View allAll Photos Tagged Pulsating
Sunset over the becks wood, combination of a hoya pulsator, and hoya orange filters stacked. Langholm, dumfriesshire, scotland.
Hi everyone!!! Cyberfair is starting tomorrow & I wanted to share what geek. did for the event!!
EXO-Enhance Sock is compatible with Maitreya, Legacy, Ebody Reborn & Kupra OG and has optional pulsating glow.
By popular request, we've also decided to include this piece as MOD Permission in the Fatpak for all of your customization!!
Also, to combat the recent autohide script issues, we've decided to move to BOM for alpha.
I hope you all enjoy!
Cyberfair starts @ noon SLT tomorrow, June 1st!! <3
Twirl art illustrative "Pulsating Star" pattern created by motion filters in photoshop from a photo conversion designed by Adrian of www.luminouslight.com
This is the incredible powerhouse of a Dragonfly, I loved the rich reds of an adult male Common darter. It was interesting to note that whilst photographing these, you could actually see the muscles pulsating under the exoskeleton, if anyone manages to engineer an aircraft using a Dragonflies agility and power, then flight as we know it could change.
It was also great fun creeping up on these guys to get these shots LOL :)
Poem.
Beautiful Affric.
As if the Caledonian Forest breathes out, the mist slowly rises like a spirit rising to the ethereal heavens.
Just visible, the River Affric surges down the valley, two hundred feet below, just east of Dog Falls.
Life here is so abundant, from Golden Eagle to Wood Ants,
from Red Deer Stag to Pine-Marten.
In the dawn, a slow pulse of life gathers pace.
Life begins to pulsate, quietly but tangibly.
The carpet of life is mesmerising.
Stately, dignified Scots Pine sweep up and down these slopes for over thirty miles.
Early golden gorse contrasts with still burnished bracken.
“Lambs-tail” catkins quivering in the slightest breeze confirm that spring has arrived.
Delicate silver-birch branches hang, bare of leaves, but laden with tiny buds.
The sun is rising fast and soon the mist will burn away.
The promise of a glorious new day creates a quiet excitement and anticipation.
This place is very special.
It has a spirit that absorbs my own and softly whispers its reassuring but unassuming reality.
It beckons the senses to see, hear and feel its stupendous splendour, again and again!
A free Spirit
Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.
When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.
Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.
Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.
In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.
Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.
Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.
In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.
She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.
This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.
and when art became the center of her life.
The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.
Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.
It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.
Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.
Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.
Mirela Tal
As twilight descends, the George Washington Bridge transforms into a vibrant artery, pulsating with the lifeblood of the city. The stark lines of steel are softened by a kaleidoscope of lights, with the occasional flare of a police siren adding a dash of drama. Suspended between the quiet of the sky and the hum of the urban expanse, the bridge stands as a bold sentinel, watching over the ceaseless ebb and flow of New York's narrative.
Poem.
A silhouetted, rapier-like peninsula piercing the radiant splendour of a pewter-grey sea.
Domed islands capped by the heavenly spokes of a setting-sun.
Timeless beauty.
Silence, but for the distant scream of a gull and the gentle, pulsating whistle of an oyster-catcher.
Sky, rock, sand, light and sea uniquely combine
to produce a glimpse inside heaven’s door.
Don’t yearn for heaven.
Look around.
It’s already here!
From Wikipedia: NGC 3324 is an open cluster in the constellation Carina, located northwest of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) at a distance of 9,100 ly (2,800 pc) from Earth. It is closely associated with the emission nebula IC 2599, also known as Gum 31. The two are often confused as a single object, and together have been nicknamed the "Gabriela Mistral Nebula" due to its resemblance to the Chilean poet. NGC 3324 was first catalogued by James Dunlop in 1826.
NGC 3293 (aka the Gem Cluster) is an open cluster in the Carina constellation. It was discovered by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1751. It consists of more than 100 stars brighter than 14th magnitude in a 10 arc minute field, the brightest of which are blue supergiants of apparent magnitude 6.5 and 6.7. There is also a 7th magnitude pulsating red supergiant, V361 Carinae.
NGC 3293 is associated with the open cluster NGC 3324. Both are fairly young, at around 12 million years old. They show some degree of mass segregation, with more massive stars concentrated near their centers.
This is an (LHa)(RHa)G(BHa) image (L & Ha: 180 Mins & 120 mins respectievly). R,G & B were all 120 mins for a total integration time of 11 hours. All subs were 10 mins.
FOV: 26.27 x 39.35 arcmins @ 0.59 arcsec/pixel (natively)
Camera: SBIG STXL 11002, Telescope: Officina Stellare ProRC 360, Mount: Paramount ME
Seeing was variable from excellent to mostly good ranging from 1.48 to 2.4 arcsecs FWHM. Averasge was 2.1 arcsecs over all subexposures
www.amazon.com/dp/9657589290?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
A free Spirit
Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.
When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.
Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.
Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.
In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.
Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.
Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.
In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.
She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.
This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.
and when art became the center of her life.
The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.
Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.
It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.
Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.
Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.
Mirela Tal
This spectacular image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the spiral galaxy NGC 105, which lies roughly 215 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces. While it looks like NGC 105 is plunging edge-on into a neighboring galaxy, this is just a circumstance of perspective. NGC 105’s elongated neighbor is actually far more distant. Such visual associations are the result of our Earthly perspective and they occur frequently in astronomy. A good example of this are the constellations. The stars that form constellations are at vastly different distances from Earth. To us they appear to form these patterns because they are aligned along the same sightline, while an observer in another part of the galaxy would see different patterns.
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 observations in this image are from a vast collection of Hubble measurements examining nearby galaxies that contain two fascinating astronomical phenomena – Cepheid variable stars and cataclysmic supernova explosions. While these two phenomena may appear unrelated – one is a peculiar class of pulsating stars and the other is the explosion caused by the catastrophic death of a massive star – astronomers use both to measure the vast distances to astronomical objects. Both Cepheids and supernovae have very predictable luminosities. Astronomers use these so-called “standard candles” to determine distances by comparing how bright these objects appear from Earth to their actual brightness. NGC 105 contains both supernovae and Cepheid variables, giving astronomers the opportunity to calibrate the two distance measurement techniques against one another.
Astronomers recently analyzed the distances to a sample of galaxies including NGC 105 and their velocities to measure how fast the universe is expanding – a value known as the Hubble constant. Their results don’t agree with predictions made by the most widely accepted cosmological model, and their analysis shows that there is only a 1-in-a-million chance that this discrepancy is the result of measurement errors. The difference between galaxy measurements and cosmological predictions is a long-standing source of consternation for astronomers, and these recent findings provide credible new evidence that something is either wrong or lacking in our standard model of cosmology.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Jones, A. Riess et al.; Acknowledgment: R. Colombari
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2002/hubble-sees-cosmi...
Click for story and time-lapse video
A really great display of pulsating aurora on the morning of October 30, 2013 in the sky over Fairbanks, Alaska. I only took a few still images before cranking up the ISO and shooting a time-lapse for about 20 minutes - check out the link above!
This is the larger than life Buland Darwaza in Fatehpur Sikri, in the far north of India. I spent a long time around here, looking at all of Akbar's Mughal architecture from every angle. I pictured many a fantastic battle being fought for control of the palace and inner cloister.
It's the highest gateway in the world and you can easily see the detail of the red sandstone and the inlayed white marble, which still has remarkable architecture, even though it has been there for over 400 years. A very close look uncovers verses from the Koran, winding their way up and around the towers.
from the blog at www.stuckincustoms.com
A free Spirit
Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.
When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.
Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.
Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.
In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.
Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.
Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.
In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.
She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.
This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.
and when art became the center of her life.
The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.
Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.
It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.
Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.
Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.
Mirela Tal
tiny people pulsating hit the sky
you hit the ground got up and wiped your face
you expected to fly, wind up your misfortune
swing ‘em to a maitre-dee
who wears dead butterflies on his face
and is hoping to grow wings.
untitled #12 | john frusciante
The Bridge of Peace, Tbilisi, Georgia.
Relatively newly constructed the Bridge of Peace is definitely the attraction one wouldn’t want to miss in Tbilisi. It is a pedestrian glass and steel bridge in a bow-shaped design that sits over the Mtkvari (Kura) river in Georgian capital. It was officially opened in May 2010. The bridge was brought to Georgia from Italy in 200 unassembled components. The bridge is 156 meters long and has more than 10 000 LED bulbs built-in, that are switched on daily 90 minutes before the sunset.
The pulsating lights are communicating the message in Morse code; the message says chemical elements from the Mendeleev’s periodic table that make up a human body. The idea of the Italian designer Michele De Lucchi was to broadcast the message which is “the anthem of life and piece among people and nations”.
For video, please visit youtu.be/uuXt4UxoeEc
When the Creator paints the night sky with light using his full palette . . . words fail. Northern Lights pulsate with beams of colors over Lake Nokomis in Tomahawk on March 23, 2023.
Starling (Sturnus vulgaris). During the winter months, the numbers of Starlings present within Britain and Ireland are swelled by the arrival of individuals from breeding populations located elsewhere within Europe. The numbers arriving vary from one winter to the next and are influenced by weather conditions on the Continent. Wintering Starlings roost communally and vast flocks may congregate at favoured sites, typically performing amazing aerobatic displays (known as ‘murmurations’) before dropping into the roost, which may be a reedbed, a group of conifers or a human structure, such as a pier. With many thousands of birds using a roost there is the potential for nuisance, their droppings fouling the ground beneath and around the chosen site.
These vast flocks have more humble beginnings, with small flocks of Starlings coming together as dusk approaches. Gradually, as more and more birds join the gathering, a huge pulsating flock is formed. As the light begins to fade so part of the flock will plunge down towards the chosen roost, almost as if testing its nerve to see who will be the first bird to drop into the roost itself. The birds have good reason to be nervous; these large gatherings attract the attentions of predators like Peregrine and Sparrowhawk. Photo by Nick Dobbs, Mudeford, Dorset 31-12-19
Lightblading, taking advantage of the Pulse Width Modulation in the 10lm low mode of the Klarus XT11GT flashlight. The edge of LPB Plexiglass Diamond blade had blue and purple stripes from sharpie pens, masking tape on one side, and purple cellophane on the other. Due to the low output in this mode, a wide aperture and high ISO was required. f/4.8, 5secs, ISO1600. Post processed from RAW exposure in Adobe Lightroom 6.
This 'thing' was moving,pulsating and vibrating in weird ways... Took me a few seconds to realise it was a sunbeam reflected off boiling eggs ;)
Resistance Arts Society - The Story Behind Of The Name
by Daniel Arrhakis (2024)
Resistance Arts Society - The Story Behind Of The Name :
Accademia Degli Incogniti, that in English means Academy of the Unknown
Giovanni Francesco Loredan, noble by origin and rebel by vocation, founded the Accademia degli Incogniti, Ex Ignoto Notus, in 1630.
The guilty place of clandestine meetings was Palazzo Ruzzini, in full Palazzo Loredan Ruzzini Priuli, Loredan's noble residence in the pulsating heart of Venice. Here, far from prying ears, their faces hidden by traditional masks to escape the deadly accusation of treason and apostasy, they read forbidden, censored books, printed in religious secrecy by Venetian printers.
Their activity did not end only in the literary universe, but also touched other areas, such as music, theater and figurative art.
Its influence began to wane in the late 1650s, and by 1661, the academy had ceased to meet.
The secrecy of this now extinct society was the starting point for the creation of a Mystic Arts Resistance movement, " The Resistance Arts Society" which, although linked to the Ion Mystical World and the Humanistic Mystic Movement, can be a reflection and a light for those who resist the shadows that they try to voraciously swallow our current society.
__________________________________________________
Resistance Arts Society - A história por detrás do nome da nossa página / A Historia Por Trás Do Nome:
Resistance Arts Society que em Português significa a Academia dos Incógnitos (ou dos desconhecidos)
Giovanni Francesco Loredan, nobre por origem e rebelde por vocação, fundou a Accademia degli Incogniti, Ex Ignoto Notus, em 1630.
O local culpado dos encontros clandestinos foi o Palazzo Ruzzini, em pleno Palazzo Loredan Ruzzini Priuli, a nobre residência de Loredan no coração pulsante de Veneza. Aqui, longe de ouvidos curiosos, com os rostos escondidos por máscaras tradicionais para escapar à acusação mortal de traição e apostasia, liam livros proibidos e censurados, impressos em segredo religioso por impressores venezianos.
A sua actividade não se limitou ao universo literário, mas tocou também outras áreas, como a música, o teatro e as artes figurativas.
A sua influência começou a diminuir no final da década de 1650 e, em 1661, a academia deixou de se reunir.
O secretismo desta sociedade já extinta foi o ponto de partida para a criação de um movimento de Resistência ligado às Artes Místicas, " The Resistance Arts Society" que, embora ligado ao Mundo Místico de Íon e ao Movimento Místico Humanista , pode ser um reflexão e uma luz para aqueles que resistem às sombras.
Spectacled owls occur throughout the tropical regions of South America from northern Argentina to southern Mexico.
These birds are very reclusive and seldom seen. We never would have observed this bird without the assistance of a local guide familiar with the area.
According to the Cornell Lab, the "distinctive pulsating vocalizations are a common aspect of the nocturnal chorus in Neotropical lowland forest."
I've always loved greenhouses. They just seem so aesthetically well suited to their purpose. Particularly the quonset hut style shown here. Love how they taper into the ground, suggesting a oneness with earth. A perfect harmony with the concept of sprouting seeds and nurturing plants. The roof blends into the side walls, it's all seamless and the quality of light within is exquisite. And when the wind blows, the fabric ripples and pulsates. When it rains, you hear the drops striking the cloth. You are protected from all of this, yet you still feel as if you are outdoors. Inside the atmosphere is oxygen and nitrogen rich, and quite humid. For me it encompasses every one of my senses.
»What is this thing, Mister Spock? It seems to be pulsating with power of some kind. Analysis, please.«
»A time portal, Captain. A gateway to other times and dimensions, if I'm correct.«
»Like in this ancient TV show, Outlander?«
»…?«
Happy 55th Anniversary!
Since Star Trek premiered on September 8, 1966, I’d like to celebrate with a picture from one of the shows finest. I'm a little late, but sometimes life happens 😉
More information about the MOC on Rebrickable: The Guardian of Forever
A'dam Tower, a 100-meter-high lookout on the IJ river. A’DAM LOOKOUT is an observation deck with an unrivalled panoramic view of Amsterdam. You’ll see the city’s historical centre, its pulsating port, the unique Dutch polder landscape and you’ll spot the famous canals which belong to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Complementing the experience is a state-of-the-art interactive exhibition and free audio tour about Amsterdam’s history and culture. A’DAM LOOKOUT is located on top of the A’DAM Tower in Amsterdam North. (www.adamlookout.com/)
Fuligo septica Dog Vomit Slime Mold or Scrambled Egg Slime Mold. While looking for birds in Owl Canyon (Bodega Head State Park, Sonoma County, California), I came across a bright yellow "fungus" and took this photo of it, to identify later. I discovered that it is a slime mold, not a fungus. I inquired about slime mold a little more, and found out how really interesting they can be. Apparently it can "pulsate" and can travel. There are even a couple of videos of this slime mold hunting and finding its "prey" in a maze on Flickr. WOW! I had no idea. If your interested in seeing the maze visit "myxonz". He has two different mazes for his "pet" plasmodium.
Poem.
Deep-blue dawn sky breaks five days before Christmas.
Steep, snow-laden Castle-Ramparts.
Variegated Holly bush, and trees, are white-tinted.
Roofs shrouded in white by the winter snow-fall.
River runs dark and fast beneath three bridges.
River-bank, bridge and street-lights beam off the gushing water and glow in spears of warm, orange iridescent light.
Ben Wyvis stands imperious 25 miles north-west
under a blanket of snow and cloud.
Majestic conditions for this latitude, at this time of year.
Anticipation pulsates.
Not just Christmas.
A “White Christmas.”
Full version here:
This is the short version of a collaboration with sound artist The extended head, he provided me with sound pieces that I had in mind & listened to during my 2 weeks of animating with ink & brush on a bit of wood panel. The image & sound has not been synchronized in editing, the idea was to use four screens and let the sync happen by chance.
The entire 20min piece will soon be on vimeo soon.
A free Spirit
Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.
When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.
Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.
Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.
In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.
Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.
Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.
In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.
She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.
This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.
and when art became the center of her life.
The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.
Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.
It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.
Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.
Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.
It almost looked like the anticipated show wasn't going to happen but for a short while the auroras filled the sky with color and pulsating light.
Devon, Alberta, Canada
A free Spirit
Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.
When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.
Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.
Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.
In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.
Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.
Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.
In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.
She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.
This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.
and when art became the center of her life.
The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.
Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.
It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.
Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.
Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.
Mirela Tal
A free Spirit
Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.
When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.
Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.
Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.
In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.
Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.
Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.
In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.
She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.
This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.
and when art became the center of her life.
The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.
Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.
It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.
Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.
Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.
Mirela Tal
A G. Aeon, Private Detective, story
In the steam-powered glow of Victorian virtuality, G. Aeon's name etched in brass upon the frosted glass of her office door stood as a beacon in the expanse of Second Life's neo-Victorian district. Her domain was a labyrinthine enclave of commerce and vice, where the clanking of machinery and the hiss of steam blended with the raucous laughter of tavern-goers and the seductive whispers from the shadows of the night. It was a haven for avatars bearing the burdens of their pixelated pasts and seeking her expertise to navigate the complexities of their digital lives.
G. Aeon sat alone in her office. The gentle ticking of the clockwork mechanisms that powered her gadgets provided a comforting, if somewhat monotonous, backdrop to her thoughts. Her mind wandered to her last lover, a woman whose curiosity and desire for the new had led her away from the steam-powered elegance of their shared world. She had been drawn to the pulsating neon lights and digital chaos of the cyberpunk scene, a stark contrast to the orderly and mechanical beauty of the steampunk realm. This departure had left G with a sense of loss, a reminder of the ever-changing tides of virtual relationships and the diverse landscapes of Second Life that could pull people in different directions.
In the midst of her contemplation, G was acutely aware of the pragmatic realities that tethered her to the virtual world. The rent for her digital office, payable in Linden dollars, loomed on the horizon, a reminder of the economic underpinnings that governed even this ethereal realm. The recent case, involving the recovery of a priceless artifact stolen from the Steamwright Collection, had been intellectually stimulating but had yielded a modest fee.
G needed a new client, a case with the promise of both intrigue and a more substantial reward, to secure her financial footing and ensure the continuation of her detective endeavors. To this end, G Aeon, Private Detective, had distributed handbills throughout New Victoria Township, advertising her availability for work. The ticking silence of the room was punctured only by soft sighs as she waited for the phone to ring.
Part 2 flic.kr/p/2pQtrtY
Part 3 flic.kr/p/2pQPRer
Photo taken at New Victoria Township- RP and community opening late Summer.
Story by Grace with some help from ChatGPT
More G. Aeon, Private Detective, at flic.kr/s/aHBqjBgiN8
More Clockwork Sibyls at flic.kr/s/aHBqjBiSG9
A free Spirit
Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.
When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.
Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.
Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.
In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.
Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.
Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.
In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.
She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.
This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.
and when art became the center of her life.
The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.
Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.
It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.
Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.
Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.
Mirela Tal
This is an all-sky 360° panorama from the horizon to the zenith at centre, taking in the entire sky during an outburst of a particularly colourful aurora on September 16, 2024. This was from home in southern Alberta.
North is at bottom; south at top; east to the right; west to the left. Note the aurora's coronal outburst is converging at the magnetic zenith south of (above) the actual zenith which is dead centre here.
The numbers were indicating a Kp index of 8 this night, though the peak was earlier in the evening before it got dark at my location. The aurora was well underway in the darkening twilight, but underwent a major outburst at about 9:20 pm MDT when I shot this panorama.
The brightest part of the display captured here lasted only a few minutes before the show settled down into fainter pulsating patches and curtains.
But for a few minutes the curtains converged to the magnetic zenith at top left to produce a coronal outburst that was bright to the eye, and pinkish-white here. The outburst was notable for its strong pinks over much of the sky, likely from nitrogen molecules glowing, indicative of a very energetic rain of electrons. Also present are the more usual yellow-greens from oxygen, and briefly at right to the southeast some strong oxygen reds. The bright object at right is the almost Full Moon rising. Arcing across the south at top is a diffuse blue-green band, which might be a proton aurora with hydrogen-beta emission. The sky is blue from moonlight.
At centre are the Summer Triangle stars, with Deneb (below) and Vega (at centre) and Altair (above). At bottom low in the north is the Big Dipper, Polaris and Cassiopeia. The light at top left in the yard is another camera shooting a time-lapse.
Technical:
This is a panorama of 12 segments (at 30° spacing for generous overlap), shot in quick succession, each 4 seconds long with the Venus Optics Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 and the Canon R5 at only ISO 400, with the camera in portrait orientation. Developed in Camera Raw and stitched in PTGui. The aurora was changing rapidly, so the zenith area in particular at top is a blend of various segments' content to create a smooth transition without abrupt seams. So the panorama does not represent what the aurora looked like at one instant in time, but is a blend of images taken over about a minute.
The original is 11,500 pixels square.
Just as with my moon shot long exposure tail lights is nothing new, but this is my take on it. I quite fancy how the LED tail lights pulsate at a high frequency which mimics the jagged lines in the road.
Poem.
A silhouetted, rapier-like peninsula piercing the radiant splendour of a pewter-grey sea.
Domed islands capped by the heavenly spokes of a setting-sun.
Timeless beauty.
Silence……
but for the distant scream of a gull and the gentle, pulsating whistle of an oyster-catcher.
Sky, rock, sand, light and sea uniquely combine
to produce a glimpse inside heaven’s door.
Don’t yearn for heaven.
Look around.
It’s already here!
Let us rise up
Not to fight
But to love.
Not to ridicule
But to praise.
Not to destroy
But to reach out
To take a hand
And pull away from the past of darkness and persecution.
Let us be grand creators
Of tolerance and understanding
Of empathy and compassion
Let the fist open
And become a heart
And let that heart
Pump and pulsate and glow and shine and love
As one.
All photography & textured effects by Hal Halli. The groovy words as well........
All Rights Reserved. © Hal Halli (2013)
Please contact regarding usage permission. Thank you.
This is the Flare from Stanlow oil refinery. Its hard to judge the size of the flame from this shot but the flames must be at least 10ft tall! I'd probably say the stack is burning around 80% here and the light from the flame was pulsating in the clouds viewed from Helsby 5 miles away. Its difficult to get near enough to legally take photos of the refinery so this shot from about 1/4 mile from the flare was the best i could get in the darkness.
And this is Essar's explanation for the "flare"
"Flares are important safety devices allowing refineries to get rid of excess gas which cannot be recycled.
Instead of harmful hydrocarbons like methane being released into the atmosphere they are burnt off in a controlled manner at the top of the stack.
The gases are combined with steam to ensure maximum efficiency.
It is done high above the ground as the process generates a huge amount of heat which could affect surrounding equipment.
The Essar website states: "At Essar Oil UK we are committed to improving processes and technology and aim to reduce the amount of flaring through improved recovery and reprocessing of excess materials."
So even though they say its safe it doesnt sound like its completely harmless!
POIMANDRES, THE VISION OF HERMES
The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus is one of the earliest of the Hermetic writings now extant. While probably not in its original form, having been remodeled during the first centuries of the Christian Era and incorrectly translated since, this work undoubtedly contains many of the original concepts of the Hermetic cultus. The Divine Pymander consists of seventeen fragmentary writings gathered together and put forth as one work. The second book of The Divine Pymander, called Poimandres, or The Vision, is believed to describe the method by which the divine wisdom was first revealed to Hermes. It was after Hermes had received this revelation that he began his ministry, teaching to all who would listen the secrets of the invisible universe as they had been unfolded to him.
The Vision is the most: famous of all the Hermetic fragments, and contains an exposition of Hermetic cosmogony and the secret sciences of the Egyptians regarding the culture and unfoldment of the human soul. For some time it was erroneously called "The Genesis of Enoch," but that mistake has now been rectified. At hand while preparing the following interpretation of the symbolic philosophy concealed within The Vision of Hermes the present author has had these reference works: The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus (London, 1650), translated out of the Arabic and Greek by Dr. Everard; Hermetica (Oxford, 1924), edited by Walter Scott; Hermes, The Mysteries of Egypt (Philadelphia, 1925), by Edouard Schure; and the Thrice-Greatest Hermes (London, 1906), by G. R. S. Mead. To the material contained in the above volumes he has added commentaries based upon the esoteric philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, together with amplifications derived partly from other Hermetic fragments and partly from the secret arcanum of the Hermetic sciences. For the sake of clarity, the narrative form has been chosen in preference to the original dialogic style, and obsolete words have given place to those in current use.Hermes, while wandering in a rocky and desolate place, gave himself over to meditation and prayer. Following the secret instructions of the Temple, he gradually freed his higher consciousness from the bondage of his bodily senses; and, thus released, his divine nature revealed to him the mysteries of the transcendental spheres. He beheld a figure, terrible and awe-inspiring. It was the Great Dragon, with wings stretching across the sky and light streaming in all directions from its body. (The Mysteries taught that the Universal Life was personified as a dragon.) The Great Dragon called Hermes by name, and asked him why he thus meditated upon the World Mystery. Terrified by the spectacle, Hermes prostrated himself before the Dragon, beseeching it to reveal its identity. The great creature answered that it was Poimandres, the Mind of the Universe, the Creative Intelligence, and the Absolute Emperor of all. (Schure identifies Poimandres as the god Osiris.) Hermes then besought Poimandres to disclose the nature of the universe and the constitution of the gods. The Dragon acquiesced, bidding Trismegistus hold its image in his mind.Immediately the form of Poimandres changed. Where it had stood there was a glorious and pulsating Radiance. This Light was the spiritual nature of the Great Dragon itself. Hermes was "raised" into the midst of this Divine Effulgence and the universe of material things faded from his consciousness. Presently a great darkness descended and, expanding, swallowed up the Light. Everything was troubled. About Hermes swirled a mysterious watery substance which gave forth a smokelike vapor. The air was filled with inarticulate moanings and sighings which seemed to come from the Light swallowed up in the darkness. His mind told Hermes thatthe Light was the form of the spiritual universe and that the swirling darkness which had engulfed it represented material substance.Then out of the imprisoned Light a mysterious and Holy Word came forth and took its stand upon the smoking waters. This Word--the Voice of the Light--rose out of the darkness as a great pillar, and the fire and the air followed after it, but the earth and the water remained unmoved below. Thus the waters of Light were divided from the waters of darkness, and from the waters of Light were formed the worlds above and from the waters of darkness were formed the worlds below. The earth and the water next mingled, becoming inseparable, and the Spiritual Word which is called Reason moved upon their surface, causing endless turmoil.Then again was heard the voice of Poimandres, but His form was not revealed: "I Thy God am the Light and the Mind which were before substance was divided from spirit and darkness from Light. And the Word which appeared as a pillar of flame out of the darkness is the Son of God, born of the mystery of the Mind. The name of that Word is Reason. Reason is the offspring of Thought and Reason shall divide the Light from the darkness and establish Truth in the midst of the waters. Understand, O Hermes, and meditate deeply upon the mystery. That which in you sees and hears is not of the earth, but is the Word of God incarnate. So it is said that Divine Light dwells in the midst of mortal darkness, and ignorance cannot divide them. The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life. As the darkness without you is divided against itself, so the darkness within you is likewise divided. The Light and the fire which rise are the divine man, ascending in the path of the Word, and that which fails to ascend is the mortal man, which may not partake of immortality. Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality."The Dragon again revealed its form to Hermes, and for a long time the two looked steadfastly one upon the other, eye to eye, so that Hermes trembled before the gaze of Poimandres. At the Word of the Dragon the heavens opened and the innumerable Light Powers were revealed, soaring through Cosmos on pinions of streaming fire. Hermes beheld the spirits of the stars, the celestials controlling the universe, and all those Powers which shine with the radiance of the One Fire--the glory of the Sovereign Mind. Hermes realized that the sight which he beheld was revealed to him only because Poimandres had spoken a Word. The Word was Reason, and by the Reason of the Word invisible things were made manifest. Divine Mind--the Dragon--continued its discourse:"Before the visible universe was formed its mold was cast. This mold was called the Archetype, and this Archetype was in the Supreme Mind long before the process of creation began. Beholding the Archetypes, the Supreme Mind became enamored with Its own thought; so, taking the Word as a mighty hammer, It gouged out caverns in primordial space and cast the form of the spheres in the Archetypal mold, at the same time sowing in the newly fashioned bodies the seeds of living things. The darkness below, receiving the hammer of the Word, was fashioned into an orderly universe. The elements separated into strata and each brought forth living creatures. The Supreme Being--the Mind--male and female, brought forth the Word; and the Word, suspended between Light and darkness, was delivered of another Mind called the Workman, the Master-Builder, or the Maker of Things.
"In this manner it was accomplished, O Hermes: The Word moving like a breath through space called forth the Fire by the friction of its motion. Therefore, the Fire is called the Son of Striving. The Workman passed as a whirlwind through the universe, causing the substances to vibrate and glow with its friction, The Son of Striving thus formed Seven Governors, the Spirits of the Planets, whose orbits bounded the world; and the Seven Governors controlled the world by the mysterious power called Destiny given them by the Fiery Workman. When the Second Mind (The Workman) had organized Chaos, the Word of God rose straightway our of its prison of substance, leaving the elements without Reason, and joined Itself to the nature of the Fiery Workman. Then the Second Mind, together with the risen Word, established Itself in the midst of the universe and whirled the wheels of the Celestial Powers. This shall continue from an infinite beginning to an infinite end, for the beginning and the ending are in the same place and state."Then the downward-turned and unreasoning elements brought forth creatures without Reason. Substance could not bestow Reason, for Reason had ascended out of it. The air produced flying things and the waters such as swim. The earth conceived strange four-footed and creeping beasts, dragons, composite demons, and grotesque monsters. Then the Father--the Supreme Mind--being Light and Life, fashioned a glorious Universal Man in Its own image, not an earthy man but a heavenly Man dwelling in the Light of God. The Supreme Mind loved the Man It had fashioned and delivered to Him the control of the creations and workmanships."The Man, desiring to labor, took up His abode in the sphere of generation and observed the works of His brother--the Second Mind--which sat upon the Ring of the Fire. And having beheld the achievements of the Fiery Workman, He willed also to make things, and His Father gave permission. The Seven Governors, of whose powers He partook, rejoiced and each gave the Man a share of Its own nature."The Man longed to pierce the circumference of the circles and understand the mystery of Him who sat upon the Eternal Fire. Having already all power, He stooped down and peeped through the seven Harmonies and, breaking through the strength of the circles, made Himself manifest to Nature stretched out below. The Man, looking into the depths, smiled, for He beheld a shadow upon the earth and a likeness mirrored in the waters, which shadow and likeness were a reflection of Himself. The Man fell in love with His own shadow and desired to descend into it. Coincident with the desire, the Intelligent Thing united Itself with the unreasoning image or shape."Nature, beholding the descent, wrapped herself about the Man whom she loved, and the two were mingled. For this reason, earthy man is composite. Within him is the Sky Man, immortal and beautiful; without is Nature, mortal and destructible. Thus, suffering is the result of the Immortal Man's falling in love with His shadow and giving up Reality to dwell in the darkness of illusion; for, being immortal, man has the power of the Seven Governors--also the Life, the Light, and the Word-but being mortal, he is controlled by the Rings of the Governors--Fate or Destiny."Of the Immortal Man it should be said that He is hermaphrodite, or male and female, and eternally watchful. He neither slumbers nor sleeps, and is governed by a Father also both male and female, and ever watchful. Such is the mystery kept hidden to this day, for Nature, being mingled in marriage with the Sky Man, brought forth a wonder most wonderful--seven men, all bisexual, male and female, and upright of stature, each one exemplifying the natures of the Seven Governors. These O Hermes, are the seven races, species, and wheels."After this manner were the seven men generated. Earth was the female element and water the male element, and from the fire and the æther they received their spirits, and Nature produced bodies after the species and shapes of men. And man received the Life and Light of the Great Dragon, and of the Life was made his Soul and of the Light his Mind. And so, all these composite creatures containing immortality, but partaking of mortality, continued in this state for the duration of a period. They reproduced themselves out of themselves, for each was male and female. But at the end of the period the knot of Destiny was untied by the will of God and the bond of all things was loosened."Then all living creatures, including man, which had been hermaphroditical, were separated, the males being set apart by themselves and the females likewise, according to the dictates of Reason."Then God spoke to the Holy Word within the soul of all things, saying: 'Increase in increasing and multiply in multitudes, all you, my creatures and workmanships. Let him that is endued with Mind know himself to be immortal and that the cause of death is the love of the body; and let him learn all things that are, for he who has recognized himself enters into the state of Good.'"And when God had said this, Providence, with the aid of the Seven Governors and Harmony, brought the sexes together, making the mixtures and establishing the generations, and all things were multiplied according to their kind. He who through the error of attachment loves his body, abides wandering in darkness, sensible and suffering the things of death, but he who realizes that the body is but the tomb of his soul, rises to immortality."Then Hermes desired to know why men should be deprived of immortality for the sin of ignorance alone. The Great Dragon answered:, To the ignorant the body is supreme and they are incapable of realizing the immortality that is within them. Knowing only the body which is subject to death, they believe in death because they worship that substance which is the cause and reality of death."Then Hermes asked how the righteous and wise pass to God, to which Poimandres replied: "That which the Word of God said, say I: 'Because the Father of all things consists of Life and Light, whereof man is made.' If, therefore, a man shall learn and understand the nature of Life and Light, then he shall pass into the eternity of Life and Light."Hermes next inquired about the road by which the wise attained to Life eternal, and Poimandres continued: "Let the man endued with a Mind mark, consider, and learn of himself, and with the power of his Mind divide himself from his not-self and become a servant of Reality."Hermes asked if all men did not have Minds, and the Great Dragon replied: "Take heed what you say, for I am the Mind--the Eternal Teacher. I am the Father of the Word--the Redeemer of all men--and in the nature of the wise the Word takes flesh. By means of the Word, the world is saved. I, Thought (Thoth)--the Father of the Word, the Mind--come only unto men that are holy and good, pure and merciful, and that live piously and religiously, and my presence is an inspiration and a help to them, for when I come they immediately know all things and adore the Universal Father. Before such wise and philosophic ones die, they learn to renounce their senses, knowing that these are the enemies of their immortal souls."I will not permit the evil senses to control the bodies of those who love me, nor will I allow evil emotions and evil thoughts to enter them. I become as a porter or doorkeeper, and shut out evil, protecting the wise from their own lower nature. But to the wicked, the envious and the covetous, I come not, for such cannot understand the mysteries of Mind; therefore, I am unwelcome. I leave them to the avenging demon that they are making in their own souls, for evil each day increases itself and torments man more sharply, and each evil deed adds to the evil deeds that are gone before until finally evil destroys itself. The punishment of desire is the agony of unfulfillment."Hermes bowed his head in thankfulness to the Great Dragon who had taught him so much, and begged to hear more concerning the ultimate of the human soul. So Poimandres resumed: "At death the material body of man is returned to the elements from which it came, and the invisible divine man ascends to the source from whence he came, namely the Eighth Sphere. The evil passes to the dwelling place of the demon, and the senses, feelings, desires, and body passions return to their source, namely the Seven Governors, whose natures in the lower man destroy but in the invisible spiritual man give life."After the lower nature has returned to the brutishness, the higher struggles again to regain its spiritual estate. It ascends the seven Rings upon which sit the Seven Governors and returns to each their lower powers in this manner: Upon the first ring sits the Moon, and to it is returned the ability to increase and diminish. Upon the second ring sits Mercury, and to it are returned machinations, deceit, and craftiness. Upon the third ring sits Venus, and to it are returned the lusts and passions. Upon the fourth ring sits the Sun, and to this Lord are returned ambitions. Upon the fifth ring sits Mars, and to it are returned rashness and profane boldness. Upon the sixth ring sits Jupiter, and to it are returned the sense of accumulation and riches. And upon the seventh ring sits Saturn, at the Gate of Chaos, and to it are returned falsehood and evil plotting."Then, being naked of all the accumulations of the seven Rings, the soul comes to the Eighth Sphere, namely, the ring of the fixed stars. Here, freed of all illusion, it dwells in the Light and sings praises to the Father in a voice which only the pure of spirit may understand. Behold, O Hermes, there is a great mystery in the Eighth Sphere, for the Milky Way is the seed-ground of souls, and from it they drop into the Rings, and to the Milky Way they return again from the wheels of Saturn. But some cannot climb the seven-runged ladder of the Rings. So they wander in darkness below and are swept into eternity with the illusion of sense and earthiness."The path to immortality is hard, and only a few find it. The rest await the Great Day when the wheels of the universe shall be stopped and the immortal sparks shall escape from the sheaths of substance. Woe unto those who wait, for they must return again, unconscious and unknowing, to the seed-ground of stars, and await a new beginning. Those who are saved by the light of the mystery which I have revealed unto you, O Hermes, and which I now bid you to establish among men, shall return again to the Father who dwelleth in the White Light, and shall deliver themselves up to the Light and shall be absorbed into the Light, and in the Light they shall become Powers in God. This is the Way of Good and is revealed only to them that have wisdom."Blessed art thou, O Son of Light, to whom of all men, I, Poimandres, the Light of the World, have revealed myself. I order you to go forth, to become as a guide to those who wander in darkness, that all men within whom dwells the spirit of My Mind (The Universal Mind) may be saved by My Mind in you, which shall call forth My Mind in them. Establish My Mysteries and they shall not fail from the earth, for I am the Mind of the Mysteries and until Mind fails (which is never) my Mysteries cannot fail." With these parting words, Poimandres, radiant with celestial light, vanished, mingling with the powers of the heavens. Raising his eyes unto the heavens, Hermes blessed the Father of All Things and consecrated his life to the service of the Great Light.Thus preached Hermes: "O people of the earth, men born and made of the elements, but with the spirit of the Divine Man within you, rise from your sleep of ignorance! Be sober and thoughtful. Realize that your home is not in the earth but in the Light. Why have you delivered yourselves over unto death, having power to partake of immortality? Repent, and change your minds. Depart from the dark light and forsake corruption forever. Prepare yourselves to climb through the Seven Rings and to blend your souls with the eternal Light."Some who heard mocked and scoffed and went their way, delivering themselves to the Second Death from which there is no salvation. But others, casting themselves before the feet of Hermes, besought him to teach them the Way of Life. He lifted them gently, receiving no approbation for himself, and staff in hand, went forth teaching and guiding mankind, and showing them how they might be saved. In the worlds of men, Hermes sowed the seeds of wisdom and nourished the seeds with the Immortal Waters. And at last came the evening of his life, and as the brightness of the light of earth was beginning to go down, Hermes commanded his disciples to preserve his doctrines inviolate throughout all ages. The Vision of Poimandres he committed to writing that all men desiring immortality might therein find the way.In concluding his exposition of the Vision, Hermes wrote: "The sleep of the body is the sober watchfulness of the Mind and the shutting of my eyes reveals the true Light. My silence is filled with budding life and hope, and is full of good. My words are the blossoms of fruit of the tree of my soul. For this is the faithful account of what I received from my true Mind, that is Poimandres, the Great Dragon, the Lord of the Word, through whom I became inspired by God with the Truth. Since that day my Mind has been ever with me and in my own soul it hath given birth to the Word: the Word is Reason, and Reason hath redeemed me. For which cause, with all my soul and all my strength, I give praise and blessing unto God the Father, the Life and the Light, and the Eternal Good.
This is a display of Northern Lights in the pre-dawn hours at about 3:45 am MDT on May 3, 2025 from home in southern Alberta at latitude 51º N.
The aurora has been going all night though usually not bright. But at this time it entered into a more active pulsating or flickering phase typical of a post-substorm recovery. Large patches were pulsing off and on and amid the green patches were isolated blue rays or pillars, lit by sunlight. The aurora still looked dim grey to the eye but the blue pillars were visible to the eye standing out from the more diffuse background aurora.
The darker green area at right was a patch that had turned on briefly. It was absent in the frame before and after, The arc of maon aurora showed some yellows and lower red fringes
Technical:
This is a single 2.5-second exposure with the Nikkor 20mm lens at f/1.8 on the Nikon Z8 at ISO 3200.
A free Spirit
Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.
When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.
Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.
Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.
In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.
Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.
Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.
In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.
She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.
This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter and when art became the center of her life.
The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.
Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.
It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.
Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.
Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.
Mirela Tal
Cours Saleya market in Nice is at the heart of the Old Town and it’s always pulsating with life. Striped awnings cover its centre and shelter the products on offer in the daily market. Crowds of locals and tourists come here to do their shopping or sometimes just to look and snap photos of the colourful displays. The scents of fresh produce and flowers seem to put everyone in a good mood and the atmosphere is friendly.*
*https://www.thegoodlifefrance.com/cours-saleya-market-in-nice-france/
It's a cold May afternoon in the small community of Gold Run, CA. Rain clouds have danced across the sky all day. After numerous threats, the skies finally open up, dumping rain and hail across the area. The torrent, along with the hum of wind rushing through the pines, drowns out the sounds from parallel Interstate 80 and the railroad. Suddenly, a pulsating screaming sound marches fast towards my location. Light dances across the steel rails in the distance. The large yellow locomotive comes into view. It's a train...a big train.
UP 5452 marches past my location, with the ZG2LT (Global Two Yard, Chicago to Lathrop, CA Expedited Intermodal) in tow. The long train rolls past, racing down the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, eager to leave the stormy weather behind. As fast as the train passes, so does the storm. Rain and hail abates, allowing the roar of the train to grow louder and louder. In the distance, a distinct screaming sound gets closer and closer to my location. It's the sound of dynamic brakes screaming.
UP 8647, the rear distributed power unit, roars past. The locomotive, providing additional breaking for the long train, is in full dynamics. As the train disappears around the corner, the roar mellows substantially. The dull hum of traffic passing by on Interstate 80 re-enters the scene. The sound of a locomotive horn in the distance punctuates the air for a brief moment.
Another amazing moment on Donner Pass.
© 2016 Patrick Dirden Photography
All Rights Reserved.
Fresh water
Lethocerus is a genus of the hemipteran family Belostomatidae, known colloquially as giant water bugs, toe biters and electric light bugs, distributed in tropical, subtropical and temperate areas of the world. The greatest diversity of species occurs in the Americas, with only a single species in Europe, two in Africa, two in Australia and three in Asia.
Like other members of the giant water bug family, Lethocerus species are predators that overpower prey by stabbing it with the rostrum and injecting a saliva that includes a number of enzymes that break down proteins. As many as 132 components have been found in their saliva or venom, several being similar to those found in assassin bugs. The proboscis is then used to suck the liquified and semi-digested body fluid of the prey. The rostrum can also be used in self-defense, and the bite is very painful to humans, causing swelling and pulsating pain, but usually resolves within about five hours at most.