/in/dateposted...

3

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54639396885/in/dateposted...

2

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54628511025/in/dateposted...

1

www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54599616429/in/dateposted...

Soundtrack.

music.apple.com/jp/playlist/b-my-novel-soundtrack/pl.u-47...

追記　この小説を多少説明しました。

youtu.be/3w65lqUF-YI?si=yG7qy6TPeCL9xRJV

メモ

1

「Bombay型（ボンベイ型、hh型）」

•特徴：通常のABO血液型を持たない（A、B、Oに分類されない）特殊な型。

•発見地：1952年、インド・ムンバイ（旧ボンベイ）で初めて確認。

•発生頻度：インドでは1万人に1人程度だが、世界的には約250万人に1人とも。

•輸血制限：同じBombay型しか輸血できない。

2

2024年ハーバード大学首席の卒業式スピーチ『知らないことの力』

youtu.be/SOUH8iVqSOI?si=Ju-Y728irtcWR71K

3

Shots fired at Trump rally

youtu.be/1ejfAkzjEhk?si=ASqJwEmkY-2rW_hT

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My protagonist in Louise and The Men of Transit looks to help customers at Union station. It all gets to be a bit confusing between the map, names, and real life customers thinking in a non-TTC way. Her story: my.w.tt/i2Uvlc22QR

Lanira, lead protagonist of the new VR Game 'Secrets of the forgotten mysteries'.

It is still unknown what she's looking for and for what purpose, but one thing is for sure, she is unstoppable and determined to accomplish the task she had.

Here we have the protagonist of arguably the most resonant American myth:

Dorothy Gale, the ostensibly small and meek, of Kansas.

L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is not without its charms (it supplied the title of this photo), but for my money the 1939 MGM film starring Judy Garland is, was and always will be the most compelling Oz vision.

I used the Color Splash feature at Pixlr to reinforce the notion that Dorothy carried the power within her long before she wore the ruby slippers.

In closing, I leave you with the words of Salman Rushdie:

'Over the Rainbow' is, or ought to be, the anthem of all the world's migrants, all those who go in search of the place where 'the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true'.

Fallout: New Vegas

Outdoor book and map sale - Southbank, London.