One of three photos taken yesterday in my walk the Humber Bay Shore Park.

 

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Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

It is evening at Cavendish Mews, and like many other evenings, Lettice has had , her old childhood chum, Gerald, join her for a quiet dinner, just the two of them. Whilst Gerald is also a member of the aristocracy who has tried to gain some independence from his family by designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street, his underlying reasons differ greatly from Lettice’s. Their families’ properties may neighbour one another, but whereas the Chetwynds have weathered the storms of war, tax increases and the necessity to modernise that the Twentieth Century has dealt them, the Brutons, Gerald’s parents, have not been so fortunate. Gerald has a paltry allowance from his father, which has only dwindled since the family has been beset by more financial difficulties in the last few years, so the success of his fledgling couture house is imperative for his survival. Luckily, as well as being handsome, Gerald is charming, and has therefore been invited by friends to enjoy their largess and he often dines out at the cost of others. Lettice may be Gerald’s best friend, and her dinner invitation is always welcome, however the evening offers more than just a free meal for Gerald. By bringing some of his sewing, he can use Lettice’s electricity rather than his own, dealing him a small saving, and both of them may enjoy one another’s company as part of the arrangement.

 

Lettice usually sits and works at her Hepplewhite desk next to the fire in her drawing room, whilst Gerald sews a piece of one of his latest creations for a customer in the comfort of one of Lettice’s arm chairs, but tonight Lettice is enjoying a night of freedom and is sitting in her Art Deco tub arm chair contentedly reading a copy of the Daily Mail and watching Gerald sitting across from her, embroidering the collar of what will soon be a new outfit for her. Whilst they chat and drink one of Lettice’s fine French champagne, they both enjoy the gift of a shiny new brass wireless, a gift from Selwyn Spencely, the future Duke of Mumford, whom Lettice has been seeing socially for a little over a year now.

 

“I must say,” Gerald remarks as he takes a sip of champagne and settles back with Lettice’s collar into her comfortable tub chair. “Spencely’s gift really does make what was already a wonderful evening even better.” He glances at the shining brass wireless. “It really is ripping getting to listen to music without even leaving the comfort of home.”

 

“Or the comfort of someone else’s home.” Lettice adds with a cheeky smile, taking a sip of champagne from her own tall glass flute.

 

“Indeed.” Gerald murmurs, glancing down at the fine pale orange stitches he is adding to a floral motif on the collar as his face flushes. Even though Lettice is aware of Gerald’s financial situation, and she is happy to let Gerald do some work at her flat to help him save money, it is still a point of embarrassment for Gerald and he tries not to let Lettice see him blush. “Mind you,” he adds. “You’ll do well out of this bargain, my darling.” He holds up the collar so Lettice can admire the large petals in pink and orange that radiate around the large Peter Pan collar*.

 

“Oh, it’s lovely, Gerald!” Lettice enthuses as she reaches across the coffee table and touches the looped embroidery around the edge of the collar, worked in a fine golden apricot. “Elizabeth is going to love it!”

 

“I hope you are the one who is going to love it, Lettice darling.” Gerald remarks, placing the collar back in his lap. “After all you will be the one wearing it, not Elizabeth.”

 

Lettice sighs. “I don’t think anyone will care about what I’m wearing to Elizabeth’s wedding**.”

 

“And so they shouldn’t.” Gerald retorts with a snort. Seeing the hurt in his best friend’s eyes at his statement, he quickly elaborates, “Well, not care so much as focus more on her rather than you. After all she is the bride, and a royal one at that. I know of no bride in all of Christendom who would want to be outshone by any of her wedding guests,” He nods in Lettice’s direction. “However lovely they may be.”

 

“Thank you, Gerald darling.” Lettice blows her friend a kiss and takes another sip from her tall champagne flute. “There won’t be much chance of that,” Lettice says resignedly, tossing the copy of the Daily Express from her lap irritably onto the black japanned tabletop of the coffee table between them. There on its cover, another romantic photographic portrait of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon looking demure as she casts her gaze downwards, takes up more than a third of the tabloid’s cover. “Judging by every rag in the city. It’s ‘Elizabeth this’ and ‘Elizabeth that’.”

 

“I say! Are you just a teensy bit jealous of her, Lettuce Leaf?” Gerald asks teasingly using her abhorred childhood nickname.

 

“Don’t call me that Gerald!” Lettice warns her friend. “You know I don’t like it.”

 

“You didn’t mind it when we were four.”

 

“But I’m not four any more Gerald, and nor are you.” She gives him a doubtful look.

 

“You are, Lettuce Leaf! You’re jealous of Elizabeth because she has all the attention of the press in the society pages!”

 

“I wouldn’t say that I’m jealous, exactly, Gerald,” Lettice begins, but she retracts this statement as Gerald looks across at her doubtfully. “Well, maybe I am, just a little bit. I mean, I am very happy for her, and I’m delighted that the press love her and give her positively glowing publicity.” She pauses.

 

“But?” Gerald probes.

 

“But, it is getting a little bit tiresome, isn’t it? We’ve barely featured in the society pages since the wedding was announced.”

 

“We aren’t alone, Lettice darling,” Gerald commiserates. “Barely anyone has.”

 

“It’s like the whole country has gone Elizabeth mad!”

 

“I should get Hattie to invest in a wireless.” Gerald ruminates, changing the subject momentarily away from the marriage of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon to the Duke of York***. “If a few of us pooled some money: Hattie, Cyril, Charlie Boy, we might be able to afford one.”

 

“But what happens if one of Miss Milford’s lodgers decides to leave? What happens with the wireless then? You can’t cut it into sections. Would Cyril or Charles claim custody rights for a few weeks a year?”

 

The pair laugh at the idea.

 

“You know, you should come to Hattie’s tonight, Lettice darling.” Gerald says to Lettice as he now draws a pale pink thread through the collar on his lap. “It will be great fun, and far better than sitting here alone, even if you do have your wireless for company.”

 

“I’m not alone. I have Edith.” Lettice defends, referring to her maid.

 

“You know what I mean.” He gives her a withering look. “Don’t be tiresome, darling! Being a bottle party**** we’re guaranteed to have some interesting cocktails to drink. You’ve got plenty to choose from in your cocktail cabinet. I’ve got my new banjo***** in the Morris****** because one of Cyril’s orchestra friends who is coming tonight has promised to give me a few lessons on playing it. Come on! It will marvellous fun!”

 

“I haven’t exactly been invited, Gerald.” She gives him a doubtful look.

 

“Oh, Hattie won’t mind! The more the merrier, so long as you bring a bottle. In fact, that will make it even merrier, especially if it’s a bottle of gin.” He takes another sip of champagne and raises his flute in his half of a toast. “Being a bunch of theatricals, it might be, well, a bit…”

 

“Theatrical?”

 

“Theatrical, yes, but such marvellous fun! We’re quite a tight and fun group, you know,”

 

“I really don’t know, Gerald.”

 

Gerald sits up in his seat and puts the collar aside, laying it flat on the black japanned coffee table between them. “Why have you taken against Hattie so, Lettice?”

 

“I haven’t, Gerald!” she defends. “She’s making me a new hat!”

 

“Oh pooh to the hat she is making you! I’d say you have.” he counters as he looks at Lettice with a seriousness that he rarely does. “She told me when you visited her to commission her to make your hat for Elizabeth’s wedding, that you were a little bit pompous.”

 

“Did she?” Lettice’s eyes widen and her expertly plucked brows arch over them at the revelation. “Pompous? Me?”

 

“Yes, you.” he says pointedly as he picks up the collar again and draws the pink thread through with added concentration. “Certainly, from what she was telling me, and I hate to say this, but you did come across as pompous, darling.”

 

“That’s rich coming from the man who originally despised Mrs. Hatchett for her up-and-coming middle-class mediocrity.”

 

“Customers who are more exalted and refined than your second cousins?” Gerald paraphrases from the conversation between Lettice and Harriet as related to him by Harriet.

 

Lettice blushes.

 

“You may be friends with Elizabeth, darling, but even when she becomes the Duchess of York, you could hardly call her exalted.”

 

“She might be Queen one day, Gerald. After all, our King was Duke of York once.”

 

“But he was always first in line, and we all know that Bertie is not, and the Prince of Wales isn’t going anywhere. He enjoys the adulation of the people too much to not be King one day!”

 

“Yes, especially of other men’s wives.” Lettice acknowledges.

 

“And besides, Elizabeth has her own milliner. She’s hardly going to go to Hattie just because she makes you a fetching hat.” He looks reproachfully at Lettice. “Pulling the class card. Really darling! I would have expected better from you. What’s Hattie ever done to you?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Nothing, exactly! So ask again, why have you taken against her so?”

 

“She’s… she’s…” Lettice stammers as emotions she has kept controlled and to herself begin to build before finally bursting forth. “She’s just so, nice, so pretty, so sweet natured and good tempered.” She pauses. “It’s like she’s a saint! She calls you Gerry and… and she embraces you in such a familiar way when she sees you, and she invites you to bottle parties at her house!”

 

“Ahh,” Gerald sinks back in his seat. “Finally! The truth will out! You’re jealous of Hattie. You seem to think that she is usurping you in my affections. You think you’ll lose your best friend to her.”

 

Lettice doesn’t answer, but the guilty look she momentarily gives Gerald coyly before looking away in shame speaks loudly enough for her.

 

“I never took you for a silly, jealous type, Lettice darling, yet here you are, jealous of two women in one night.”

 

“I’m not,” Lettice replies guiltily. “Usually.”

 

“Well, you have nothing to fear from Hattie.” He looks at her earnestly. “It is true that I do love Hattie, and I enjoy her company immensely. She’s great fun and easy to get along with. However, she doesn’t have the shared experience of growing up together that you and I have, Lettice darling. She will never understand the little quirks and language that we share, and nor do I want her to. Hattie is just another friend: a very good friend I hope.” He reaches out his hand to Lettice’s as it dangles limply from her seat. “I can be myself with Hattie, just like I can with you, and you know how precious that is in this unforgiving world of ours,” He looks meaningfully at Lettice. “But you are my best friend, Lettice. You always will be.”

 

“Really?” Lettice asks meekly.

 

“Of course! Unless you keep on carrying on like some silly, jealous upper-class snob!”

 

Lettice feels suitably reprimanded as she sits uncomfortably in her own tub chair, emotionally exposed under the scruitinising gaze of her dearest friend.

 

“You were the levelling one of the two of us when you first introduced me to Mrs. Hatchett. You said to me that in spite of her upbringing and background, that she was a good and a worthy person and that I shouldn’t be such a snob.”

 

“I did.”

 

“Well, isn’t Hattie the same? Like Mrs. Hatchett, she is a bit gauche in that up-and-coming middle-class kind of way. Although to be fair to her, unlike Mrs. Hatchett, she hasn’t had that much of a life to know what is gauche and what is not. Her mother died many years ago, and from what I can gather, her father was a very strict, Victorian man, so Harriet was given little freedom to express her own ideas or experience the world. Now life is like a giant buffet for her, and she doesn’t know what to eat first, or know that she should eat her first course before her second, rather than the reverse way around. She could benefit from a few, more experienced pairs of hands guiding her.”

 

“Are you suggesting that Miss Milford and I should be friends, Gerald?”

 

“No,” Gerald admits. “I don’t think you are ever likely to be bosom friends*******, and I believe that you have intimated as much to her on a previous occasion.”

 

“Does she tell you everything, Gerald darling?” Lettice exclaims.

 

“Fairly much.” He smiles cheekily.

 

“I must remember whatever I say to her may not be sacrosanct.”

 

“Undoubtedly it won’t be, darling.” Gerald assures her without any remorse. “Anyway, even if you aren’t bosom friends, you might at least be a little kinder to Hattie, and certainly less of a prig. Even if you don’t do it for her, do it for me, because she is my friend and I care for her deeply, and you care for me deeply.”

 

“Well, I can hardly argue with that reasoning, can I?”

 

“You know, I’m surprised at your behaviour, Lettice.”

 

“Why? You get jealous too. Tell me that you weren’t even a little bit jealous of Arabella when she and Leslie announced their marriage?”

 

“Well of course I was jealous of her!” Gerald admits readily. “I have a horrible green monster that lies not too far beneath the surface of my shallow self, darling. I am jealous of Arabella because she snagged the Chetwynd with the looks whom I desired. I’m jealous of Roland, because as the eldest son, he seems to be completely beyond contempt for any of the scandals he creates, whereas Father punishes me for even the smallest misdemeanour. I’m jealous whenever I see another man look so much as sideways at Cyril across the crowded floor of a molly-house********. Hell, I’m even jealous of you sometimes, Lettice.”

 

“Of me?” Lettice gasps, raising a hand to her chest.

 

“Of course, of you, you silly thing.” Gerald replies, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world for Lettice to know.

 

“Why are you jealous of me? It surely can’t be because of my looks. You’re every bit as handsome as I am pretty. As a woman, I am bound by strictures imposed upon me by my family, my place in society and my very sex since birth about what I can or can’t do, where I go and with whom.”

 

“Look at our lives, darling!” Gerald exclaims in exasperation. “You have money in the bank, or indeed money to burn. I on the other hand rely on the largess of friends and live on a pittance, throwing every spare penny I can make back into my business. If your business were to falter, you’d be fine, perhaps suffering the gloating of the likes of Sadie who would goad you with ‘I told you sos’ and ‘I knew she couldn’t do it’, but you would survive. As for me, if my fashion house folds, I’m ruined. I have nothing whatever to fall back on, and I would have creditors going unpaid who would hunt me down, or hound me until I am dead. I could end up in debtors’ prison. And thinking of prison,” he goes on seriously. “Regardless of the societal restrictions you are faced with, at least you and Selwyn can be seen in public together as a couple. Cyril and I can’t. I’m not Ned Warren*********, so I have no fortune to keep the gossiping staff well below stairs.”

 

“Thinking of which, I had dinner with Selwyn a few weeks ago, and he asked me if you had a Gaiety Girl********** hidden away somewhere.”

 

“I hope you didn’t disabuse him of that idea.”

 

“I most certainly did!” Lettice defends. “I wasn’t going to lie to him.” It is only when the colour drains from Gerald’s face does she realise the mistake her words have led him to make and she quickly adds. “Oh, not about Cyril, darling! I didn’t tell him about Cyril! I’m not that brainless, even if I can be a snob.” She smiles as she sees the relief in his face. “No, he asked me why you hadn’t been to your club for a while, and thought it might be because you had a chorus girl to amuse you more so than he and the other club members might. I simply told him that you were engaged in business and that was what took up your time.”

 

“Well, that isn’t entirely untrue.”

 

“Listen Gerald,” Lettice says seriously, looking her friend directly in the eyes. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

 

“A deal?” Gerald’s eyebrows arch over his glittering eyes, a smirk causing the edges of his mouth to turn upwards at the end.

 

“I’m serious, Gerald.”

 

“Alight! Alright!” Gerald drops his needle and holds his hands up in defeat. “No frivolousness.”

 

“I will try and be nicer, and less jealous of Harriet. I’ll even try to help her.”

 

“Oh, thank you, Lettice darling.”

 

“But” Lettice wags her finger warningly at Gerald. “Only if you will promise me that you’ll be careful to be discreet with Cyril.”

 

“I’m always discreet, Lettice darling!” Gerald assures her.

 

“I know you are, Gerald darling,” Lettice replies. “But in my few brief meetings with him, it seems to me that Cyril sometimes is not, and I worry for both of you.”

 

Gerald observes the look of concern that clouds his best friend’s face.

 

“I promise I’ll be discreet enough for both of us.” He holds up his glass and Lettice and Gerald click champagne flutes in agreement to both the agreements they have made.

 

*A Peter Pan collar is a style of clothing collar, flat in design with rounded corners. It is named after the collar of Maude Adams's costume in her 1905 role as Peter Pan, although similar styles had been worn before this date. Peter Pan collars were particularly fashionable during the 1920s and 1930s.

 

**Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as she was known at the beginning of 1923 when this story is set, went on to become Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from 1936 to 1952 as the wife of King George VI. Whilst still Duke of York, Prince Albert initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to". He proposed again in 1922 after Elizabeth was part of his sister, Mary the Princess Royal’s, wedding party, but she refused him again. On Saturday, January 13th, 1923, Prince Albert went for a walk with Elizabeth at the Bowes-Lyon home at St Paul’s, Walden Bury and proposed for a third and final time. This time she said yes. The wedding took place on April 26, 1923 at Westminster Abbey.

 

***Prince Albert, Duke of York, known by the diminutive “Bertie” to the family and close friends, was the second son of George V. He was never expected to become King, but came to the throne after his elder brother David, the Prince of Wales, abdicated in 1936 so that he could marry the love of his life American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. Although not schooled in being a ruler, Bertie, who styled himself as George VI as a continuation of his father, became King of United Kingdom and the Dominions from 1936 to 1952, and saw Britain through some of its darkest days, becoming one of the most popular monarchs in British history.

 

****Bottle parties, a private party to which each guest brings their own liquor, came into vogue during the 1920s and 30s initially especially after prohibition in America and liquor licence restrictions in Britain.

 

*****Originating out of America during the 1920s the banjo quickly gained popularity in Britain too because it was reasonably cheap as an instrument, portable, easy to learn on and musical duelling matches were played like draughts or chess.

 

******Morris Motors Limited was a privately owned British motor vehicle manufacturing company established in 1919. With a reputation for producing high-quality cars and a policy of cutting prices, Morris's business continued to grow and increase its share of the British market. By 1926 its production represented forty-two per cent of British car manufacturing. Amongst their more popular range was the Morris Cowley which included a four-seat tourer which was first released in 1920.

 

*******The term bosom friend is recorded as far back as the late Sixteenth Century. In those days, the bosom referred to the chest as the seat of deep emotions, though now the word usually means a woman's “chest.” A bosom friend, then, is one you might share these deep feelings with or have deep feelings for.

 

********A molly-house was a term used in Eighteenth, Nineteenth and early Twentieth-century Britain for a meeting place for homosexual men. The meeting places were generally taverns, public houses, or coffeehouses known to be regular haunts of such men, or even private rooms. Molly-houses were places where men could either socialise or meet possible sexual partners. Although the gathering of homosexual men was not strictly illegal, the act of homosexual acts between men was, which made molly-houses dangerous for men should there be a police raid.

  

*********Edward Perry Warren, known as Ned Warren, was an American art collector and the author of works proposing an idealized view of homosexual relationships. He is now best known as the former owner of the Warren Cup in the British Museum.

 

**********Gaiety Girls were the chorus girls in Edwardian musical comedies, beginning in the 1890s at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in the shows produced by George Edwardes.

 

This 1920s upper-class drawing room is different to what you may think at first glance, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Gerald’s magnificent sewing box with its mirrored lid, silver and russet brocade padding and russet trimming, and ball feet is a 1:12 artisan miniature. It’s interior is full of sewing paraphernalia. Made by an unknown artisan, it came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The embroidered collar for Lettice’s royal wedding outfit that Gerald has been working on is actually a piece of beautiful scalloped ribbon that was given to me at Christmas time by a very close friend of mine. The silver dressmaking scissors on top of it came from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay.

 

The newspaper sitting underneath the collar featuring an image of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Elizabeth and one day Queen Mother, is a copy of a real Daily Mail newspaper from 1923 and was produced to high standards in 1:12 by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

The champagne flutes that are filled with glittering golden yellow champagne were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

The brass wireless in the background, which is remarkably heavy for its size, comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Supplies in the United Kingdom.

 

Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The Art Deco tub chairs are of black japanned wood and have removable cushions, just like their life sized examples. To the left of the fireplace is a Hepplewhite drop-drawer bureau and chair of black japanned wood which has been hand painted with chinoiserie designs, even down the legs and inside the bureau. The chair set has a rattan seat, which has also been hand woven. To the right of the fireplace is a Chippendale cabinet which has also been decorated with chinoiserie designs. It also features very ornate metalwork hinges and locks.

 

The fireplace is a 1:12 miniature resin Art Deco fireplace which is flanked by brass accessories including an ash brush with real bristles.

 

The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug, and the geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

As a teenager, Ralph Dibny was fascinated by contortionists, or people who displayed feats of agility and suppleness. He learned that all of the body-benders he spoke with drank a popular soda called "Gingold".

 

Ralph set to work learning chemistry and developed a super-concentrated extract of the rare "gingo" fruit of the Yucatan, which gave him his elasticity. In his first appearance, the Flash suspects the Elongated Man is behind several crimes, but the Elongated Man helps capture the criminals, who reveal they used a helicopter to frame him.

 

Ralph Dibny was one of the earliest Silver Age DC heroes to reveal his secret identity to the public, and also one of the first to marry his love interest. After teaming up with several other superheroes like Batman, Green Lantern, the Atom, Zatanna and the Justice League of America, he became a member of the team. Eventually, his wife became a member as well. The couple was also notable in having a stable, happy, and relatively trouble-free marriage—an anomaly in the highly dramatic lives of superheroes.

 

While the Elongated Man gained his abilities by drinking a refined version of a soft drink named Gingold that contains the extract of the gingo fruit, it was revealed that he is a metahuman, and the Gingoid elixir interacted with his latent genes. An ordinary human would not develop such powers through ingesting the extract. In fact, most people are extremely allergic to highly concentrated Gingold. The only other hero in the DCU who uses Gingold is Stretch, a member of Hero Hotline who has been using the compound since the 1940s.

 

As his name suggests, the Elongated Man can stretch his limbs and body to super-human lengths and sizes. These stretching powers grant the Elongated Man heightened agility enabling flexibility and coordination that is beyond the natural limits of the human body.

 

He can contort his body into various positions and sizes impossible for ordinary humans, such as being entirely flat so that he can slip under a door, or using his fingers to pick conventional locks. He can also use it for disguise by changing the shape of his face.

 

Ralph's physiology has greater physical limitations than Plastic Man; there is a limit to how far he can stretch his finite bodily mass, and he cannot open holes in his body as Plastic Man can.

 

The Elongated Man's powers also greatly augment his durability. He is largely able to withstand corrosives, punctures and concussions without sustaining injury. It has been demonstrated that he is resistant to high velocities that would kill an ordinary person and that he is also more resistant to blasts from energy weapons that would kill ordinary humans.

 

His physiology is more like that of an ordinary human than Plastic Man and, as a result, he does not share Plastic Man's nigh-invulnerability.

 

In addition to his stretching abilities, the Elongated Man is professionally trained as a detective and is highly skilled in deductive reasoning. Often considered one of the most brilliant detectives in the DC Universe (compared with Batman only differing in the actual course of their logic).

 

He is a talented amateur chemist as well. A meta-side effect of his powers coupled with his detective skills is enhanced olfactory sense, allowing him to "smell" when something is "not right", or if a clue or mystery is at hand. This results in a rubbery "nose twitch".

 

Firehawk once told Ralph that the Green Arrow said the nose twitch was not a real thing but rather something he made up to get more press. The Elongated Man responded by telling her that the Green Arrow's hat covers a bald spot.

 

⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽

_____________________________

A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.

 

Secret Identity: Randolph William "Ralph" Dibny

 

Publisher: DC

 

First appearance: The Flash 112 (February 25, 1960).

 

Created by: John Broome (writer)

Carmine Infantino (artist)

 

I was on the 'puter & looked up-- the window was all red--so I jumped up!...the sky was on fire! unusually ...not so here in my Mi. so I called my husband & we raced outside-- it was a truly firey red-- don't know if I captured that, but at the same time ironically the Ca. fires were going on big time--8 big time on the news-- I truly make no conclusions, but it all impressed me so much-- too different for my area ,etc.ok ok weather people have their reasonings & interpretations--got it--got it.. nuff'said...WOW! awesome stuff!

This week, I renounced my right to be known as an artist. I gave it to God, because it had become such a pride issue for me. Even this project was just so filled with pride and arrogance, and I am giving my art back to God. I'm taking a step back, not taking my camera everywhere with me, praying before I photograph and post, and making sure I don't do it for renown, but for the God who gave the talent to me.

 

It's been really good. I'm not tethered to the internet as much, or so concerned with others' reactions to my photography. But I'm still learning. If I'm gone for gaps of time, or my quality of image changes, I just wanted you to know the reasoning. God first. My family here second. Artist third.

 

At first I thought I should quit my 52 weeks project, just to show God that I was willing to do so, but He has not placed that on my heart. I still will quit if I'm supposed to, because I would never quit of my own desire. But God's desires are more important to me than a project.

 

(twenty eight)

And so Thomas began on his journey to the south.

He was accompanied by his uncle Gunnar and two men he had handpicked from his Arrowford Guard. The reasoning being that four decent men are enough to deter bandits, but too few to draw the concern of the Queen’s soldiers. The emphasis now was on discretion. Their war steeds, battle armour and golden bear insignia were all left behind and simpler, mismatched gear added anonymity to their protection.

 

For Thomas, and indeed Gunnar, adventure back on the open road lightened their hearts, but the anxiety Thomas felt at leaving Arrowford to its fate weighed heavily upon him. Riding out of the mountains and down through great fields of lavender, Thomas was filled with a deep foreboding as he prepared to leave the glorious realm of Loreos yet again.

Professor X (Charles Francis Xavier) is a character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The X-Men #1 (September 1963). The character is depicted as the founder and occasional leader of the X-Men.

 

Xavier is a member of a subspecies of humans known as mutants, who are born with superhuman abilities. He is an exceptionally powerful telepath, who can read and control the minds of others. To both shelter and train mutants from around the world, he runs a private school in the X-Mansion in Salem Center, located in Westchester County, New York.Xavier also strives to serve a greater good by promoting peaceful coexistence and equality between humans and mutants in a world where zealous anti-mutant sentiment is widespread.

 

Throughout much of the character's history in comics, Xavier is a paraplegic using a standard or modified wheelchair. One of the world's most powerful mutant telepaths, Xavier is a scientific genius and a leading authority in genetics. He has devised Cerebro and other equipment to enhance psionic powers and detect and track people with the mutant gene.

 

Xavier's pacifist and assimilationist ideology and actions have often been contrasted with that of Magneto, a mutant villain with whom Xavier has a complicated relationship.

 

He also appears in almost all of the X-Men animated series and in many video games, although usually as a non-playable character. Patrick Stewart plays him in the 2000s X-Men film series, as well as providing his voice in some of the X-Men video games (including some not connected to the film series).

 

According to BusinessWeek, Charles Xavier is listed as one of the top ten most intelligent fictional characters in American comics.

 

Publication History

 

Creation and influences

 

Stan Lee has stated that the physical inspiration of Professor Xavier was from Academy Award-winning actor Yul Brynner.

 

Writer Scott Lobdell established Xavier's middle name to be "Francis" in Uncanny X-Men #328 (January 1996).

 

Character

 

Xavier's goals are to promote the peaceful affirmation of mutant rights, to mediate the co-existence of mutants and humans, to protect mutants from violent humans, and to protect society from antagonistic mutants, including his old friend, Magneto.

 

To achieve these aims, he founded Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters (later named the Xavier Institute) to teach mutants to explore and control their powers. Its first group of students was the original X-Men (Cyclops, Iceman, Marvel Girl, Angel, and Beast).

 

Xavier's students consider him a visionary and often refer to their mission as "Xavier's dream". He is highly regarded by others in the Marvel Universe, respected by various governments, and trusted by several other superhero teams, including the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.

 

However, he also has a manipulative streak which has resulted in several significant fallings-out with allies and students.

 

He often acts as a public advocate for mutant rights and is the authority most of the Marvel superhero community turns to for advice on mutants. Despite this, his status as a mutant himself and originator of the X-Men only became public during the 2001 story "E Is for Extinction".

 

In a number of comics, Xavier is shown to have a dark side, a part of himself that he struggles to suppress. Perhaps the most notable appearance of this character element is in the Onslaught storyline, in which the crossover event's antagonist is a physical manifestation of that dark side.

 

Also, Onslaught is created in the most violent act Xavier claims to have done: erasing the mind of Magneto.

 

In X-Men #106 (August 1977), the new X-Men fight images of the original team, which have been created by what Xavier says is his "evil self ... who would use his powers for personal gain and conquest", which he says he is normally able to keep in check.

 

In the 1984 four-part series titled The X-Men and the Micronauts, Xavier's dark desires manifest themselves as the Entity and threaten to destroy the Micronauts' universe.

 

In other instances, Xavier is shown to be secretive and manipulative.

 

During the Onslaught storyline, the X-Men find Xavier's files, the "Xavier Protocols", which detail how to kill many of the characters, including Xavier himself, should the need ever arise, such as if they went rogue.

 

Astonishing X-Men vol. 3, #12 (August 2005) reveals that when Xavier realizes that the Danger Room has become sentient, he keeps it trapped and experiments on it for years, an act that Cyclops calls "the oppression of a new life" and equates to humanity's treatment of mutants (however, X-Men Legacy #220 - 224 reveals that Xavier did not intend for the Danger Room to become sentient: it was an accident, and Xavier sought a way to free Danger, but was unable to find a way to accomplish this without deleting her sentience as well).

 

Fictional character biography

 

Charles Francis Xavier was born in New York City to the wealthy Dr. Brian Xavier, a well-respected nuclear scientist, and Sharon Xavier.

 

The family lives in a very grand mansion estate in Westchester County because of the riches his father's nuclear research has brought them.

 

He later grows up to attend Pembroke College at the University of Oxford, where he earns a Professorship in Genetics and other science fields, and goes on to live first in Oxford and then London for a number of years.

 

Crucially, as he enters late adolescence, Xavier inherits the mansion-house he was raised in, enabling him not only to continue to live in it, but also to turn it in to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which he begins together with the first of the X-Men.

 

Brian, his father, dies in an accident when Xavier is still very young, and Brian's science partner Kurt Marko comforts and then marries the grieving Sharon. When Xavier's telepathic mutant powers emerge, he discovers Marko cares only about his mother's money.

 

After the wedding, Kurt moves in with the Xaviers, bringing with him his son Cain. Kurt quickly grows neglectful of Sharon, driving her to alcoholism, and abuses both Charles and Cain.

 

Cain takes out his frustrations and insecurities on his stepbrother. Charles uses his telepathic powers to read Cain's mind and explore the extent of his psychological damage, which only leads to Cain becoming more aggressive toward him and the young Xavier feeling Cain's pain firsthand.

 

Sharon dies soon after, and a fight erupts between Cain and Charles that causes some of Kurt's lab equipment to explode. Mortally wounded, Kurt drags the two children out before dying, and admits he was partly responsible for Brian's death.

 

With help from his superhuman powers and natural genius, Xavier becomes an excellent student and athlete, though he gives up the latter, believing his powers give him an unfair advantage.

 

Due to his powers, by the time he graduates from high school, Charles loses all of his hair. He graduates with honors at the age of 16 from Bard College.

 

In graduate studies, he receives Ph.D.s in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology with a two-year residence at Pembroke College, University of Oxford.

 

He also receives an M.D. in Psychiatry while spending several years in London. He is later appointed adjunct professor at Columbia University.

 

At graduate school, he meets a Scottish girl named Moira Kinross, a fellow genetics student with whom he falls in love. The two agree to get married, but soon, Xavier is drafted into the Korean War.

 

He carves himself a niche as a soldier in search and rescue missions alongside Shadowcat's father, Carmen Pryde, and witnesses Cain's transformation into Juggernaut when he touches a ruby with an inscription on it in an underground temple.

 

During the war, he receives a letter from Moira telling him that she is breaking up with him. He later discovers that Moira married her old boyfriend Joseph MacTaggert, who abuses her.

 

Deeply depressed when Moira broke off their engagement without explanation, Xavier began traveling around the world as an adventurer after leaving the army.

 

In Cairo, he meets a young girl named Ororo Munroe (later known as Storm), who is a pickpocket, and the Shadow King, a powerful mutant who is posing as Egyptian crime lord Amahl Farouk.

 

Xavier defeats the Shadow King, barely escaping with his life. This encounter leads to Xavier's decision to devote his life to protecting humanity from evil mutants and safeguarding innocent mutants from human oppression.

 

Xavier visits his friend Daniel Shomron, who runs a clinic for traumatized Holocaust victims in Haifa, Israel. There, he meets a man going by the name of Magnus (who would later become Magneto), a Holocaust survivor who works as a volunteer in the clinic, and Gabrielle Haller, a woman driven into a catatonic coma by the trauma she experienced.

 

Xavier uses his mental powers to break her out of her catatonia and the two fall in love. Xavier and Magneto become good friends, although neither immediately reveals to the other that he is a mutant.

 

The two hold lengthy debates hypothesizing what will happen if humanity is faced with a new super-powered race of humans. While Xavier is optimistic, Magneto's experiences in the Holocaust lead him to believe that humanity will ultimately oppress the new race of humans.

 

The two friends reveal their powers to each other when they fight Nazi Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and his Hydra agents, who kidnap Gabrielle because she knows the location of their secret cache of gold. Magneto attempts to kill Strucker but Xavier stops him.

 

Realizing that his and Xavier's views on mutant-human relations are incompatible, Magneto leaves with the gold. Charles stays in Israel for some time, but he and Gabrielle separate on good terms, neither knowing that she is pregnant with his son, who grows up to become the mutant Legion.

 

In a strange town near the Himalayas, Xavier encounters an alien calling himself Lucifer, the advance scout for an invasion by his race, and foils his plans. In retaliation, Lucifer drops a huge stone block on Xavier, crippling his legs.

 

After Lucifer leaves, a young woman named Sage hears Xavier's telepathic cries for help and rescues him, bringing him to safety, beginning a long alliance between the two.

 

In a hospital in India, he is brought to an American nurse, Amelia Voght, who looks after him and, as she sees to his recovery, they fall in love. When he is released from the hospital, the two moved into an apartment in Bombay together.

 

Amelia is troubled to find Charles studying mutation, as she is a mutant and unsettled by it, though she calms when he reveals himself to be a mutant as well.

 

They eventually move to the United States, living on Xavier's family estate. But the night Scott Summers moves into Xavier's mansion, Amelia leaves him, believing Charles would have changed his view and that mutants should lie low. Yet he is recruiting them to what she believes is a lost cause. Charles tries to force her to stay with his mental powers, but immediately ashamed by this, lets her go. She later becomes a disciple of Magneto.

 

Over the years, Charles makes a name for himself as geneticist and psychologist, apparently renowned enough that the Greys were referred to him when no other expert could help their catatonic daughter, Jean.

 

Xavier trains her in the use of her telekinesis, while inhibiting her telepathic abilities until she matures. Around this time, he also starts working with fellow mutation expert, Karl Lykos, as well as Moira MacTaggert again, who built a mutant research station on Muir Island.

 

Apparently, Charles had gotten over Moira in his travels to the Greek island of Kirinos. Xavier discusses his candidates for recruitment to his personal strike force, the X-Men, with Moira, including those he passes over, which are Kurt Wagner, Piotr Rasputin, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, and Ororo Munroe. Xavier also trains Tessa to spy on Sebastian Shaw.

 

Xavier founded Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which provides a safe haven for mutants and teaches them to master their abilities. In addition, he seeks to foster mutant-human relations by providing his superhero team, the X-Men, as an example of mutants acting in good faith, as he told FBI agent Fred Duncan.

 

With his inherited fortune, he uses his ancestral mansion at 1407 Graymalkin Lane in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York as a base of operations with technologically advanced facilities, including the Danger Room - later, Fantomex mentions that Xavier is a billionaire with a net worth of $3.5 billion.

 

Presenting the image of a stern teacher, Xavier makes his students endure a rigorous training regime.

 

Xavier's first five students are Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Beast, and Marvel Girl who become the original X-Men. After he completes recruiting the original team of X-Men, he sends them into battle with Magneto.

 

Throughout most of his time with the team, Xavier uses his telepathic powers to keep in constant contact with his students and provides instructions and advice when needed. In addition, he uses a special machine called Cerebro, which enhances his ability to detect mutants and to allow the team to find new students in need of the school.

 

Among the obstacles Xavier faces is his old friend, Magneto, who has grown into an advocate of mutant superiority since their last encounter and who believes the only solution to mutant persecution is domination over humanity.

 

When anthropologist Bolivar Trask resurfaces the "mutant problem", Xavier counters him in a televised debate, however, he appears arrogant and Trask sends his mutant-hunting robot Sentinels to terrorize mutants. The X-Men dispatch them, but Trask sees the error in his ways too late as he is killed by his creations.

 

At one point, Xavier seemingly dies during the X-Men's battle with the sub-human Grotesk, but it is later revealed that Xavier arranged for a reformed former villain named Changeling to impersonate him while he went into hiding to plan a defense against an invasion by the extraterrestrial Z'Nox, imparting a portion of his telepathic abilities to the Changeling to complete the disguise.

 

When the X-Men are captured by the sentient island Krakoa, Xavier assembles a new team to rescue them, including Cyclops' and Havok's long-lost brother, Vulcan, along with Darwin, Petra, and Sway.

 

This new team, composed of students of Dr. Moira MacTaggert, was sent to rescue the original X-Men from Krakoa. However, after rescuing Cyclops, McTaggert's former students were seemingly killed. Upon Cyclops' return, Xavier removed Cyclops' memories of the death of Vulcan and his teammates; and began assembling yet another team of X-Men.

 

Xavier's subsequent rescue team consists of Banshee, Colossus, Sunfire, Nightcrawler, Storm, Wolverine, and Thunderbird. After the mission, the older team of X-Men, except for Cyclops, leave the school, believing they no longer belong there, and Xavier mentors the new X-Men.

 

Xavier forms a psychic bond across galaxies with Princess Lilandra from the Shi'ar Empire. When they finally meet, it is love at first sight. She implores the professor to stop her mad brother, Shi'ar Emperor D'Ken, and he instantly aids her by deploying his X-Men.

 

When Jean Grey returns from the Savage Land to tell him that all the X-Men are dead, he shuts down the school and travels with Lilandra to her kingdom, where she is crowned Empress and he is treated like a child or a trophy husband.

 

Xavier senses the changes taking place in Jean Grey, and returns to Earth to help and resume leadership of the X-Men.

 

Shortly thereafter he battles his pupil after she becomes Dark Phoenix and destroys a populated planet in the Shi'ar Empire. It hurts Xavier to be on the opposite side of Lilandra, but he has no other choice but to challenge the Shi'ar Imperial Guard to a duel over the fate of the Phoenix.

 

Xavier would have lost against the greater power of the Dark Phoenix, but thanks to the help Jean Grey gives him (fighting her Phoenix persona), Xavier emerges victorious; she later commits suicide to prevent herself from endangering more innocent lives.

 

When the X-Men fight members of the extraterrestrial race known as the Brood, Xavier is captured by them, and implanted with a Brood egg, which places Xavier under the Brood's control.

 

During this time, Xavier assembles a team of younger mutants called the New Mutants, secretly intended to be prime hosts for reproduction of the aliens. The X-Men discover this and return to free Xavier, but they are too late to prevent his body from being destroyed with a Brood Queen in its place; however, his soul remains intact.

 

The X-Men and Starjammers subdue this monstrous creature containing Xavier's essence, but the only way to restore him is to clone a new body using tissue samples he donated to the Starjammers and transfer his consciousness into the clone body.

 

This new body possesses functional legs, though the psychosomatic pain Xavier experienced after living so long as a paraplegic takes some time to subside. Subsequently, he even joins the X-Men in the field, but later decides not to continue this practice after realizing that his place is at the school, as the teacher of the New Mutants.

 

After taking a teaching position at Columbia University in Uncanny X-Men #192, Xavier is severely injured and left for dead as the victim of an attack.

 

Callisto and her Morlocks, a group of underground-dwelling mutants, get him to safety. One of the Morlocks partially restores Xavier's health, but Callisto warns Xavier that he is not fully healed and that he must spend more time recuperating and restrain himself from exerting his full strength or powers, or his health might fail again. Xavier hides his injuries from the others and resumes his life.

 

Charles meets with former lover Gabrielle Haller on Muir Isle and discovers that they had a child. The boy, David, has autism and dissociative identity disorder. Furthermore, he has vast psionic powers like his father. After helping him and his team to escape from David's mind, Xavier promises he will always be there for him.

 

A reformed Magneto is arrested and put on trial. Xavier attends the trial to defend his friend. Andrea and Andreas Strucker, the children of presumed dead Baron von Strucker, crash the courtroom to attack Magneto and Xavier. Xavier is seriously injured.

 

Dying, he asks a shocked Magneto to look after the X-Men for him. Lilandra, who has a psychic bond with Xavier, feels that he is in great danger and heads to Earth. There, she and Corsair take Xavier with them so Shi'ar advanced technology can heal him.

 

Xavier leaves Magneto in charge of the school, but some of the X-Men are unwilling to forgive their former enemy. Cyclops loses a duel for the leadership of the X-Men against Storm, then leaves them and joins the other four original X-Men to form a new team called X-Factor.

 

In the meantime, Charles becomes stranded in space with the Starjammers, but he is reunited with his lover Lilandra and relishes his carefree lifestyle.

 

He serves as a member of the Starjammers aboard the starship Starjammer, mobile in the Shi'ar Galaxy. He becomes consort to the Princess-Majestrix Lilandra while in exile, and when she later resumes her throne he takes up residence with her in the Imperial palace on the Shi'ar homeworld. Xavier joins Lilandra in her cause to overthrow her sister Deathbird, taking on the powers of Phoenix temporarily wherein he is named Bald Phoenix by Corsair, but sees that he must return to help the X-Men.

 

Xavier eventually becomes imprisoned by the Skrulls during their attempted invasion of the Shi'ar Empire. Xavier breaks free from imprisonment by Warskrull Prime, and is reunited with the X-Men.

 

A healthy Xavier returns from the Shi'ar Empire and is reunited with both the current and original X-Men teams, and resumes his leadership responsibilities of the united teams. In a battle with his old foe, the Shadow King, in the "Muir Island Saga", Xavier's spine is shattered, returning him to his former paraplegic state, while his son David is seemingly killed. In the following months, Xavier rebuilds the mansion, which previously was rebuilt with Shi'ar technology, and restructures the X-Men into two teams.

 

While holding a mutant rights speech, Xavier is nearly assassinated by Stryfe in the guise of Cable, being infected with a fatal techno-organic virus. For reasons of his own, the villain Apocalypse saves him. As a temporary side-effect, he gains full use of his legs and devotes his precious time to the youngest recruit on his team, Jubilee.

 

With all his students now highly trained adults, Professor Xavier renames his school the Xavier Institute For Higher Learning. Also, he assumes control of a private institution, the Massachusetts Academy, making it a new School for Gifted Youngsters. Another group of young mutants is trained here, Generation X, with Banshee and Emma Frost as headmaster and headmistress, respectively.

 

Professor X is for a time the unknowing host of the evil psionic entity Onslaught, the result of a previous battle with Magneto. In that battle, Magneto uses his powers to rip out the adamantium bonded to Wolverine's skeleton, and a furious Xavier wipes Magneto's mind, leaving him in a coma.

 

From the psychic trauma of Xavier using his powers so violently and the mixing of Magneto's and Xavier's repressed anger, Onslaught is born. Onslaught wreaks havoc, destroying much of Manhattan, until many of Marvel's superheroes—including the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the Hulk—destroy him.

 

Xavier is left without his telepathy and, overcome with guilt, leaves the X-Men and is incarcerated for his actions.

 

He later returns to the X-Men after Operation: Zero Tolerance, in which he is shocked by the cruel act of being turned over to the mutant-hating Bastion, following a clash with the sentient Cerebro and a team of impostor X-Men.

 

Xavier questions his dream again and Magneto shortly thereafter is confronted by the X-Men. After the battle, the UN concedes Genosha to Magnus, and Wolverine is angered by Xavier stopping him from getting his revenge on Magneto. Charles and Logan are later trapped in a dimension with different laws of physics, wherein they have to coordinate their moves together and, in the process, gain a better understanding of the other's views.

 

Apocalypse kidnaps the fabled "Twelve" special mutants (Xavier included) whose combined energies would grant him omnipotence. After Apocalypse's defeat with the help of Skrull mutants, Xavier goes with the young Skrulls known as Cadre K to train them and free them from their oppressors, and eventually returns to aid in Legacy Virus research.

 

Mystique and her Brotherhood start a deadly assault on Muir Isle by releasing an altered form of the Legacy Virus, all in retaliation against the election campaign of Robert Kelly, a seeming mutant-hater. Mystique blows up Moira MacTaggert's laboratory complex, fatally wounding her. Charles goes to the astral plane to meet with her and retrieve information on the cure to the Legacy Virus, but after gathering the information does not want to leave her alone. If not for Jean and Cable talking him down and pulling him back, the professor would have died with his first love, who states she has no regrets.

 

As Beast cures the Legacy Virus, many infected Genoshan mutants recover overnight, providing Magneto, the current ruler of Genosha, with an army to start the third World War. He demands Earth's governments accept him as their leader, and abducts and crucifies Xavier in Magda Square for all to see. A loyal member of Magneto's Acolytes, Amelia Voght, cannot stand to see her former lover punished in such a manner and sets him free. Jean Grey and rather untrained newcomers, as most of the team are elsewhere, distract Magneto and Wolverine guts him. Xavier is too late to intervene.

 

Xavier's evil twin Cassandra Nova, whom Xavier attempted to kill while they were both in their mother's womb, orders a group of rogue Sentinels to destroy the independent mutant nation of Genosha.

 

Magneto, who is Genosha's leader, appears to die along with the vast majority of the nation's inhabitants. Nova then takes over Xavier's body. Posing as Xavier, she reveals his mutation to the world, something he needed to do but did not want to sully his reputation over, before going into space and crippling the Shi'ar Empire. The X-Men restore Xavier, but Lilandra, believing that too much disaster has come from the Shi'ar's involvement with the X-Men, annuls her marriage to Xavier.

 

Lilandra previously had gone insane and tried to assassinate Charles on a trip to Mumbai. During this period, a mutant named Xorn joins the X-Men. Xorn uses his healing power to restore Xavier's use of his legs.

 

When the X-Men receive a distress call from a Scottish island, they are surprised to find Juggernaut with nowhere to go, as the island was destroyed by his further-mutated partner in crime, Black Tom Cassidy, who died.

 

Xavier reaches out to his stepbrother and offers him a place in his mansion, with Cain reluctantly accepting. The Juggernaut redeems himself over the next few weeks and joins the X-Men. Xavier finds out that Cain's father preferred him to his own flesh and blood and that they both thought they deserved the abuse they incurred by Kurt; Cain believed this because his father loved someone else's child more than him, and Charles felt guilty about getting in the way. That it is why neither of them stopped Kurt Marko with their powers.

 

Now outed as a mutant, Xavier makes speeches to the public about mutant tolerance. He also founds the X-Corporation, or X-Corp (not to be confused with the X-Corps), with offices all over the world. The purpose of the X-Corp is to watch over mutant rights and help mutants in need.

 

As a result of being out, the school no longer hides the fact that it is a school for mutants and it opens its doors for more mutant (and even human) students to come in.

 

A student named Quentin Quire and members of his gang start a riot at the Xavier Institute during an open house at the school. As a result, Quire and two other students are killed. Uncertain about his dream's validity, Xavier announces that he will step down as headmaster and be succeeded by Jean Grey.

 

Afterwards, Xorn reveals himself to be Magneto, having apparently not died in the Sentinel raid on Genosha. Magneto undoes the restoration of Xavier's ability to walk, kidnaps him, and destroys the X-Mansion (killing several of the students). Then Xorn/Magneto assaults New York, where Cyclops, Fantomex and a few students confront him. After the rest of the X-Men arrive, Xorn/Magneto kills Jean Grey with an electromagnetically induced stroke, and Wolverine decapitates him.

 

With Jean dead, Xavier leaves the school to Cyclops and Emma Frost, to bury Xorn/Magneto in Genosha. In a retcon of Grant Morrison's storyline, there Xavier meets the "real" Magneto, who mysteriously survived Cassandra Nova's assault. The two resolve their differences and attempt to restore their friendship, leading a team of mutants, the Genoshan Excalibur, to rebuild and restore order to the destroyed island nation.

 

At the mansion, the Danger Room (the X-Men's simulated reality training chamber) gains sentience, christens itself "Danger", assumes a humanoid form, and attacks the X-Men before leaving to kill Xavier. With Magneto's help, Xavier holds off Danger until the X-Men arrive. Danger flees, but not before revealing to Colossus that Xavier has known it to be sentient ever since he upgraded it.

 

Colossus is especially offended by this because he had been held captive and experimented upon by Danger's ally, Ord of the Breakworld. Ashamed, Xavier tries to explain to them that by the time he realized what was happening, he could see no other course. The disgusted X-Men leave.

  

House of M

 

In a prelude to House of M, Magneto's daughter Scarlet Witch has a mental breakdown and causes the death of several Avengers. Magneto brings her to Xavier and asks him to use his mental powers to help her.

 

Although aided by Doctor Strange and the appearance of Cassandra Nova, Xavier is unsuccessful. Xavier orders a meeting of the X-Men and Avengers to decide Wanda's fate.

 

Her brother Quicksilver, believing the heroes plan to kill her, speeds off to Genosha and convinces Wanda that she could right the wrongs she inflicted by using her powers to alter reality.

 

Quicksilver somehow forces a tearful Wanda to reveal to him her heart's desires of Magneto, the assembled New Avengers, and the X-Men, and then uses her powers to make them all real.

 

Thanks to Magneto, though, this re-imagined world is a place where a much more numerous mutant-kind are the dominant species, humans a disenfranchised and oppressed 'silent majority', and Magneto himself rules supreme. In this reality, the only proof that Charles Xavier ever existed is a secret monument in Magneto's palace garden, with the engraved message "He died so Genosha could live".

 

After mutant Layla Miller restores the memories of some of the X-Men and Avengers, they head to Genosha where they discover that Magneto has erected a memorial garden for Xavier commemorating his death. Emma is horrified until Cloak fades into the grave and discovers there is no body inside.

 

After a battle, Scarlet Witch again uses her powers to restore reality and, as a slight against her father, causes a large majority mutants to lose their powers, leaving the mutant race on the brink of extinction and causing the lost powers to become an energy mass, the Collective. With reality restored, Xavier is still missing and the X-Men are unable to detect him with Cerebro.

 

Deadly Genesis

 

Xavier returns when Cyclops' and Havok's long-lost brother, Vulcan, is revived by the Collective energy released as a result of the "House of M" incident. Vulcan then attacks the X-Men.

 

Xavier, now depowered but able to walk in the wake of "House of M", reveals that he had gathered and trained another team of X-Men (this one composed of students of Dr. Moira MacTaggert) sometime between the original team and the new X-Men team introduced in Giant Size X-Men #1.

 

This team included Vulcan as a member. Like the "Giant Size" X-Men team, McTaggert's former students were sent to rescue the original X-Men from Krakoa, the living island. However, after rescuing Cyclops, McTaggert's former students were seemingly killed. Upon Cyclops' return, Xavier removed Cyclops' memories of the death of Vulcan and his teammates and began assembling the "Giant Size" X-Men. Vulcan skirmishes with the X-Men and eventually flees into space.

 

In spite of Cyclops' feelings, Xavier forms a new team including Havok and Darwin, the lone other survivors of Moira's students. Xavier seeks to confront Vulcan before he can enact his vengeance against the Shi'ar empire, which killed Vulcan's mother.

 

While en route to the Shi'ar homeworld, Xavier is abducted and is later thrown into the M'Kraan Crystal by Vulcan. Darwin follows Xavier into the crystal and pulls Xavier out. This somehow restores Xavier's lost telepathy. With help from his longtime lover, Lilandra, Xavier escapes back to Earth with several of his X-Men.

 

Upon Xavier's return to Earth, as seen in the World War Hulk storyline, he begins to search for lost mutants such as Magneto. Charles' search for more mutants is interrupted by the Hulk, who was sent into extraterrestrial exile by the Illuminati, a group of powerful superbeings to which Xavier belongs.

 

Xavier had no part in (and did not know of) the Hulk exile decision, but Xavier admits to Hulk that he would have concurred to a temporary exile so Bruce Banner could be cured of transforming into the Hulk.

 

However, he also tells the Hulk he would not have agreed to permanent exile. Xavier attempts to surrender to the Hulk, but after viewing the X-Mansion's large graveyard dedicated to post-M-Day mutant deaths, The Hulk concludes the mutants have suffered enough and leaves the Mansion grounds on his own accord. While the X-Men tend to the wounded, Cyclops finally forgives Professor X.

 

Messiah Complex

 

While using Cerebra and talking to Beast during the Messiah Complex storyline, Charles detects a new mutant so powerful it fries Cerebra's system. He asks Cyclops to send out a team to find out about the mutant.

 

Once the team has come back empty handed, he argues with Scott for not telling him about the team he deployed to find former Acolytes. Scott tells him outright that he does not need him to run the X-Men anymore.

 

This upsets Charles and annoys him later on when he overhears Cyclops briefing X-Factor on the situation. He also approaches the New X-Men in an attempt to help them figure out a non-violent way to help against the Purifiers, but is quickly rebuked by Surge, who questions where he was when they were getting attacked the first time, and that they did not need to learn from him.

 

Charles questions Cyclops' decision to send X-Force to hunt down his own son, Cable, in front of the students. Cyclops then tells Xavier that he is a distraction that will keep getting in the way and that he must leave the mansion.

 

Xavier is contacted by Cable, who lost the mutant newborn to the traitorous actions of Bishop, who in turn lost the child to the Marauders, and tells him that he is the only one who can help Cable save the future.

 

In the final fight, Xavier is accidentally shot in the head by Bishop. Immediately afterward Xavier's body disappears and Cyclops declares that there are no more X-Men.

 

Professor Xavier survives Bishop's gunshot but falls into a coma. Xavier is kidnapped by Exodus, Tempo, and Karima Shapandar. Exodus tries to heal Xavier, Xavier mentally fights Exodus.

 

Exodus finally approaches Magneto, who is apparently still depowered, for help. Magneto and Karima Shapandar are able to stir Xavier's memories and coax him out of his coma, though Xavier remains slightly confused and partly amnesiac. Later, Exodus confronts Magneto about Joanna Cargill's injury (Magneto was forced to shoot a laser through her eyeball to prevent her attempted an assassination of Xavier).

 

Exodus nearly kills Magneto, and Xavier drags Exodus onto the Astral Plane, putting Xavier's own newly restored mind at stake. Xavier defeats Exodus after a harrowing psionic battle, and Exodus reveals the reason he abducted Xavier and to restore his mind: Exodus wants Xavier to lead the Acolytes and find the mutant messiah child (now under the guardianship of Cable) to indoctrinate the child into their cause.

 

Xavier refuses. Emma Frost's telepathy picks up on the psychic fight, and Emma informs Cyclops that Xavier is alive. Xavier parts company with Magneto and Karima to try to regain his lost memories by visiting people from his past.

 

The first person Charles visits is Carter Ryking, who had gone insane after losing his powers. Charles reads Carter's memories and discovers that when the two were children they were used as test subjects by Nathan Milbury of the Black Womb Project, with the approval of Charles' father, Doctor Brian Xavier.

 

Xavier makes the connection Milbury and X-Men villain, Mister Sinister, who has apparently long been manipulating Charles' life in addition to other X-Men. Afterwards, he discovers he has been targeted by assassins.

 

Charles eventually discovers Mister Sinister had set up Charles, Sebastian Shaw, Juggernaut, and Ryking (Hazard) as potential new hosts for Sinister's mind.

 

Bleeding slowly to death, he apparently gives in to Sinister becoming the new Mister Sinister. But in reality, Xavier is still battling Sinister for control of his body.

 

As Sebastian Shaw and Gambit destroy Sinister's Cronus Machine, the device that he used to transfer his consciousness into new hosts, Xavier drives Sinister out of his body permanently.

 

Xavier thanks Shaw and Gambit for their help and declares he must go and see Cyclops immediately. Professor X returns to the X-Mansion to find it destroyed after recent events.

 

Afterwards, Xavier leaves the ruins of the X-Mansion to secretly meet up Cyclops by psychically coercing his former student for the visit. Xavier explains to Cyclops about the recent events with Mr. Sinister and tries to explain to Cyclops how Sinister has been manipulating Scott's and Jean's lives since when they were children.

 

Xavier attempts to have Scott give him permission to scan Scott's mind for traces of Sinister's influences, but instead, Scott turns the tables on Xavier by revealing that he has secretly invited Emma Frost into their entire meeting and also into Xavier's mind.

 

While in his mind, Emma forces Xavier to relive each of his morally ambiguous decisions under altruistic pretenses. As the issue continues, Charles realizes his human arrogance and that while some of his decisions were morally wrong, he must move forward with his life and deal with the consequences.

 

Emma ends her incursion into Xavier's mind by reminding him of Moira MacTaggert's last words. As he reflects on Moira's words, Xavier gives Cyclops his blessing to lead the X-Men and leaves to find his own path.

 

Following his encounter with Wolverine (in the "Original Sin" Arc) Professor Xavier seeks out his step-brother, the unstoppable Juggernaut in an attempt to reform him. After a conversation about the meaning of the word "Juggernaut" and a review of Juggernaut and Xavier's shared history Xavier offers Cain an empty box as a gift.

 

Confused by Xavier's gift Cain attempts to kill the Professor bringing an entire sports bar down over their heads in the process. Later Cain battles the X-Men in his full Juggernaut armor and conquers the planet.

 

Just as everything appears to be under the Juggernaut's control Xavier reappears and informs him that everything that has just taken place except for Juggernaut destroying the bar took place in Cain's mind.

 

A baffled Cain demands to know how Xavier managed to overcome his psychically shielded helmet to which the Professor replies that he decided to visit Cain in his sleep.

 

Professor Xavier then informs him that he now understands Cain as a person and that he will not attempt to get in his way or reform him again. But Xavier also warns Cain that if he gets in the way of the Professor's path to redemption Xavier will stop him permanently. Following his encounter with Cain it has been revealed that Xavier is now searching for Rogue.

 

After his bruising encounter with Cyclops and Emma Frost, Professor X is forced to revisit the biggest challenge and the biggest failure of his career, Wolverine, when the feral mutant asks for Charles' help in freeing his son from the clutches of the Hellfire Club.

 

As the two search for Daken, Wolverine reveals that when he first joined the X-Men he attempted to assassinate Xavier due to some unknown programming. In response, the Professor broke Logan's mind and rebuilt it so that any and all programming he received was forgotten. Logan also revealed that the real reason Xavier asked him to join the X-Men was that Charles "needed a weapon".

 

Eventually Professor Xavier and Wolverine locate Sebastian Shaw's mansion and attack his minions, just as they are about to enter a bomb explodes from within catching them both off guard. From the wreckage emerges an angry Sebastian who immobilizes Wolverine.

 

Meanwhile, Miss Sinister knocks Daken unconscious and has him taken to the med lab in the mansion's basement. As Shaw prepares to deliver a killing blow to Xavier, Wolverine recovers and stops him telling Xavier to rescue his son. Professor Xavier locates the med lab and after a quick psychic battle with Miss Sinister enters Daken's fractured mind. While in Daken's mind Xavier discovers Romulus's psychic tampering and comments that Daken's mind is even more broken than Wolverine's was.

 

Before Xavier can heal Daken a psychic bomb explodes causing Xavier to become comatose and Daken to wake up. Miss Sinister arrives and attempts to manipulate Daken who reveals that the psychic bomb in his head restored his memories and stabs Miss Sinister in the chest.

 

Meanwhile, Wolverine defeats Shaw and enters the mansion to find Daken standing over an unconscious Xavier preparing to kill him. Wolverine tells Daken that he will not let him hurt Xavier and the two fight.

 

Overcome with guilt over what happened to Daken and Itsu, Wolverine allows himself to be beaten. Just as Daken appears to have won Xavier pulls both of them onto the astral plane revealing that the psychic bomb had little effect on him because his psyche was already shattered.

 

Xavier then explains to Wolverine and Daken that Romulus is solely responsible for Itsu's death and that he lied to Daken about everything because he wanted Wolverine to become his weapon. As the three converse, Daken returns to the physical plane and prevents Shaw from killing Xavier.

 

With the truth revealed Wolverine and Daken decide to kill Romulus. As the two depart Wolverine tells Xavier that he forgives him for all of the dark moments in their history. Wolverine acknowledges that Professor Xavier allowed him to become a hero. Wolverine then tells the Professor that he hopes he will one day be able to forgive him for choosing to kill Romulus.

 

Professor Xavier recruits Gambit to go with him to Australia to find and help Rogue who is currently staying at the X-Men's old base in the Outback; unaware Danger is using Rogue as a conduit for her revenge against him.

 

In a prelude to the "Secret Invasion" storyline, Professor X was at the meeting of the Illuminati when it came to the discussion about the Skrulls planning an invasion by taking out Earth's heroes and posing as them. He claims he was unable to distinguish that Black Bolt had been replaced by a Skrull, and his powers were tested quickly by the Black Bolt Skrull.

 

Professor X leaves after learning even he can no longer trust the others, yet appears to have severely restricted the number of people he informs of the forthcoming alien invasion, as the X-Men were not prepared for the Skrulls, at least at first.

 

Xavier was not seen again during the events of Secret Invasion, though his X-Men in San Francisco are successful at repelling the invaders there through the use of the modified Legacy Virus.

 

Dark Reign

 

During the Dark Reign storyline, Professor X convinces Exodus to disband the Acolytes. A H.A.M.M.E.R. helicopter arrives and from inside appears Norman Osborn, who wants to talk to him.

 

During the Dark Avengers' arrival in San Francisco to enforce martial law and squelch the anti-mutant riots occurring in the city, Xavier appears (back in his wheelchair) in the company of Norman Osborn and publicly denounces Cyclops' actions and urges him to turn himself in.

 

However, this Xavier was revealed to be Mystique who Osborn found to impersonate Xavier in public. The real Xavier is shown in prison on Alcatraz and slowly being stripped of his telepathic powers while in psionic contact with Beast, who was arrested earlier for his part in the anti-mutant riots.

 

It was also revealed by Emma Frost that she and Professor X are both Omega Class Telepaths when she manages to detect the real Professor X.

 

Professor X helps Emma Frost enter Sentry's mind. However, as Emma frees him of the Void's influence, a minute sliver of the entity itself remains in her mind. Xavier quickly tells her to remain in her diamond armor state to prevent the Void from gaining access to her psi-powers. Professor X is later seen with Emma Frost where Beast is recuperating.

 

After what happened at Utopia, Xavier has come to live on the risen Asteroid M, rechristened Utopia, along with the rest of the X-Men, X-Club, and mutant refugees and is also allowed to join the Utopia lead council (Cyclops, Storm, Namor, Iceman, Beast, Wolverine and Emma Frost).

 

While he no longer continues to openly question every move that Cyclops makes, he is still concerned about some of his leadership decisions. Xavier had wanted to return to the mainland to clear his name, but in the aftermath of Osborn declaring Utopia as a mutant detention area, Cyclops refused to let him leave, stating that it would be a tactical advantage to have him as an ace in the hole in case the need arose.

 

To that end, he has kept Xavier out of the field and instead relied on Emma Frost, Psylocke and the Stepford Cuckoos respectively for their own psionic talents.

 

While attending the funeral of Yuriko Takiguchi, Magneto arrives at Utopia, apparently under peaceful motives. Xavier does not believe it, and attacks Magneto telepathically, causing Cyclops to force him to stand down. He later apologizes to Magneto for acting out of his old passions from their complicated relationship, which Magneto accepts.

 

Next, Professor Xavier is seen on Utopia delivering a eulogy at Nightcrawler's funeral. Like the other X-Men, he is deeply saddened by Kurt's death and anxious about the arrival of Cable and Hope.

 

Xavier is seen using his powers to help his son Legion control his many personalities and battle the Nimrods.

 

Afterwards, Professor X is seen surveying the aftermath of the battle from a helicopter. As Hope descends to the ground and cradles Cable's lifeless arm, Xavier reflects on everything that has transpired and states that, while he feels that Hope has indeed come to save mutant kind and revive his dream, she is still only a young woman and will have a long and difficult journey before she can truly achieve her potential.

 

AvX

 

During the "Avengers vs. X-Men" storyline, the Phoenix Force is split into five pieces and bonded with Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Colossus and Magik (who become known as the Phoenix Five).

 

Eventually, Cyclops and Frost come to possess the full Phoenix Force, and Professor X is instrumental in confronting them both, and dies in the ensuing battle with Cyclops.

 

The Phoenix Force is subsequently forced to abandon Cyclops as a host by the efforts of both Hope Summers and the Scarlet Witch.

 

Xavier's body is later stolen by the Red Skull's S-Men while the group also captures Rogue and Scarlet Witch. Xavier's brain is removed and fused to the brain of the Red Skull. After Rogue and Scarlet Witch snapped out of the fight they were in, they find the lobotomized body of Professor X.

 

Red Skull uses the new powers conferred upon him by Professor X's brain to provoke anti-mutant riots. His plans are foiled by the Avengers and the X-Men, and the Skull escapes.

 

Professor X's spirit is later seen in the Heaven dimension along with Nightcrawler's spirit at the time when Azazel invades Heaven.

 

During the AXIS storyline, a fragment of Professor X's psyche (which had escaped the scrubbing of his memories) still existed in Red Skull's mind preventing him from unleashing the full potential of Professor X's powers.

 

During a fight with the Stark Sentinels, Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch attempt to cast a spell to invert the axis of Red Skull's brain and bring out the fragment of Professor X to defeat Onslaught.

 

Doctor Strange was targeted and captured by the Sentinels before they could cast the spell. When Magneto arrived with his supervillain allies, Doctor Doom and Scarlet Witch attempted to cast the inversion spell again and Red Onslaught was knocked unconscious and reverted to his Red Skull form.

 

Although they did not know whether Professor X was now in control, the Avengers decided to be cautious and take Red Skull to Stark Tower.

 

It was later revealed that the spell had actually caused all the heroes and villains present to undergo a "moral inversion" rather than simply bringing out Professor X in the Skull, with the result that the Skull and other villains became heroic while the Avengers and X-Men present became villainous. Eventually, the inversion was undone.

 

After the Skull mounts a telepathic assault that nearly allows him to take control of the Avengers, he is defeated when Deadpool places Magneto's old helmet on Rogue, allowing her to knock out the Skull and take him to Beast.

 

Beast is subsequently able to perform brain surgery on the Skull, extracting the part of Xavier's brain that was grafted onto the villain's own brain without causing any apparent damage to the Skull. Rogers attempts to claim the fragment for himself, but Rogue flies up and incinerates the fragment with the aid of the Human Torch, the two expressing hope that Xavier will rest in peace.

 

Return

 

The astral form of Professor Xavier has since been revealed to be imprisoned in the Astral Plane after Shadow King somehow acquired it upon Professor X's death.

 

After what appeared to be years in the Astral Plane, Professor X is able to trick Shadow King into playing him in a 'game' that lures Rogue, Mystique and Fantomex onto the Astral Plane, while turning others into carriers for the Shadow King's 'contagious' psychic essence. With the Shadow King certain of his victory, he fails to realize that Xavier's apparent 'surrender' to his game was really just him biding his time until the Shadow King's influence was distracted long enough for him to drop his already-subtly-weakened guard long enough for Xavier to break his bonds, luring in the three aforementioned X-Men as their identities were already fundamentally malleable.

 

With the Shadow King defeated, Xavier is apparently returned to the real world in the body of Fantomex, Fantomex reasoning that nobody really knows who he is as an individual beyond his status as one of the X-Men whereas this act of sacrifice will ensure that he is remembered for a great deed.

 

Proteus has spent years trapped in a psionic hellscape of the Astral Plane, where The Shadow King reigned supreme, only to escape.

 

Part of the reason that he could was the escape of Charles Xavier (who now chooses to go by X, since he is now in a younger body after escaping), and now X leads the X-Men directly into an ambush, as Proteus has warped an entire village with his powers, leading to a mind-to-mind battle that leaves X on the receiving end of a psychic beatdown.

 

Proteus has started his garden and his seeds are planted all over the world. Psylocke is in command and has a plan which mainly consists of Archangel using metal and Mystique morphing into his mother.

 

Once they drain him, Rogue and Bishop convert his energy and release him back to the universe. Whilst this all went down Psylocke and X combined forces to burn out the seeds across the planet. As they are working on it they discover they are not enough to accomplish the task. X mentions the network of psychics the Shadow King was using and that Betsy who is in control should tap into it.

 

She agrees and does so yet unbeknownst to her X was possessed by the Shadow King who violently erupts from X's head.

 

Following X's apparent death after the Shadow King exploded from his skull, the psychic villain tears the X-Men apart until X literally pulls himself back together (a feat he later refuses to explain), and he and Psylocke team up to harness the power of all of Earth's psychics to destroy the Shadow King.

 

As Psylocke says she feels no psychic trace of him anywhere, X implants comforting post-hypnotic psychic suggestions in his allies and then erases their memories (including allowing Warren Worthington to switch between his identities at will). Only Psylocke's memory is left intact, with X telling her she will be the one to "keep him honest" while he embarks on a new mission.

 

Dawn of X

 

X has since made his presence known to his former students and reveals his new plan for all mutantkind. Now clad in a Cerebro-like helmet, Xavier has apparently abandoned his dream for peaceful coexistence, and had turned Krakoa into a sovereign nation state for mutants as well as use it to apparently heal the X-Men from their ordeals during the showdown against the forces of O.N.E.

 

He then leads the X-Men into planting in seeds in strategic locations around the world and Mars, which, overnight, grow into massive plantlike "Habitats". As it turns out, these "Habitats" – and the plants that grew them – are extensions of Krakoa.

 

Through the advancement of mutant technology combined with Krakoa's unique abilities as a living mutant island, Professor X and the X-Men have embassies around the world. Also through this combination of technology and mutant power, Xavier have developed three drugs that could change human life – a pill that extends human life by five years, an adaptable universal antibiotic, and a pill that cures "diseases of the mind, in humans".” In exchange for recognizing the sovereignty of Krakoa, Professor X will give these drugs to mankind, with mutants living in peace on the island.

 

Xavier and Magneto later meet with Raven Darkholm inside his sanctum. The two mutant leaders both greatly pleased with the success of her mission as she presents what they'ed petitioned her to steal. A mysterious USB tab containing sensitive information stolen from Damage Control, Mystique would inquire for her payment as she had met their demands.

 

However, Xavier mentions that he still had more demands that needed to be met as they were building their protected future of Homo Sapiens Superior, seeming to psychokinetically beckon the contents of her theft into his hands while Mystique questions how much more needed to be done for his ultimate pet project.

 

Xavier and Magneto reveal the contents of the USB drive to Cyclops, which are shown to be information on Orchis, an organization dedicated to responding to a large-scale mutant threat and the plans of a Mother Mold.

 

They believe that the creation of the Mother Mold will herald a new generation of Sentinels and along with it, Nimrod. They task Cyclops with assembling a team to destroy the Mother Mold station. Although the team (composed of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Husk, Mystique, Archangel, and Monet) is successfully, they are all killed in the process. X mourns them, vowing "No more."

 

Xavier is revealed to have upgraded Cerebro with the help of Forge, which is now able to copy and store the minds of mutants in a database.

 

After the Five (Hope Summers, Goldballs, Elixir, Proteus, and Tempus) are able to grow the bodies of deceased mutants, Xavier is able to copy the minds back in these empty shells. Thus, he is able to restore Cyclops's team, thanking them for what they did.

 

At the U.N., Xavier, Beast, and Emma celebrate with other ambassadors for the recognition of Krakoa as a sovereign nation. Xavier telepathically converses with Emma, revealing that he knows that she manipulated the Russian ambassador to abstain from the vote, before thanking her for her service.

 

Two days after the U.N. vote, Xavier, Magneto, and Wolverine are in Krakoa waiting besides several portals. While Wolverine expresses his misgivings about the upcoming event, Xavier and Magneto assure him all will be alright. Soon after, several villainous mutants, including Mister Sinister, Sebastian Shaw, Exodus, Selene and Apocalypse arrive through the portals.

 

Apocalypse in particular expresses satisfaction at arriving and Krakoa responds in the same way. Magneto and Xavier reveal that they have invited all mutants, even those who have fought against them in the past, to Krakoa, to form a society. The assembled villainous mutants agree to their terms, and Xavier shakes Apocalypse's hand, welcoming him and the others to their home."

 

While peace reigns on Krakoa, a mysterious team of assassins HALO drops into the island and assassinates Xavier, destroying his Cerebro helmet in the process.

 

The Quiet Council hides Xavier's death from the rest of the world, and through the activation of a Cerebro backup, and the efforts of The Five, Xavier is reborn once more.

 

Soon after, he partakes in a global conference alongside Magneto and Apocalypse, professing that he still loves humanity, whilst subtly warning them in regards to his previous assassination - and his knowledge of an ongoing assassination attempt at the forum itself, foiled by Cyclops and Gorgon.

 

Powers and Abilities

 

Professor X is a mutant who possesses vast telepathic powers, and is among the strongest and most powerful telepaths in the Marvel Universe. He is able to perceive the thoughts of others or project his own thoughts within a radius of approximately 250 miles (400 km).

 

Xavier's telepathy once covered the entire world; although following this, Magneto altered the Earth's electromagnetic field to restrict Xavier's telepathic range.

 

While not on Earth, Xavier's natural telepathic abilities have reached across space to make universal mental contact with multiple alien races.

 

With extreme effort, he can also greatly extend the range of his telepathy. He can learn foreign languages by reading the language centers of the brain of someone adept, and alternately "teach" languages to others in the same manner. Xavier once trained a new group of mutants mentally, subjectively making them experience months of training together, while only hours passed in the real world.

 

Xavier's vast psionic powers enable him to manipulate the minds of others, warp perceptions to make himself seem invisible, project mental illusions, cause loss of particular memories or total amnesia, and induce pain or temporary mental and/or physical paralysis in others.

 

Within close range, he can manipulate almost any number of minds for such simple feats. However, he can only take full possession of one other mind at a time, and must strictly be within that person's physical presence. He is one of the few telepaths skilled enough to communicate with animals and even share their perceptions.

 

He can also telepathically take away or control people's natural bodily functions and senses, such as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or even mutant powers.

 

A side effect of his telepathy is that he has an eidetic memory and his brain can assimilate and process impossibly huge amounts of raw data in an astonishingly short amount of time.

 

He has displayed telepathic prowess sufficient to confront Ego the Living Planet (while aided by Cadre K) as well as narrowly defeat Exodus.

 

However, he cannot permanently "reprogram" human minds to believe what he might want them to believe even if he wanted to do so, explaining that the mind is an organism that would always recall the steps necessary for it to reach the present and thus 'rewrite' itself to its original setting if he tried to change it.

 

However, his initial reprogramming of Wolverine lasted several years, despite Wolverine overcoming the reprogramming much faster than an ordinary human because of his healing factor.

 

He is able to project from his mind 'bolts' composed of psychic energy, enabling him to stun the mind of another person into unconsciousness, inflict mental trauma, or even cause death. These 'bolts' inflict damage only upon other minds, having a negligible effect on non-mental beings, if any.

 

The manner in which Xavier's powers function indicates that his telepathy is physical in some way, as it can be enhanced by physical means (for example, Cerebro), but can also be disrupted by physical means (for example, Magneto's alteration of the Earth's magnetic field).

 

Xavier can perceive the distinct mental presence/brain waves of other superhuman mutants within a small radius of himself. To detect mutants to a wider area beyond this radius, he must amplify his powers through Cerebro and subsequently Cerebra, computer devices of his own design which are sensitive to the psychic/physical energies produced by the mind.

 

Professor X can project his astral form into a psychic dimension known as the astral plane. There, he can use his powers to create objects, control his surroundings, and even control and destroy the astral forms of others. He cannot project this form over long distances.

 

Uncanny X-Men writer Ed Brubaker has claimed that, after being de-powered by the Scarlet Witch, and then re-powered by the M'Kraan Crystal, Charles' telepathy is more powerful than was previously known. However, the extent of this enhancement is unknown.

 

Years prior to initial publishing, Charles Xavier had an undefined level of telekinesis. This aspect of his powers were potent enough to cause catastrophic system disruption in computerized appliances.

 

Such an attribute has faded, however. His evil counterpart Cassandra Nova Xavier would possess this ability, indicating he still possessed the potential for them.

 

This potential was proven true after his death and resurgence within the younger, stronger body of Charlie Cluster 7. The Professor, using the moniker X, fashioned a Cerebro like a helmet which acts as a focusing device for his psionic powers and used it to galvanize latent aspects of his X-Gene to stimulate some dormant properties, seemingly using telekinesis to will a flash drive on Mystique's person into his hand.

 

Charles Xavier is a genius with multiple doctorates. He is a world-renowned geneticist, a leading expert in mutation, possesses considerable knowledge of various life sciences, and is the inventor of Cerebro.

He possesses Ph.D.s in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology, and an M.D. in Psychiatry. He is highly talented in devising equipment for utilizing and enhancing psionic powers. He is also a great tactician and strategist, effectively evaluating situations and devising swift responses.

 

During his travels in Asia, Xavier learned martial arts, acquiring "refined combat skills" according to Magneto. When these skills are coordinated in tandem with his telepathic abilities, Xavier is a dangerous unarmed combatant, capable of sensing the intentions of others and countering them with superhuman efficiency. He also has extensive knowledge of pressure points.

 

Charles Xavier was also given possession of the Mind Gem. It allows the user to boost mental power and access the thoughts and dreams of other beings. Backed by the Power Gem, it is possible to access all minds in existence simultaneously. Like all other former Illuminati members, Xavier has sworn to never use the gem and to keep its location hidden.

 

The Xavier Protocols

 

Totally NOT a blatant rip-off of the Batman Protocols from DC... /end sarcasm

 

The Xavier Protocols are a set of doomsday plans created by Professor X. The protocols detail the best way to kill many powerful mutant characters, including the X-Men and Xavier himself, should they become too large of a danger.

 

The Xavier Protocols are first mentioned during the Onslaught crossover and first seen in Excalibur #100 in Moira MacTaggert's lab. Charles Xavier compiled a list of the Earth's most powerful mutants and plans on how to defeat them if they become a threat to the world. They are first used after Onslaught grows too powerful.

 

Only parts of the actual protocols are ever shown. In the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover Bastion obtains an encrypted copy of the protocols, intending to use them against the X-Men.

 

However, Cable infiltrates the X-Mansion and secures all encrypted files before Bastion has a chance to decrypt them.

 

Due to the tampering of Bastion and his Sentinels, the X-Mansion computer system Cerebro gains autonomy and seeks to destroy the X-Men by employing its knowledge of the Xavier Protocols. In a virtual environment created by Professor X, Cerebro executes the Xavier Protocols against the X-Men.

 

Each protocol is activated by the presence of a different combination of X-Men and were written by Xavier himself: Code 0-0-0 (Charles Xavier) was activated by Moira MacTaggert, Cyclops, and Jean Grey.

 

This file is both an entry on Charles Xavier, as well as an introduction to the Xavier Protocols. It contained a holographic image of Charles Xavier, reading the following message: "Moira, Scott, Jean; if you three are seeing these images, then I have become a mortal threat to my X-Men. In this instance, I must be stopped by any means necessary. Some years ago, I made a study of various forms of possible defense against my own psychic abilities. The image next to me is that of an anti-psionic armor. The wearer should be protected from my talent. When I finish speaking, a blueprint for this armor will be downloaded."

 

Code 0-2-1 (Wolverine) was activated by Archangel, Cyclops, and Jean Grey. Code 1-3-9 (Cable) was activated by Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Cannonball. Other X-Men who have faced their Xavier Protocols are Colossus, Rogue, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Gambit.

 

⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽

_____________________________

A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.

 

Secret Identity: Charles Francis Xavier

 

Publisher: Marvel

 

First appearance: The X-Men #1 (September 1963)

 

Created by: Stan Lee (writer)

Jack Kirby (artist)

 

Professor X last seen back in BP 2019 Day 234!

I wasn't going to post today but after what happened on Saturday I had a lot more to think about yesterday. I've been making plans to potentially take my first steps out in public in London with friends later this month, though I had to reject one of the plans on the basis that it would mean being right around near where my mother works. With that thought in my mind, I found myself looking up the website of her chambers (she's a family barrister) and looking at her profile. Aside from the fact that she's clearly much more organised and efficient with her work than she is at home, there was one thing that threw me. On the list of specific areas she was able to handle was 'LGBT parenting'!

 

I really wasn't sure what to make of that. On the one hand, that presumably comes from having some sort of training on the issue, as well as having a little experience with my Bi-sexual sister (though as far as I'm aware she's only had a single brief same-sex relationship) but I still question whether than changes how much I can trust her to know. At the very least it must be very different handling these issues professionally to at home. She mentioned that she could see the signs with my sister (though as I see so little of her these days I was the last person in the family to know, even after my grandfather.) but I think she's still completely oblivious about me.

 

It took months to settle the 'shall I tell her or not' issue the first time, so it's a big complication to be thrown up again. I at least got close enough that she knows there's a big secret I'm not willing to reveal. I still don't think that she's really capable of understanding, professional training or not (and my sister is a very different situation). I imagine one day she and my sisters will be told but that's probably some way off. It doesn't help that she's legendarily incapable of discression, especially when it comes to my step-father (someone I have a heck of a lot of problems with) who is likely to see it as something silly or to make fun of in a pathetic and unfunny way as he does.

 

I've never been convinced that enough would change for it to be worth it, as well as seeing a big gap between mere 'acceptance', which I do feel at least more confident about, and understanding. If I were to dress up in my girl things around the house it would probably still attract a bit of attention and comment. My reasoning has always been that if it's not going to make a difference or lead to any developments, and if I don't feel the need to do so, why take that leap and complicate things? In fact why does it have to be so complicated for us girls in the first place? :(

No. 18 The Stamp

Some words make people grow. Other words make people small. The loud and angry words used by the man with the stripes on his shoulders made the guard at the departure hall shrink, smaller and smaller… I almost felt sorry for the guy as he opened the doors for us.

‘Right, we’ll call it a draw.’

Finally we were able to change our boarding passes. Now all we needed was to get through customs, board our flight and we’d be on our way home.

I passed through the passport check and waited for my brother further back in the cue. The customs officer took a look at my brother, leafed through his passport, put it aside and told my brother to wait at the back of the cue. What just happened? Time passed and I started to get worried. I surely did not want to miss our flight.

There was a stamp missing in my brother’s ‘service’ passport. It was missing an entry-stamp. Apparently some customs officer had had a bad day. Not this one. This man revelled in this inconsistency."

One supervisor appeared, then another. We tried again: "This is a service passport. If there is a problem, please contact the embassy." Reasoning of diplomatic pressure was clearly not going to work. To solve this problem we would have to return to the main police office in Quetta(!), fill in the proper paperwork and get the right stamp. I tried to stay calm and explain. “There is no time. We have a funeral to attend to.” I looked at my watch.

“Our cousin passed away on what was supposed to be her wedding day and now you are preventing us from being at her funeral because someone forgot to place a stamp somewhere!!”

Family ties play a large role in Pakistani society and there is a clear sense of importance of both weddings and funerals. Although rules are rules, maybe there was still a small heart in these robots. The supervisors negotiated in Urdu and decided to split up, one taking the ticket, the other taking the passport. We quickly decided to do the same and stick on the men like flies. Time was ticking.

  

Identification (what’s in the image)

1) Sea glass (center and scattered pieces)

Material: Weathered glass fragments (“sea glass”)

Colors visible: seafoam green (large central piece), darker green, white/clear frosted pieces

Description: Rounded edges, matte/frosted surface from long-term abrasion in water

Origin: Broken bottles, jars, tableware tumbled for decades in surf

Notes:

White/clear and green are among the most common sea glass colors

The thick seafoam-green piece suggests older bottle glass (late 1800s–early 1900s)

2) Seashells (multiple species mixed)

Type: Marine mollusk shells (gastropods + bivalves)

Material: Primarily calcium carbonate

 

Visible forms:

 

Spiral shells (gastropods):

Smooth orange/tan shell (foreground) → likely a moon snail / naticid-type shell

Smaller spiral shells with banding patterns (background)

Bivalves (clams/scallops):

White ribbed fragment (center-left) → scallop fragment

Various smooth clam halves scattered throughout

 

General description:

 

Smooth, polished by surf

Color variation from natural pigments and mineral deposition

Mix of intact shells and fragments typical of beach drift

3) Minerals / rocks

A. Purple crystal (bottom center)

Likely: Amethyst (variety of quartz)

Features:

Translucent purple crystals

Crystalline structure (not rounded like beach stones)

Origin: Geological mineral, not marine

B. Green translucent chunk (beneath sea glass)

Possibilities:

Slag glass (industrial byproduct)

Or thick bottle glass fragment

Reasoning:

Uniform color, glassy fracture

Thickness suggests man-made origin rather than mineral

C. Red + green mottled rock (right)

Likely: Unakite (metamorphic rock)

Composition:

Green epidote + pink/red feldspar

Texture: Coarse-grained, not glassy

D. Dark brown/black rock (left)

Likely: Iron-rich rock or basalt

Features: Dense, matte, angular

Overall scene interpretation

A curated collection of:

Sea glass (dominant theme)

Mixed seashells

Decorative mineral specimens

Not a natural beach scatter — arrangement is deliberate (studio/macro composition)

Celebrity 90018 in its Freightliner 60 (1965 - 2025) livery draws to a halt at the colour light gantry guarding Golborne Junction with 4M30 the Saturdays only Grangemouth - Crewe 'liner'.

* I took this three weeks ago and have not uploaded reasoning I would eventually get it in sun ... alas not to be, its a rare bird for me.

* Pole @ 3m.

I really can't decide what to post tonight, so I'm going with this one because I like the light, the suggestion of what might be happening off to the left and many of my most recent posts have had a lot of space in them and this one is a little busier! That's the extent of my reasoning really. Hope y'all enjoy.

To be beyond the bonds of time, “True sight from the Heart” is the key. ― Learning from My Rope Team Friend (and to truly see from the Heart it is learning from my Eterna Friend, Nop). Dated: February 2, 2017

 

“I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.” ― Helen Keller

 

If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves. ― Maria Edgeworth

A hundred year storm, mosquitoes, jaggers and quicksand didn't stop me from shooting this eastbound Wheeling 612 train crossing the Youghiogheny River on the afternoon of August 28th, 2016.

 

A massive, massive severe thunderstorm had been brewing off to my southeast that was slowly pushing its way to the north prior to the trains arrival. By time the train had shown up, all the light was all but gone due to the thunderstorm approaching.

 

I later continued towards this storm after shooting the train here - only to crest the ridge behind me and see what a storm it was. Now SWPA is no stranger to some pretty wild thunderstorms in summertime, but wow did this one take the cake.

 

This same storm ended up causing catastrophic flooding throughout much of the Connellsville, PA area that resulted in a remarkable 5.12 inches of rain! falling within a 2 hour time period. Miraculously - no one was killed, but the property damage left people cleaning up for months to come following the storm. Along with many houses along nearby creeks needing to be demolished for safety reasoning's.

 

I tried every backroad I knew to try and get around the flooding into Connellsville, but just couldn't due to such a extreme amount of rain falling in that short period. Everything around was completely impassable, so I called it a day and headed for home. Back at home, roughly 35 miles northwest of Connellsville, it had not even so much as drizzled that same evening. Definitely was a day I'll never forget.

Pentax 645N SMC Pentax - FA 645 1:2.8 45mm TMX 400 LegacyPro EcoPro 1:1 11/11/2023

Gondolas took us to the top of the summit overlooking Squamish and Howe Sound. It took about 45 minutes to convince my wife to come to the top. Reasoning from my wife's side went something like this, "Are you prepared to die today". She finally acquiesced when i agreed to pay for the tickets and the funerals. I still can't understand her reluctance since she was the Nancy Greene of the ski hills in her home town and rode the chair lifts and gondolas to the mountain tops practically every day of her teenage youth.

Do we use circular reasoning without realizing it? Most say your argument fails when you use circular reasoning.

 

"However, not all circular reasoning is fallacious. Certain standards must be assumed. Dr. Jason Lisle gave this example of a non-arbitrary use of circular reasoning:

  

Without laws of logic, we could not make an argument.

We can make an argument.

Therefore, there must be laws of logic.

While this argument is circular, it is a non-fallacious use of circular reasoning. Since we couldn’t prove anything apart from the laws of logic, we must presuppose the laws of logic even to prove they exist. In fact, if someone were trying to disprove that laws of logic exist, he’d have to use the laws of logic in his attempt, thereby refuting himself. Your non-Christian friend must agree there are certain standards that can be proven with circular reasoning.

  

Your basic presupposition—God exists and has revealed Himself in His inerrant, authoritative Word—is the ultimate standard. Presupposing God exists to argue that God exists is a reasonable circular argument because without the God of the Bible, we have no basis for assuming the laws of logic and their properties, let alone absolute morality or the uniformity of nature." - answersingenesis.org/apologetics/circular-reasoning/

 

www.NeedGod.com

Black-figured pinax (plate), late style, depicting a youthful, beardless archer, with hair curly in front, earrings, and a high peaked cap. He also wears a jerkin (jacket) and anaxyrides (trousers) in one piece, stippled all over, with a guilloche pattern down the legs. At his side, his bow and quiver, the latter ornamented with guilloche pattern, with open lid in the form of a wing. He's blowing a trumpet (salpinx) with a phorbeia (chinstrap).

 

His clothing is almost entirely Scythian in style. Scythian archers were employed as mercenaries in Athens from the mid-sixth century until 514 BCE, with the Persian conquest of Thrace. I assumed this meant he *is* Scythian, but the British Museum has a somewhat odd reasoning behind why they think he's really Greek: he's clean-shaven. Perhaps the trumpet is part of their reasoning ...

 

This archer is blowing the salpinx, whose sound the Greeks most associated with war. It was the instrument often used for signaling, summoning crowds and starting chariot races. Aristides Quintilianus described the necessity of the salpinx and salpingtis (a player of the salpinx) in battle in his treatise, On Music. He explains that each command to troops was given using specific tones or "melodies" played on the salpinx. This action allowed for an entire army to receive a command at once as well as provide a level of secrecy as these salpinx calls were specific to a group and would be unknown to an opponent. Because it could be difficult to hear its tones over the sound of war, it was generally used before fighting began, to gather the men to battle and sound the charge.

 

This plate was painted by Psiax, who worked in both the conventional black-figure and the new red-figure techniques. The design, with the single black figure set on a plain clay background, looks like a translation into black-figure of a contemporary red-figure decorative scheme. Comparing it with a red-figure plate by the painter Epiktetos, which also shows a single archer, the opportunities offered by the newer technique are clear. The red-figure archer stands out more boldly against his black background; more varied and intricate patterns can be achieved because the details of his costume are painted rather than incised.

 

Greek, Attic, ca. 520-500 BCE. Painted by Psiax.

 

British Museum, London (1867,0508.941)

Driving down to Port Alfred I saw this little boy in the car in front of us holding his vuvuzela. I loved the wistful almost dreamy look on his face and the way he was holding onto his precious noise-maker. Not a good shot but I just loved the mood.

This is for Monday Photo Challenges and Thursday Retreads challenge which was "Something that is either old, new, borrowed or blue". My reasoning? By now the World Soccer Cup is almost old and I am sure you are all feeling that the vuvuzela is something very old (!), to this little boy it is new, I borrowed his face for this image and the car happened to be blue. Well done me. Go here to see what everyone else did. I love this group

 

www.flickr.com/groups/1091826@N21/

  

And this is also for Geza's special day (I suspect it is his birthday). If you have not been to his site before you have a treat in store. Happy birthday, I think, Geza

www.flickr.com/photos/just_solutions/

What if during the Battle of Coruscant, General Grievous executed Supreme Chancellor Palpatine aboard the Invisible Hand? How would the fate of the galaxy have changed without Palpatine's machinations to drive it towards it's ultimate fate. Ruled over by a tyrannical Galactic Empire.

 

Would the Clone War have continued? Would Dooku assume the role as Dark Lord of the Sith? What would have become of Anakin Skywalker's fear of losing Padme during child birth? Would he have continued down the dark path? Or would he have sought the guidance of a close friend?

 

The possible ripple effects of Palpatine's death are endless, due to the role he played on both sides of the Clone War as well as orchestrating the downfall of Anakin Skywalker. In my mind, having lost a non-Jedi confidant to confide his fears, Anakin would likely eventually open up on the matter to Obi-Wan. But that's something to be told in the actual bio.

 

But with the execution of the Republic's head of state, it's likely the Galactic Senate would refuse any calls for a peace deal with the Separatists, instead believing the only way to end the war was to eradicate the Separatist forces. In response to the Chancellor's assassination, it's likely a pro-war senator would be elected Supreme Chancellor thus ensuring further escalation in the Clone War.

 

Anakin Skywalker - Following the loss of his close friend, Chancellor Palpatine, Anakin would find himself gravely concerned about problems with Padme's pregnancy. Though the death of Palpatine would grant him great clarity in his vision, the lack of knowledge as to what this complication would be would slowly start to drive him mad. Eventually, he had no choice but to confess the truth about his marriage to Padme Amidala to his oldest friend and mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kenobi would be apprehensive at first with the Jedi doctrine dictating that the Jedi not form attachments, but ultimately he would promise to protect Anakin's secret out his love and respect for his former apprentice.

 

Eventually, as the Clone Wars escalated and the Republic began a fresh multi-front campaign to push the Separatists from the outer-rim, Padme would go into labour. Unlike his vision however, the complication that Anakin feared, Padme dying during child birth, was not to be. Instead the complication was of a far different nature. Padme gave birth to twins.

 

A son and a daughter who would later be known by the names Luke and Leia.

 

With Obi-Wan present to help with the birth, Anakin would make him the children's godfather out of both respect and love for his former teacher.

 

Slowly but surely, as he continued to fight on the battlefield in the name of the Republic, Anakin would start to utilise more more extreme methods of force use in order to try and force the war towards a swifter revolution. These actions would trouble Obi-Wan, but he understood Anakin's reasoning. All he wanted was an end to the war, both to bring peace to the galaxy and to ensure a safe future for his children.

 

Anakin would soon find himself the target of Count Dooku's new apprentice, and would spar with the Sith apprentice on numerous different occasions before finally striking him down during a duel in the lava fields of Mustafar. This action would make Anakin Skywalker the face of the Jedi war effort against the Separatists, and as such, the Jedi council would take the unusual step of granting him the title of Master despite having not taught an apprentice to knighthood. His position on the council would slowly start to make Anakin feel appreciated by his fellow Jedi, and he would eventually become more humble, realising that even though he was destined to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the force, he still had much to learn. The more self conscious Anakin would slowly come to accept the path of the Jedi and fully embrace their ways, even going so far as to dress in the more typical Jedi robes, a symbol of his development from Jedi Knight, to Jedi Master.

 

Despite this though, the shadow of his greatest secret would loom over him. His family. Skywalker had always longed for a family of his own and feared what the Jedi council would do were they to learn the truth. It wouldn't be until Jedi Master Mace Windu was defeated and killed by the reigning Sith Lord, Count Dooku that Anakin would confess his secret to Grandmaster Yoda. Leader of the Jedi council. To Anakin's surprise, Yoda did not seem angry or annoyed at Skywalker's secret. In fact, he appeared proud. Yoda would remark on how the Clone War had shown the Jedi the importance of life and that it was only right that Skywalker would lead them into a new era.

 

He wasn't any Jedi.

 

He was the first of a new generation of Jedi. Due to his confidence in Skywalker's abilities and trust in the young Jedi, Yoda would entrust the leadership of the Jedi council to Anakin as he retired solely to teaching the youngest amongst the Jedi ranks. Under Skywalker's leadership, the Jedi order would undertake a galaxy wide search for the sinister Count Dooku, seeking to bring an end to the war.

 

The war would finally resolve as the Republic launched a full scale offensive against Count Dooku's final hideout. A battle station the size of a moon, that the holonet news would come to refer to as the 'Death Star'.

Title #

Mail.

 

( iPhone 13 Pro shot )

 

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

(Photo of the day. Unpublished.)

  

Images:

 

The Weeknd … Niagara Fall 【和訳】

youtu.be/hz-GZub_9rw?si=5yimkNvIoidXGPlA

  

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My new novel

B♭ (B Flat)

 

Volume 15 😄

The following is still in its draft stage and will be revised further.

Key parts are not disclosed.

The order of the content shown here is mixed.

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

 

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My new novel

B♭ (B Flat)

The summer light of Manhattan afternoons flared against the glass facades of the high-rises, and each time the heat of the asphalt wavered through the alleys, the massive building of the FBI’s New York Field Office seemed to draw in the clamor of the city, holding a grave and immovable stillness, while within its walls a taut tension and vigilance seeped forth. Beyond the thick iron doors set into its corner, the countless eyes of surveillance cameras interlaced with the motions of guards, proclaiming an order unshaken by the heat waves or the murmur of the crowd outside.

Special Agent Veronica Reeves, carrying the weight of long years of experience yet with a gaze still honed to an unerring edge, sat at the long desk by the window, quietly deciphering the thick bundle of reports spread before her—accounts of what had unfolded thus far. The shafts of heat-laden sunlight pressed through the glass, warping the air, and against that trembling her thoughts held fast, focusing upon the minutiae, drawing out, in three dimensions, the possibilities of the case and the breadth of its consequences.

The figures and map symbols inscribed upon the documents she reassembled in her mind, as though enfolding the arteries of the overheated city itself—the courses of traffic, the currents of people, the compression of the skyline—ordering the incident’s first movements with a hand imbued with a quiet, frigid certainty. The sterile white light of the ceiling LEDs cast swaying shadows upon the papers, and even those faint tremors at the edges of her sight seemed to enter her calculus, like unknown variables absorbed into the mesh of her analysis.

Her fingertip traced a single point upon the map, and in that gesture she drew together the city’s flows, the density of its crowds, the thicket of its structures, conjuring within her mind a three-dimensional rendering of the ground. The clash of red and blue signals at intersections, the exhaust drifting at corners, the tempo of footsteps, the shadows of cars idling at the curb—all converged upon the figures and symbols of the page, lifting before her the living geometry of New York.

Fragments of reports crackled from radios and telephones, slipping into her net of thought and fixed into the coordinates of time and place. At what moment, in what place, had the current of the crowd shifted? Who might have slipped within which building? The jam of traffic, the swell of onlookers, the frameworks of the structures—these she aligned, reducing error to its smallest margin, until the hidden contours of the scene emerged.

Her eyes remained calm, but the faint tightening of the muscles around them betrayed the sense of danger running beneath. With her finger pressing upon a point on the map, she drew upon the memory of old cases, of the city’s blueprints, calculating risk along each imagined path. The city’s shape, the crowd’s density, the placing of exits—all she set upon a grid of logic, hypothesizing every possible turn the future might take.

Her gaze halted upon a photograph in the file, parsing the expressions of the crowd, the disposition of guards, the position of obstacles. Cold though her eyes remained, they missed no dissonance, no trace of the unnatural, intent upon catching every variable within the net of reason, undistracted by the fever of the summer city.

In the office, where the cool of the air conditioning crossed with the heat outside, her thoughts gathered speed—silent, assured, relentless. What would unfold next? Which routes were safe, which led into peril? Each decision, measured in the span of a heartbeat, bore upon the safety of the crowd, upon the life of the candidate. Her logic did not waver, its threads weaving together in her hand like cords unraveling the complexity of the city.

Before her stood not only the files, but also the glow of monitors, the static of radios. Each was but a source of fragments, meaningless until passed through the filter of her thought. To bind data to the streets, images to reality, was the task at hand, advancing cold and quiet even as the heat of summer pressed against the glass.

The sweltering air outside rattled the windows; the distant sirens and the rumble of the city did not shatter her focus, but rather deepened her mental simulation, lending depth to the field she constructed within. Figures on the page fused with the living breath of the streets, reason drawing them together into clarity, and she readied herself to strike upon the next move.

Each sweep of her fingertip across the map made the city’s avenues rise in relief within her mind: the density of buildings, the movement of passersby, the gaze of cameras, the stations of guards. All chained together, cold and inexorable, suggesting the next action. Veronica drew a long breath, and with her exhale, wove the scattered variables into a single fabric, fixing her gaze upon the heart of the incident. In that moment, the distant sirens, the horns, the shuffling of feet at a crosswalk—all dissolved into her reasoning, each sound settling into place like a piece of a puzzle within the flow of logic. The city shimmered in heat, light and shadow in feverish scatter, but her mind cut through the glare, quietly tracing the full outline of the unfolding event.

At last, Veronica lifted the receiver of the internal line, feeling the cold resin beneath her fingers, and summoned Deputy Special Agent Elliot.

“Put me through to Jack Vance, Secret Service.”

“Understood.”

 

The black Ford SUV cut through the summer heat, racing down the streets. At the wheel, Jack’s profile was set with strain, while in the backseat Ana leaned forward, arms stretched protectively over the children, shouting in desperation.

“Keep your eyes ahead, Jack!”

The children, jolted by the car’s violent tremors, cried out with voices that wavered between cheers and screams, unable to discern the line between fear and thrill. Beside them, Mika bit her lip, struck dumb, staring in mute shock.

Behind them, the pursuing car roared, bullets sparking off the asphalt and leaving the acrid tang of gunpowder in the air. Jack twisted the wheel, his Ford scraping sparks along a wall of concrete, gunfire rattling through the city’s very skin. Ignoring lights and crowds alike, he veered the SUV up onto the sidewalk, plunging forward as screams scattered into the air, driving on as if to outpace the terror that pursued them.

  

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My new novel:

B♭ (B-flat)

There’s still more to come. 😃

(This is not the final draft.)

Set in New York City.

  

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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

 

My new novel:

B♭ (B-flat)

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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Title.

Mail.

  

( 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:

 

The Weeknd … Niagara Fall 【和訳】

youtu.be/hz-GZub_9rw?si=5yimkNvIoidXGPlA

  

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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僕の新しい小説。

　B♭　（ビーフラット）

  

第15弾。 😄

以下は、まだ初稿の段階です。まだ推敲します。

重要な部分は公開していません。

公開している内容の順番はバラバラです。

(もちろん最終稿ではありません。)

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

僕の新しい小説。

 

　B♭　（ビーフラット）

 

　マンハッタンの夏の午後の光が高層ビル群のガラスにぎらつき、アスファルトの熱気が路地を揺らすたびに、FBIニューヨーク支局の巨大な建物は都市の喧騒を吸い込み、どっしりと静けさを保ちながらも、その内部に張り詰めた警戒と緊張をにじませていた。その角に設えられた厚い鉄の扉の向こうでは、監視カメラの無数の視線と警備員の動きが絡み合い、外界の熱波や人々のざわめきにも揺るがぬ秩序を守っていることを告げていた。

　ヴェロニカ・リーヴス特別捜査官は、豊富な経験を背負いながらもなお研ぎ澄まされた眼差しで、窓際の長机に広げられた、これまでに起こった報告がまとめられた資料の束を静かに読み解いていた。差し込んだ外光の熱の束が窓ガラスを透かし、空気を歪ませ、彼女の思考はそれに抗うように細部まで集中され、事件の可能性や影響範囲を論理の中に立体的に描き出していった。

　書類に記された数字や地図の記号を、熱せられた街の動線や人々の流れ、ビルの密集度までを含めるかのように頭の中で再構築し、事件の初動を論理的に整理していく手つきには、冷たくも静かな確信が宿っていた。

　天井のLEDの白い光が、紙面に落ちる影を揺らし、視界の隅で振れるその影さえも、未知の変数として分析に取り込まれているかのようであった。

　ヴェロニカは指先で地図上の一点をなぞり、都市の動線、人の密度、建築の密集度を瞬時に組み合わせ、頭の中で現場の立体的な状況を描き出していた。信号の赤や青が交錯する交差点、街角に漂う排気ガスの匂い、通行人の歩行速度、路上に停められた車の影――それらすべてが、紙面の数字や地図上の印と結びつき、ニューヨークという巨大な都市の立体的な動線を彼女の思考に浮かび上がらせた。

　無線や電話からの断片的な報告も、彼女の分析の網に吸い込まれ、時間と空間に配置される。どの瞬間に、どの場所で、人々の流れが変化したか。誰がどの建物に潜入した可能性があるか。交通の混雑状況と、観衆の動き、建築物の構造を組み合わせ、最小の推測誤差で現場の全貌を描く。

　彼女の瞳は冷静そのもので、しかし微細な筋肉の緊張が、その奥に潜む危機意識を示していた。手元の地図の一点を指でなぞり、過去の事件や都市計画のデータを呼び出しながら、シナリオごとにリスクを計算する。都市の構造、観衆の密度、出口の配置――あらゆる要素を論理のグリッドに沿って並べ、想像されるすべての事態を仮定する。

　ヴェロニカは資料の中の写真に目を留め、観衆の表情や警備員の配置、障害物の位置を詳細に分析した。その視線は冷徹でありながらも、微細な違和感や不自然さを見逃さず、都市の熱気に流されることなく、論理の網の中に全ての変数を捕らえようとしていた。

　冷房の空気と夏の熱気が交錯するオフィス内で、彼女の思考は静かに、しかし確実に速度を上げていく。次に何が起こりうるか、どのルートが安全で、どのルートが危険か。瞬間ごとの判断が、観衆の安全と候補者の命を左右する。論理は揺るぎなく、都市の複雑さを紐解く糸のように彼女の手の中で絡まり合った。

　彼女の前には資料だけでなく、コンピュータの画面や無線のディスプレイも並ぶ。それらは断片的な情報の源にすぎず、ヴェロニカの思考というフィルターを通すことで初めて意味を持つ。データと現実の光景を繋ぎ、事件の全体像を構築する作業は、夏の街の熱気の中でも冷たく静かに進行した。

　外の熱気は窓ガラスを揺らし、街のざわめきや遠くで響くサイレンは、彼女の集中をかき乱すどころか、逆に現場の臨場感を補強し、頭の中のシミュレーションに奥行きを与えた。紙面の数字と街の実像が、冷たい理性の中で重なり合い、彼女は次の一手を論理的に導き出す準備を整えていった。

　彼女の指先が地図をなぞるたび、都市の街路が脳内で立体的に浮かび上がり、建物の密度、通行人の流れ、監視カメラの視野、警備員の位置が、冷徹な論理の中で連鎖し、次の行動を示唆する。ヴェロニカは深く息を吸い、吐き出すと同時に、無言のうちに全ての変数を繋ぎ合わせ、事件の核心へと視線を固定した。その瞬間、遠くの街路から聞こえるサイレンの音や車のクラクション、交差点で立ち止まる人々の足音が、彼女の頭の中ではパズルのピースとなり、論理的な流れの中に溶け込んでいった。都市は暑さに揺れ、光と影が乱反射するが、ヴェロニカの思考は静かに、その熱気を透過して事件の全体像を描き出していった。

　ヴェロニカは、静かに内線電話の受話器を手に取り、その冷たい樹脂の感触を指先で確かめながら、エリオット副特別捜査官を呼び出し、いった。

「シークレットサービスのジャックバンスにつないで」

「了解」

 

ーーーーーー

　黒のSUVフォードは、夏の熱気を押し裂くように街路を駆け抜けた。ハンドルを握るジャックの横顔には焦燥が張りつき、後部座席に身を寄せたアナは、子供たちを庇うように腕を伸ばしながら、それでも必死に声を張り上げた。

「前を見て、ジャック！」

　車体の振動に身を揺らしながら、子供たちは歓声とも悲鳴ともつかぬ声をあげ、恐怖と興奮の境を知らぬままに叫んでいる。その隣でミカは唇を噛み、言葉を失ったまま呆然としている。

　背後では追撃の車が唸りを上げ、硝煙の匂いを残して弾丸がアスファルトを跳ねた。ハンドルを切ったジャックの車体がコンクリート壁面に火花が散らせた。都市の皮膚を削るようにして銃声が響く。ジャックのフォードは信号も人波も無視し、歩道へと飛び込み、群衆の悲鳴を振り払うように疾走した。

  

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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。

 

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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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As anyone knows, I live for a good sunset... well, here is the only shots I was able to take of a sunset the entire 2 weeks I was in Kenya... and this was through the side window of the van I was being transported in. The only reasoning that I can come up with is that God wanted me to concentrate on others parts of his creation...

 

Enjoy

About five years ago, BNSF experimented with a rebuild program in association with Progress Rail. A total of 24 SD70MACs were give brand new electronics and traction motors. Their designation was changed from "SD70MAC" to "SD70MACe". Not sure the reasoning, but it appears those 24 units were the only ones to go through the program. BNSF 9730 is one of the two dozen units to receive the rebuild (and a fresh coat of paint, going from the Heritage 2 scheme to the New Image scheme).

 

©2021 ColoradoRailfan.com

Dark Souls (2011)

 

Parasitic Headgear. An egg implanted on the head by a type of parasite bearing eggs on its back. The nightmare begins with a slight itch on the head, and soon the parasite will be siphoning the souls of slain enemies.

 

Black Knight Halberd

 

DSfix

HD Textures

 

Hit L then F11 to view

  

Don Juan was about to start his explanation of the mastery of awareness, but he changed his mind and stood up. We had been sitting in the big room, observing a moment of quiet.

 

“I want you to try seeing the Eagle’s emanations,” he said. “For that you must first move your assemblage point until you see the cocoon of man.”

 

We walked from the house to the center of town. We sat down on an empty, worn park bench in front of the church, it was early afternoon; a sunny, windy day with lots of people milling around.

 

He repeated, as if he were trying to drill it into me, that alignment is a unique force because it either helps the assemblage point shift, or it keeps it glued to its customary position. The aspect of alignment that keeps the point stationary, he said, is will; and the aspect that makes it shift is intent. He remarked that one of the most haunting mysteries is how will, the impersonal force of alignment, changes into intent, the personalized force, which is at the service of each individual.

 

“The strangest part of this mystery is that the change is so easy to accomplish,” he went on. “But what is not so easy is to convince ourselves that it is possible. There, right there, is our safety catch. We have to be convinced. And none of us wants to be.”

 

He told me then that I was in my keenest state of awareness, and that it was possible for me to intend my assemblage point to shift deeper into my left side, to a dreaming position. He said that warriors should never attempt seeing unless they are aided by dreaming. I argued that to fall asleep in public was not one of my fortés. He clarified his statement, saying that to move the assemblage point away from its natural setting and to keep it fixed at a new location is to be asleep; with practice, seers learn to be asleep and yet behave as if nothing is happening to them.

 

After a moment’s pause he added that for purposes of seeing the cocoon of man, one has to gaze at people from behind, as they walk away. It is useless to gaze at people face to face, because the front of the egglike cocoon of man has a protective shield, which seers call the front plate, it is an almost impregnable, unyielding shield that protects us throughout our lives against the onslaught of a peculiar force that stems from the emanations themselves.

 

He also told me not to be surprised if my body was stiff, as though it were frozen; he said that I was going to feel very much like someone standing in the middle of a room looking at the street through a window, and that speed was of the essence, as people were going to move extremely fast by my seeing window. He told me then to relax my muscles, shut off my internal dialogue, and let my assemblage point drift away under the spell of inner silence. He urged me to smack myself gently but firmly on my right side, between my hipbone and my ribcage.

 

I did that three times and I was sound asleep. It was a most peculiar state of sleep. My body was dormant, but I was perfectly aware of everything that was taking place. I could hear don Juan talking to me and I could follow every one of his statements as if I were awake, yet I could not move my body at all.

 

Don Juan said that a man was going to walk by my seeing window and that I should try to see him. I unsuccessfully attempted to move my head and then a shiny egglike shape appeared, it was resplendent. I was awed by the sight and before I could recover from my surprise, it was gone. It floated away, bobbing up and down.

 

Everything had been so sudden and fast that it made me feel frustrated and impatient. I felt that I was beginning to wake up. Don Juan talked to me again and urged me to relax. He said that I had no right and no time to be impatient. Suddenly, another luminous being appeared and moved away. It seemed to be made of a white fluorescent shag.

 

Don Juan whispered in my ear that if I wanted to, my eyes were capable of slowing down everything they focused on. Then he warned me that another man was coming. I realized at that instant that there were two voices. The one I had just heard was the same one that had admonished me to be patient. That was don Juan’s. The other, the one that told me to use my eyes to slow down movement, was the voice of seeing.

 

That afternoon, I saw ten luminous beings in slow motion. The voice of seeing guided me to witness in them everything don Juan had told me about the glow of awareness. There was a vertical band with a stronger amber glow on the right side of those egglike luminous creatures, perhaps one-tenth of the total volume of the cocoon. The voice said that that was man’s band of awareness. The voice pointed out a dot on man’s band, a dot with an intense shine; it was high on the oblong shapes, almost on the crest of them, on the surface of the cocoon; the voice said that it was the assemblage point.

 

When I saw each luminous creature in profile, from the point of view of its body, its egglike shape was like a gigantic asymmetrical yoyo that was standing edgewise, or like an almost round pot that was resting on its side with its lid on. The part that looked like a lid was the front plate; it was perhaps one-fifth the thickness of the total cocoon.

 

I would have gone on seeing those creatures, but don Juan said that I should now gaze at people face to face and sustain my gaze until I had broken the barrier and I was seeing the emanations.

 

I followed his command. Almost instantaneously, I saw a most brilliant array of live, compelling fibers of light. It was a dazzling sight that immediately shattered my balance. I fell down on the cement walk on my side. From there, I saw the compelling fibers of light multiply themselves. They burst open and myriads of other fibers came out of them. But the fibers, compelling as they were, somehow did not interfere with my ordinary view. There were scores of people going into church. I was no longer seeing them. There were quite a few women and men just around the bench. I wanted to focus my eyes on them, but instead I noticed how one of those fibers of light bulged suddenly. It became like a ball of fire that was perhaps seven feet in diameter, it rolled on me. My first impulse was to roll out of its way. Before I could even move a muscle the ball had hit me. I felt it as clearly as if someone had punched me gently in the stomach. An instant later another ball of fire hit me, this time with considerably more strength, and then don Juan whacked me really hard on the cheek with his open hand. I jumped up involuntarily and lost sight of the fibers of light and the balloons that were hitting me.

 

Don Juan said that I had successfully endured my first brief encounter with the Eagle’s emanations, but that a couple of shoves from the tumbler had dangerously opened up my gap. He added that the balls that had hit me were called the rolling force, or the tumbler.

 

We had returned to his house, although I did not remember how or when. I had spent hours in a sort of semi-sleeping state. Don Juan and the other seers of his group had given me large amounts of water to drink. They had also submerged me in an ice-cold tub of water for short periods of time.

 

“Were those fibers I saw the Eagle’s emanations?” I asked don Juan.

 

“Yes. But you didn’t really see them,” he replied. “No sooner had you begun to see than the tumbler stopped you. If you had remained a moment longer it would have blasted you.”

 

“What exactly is the tumbler?” I asked.

 

“It is a force from the Eagle’s emanations,” he said. “A ceaseless force that strikes us every instant of our lives, it is lethal when seen, but otherwise we are oblivious to it, in our ordinary lives, because we have protective shields. We have consuming interests that engage all our awareness. We are permanently worried about our station, our possessions. These shields, however, do not keep the tumbler away, they simply keep us from seeing it directly, protecting us in this way from getting hurt by the fright of seeing the balls of fire hitting us. Shields are a great help and a great hindrance to us. They pacify us and at the same time fool us. They give us a false sense of security.”

 

He warned me that a moment would come in my life when I would be without any shields, uninterruptedly at the mercy of the tumbler. He said that it is an obligatory stage in the life of a warrior, known as losing the human form.

 

I asked him to explain to me once and for all what the human form is and what it means to lose it.

 

He replied that seers describe the human form as the compelling force of alignment of the emanations lit by the glow of awareness on the precise spot on which normally man’s assemblage point is fixated. It is the force that makes us into persons. Thus, to be a person is to be compelled to affiliate with that force of alignment and consequently to be affiliated with the precise spot where it originates.

 

By reason of their activities, at a given moment the assemblage points of warriors drift toward the left. It is a permanent move, which results in an uncommon sense of aloofness, or control, or even abandon. That drift of the assemblage point entails a new alignment of emanations. It is the beginning of a series of greater shifts. Seers very aptly called this initial shift losing the human form, because it marks an inexorable movement of the assemblage point away from its original setting, resulting in the irreversible loss of our affiliation to the force that makes us persons.

 

He asked me then to describe all the details I could remember about the balls of fire. I told him that I had seen them so briefly I was not sure I could describe them in detail.

 

He pointed out that seeing is an euphemism for moving the assemblage point, and that if I moved mine a fraction more to the left I would have a clear picture of the balls of fire, a picture which I could interpret then as having remembered them.

 

I tried to have a clear picture, but I couldn’t, so I described what I remembered.

 

He listened attentively and then urged me to recall if they were balls or circles of fire. I told him I didn’t remember.

 

He explained that those balls of fire are of crucial importance to human beings because they are the expression of a force that pertains to all details of life and death, something that the new seers call the rolling force.

 

I asked him to clarify what he meant by all the details of life and death.

 

“The rolling force is the means through which the Eagle distributes life and awareness for safekeeping,” he said. “But it also is the force that, let’s say, collects the rent. It makes all living beings die. What you saw today was called by the ancient seers the tumbler.”

 

He said that seers describe it as an eternal line of iridescent rings, or balls of fire, that roll onto living beings ceaselessly. Luminous organic beings meet the rolling force head on, until the day when the force proves to be too much for them and the creatures finally collapse. The old seers were mesmerized by seeing how the tumbler then tumbles them into the beak of the Eagle to be devoured. That was the reason they called it the tumbler.

 

“You said that it is a mesmerizing sight. Have you yourself seen it rolling human beings?” I asked.

 

“Certainly I’ve seen it,” he replied, and after a pause he added, “You and I saw it only a short while ago in Mexico City.”

 

His assertion was so farfetched that I felt obliged to tell him that this time he was wrong. He laughed and reminded me that on that occasion, while both of us were sitting on a bench in the Alameda Park in Mexico City, we had witnessed the death of a man. He said that I had recorded the event in my everyday-life memory as well as in my left-side emanations.

 

As don Juan spoke to me I had the sensation of something inside me becoming lucid by degrees, and I could visualize with uncanny clarity the whole scene in the park. The man was lying on the grass with three policemen standing by him to keep onlookers away. I distinctly remembered don Juan hitting me on my back to make me change levels of awareness. And then I saw. My seeing was imperfect. I was unable to shake off the sight of the world of everyday life.

 

What I ended up with was a composite of filaments of the most gorgeous colors superimposed on the buildings and the traffic. The filaments were actually lines of colored light that came from above. They had inner life; they were bright and bursting with energy.

 

When I looked at the dying man, I saw what don Juan was talking about; something that was at once like circles of fire, or iridescent tumbleweeds, was rolling everywhere I focused my eyes. The circles were rolling on people, on don Juan, on me. I felt them in my stomach and became ill.

 

Don Juan told me to focus my eyes on the dying man. I saw him at one moment curling up, just as a sowbug curls itself up upon being touched. The incandescent circles pushed him away, as if they were casting him aside, out of their majestic, inalterable path.

 

I had not liked the feeling. The circles of fire had not scared me; they were not awesome, or sinister. I did not feel morbid or somber. The circles rather had nauseated me. I’d felt them in the pit of my stomach. It was a revulsion that I’d felt that day.

 

Remembering them conjured up again the total feeling of discomfort I had experienced on that occasion. As I got ill, don Juan laughed until he was out of breath.

 

“You’re such an exaggerated fellow.” he said. “The rolling force is not that bad. It’s lovely, in fact. The new seers recommend that we open ourselves to it. The old seers also opened themselves to it, but for reasons and purposes guided mostly by self-importance and obsession.”

 

“The new seers, on the other hand, make friends with it. They become familiar with that force by handling it without any self-importance. The result is staggering in its consequences.”

 

He said that a shift of the assemblage point is all that is needed to open oneself to the rolling force. He added that if the force is seen in a deliberate manner, there is minimal danger. A situation that is extremely dangerous, however, is an involuntary shift of the assemblage point owing, perhaps, to physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, disease, or simply a minor emotional or physical crisis, such as being frightened or being drunk.

 

“When the assemblage point shifts involuntarily, the rolling force cracks the cocoon,” he went on. “I’ve talked many times about a gap that man has below his navel. It’s not really below the navel itself, but in the cocoon, at the height of the navel. The gap is more like a dent, a natural flaw in the otherwise smooth cocoon. It is there where the tumbler hits us ceaselessly and where the cocoon cracks.”

 

He went on to explain that if it is a minor shift of the assemblage point, the crack is very small, the cocoon quickly repairs itself, and people experience what everybody has at one time or another: blotches of color and contorted shapes, which remain even if the eyes are closed.

 

If the shift is considerable, the crack also is extensive and it takes time for the cocoon to repair itself, as in the case of warriors who purposely use power plants to elicit that shift or people who take drugs and unwittingly do the same. In these cases men feel numb and cold; they have difficulty talking or even thinking; it is as if they have been frozen from inside.

 

Don Juan said that in cases in which the assemblage point shifts drastically because of the effects of trauma or of a mortal disease, the rolling force produces a crack the length of the cocoon; the cocoon collapses and curls in on itself, and the individual dies.

 

“Can a voluntary shift also produce a gap of that nature?” I asked.

 

“Sometimes,” he replied. “We’re really frail. As the tumbler hits us over and over, death comes to us through the gap. Death is the rolling force. When it finds weakness in the gap of a luminous being it automatically cracks it open and makes it collapse.”

 

“Does every living being have a gap?” I asked.

 

“Of course,” he replied. “If it didn’t have one it wouldn’t die. The gaps are different, however, in size and configuration. Man’s gap is a bowl-like depression the size of a fist, a very frail vulnerable configuration. The gaps of other organic creatures are very much like man’s; some are stronger than ours and others are weaker. But the gap of inorganic beings is really different. It’s more like a long thread, a hair of luminosity; consequently, inorganic beings are infinitely more durable than we are.”

 

“There is something hauntingly appealing about the long life of those creatures, and the old seers could not resist being carried away by that appeal.”

 

He said that the same force can produce two effects that are diametrically opposed. The old seers were imprisoned by the rolling force, and the new seers are rewarded for their toils with the gift of freedom. By becoming familiar with the rolling force through the mastery of intent, the new seers, at a given moment, open their own cocoons and the force floods them rather than rolling them up like a curled-up sowbug. The final result is their total and instantaneous disintegration.

 

I asked him a lot of questions about the survival of awareness after the luminous being is consumed by the fire from within. He did not answer. He simply chuckled, shrugged his shoulders, and went on to say that the old seers’ obsession with the tumbler blinded them to the other side of that force. The new seers, with their usual thoroughness in refusing tradition, went to the other extreme. They were at first totally averse to focusing their seeing on the tumbler; they argued that they needed to understand the force of the emanations at large in its aspect of lifegiver and enhancer of awareness.

 

“They realized that it is infinitely easier to destroy something,” don Juan went on, “than it is to build it and maintain it. To roll life away is nothing compared to giving it and nourishing it. Of course, the new seers were wrong on this count, but in due course they corrected their mistake.”

 

“How were they wrong, don Juan?”

 

“It’s an error to isolate anything for seeing. At the beginning, the new seers did exactly the opposite from what their predecessors did. They focused with equal attention on the other side of the tumbler. What happened to them was as terrible as, if not worse than, what happened to the old seers. They died stupid deaths, just as the average man does. They didn’t have the mystery or the malignancy of the ancient seers, nor had they the quest for freedom of the seers of today.”

 

“Those first new seers served everybody. Because they were focusing their seeing on the lifegiving side of the emanations, they were filled with love and kindness. But that didn’t keep them from being tumbled. They were vulnerable, just as were the old seers who were filled with morbidity.”

 

He said that for the modern-day new seers, to be left stranded after a life of discipline and toil, just like men who have never had a purposeful moment in their lives, was intolerable. Don Juan said that these new seers realized, after they had readopted their tradition, that the old seers’ knowledge of the rolling force had been complete; at one point the old seers had concluded that there were, in effect, two different aspects of the same force. The tumbling aspect relates exclusively to destruction and death. The circular aspect, on the other hand, is what maintains life and awareness, fulfillment and purpose. They had chosen, however, to deal exclusively with the tumbling aspect.

 

“Gazing in teams, the new seers were able to see the separation between the tumbling and the circular aspects,” he explained. “They saw that both forces are fused, but are not the same. The circular force comes to us just before the tumbling force; they are so close to each other that they seem the same.”

 

“The reason it’s called the circular force is that it comes in rings, threadlike hoops of iridescence – a very delicate affair indeed. And just like the tumbling force, it strikes all living beings ceaselessly, but for a different purpose. It strikes them to give them strength, direction, awareness; to give them life.”

 

“What the new seers discovered is that the balance of the two forces in every living being is a very delicate one,” he continued, “if at any given time an individual feels that the tumbling force strikes harder than the circular one, that means the balance is upset; the tumbling force strikes harder and harder from then on, until it cracks the living being’s gap and makes it die.”

 

He added that out of what I had called balls of fire comes an iridescent hoop exactly the size of living beings, whether men, trees, microbes, or allies.

 

“Are there different-size circles?” I asked.

 

“Don’t take me so literally,” he protested. “There are no circles to speak of, just a circular force that gives seers, who are dreaming it, the feeling of rings. And there are no different sizes either. It’s one indivisible force that fits all living beings, organic and inorganic.”

 

“Why did the old seers focus on the tumbling aspect?” I asked.

 

“Because they believed that their lives depended on seeing it,” he replied. “They were sure that their seeing was going to give them answers to age-old questions. You see, they figured that if they unraveled the secrets of the rolling force they would be invulnerable and immortal. The sad part is that in one way or another, they did unravel the secrets and yet they were neither invulnerable nor immortal.”

 

“The new seers changed it all by realizing that there is no way to aspire to immortality as long as man has a cocoon.”

 

Don Juan explained that the old seers apparently never realized that the human cocoon is a receptacle and cannot sustain the onslaught of the rolling force forever. In spite of all the knowledge that they had accumulated, they were in the end certainly no better, and perhaps much worse, off than the average man.

 

“In what way were they left worse off than the average man?” I asked.

 

“Their tremendous knowledge forced them to take it for granted that their choices were infallible,” he said. “So they chose to live at any cost.”

 

Don Juan looked at me and smiled. With his theatrical pause he was telling me something I could not fathom.

 

“They chose to live,” he repeated. “Just as they chose to become trees in order to assemble worlds with those nearly unreachable great bands.”

 

“What do you mean by that, don Juan?”

 

“I mean that they used the rolling force to shift their assemblage points to unimaginable dreaming positions, instead of letting it roll them to the beak of the Eagle to be devoured.”

 

The Death Defiers

 

I arrived at Genaro’s house around 2:00 p. m. Don Juan and I became involved in conversation, and then don Juan made me shift into heightened awareness.

 

“Here we are again, the three of us, just as we were the day we went to that flat rock,” don Juan said. “And tonight we’re going to make another trip to that area.”

 

“You have enough knowledge now to draw very serious conclusions about that place and its effects on awareness.”

 

“What is it with that place, don Juan?”

 

“Tonight you’re going to find out some gruesome facts that the old seers collected about the rolling force; and you’re going to see what I meant when I told you that the old seers chose to live at any cost.”

 

Don Juan turned to Genaro, who was about to fall asleep. He nudged him.

 

“Wouldn’t you say, Genaro, that the old seers-were dreadful men?” don Juan asked.

 

“Absolutely,” Genaro said in a crisp tone and then seemed to succumb to fatigue.

 

He began to nod noticeably. In an instant he was sound asleep, his head resting on his chest with his chin tucked in. He snored.

 

I wanted to laugh out loud. But then I noticed that Genaro was staring at me, as if he were sleeping with his eyes open.

 

“They were such dreadful men that they even defied death,” Genaro added between snores.

 

“Aren’t you curious to know how those gruesome men defied death?” don Juan asked me.

 

He seemed to be urging me to ask for an example of their gruesomeness. He paused and looked at me with what I thought was a glint of expectation in his eyes.

 

“You’re waiting for me to ask for an example, aren’t you?” I said.

 

“This is a great moment,” he said, patting me on the back and laughing. “My benefactor had me on the edge of my seat at this point. I asked him to give me an example, and he did; now I’m going to give you one whether you ask for it or not.”

 

“What are you going to do?” I asked, so frightened that my stomach was tied in knots and my voice cracked.

 

It took quite a while for don Juan to stop laughing. Every time he started to speak, he’d get an attack of coughing laughter.

 

“As Genaro told you, the old seers were dreadful men,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “There was something they tried to avoid at all costs: they didn’t want to die. You may say that the average man doesn’t want to die either, but the advantage that the old seers had over the average man was that they had the concentration and the discipline to intend things away; and they actually intended death away.”

 

He paused and looked at me with raised eyebrows. He said that I was falling behind, that I was not asking my usual questions. I remarked that it was plain to me that he was leading me to ask if the old seers had succeeded in intending death away, but he himself had already told me that their knowledge about the tumbler had not saved them from dying.

 

“They succeeded in intending death away,” he said, pronouncing his words with extra care. “But they still had to die.”

 

“How did they intend death away?” I asked.

 

“They observed their allies,” he said, “and seeing that they were living beings with a much greater resilience to the rolling force, the seers patterned themselves on their allies.”

 

“The old seers realized,” don Juan explained, “that only organic beings have a gap that resembles a bowl. Its size and shape and its brittleness make it the ideal configuration to hasten the cracking and collapsing of the luminous shell under the onslaughts of the tumbling force. The allies, on the other hand, who have only a line for a gap, present such a small surface to the rolling force as to be practically immortal. Their cocoons can sustain the onslaughts of the tumbler indefinitely, because hairline gaps offer no ideal configuration to it.”

 

“The old seers developed the most bizarre techniques for closing their gaps,” don Juan continued. “They were essentially correct in assuming that a hairline gap is more durable than a bowl-like one.”

 

“Are those techniques still in existence?” I asked.

 

“No, they are not,” he said. “But some of the seers who practiced them are.”

 

For reasons unknown to me, his statement caused a reaction of sheer terror in me. My breathing was altered instantly, and I couldn’t control its rapid pace.

 

“They’re still alive to this day, isn’t that so, Genaro?” don Juan asked.

 

“Absolutely,” Genaro muttered from an apparent state of deep sleep.

 

I asked don Juan if he knew the reason for my being so frightened. He reminded me about a previous occasion in that very room when they had asked me if I had noticed the weird creatures that had come in the moment Genaro opened the door.

 

“That day your assemblage point went very deep into the left side and assembled a frightening world,” he went on. “But I have already said that to you; what you don’t remember is that you went directly to a very remote world and scared yourself pissless there.”

 

Don Juan turned to Genaro, who was snoring peacefully with his legs stretched out in front of him.

 

“Wasn’t he scared pissless, Genaro?” he asked.

 

“Absolutely pissless,” Genaro muttered, and don Juan laughed.

 

“I want you to know that we don’t blame you for being scared,” don Juan continued. “We, ourselves, are revolted by some of the actions of the old seers. I’m sure that you have realized by now that what you can’t remember about that night is that you saw the old seers who are still alive.”

 

I wanted to protest that I had realized nothing, but I could not voice my words. I had to clear my throat over and over before I could articulate a word. Genaro had stood up and was gently patting my upper back, by my neck, as if I were choking.

 

“You have a frog in your throat,” he said.

 

I thanked him in a high squeaky voice.

 

“No, I think you have a chicken there,” he added and sat down to sleep.

 

Don Juan said that the new seers had rebelled against all the bizarre practices of the old seers and declared them not only useless but injurious to our total being. They even went so far as to ban those techniques from whatever was taught to new warriors; and for generations there was no mention of those practices at all.

 

It was in the early part of the eighteenth century that the nagual Sebastian, a member of don Juan’s direct line of naguals, rediscovered the existence of those techniques.

 

“How did he rediscover them?” I asked.

 

“He was a superb stalker, and because of his impeccability he got a chance to learn marvels,” don Juan replied.

 

He said that one day as the nagual Sebastian was about to start his daily routines – he was the sexton at the cathedral in the city where he lived – he found a middle-aged Indian man who seemed to be in a quandary at the door of the church.

 

The nagual Sebastian went to the man’s side and asked him if he needed help.

 

“I need a bit of energy to close my gap,” the man said to him in a loud clear voice. “Would you give me some of your energy?”

 

Don Juan said that according to the story, the nagual Sebastian was dumbfounded. He did not know what the man was talking about. He offered to take the Indian to see the parish priest. The man lost his patience and angrily accused the nagual Sebastian of stalling.

 

“I need your energy because you’re a nagual,” he said. “Let’s go quietly.”

 

The nagual Sebastian succumbed to the magnetic power of the stranger and meekly went with him into the mountains. He was gone for many days. When he came back he not only had a new outlook about the ancient seers, but detailed knowledge of their techniques. The stranger was an ancient Toltec. One of the last survivors.

 

“The nagual Sebastian found out marvels about the old seers,” don Juan went on. “He was the one who first knew how grotesque and aberrant they really were. Before him, that knowledge was only hearsay.”

 

“One night my benefactor and the nagual Elias gave me a sample of those aberrations. They really showed it to Genaro and me together, so it’s only proper that we both show you the same sample.”

 

I wanted to talk in order to stall; I needed time to calm down, to think things out. But before I could say anything, don Juan and Genaro were practically dragging me out of the house. They headed for the same eroded hills we had visited before.

 

We stopped at the bottom of a large barren hill. Don Juan pointed toward some distant mountains to the south, and said that between the place where we stood and a natural cut in one of those mountains, a cut that looked like an open mouth, there were at least seven sites where the ancient seers had focused all the power of their awareness.

 

Don Juan said that those seers had not only been knowledgeable and daring but downright successful. He added that his benefactor had showed him and Genaro a site where the old seers, driven by their love for life, had buried themselves alive and actually intended the rolling force away.

 

“There is nothing that would catch the eye in those places,” he went on. “The old seers were careful not to leave marks. It is just a landscape. One has to see to know where those places are.”

 

He said that he did not want to walk to the faraway sites, but would take me to the one that was nearest. I insisted on knowing what we were after. He said that we were going to see the buried seers, and that for that we had to stay until it got dark under the cover of some green bushes. He pointed them out; they were perhaps half a mile away, up a steep slope.

 

We reached the patch of bushes and sat down as comfortably as we could. He began then to explain in a very low voice that in order to get energy from the earth, ancient seers used to bury themselves for periods of time, depending on what they wanted to accomplish. The more difficult their task, the longer their burial period.

 

Don Juan stood up and in a melodramatic way showed me a spot a few yards from where we were.

 

“Two old seers are buried there,” he said. “They buried themselves about two thousand years ago to escape death, not in the spirit of running away from it but in the spirit of defying it.”

 

Don Juan asked Genaro to show me the exact spot where the old seers were buried. I turned to look at Genaro and realized that he was sitting by my side sound asleep again. But to my utter amazement, he jumped up and barked like a dog and ran on all fours to the spot don Juan was pointing out. There he ran around the place in a perfect mime of a small dog.

 

I found his performance hilarious. Don Juan was nearly on the ground laughing.

 

“Genaro has shown you something extraordinary,” don Juan said, after Genaro had returned to where we were and had gone back to sleep. “He has shown you something about the assemblage point and dreaming. He’s dreaming now, but he can act as if he were fully awake and he can hear everything you say. From that position he can do more than if he were awake.”

 

He was silent for a moment as if assessing what to say next. Genaro snored rhythmically. Don Juan remarked how easy it was for him to find flaws with what the old seers had done, yet, in all fairness, he never tired of repeating how wonderful their accomplishments were. He said that they understood the earth to perfection. Not only did they discover and use the boost from the earth, but they also discovered that if they remained buried, their assemblage points aligned emanations that were ordinarily inaccessible, and that such an alignment engaged the earth’s strange, inexplicable capacity to deflect the ceaseless strikes of the rolling force.

 

Consequently, they developed the most astounding and complex techniques for burying themselves for extremely long periods of time without any detriment to themselves. In their fight against death, they learned how to elongate those periods to cover millennia.

 

It was a cloudy day, and night fell quickly. In no time at all, everything was in darkness. Don Juan stood up and guided me and the sleepwalker Genaro to an enormous flat oval rock that had caught my eye the moment we got to that place. It was similar to the flat rock we had visited before, but bigger. It occurred to me that the rock, enormous as it was, had deliberately been placed there.

 

“This is another site,” don Juan said. “This huge rock was placed here as a trap, to attract people. Soon you’ll know why.”

 

I felt a shiver run through my body. I thought I was going to faint. I knew that I was definitely overreacting and wanted to say something about it, but don Juan kept on talking in a hoarse whisper. He said that Genaro, since he was dreaming, had enough control over his assemblage point to move it until he could reach the specific emanations that would wake up whatever was around that rock. He recommended that I try to move my assemblage point, and follow Genaro’s.

 

He said that I could do it, first by setting up my unbending intent to move it, and second by letting the context of the situation dictate where it should move.

 

After a moment’s thought he whispered in my ear not to worry about procedures, because most of the really unusual things that happen to seers, or to the average man for that matter, happen by themselves, with only the intervention of intent.

 

He was silent for a moment and then added that the danger for me was going to be the buried seers’ inevitable attempt to scare me to death. He exhorted me to keep myself calm and not to succumb to fear, but follow Genaro’s movements.

 

I fought desperately not to be sick. Don Juan patted me on the back and said that I was an old pro at playing an innocent bystander. He assured me that I was not consciously refusing to let my assemblage point move, but that every human being does it automatically.

 

“Something is going to scare the living daylights out of you,” he whispered. “Don’t give up, because if you do, you’ll die and the old vultures around here are going to feast on your energy.”

 

“Let’s get out of here,” I pleaded. “I really don’t give a damn about getting an example of the old seers’ grotesqueness.”

 

“It’s too late,” Genaro said, fully awake now, standing by my side. “Even if we try to get away, the two seers and their allies on the other spot will cut you down. They have already made a circle around us. There are as many as sixteen awarenesses focused on you right now.”

 

“Who are they?” I whispered in Genaro’s ear.

 

“The four seers and their court,” he replied. “They’ve been aware of us since we got here.”

 

I wanted to turn tail and run for dear life, but don Juan held my arm and pointed to the sky. I noticed that a remarkable change in visibility had taken place. Instead of the pitch-black darkness that had prevailed, there was a pleasant dawn twilight. I made a quick assessment of the cardinal points. The sky was definitely lighter toward the east.

 

I felt a strange pressure around my head. My ears were buzzing. I felt cold and feverish at the same time. I was scared as I had never been before, but what bothered me was a nagging sensation of defeat, of being a coward. I felt nauseated and miserable.

 

Don Juan whispered in my ear. He said that I had to be on the alert, that the onslaught of the old seers would be felt by all three of us at any moment.

 

“You can grab on to me if you want to,” Genaro said in a fast whisper as if something were prodding him.

 

I hesitated for an instant. I did not want don Juan to believe that I was so scared I needed to hold on to Genaro.

 

“Here they come!” Genaro said in a loud whisper.

 

The world turned upside down instantaneously for me when something gripped me by my left ankle. I felt the coldness of death on my entire body. I knew I had stepped on an iron clamp, maybe a bear trap. That all flashed through my mind before I let out a piercing scream, as intense as my fright.

 

Don Juan and Genaro laughed out loud. They were flanking me no more than three feet away, but I was so terrified I did not even notice them.

 

“Sing! Sing for dear life!” I heard don Juan ordering me under his breath.

 

I tried to pull my foot loose. I felt then a sting, as if needles were piercing my skin. Don Juan insisted over and over that I sing. He and Genaro started to sing a popular song. Genaro spoke the lyrics as he looked at me from hardly two inches away. They sang off-key in raspy voices, getting so completely out of breath and so high out of the range of their voices that I ended up laughing.

 

“Sing, or you’re going to perish,” don Juan said to me.

 

“Let’s make a trio,” Genaro said, “We’ll sing a bolero.”

 

I joined them in an off-key trio. We sang for quite a while at the top of our voices, like drunkards. I felt that the iron grip on my leg was gradually letting go of me. I had not dared to look down at my ankle. At one moment I did and I realized then that there was no trap clutching me. A dark, headlike shape was biting me!

 

Only a supreme effort kept me from fainting. I felt I was getting sick and automatically tried to bend over, but somebody with superhuman strength grabbed me painlessly by the elbows and the nape of my neck and did not let me move. I got sick all over my clothes.

 

My revulsion was so complete that I began to fall in a faint. Don Juan sprinkled my face with some water from the small gourd he always carried when we went into the mountains. The water slid under my collar. The coldness restored my physical balance, but it did not affect the force that was holding me by my elbows and neck.

 

“I think you are going too far with your fright,” don Juan said loudly and in such a matter-of fact tone that he created an immediate feeling of order.

 

“Let’s sing again,” he added. “Let’s sing a song with substance – I don’t want any more boleros.”

 

I silently thanked him for his sobriety and for his grand style. I was so moved as I heard them singing “La Valentina” that I began to weep.

 

Because of my passion, they say

 

that ill fortune is on my way.

 

It doesn’t matter

 

that it might be the devil himself.

 

I do know how to die

 

Valentina, Valentina.

 

I throw myself in your way.

 

If I am going to die tomorrow,

 

why not, once and for all, today?

 

All of my being staggered under the impact of that inconceivable juxtaposition of values. Never had a song meant so much to me. As I heard them sing those lyrics, which I ordinarily considered reeking with cheap sentimentalism, I thought I understood the ethos of the warrior.

 

Don Juan had drilled into me that warriors live with death at their side, and from the knowledge that death is with them they draw the courage to face anything. Don Juan had said that the worst that could happen to us is that we have to die, and since that is already our unalterable fate, we are free; those who have lost everything no longer have anything to fear.

 

I walked to don Juan and Genaro and embraced them to express my boundless gratitude and admiration for them.

 

Then I realized that nothing was holding me any longer. Without a word don Juan took my arm and guided me to sit on the flat rock.

 

“The show is just about to begin now,” Genaro said in a jovial tone as he tried to find a comfortable position to sit. “You’ve just paid your admission ticket. It’s all over your chest.”

 

He looked at me, and both of them began to laugh.

 

“Don’t sit too close to me,” Genaro said. “I don’t appreciate pukers. But don’t go too far, either. The old seers are not yet through with their tricks.”

 

I moved as close to them as politeness permitted. I was concerned about my fate for an instant, and then all my qualms became nonsense, for I noticed that some people were coming toward us. I could not make out their shapes clearly but I distinguished a mass of human figures moving in the semidarkness. They did not carry lanterns or flashlights with them, which at that hour they would still have needed. Somehow that detail worried me. I did not want to focus on it and I deliberately began to think rationally. I figured that we must have attracted attention with our loud singing and they were coming to investigate. Don Juan tapped me on the shoulder. He pointed with a movement of his chin to the men in front of the group of others.

 

“Those four are the old seers,” he said. “The rest are their allies.”

 

Before I could remark that they were just local peasants, I heard a swishing sound right behind me. I quickly turned around in a state of total alarm. My movement was so sudden that don Juan’s warning came too late.

 

“Don’t turn around!” I heard him yell.

 

His words were only background; they did not mean anything to me. On turning around, I saw that three grotesquely deformed men had climbed up on the rock right behind me; they were crawling toward me, with their mouths open in a nightmarish grimace and their arms outstretched to grab me.

 

I intended to scream at the top of my lungs, but what came out was an agonizing croak, as if something were obstructing my windpipe. I automatically rolled out of their reach and onto the ground.

 

As I stood up, don Juan jumped to my side, at the very same moment that a horde of men, led by those don Juan had pointed out, descended on me like vultures. They were actually squeaking like bats or rats. I yelled in terror. This time I was able to let out a piercing cry.

 

Don Juan, as nimbly as an athlete in top form, pulled me out of their clutches onto the rock. He told me in a stern voice not to turn around to look, no matter how scared I was. He said that the allies cannot push at all, but that they certainly could scare me and make me fall to the ground. On the ground, however, the allies could hold anybody down. If I were to fall on the ground by the place where the seers were buried, I would be at their mercy. They would rip me apart while their allies held me. He added that he had not told me all that before because he had hoped I would be forced to see and understand it by myself. His decision had nearly cost me my life. The sensation that the grotesque men were just behind me was nearly unbearable. Don Juan forcefully ordered me to keep calm and focus my attention on four men at the head of a crowd of perhaps ten or twelve. The instant I focused my eyes on them, as if on cue, they all advanced to the edge of the flat rock. They stopped there and began hissing like serpents. They walked back and forth. Their movement seemed to be synchronized. It was so consistent and orderly that it seemed to be mechanical. It was as if they were following a repetitive pattern, aimed at mesmerizing me.

 

“Don’t gaze at them, dear,” Genaro said to me as if he were talking to a child.

 

The laughter that followed was as hysterical as my fear. I laughed so hard that the sound reverberated on the surrounding hills.

 

The men stopped at once and seemed to be perplexed. I could distinguish the shapes of their heads bobbing up and down as if they were talking, deliberating among themselves. Then one of them jumped onto the rock.

 

“Watch out! That one is a seer!” Genaro exclaimed.

 

“What are we going to do?” I shouted.

 

“We could start singing again,” don Juan replied matter-of-factly.

 

My fear reached its apex then. I began to jump up and down and to roar like an animal. The man jumped down to the ground.

 

“Don’t pay any more attention to those clowns,” don Juan said. “Let’s talk as usual.”

 

He said that we had gone there for my enlightenment, and that I was failing miserably. I had to reorganize myself. The first thing to do was to realize that my assemblage point had moved and was now making obscure emanations glow. To carry the feelings from my usual state of awareness into the world I had assembled was indeed a travesty, for fear is only prevalent among the emanations of daily life.

 

I told him that if my assemblage point had shifted as he was saying it had, I had news for him. My fear was infinitely greater and more devastating than anything I had ever experienced in my daily life.

 

“You’re wrong,” he said. “Your first attention is confused and doesn’t want to give up control, that’s all. I have the feeling that you could walk right up to those creatures and face them and they wouldn’t do a thing to you.”

 

I insisted that I was definitely in no condition to test such a preposterous thing as that.

 

He laughed at me. He said that sooner or later I had to cure myself of my madness, and that to take the initiative and face up to those four seers was infinitely less preposterous than the idea that I was seeing them at all. He said that to him madness was to be confronted by men who had been buried for two thousand years and were still alive, and not to think that that was the epitome of preposterousness.

 

I heard everything he said with clarity, but I was not really paying attention to him. I was terrified of the men around the rock. They seemed to be preparing to jump us, to jump me really. They were fixed on me. My right arm began to shake as if I were stricken by some muscular disorder. Then I became aware that the light in the sky had changed. I had not noticed before that it was already dawn. The strange thing was that an uncontrollable urge made me stand up and run to the group of men.

 

I had at that moment two completely different feelings about the same event. The minor one was of sheer terror. The other, the major one, was of total indifference. I could not have cared less. When I reached the group I realized that don Juan was right; they were not really men. Only four of them had any resemblance to men, but they were not men either; they were strange creatures with huge yellow eyes. The others were just shapes that were propelled by the four that resembled men.

 

I felt extraordinarily sad for those creatures with yellow eyes. I tried to touch them, but I could not find them. Some sort of wind scooped them away.

 

I looked for don Juan and Genaro. They were not there. It was pitch-black again. I called out their names over and over again. I thrashed around in darkness for a few minutes. Don Juan came to my side and startled me. I did not see Genaro.

 

“Let’s go home,” he said. “We have a long walk.”

 

Don Juan commented on how well I had performed at the site of the buried seers, especially during the last part of our encounter with them. He said that a shift of the assemblage point is marked by a change in light. In the daytime, light becomes very dark; at night, darkness becomes twilight. He added that I had performed two shifts by myself, aided only by animal fright. The only thing he found objectionable was my indulging in fear, especially after I had realized that warriors have nothing to fear.

 

“How do you know I had realized that?” I asked.

 

“Because you were free. When fear disappears all the ties that bind us dissolve,” he said. “An ally was gripping your foot because it was attracted by your animal terror.”

 

I told him how sorry I was for not being able to uphold my realizations.

 

“Don’t concern yourself with that.” He laughed. “You know that such realizations are a dime a dozen; they don’t amount to anything in the life of warriors, because they are canceled out as the assemblage point shifts.”

 

“What Genaro and I wanted to do was to make you shift very deeply. This time Genaro was there simply to entice the old seers. He did it once already, and you went so far into the left side that it will take quite a while for you to remember it. Your fright tonight was just as intense as it was that first time when the seers and their allies followed you to this very room, but your sturdy first attention wouldn’t let you be aware of them.”

 

“Explain to me what happened at the site of the seers,” I asked.

 

“The allies came out to see you,” he replied. “Since they have very low energy, they always need the help of men. The four seers have collected twelve allies.

 

“The countryside in Mexico and also certain cities are dangerous. What happened to you can happen to any man or woman. If they bump into that tomb, they may even see the seers and their allies, if they are pliable enough to let their fear make their assemblage points shift; but one thing is for sure: they can die of fright.”

 

“But do you honestly believe that those Toltec seers are still alive?” I asked.

 

He laughed and shook his head in disbelief.

 

“It’s time for you to shift that assemblage point of yours just a bit,” he said. “I can’t talk to you when you are in your idiot’s stage.”

 

He smacked me with the palm of his hand on three spots: right on the crest of my right hipbone, on the center of my back below my shoulder blades, and on the upper part of my right pectoral muscle.

 

My ears immediately began to buzz. A trickle of blood ran out of my right nostril, and something inside me became unplugged. It was as if some flow of energy had been blocked and suddenly began to move again.

 

“What were those seers and their allies after?” I asked.

 

“Nothing,” he replied. “We were the ones who were after them. The seers, of course, had already noticed your field of energy the first time you saw them; when you came back, they were set to feast on you.”

 

“You claim that they are alive, don Juan,” I said. “You must mean that they are alive as allies are alive, is that so?”

 

“That’s exactly right,” he said. “They cannot possibly be alive as you and I are. That would be preposterous.”

 

He went on to explain that the ancient seers’ concern with death made them look into the most bizarre possibilities. The ones who opted for the allies’ pattern had in mind, doubtless, a desire for a haven. And they found it, at a fixed position in one of the seven bands of inorganic awareness.

 

The seers felt that they were relatively safe there. After all, they were separated from the daily world by a nearly insurmountable barrier, the barrier of perception set by the assemblage point.

 

“When the four seers saw that you could shift your assemblage point they took off like bats out of hell,” he said and laughed.

 

“Do you mean that I assembled one of the seven worlds?” I asked.

 

“No, you didn’t,” he replied. “But you have done it before, when the seers and their allies chased you. That day you went all the way to their world. The problem is that you love to act stupid, so you can’t remember it at all.

 

“I’m sure that it is the nagual’s presence,” he continued, “that sometimes makes people act dumb. When the nagual Julian was still around, I was dumber than I am now. I am convinced that when I’m no longer here, you’ll be capable of remembering everything.”

 

Don Juan explained that since he needed to show me the death defiers, he and Genaro had lured them to the outskirts of our world. What I had done at first was a deep lateral shift, which allowed me to see them as people, but at the end I had correctly made the shift that allowed me to see the death defiers and their allies as they are.

 

Very early the next morning, at Silvio Manuel’s house, don Juan called me to the big room to discuss the events of the previous night. I felt exhausted and wanted to rest, to sleep, but don Juan was pressed for time. He immediately started his explanation. He said that the old seers had found out a way to utilize the rolling force and be propelled by it. Instead of succumbing to the onslaughts of the tumbler they rode with it and let it move their assemblage points to the confines of human possibilities.

 

Don Juan expressed unbiased admiration for such an accomplishment. He admitted that nothing else could give the assemblage point the boost that the tumbler gives.

 

I asked him about the difference between the earth’s boost and the tumbler’s boost. He explained that the earth’s boost is the force of alignment of only the amber emanations, it is a boost that heightens awareness to unthinkable degrees. To the new seers it is a blast of unlimited consciousness, which they call total freedom.

 

He said that the tumbler’s boost, on the other hand, is the force of death. Under the impact of the tumbler, the assemblage point moves to new, unpredictable positions. Thus, the old seers were always alone in their journeys, although the enterprise they were involved in was always communal. The company of other seers on their journeys was fortuitous and usually meant struggle for supremacy.

 

I confessed to don Juan that the concerns of the old seers, whatever they may have been, were worse than morbid horror tales to me. He laughed uproariously. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

 

“You have to admit, no matter how disgusted you feel, that those devils were very daring,” he went on. “I never liked them myself, as you know, but I can’t help admiring them. Their love for life is truly beyond me.”

 

“How can that be love for life, don Juan? It’s something nauseating,” I said.

 

“What else could push a man to those extremes if it is not love for life?” he asked. “They loved life so intensely that they were not willing to give it up. That’s the way I have seen it. My benefactor saw something else. He believed that they were afraid to die, which is not the same as loving life. I say that they were afraid to die because they loved life and because they had seen marvels, and not because they were greedy little monsters. No. They were aberrant because nobody ever challenged them and they were spoiled like rotten children, but their daring was impeccable and so was their courage.”

 

“Would you venture into the unknown out of greed? No way. Greed works only in the world of ordinary affairs. To venture into that terrifying loneliness one must have something greater than greed. Love, one needs love for life, for intrigue, for mystery. One needs unquenching curiosity and guts galore. So don’t give me this nonsense about your being revolted. It’s embarrassing!”

 

Don Juan’s eyes were shining with contained laughter. He was putting me in my place, but he was laughing at it.

 

Don Juan left me alone in the room for perhaps an hour. I wanted to organize my thoughts and feelings. I had no way to do that. I knew without any doubt that my assemblage point was at a position where reasoning does not prevail, yet I was moved by reasonable concerns. Don Juan had said that technically, as soon as the assemblage point shifts, we are asleep. I wondered, for instance, if I was sound asleep from the stand of an onlooker, just as Genaro had been asleep to me.

 

I asked don Juan about it as soon as he returned.

 

“You are absolutely asleep without having to be stretched out,” he replied. “If people in a normal state of awareness saw you now, you would appear to them to be a bit dizzy, even drunk.”

 

He explained that during normal sleep, the shift of the assemblage point runs along either edge of man’s band. Such shifts are always coupled with slumber. Shifts that are induced by practice occur along the midsection of man’s band and are not coupled with slumber, yet a dreamer is asleep.

 

“Right at this juncture is where the new and the old seers made their separate bids for power,” he went on. “The old seers wanted a replica of the body, but with more physical strength, so they made their assemblage points slide along the right edge of man’s band. The deeper they moved along the right edge the more bizarre their dreaming body became. You, yourself, witnessed last night the monstrous result of a deep shift along the right edge.”

 

He said that the new seers were completely different, that they maintain their assemblage points along the midsection of man’s band. If the shift is a shallow one, like the shift into heightened awareness, the dreamer is almost like anyone else in the street, except for a slight vulnerability to emotions, such as fear and doubt. But at a certain degree of depth, the dreamer who is shifting along the midsection becomes a blob of light. A blob of light is the dreaming body of the new seers.

 

He also said that such an impersonal dreaming body is more conducive to understanding and examination, which are the basis of all the new seers do. The intensely humanized dreaming body of the old seers drove them to look for answers that were equally personal, humanized.

 

Don Juan suddenly seemed to be groping for words.

 

“There is another death defier,” he said curtly, “so unlike the four you’ve seen that he’s indistinguishable from the average man in the street. He’s accomplished this unique feat by being able to open and close his gap whenever he wants.”

 

He played with his fingers almost nervously.

 

“The ancient seer that the nagual Sebastian found in 1723 is that death defier,” he went on. “We count that day as the beginning of our line, the second beginning. That death defier, who’s been on the earth for hundreds of years, has changed the lives of every nagual he met, some more profoundly than others. And he has met every single nagual of our line since that day in 1723.”

 

Don Juan looked fixedly at me. I got strangely embarrassed. I thought my embarrassment was the result of a dilemma. I had very serious doubts about the content of the story, and at the same time I had the most disconcerting trust that everything he had said was true. I expressed my quandary to him.

 

“The problem of rational disbelief is not yours alone,” don Juan said. “My benefactor was at first plagued by the same question. Of course, later on he remembered everything. But it took him a long time to do so. When I met him he had already recollected everything, so I never witnessed his doubts. I only heard about them.”

 

“The weird part is that people who have never set eyes on the man have less difficulty accepting that he’s one of the original seers. My benefactor said that his quandaries stemmed from the fact that the shock of meeting such a creature had lumped together a number of emanations. It takes time for those emanations to separate themselves.”

 

Don Juan went on to explain that as my assemblage point kept on shifting, a moment would come when it would hit the proper combination of emanations; at that moment the proof of the existence of that man would become overwhelmingly evident to me.

 

I felt compelled to talk again about my ambivalence.

 

“We’re deviating from our subject,” he said. “It may seem that I’m trying to convince you of the existence of that man; and what I meant to talk about is the fact that the old seer knows how to handle the rolling force. Whether or not you believe that he exists is not important. Someday you’ll know for a fact that he certainly succeeded in closing his gap. The energy that he borrows from the nagual every generation he uses exclusively to close his gap.”

 

“How did he succeed in closing it?” I asked.

 

“There is no way of knowing that,” he replied. “I’ve talked to two other naguals who saw that man face to face, the nagual Julian and the nagual Elias. Neither of them knew how. The man never revealed how he closes that opening, which I suppose begins to expand after a time. The nagual Sebastian said that when he first saw the old seer, the man was very weak, actually dying. But my benefactor found him prancing vigorously, like a young man.”

 

Don Juan said that the nagual Sebastian nicknamed that nameless man “the tenant,” for they struck an arrangement by which the man was given energy, lodging so to speak, and he paid rent in the form of favors and knowledge.

 

“Did anybody ever get hurt in the exchange?” I asked.

 

“None of the naguals who exchanged energy with him was injured,” he replied. “The man’s commitment was that he’d only take a bit of superfluous energy from the nagual in exchange for gifts, for extraordinary abilities. For instance, the nagual Julian got the gait of power. With it, he could activate or make dormant the emanations inside his cocoon in order to look young or old at will.”

 

Don Juan explained that the death defiers in general went as far as rendering dormant all the emanations inside their cocoons, except those that matched the emanations of the allies. In this fashion they were able to imitate the allies in some form.

 

Each of the death defiers we had encountered at the rock, don Juan said, had been able to move his assemblage point to a precise spot on his cocoon in order to emphasize the emanations shared with the allies and to interact with them. But they were all unable to move it back to its usual position and interact with people. The tenant, on the other hand, is capable of shifting his assemblage point to assemble the everyday world as if nothing had ever happened.

 

Don Juan also said that his benefactor was convinced – and he fully agreed with him – that what takes place during the borrowing of energy is that the old sorcerer moves the nagual’s assemblage point to emphasize the ally’s emanations inside the nagual’s cocoon. He then uses the great jolt of energy produced by those emanations that suddenly become aligned after being so deeply dormant.

 

He said that the energy locked within us, in the dormant emanations, has a tremendous force and an incalculable scope. We can only vaguely assess the scope of that tremendous force, if we consider that the energy involved in perceiving and acting in the world of everyday life is a product of the alignment of hardly one-tenth of the emanations encased in man’s cocoon.

 

“What happens at the moment of death is that all that energy is released at once,” he continued. “Living beings at that moment become flooded by the most inconceivable force. It is not the rolling force that has cracked their gaps, because that force never enters inside the cocoon; it only makes it collapse. What floods them is the force of all the emanations that are suddenly aligned after being dormant for a lifetime. There is no outlet for such a giant force except to escape through the gap.”

 

He added that the old sorcerer

"Pow, zoom, right to the moon, Teresa!!!!!!"

This is one of, if not the oldest Publix in Gainesville, having opened way back in the late 1960's. I'm sure it has been remodeled numerous times since then, but this store looks like it's sort of stuck in the mid to late 90's. I keep hearing rumors of this store eventually closing, being torn down, and rebuilt complete with a parking garage on top! I'll believe it when I read it in the Gainesville Sun. I heard the reasoning for the stalling of this project has to do with the fact that the Checkers Fast Food Restaurant in the northwest corner of this plaza refuses to relocate.

Spotmatic II | Sears 135mm | Arista Edu Ultra 100

 

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.

 

Roll #133, Frame 32. f/8.

Dev: D-76 (1:1, 225mL), 8 min @ 18°C (EI 50). 10 sec rolling agit / min.

(I don't have photoshop yet, so all manipulations are done using microsoft picture manager, pixeasy and similar programs. after that there's manual retouching using different kinds of paper and sometimes watercolor or pencil)

Clickers is the nickname given to humans in the third stage of the Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis infection. They have had prolonged exposure to the fungus and are completely blind. Navigation is still possible using an adaptive echolocation, similar to that of most bats. This makes an eerie clicking sound, thus earning Clickers their nickname. Their appearance is less human than that of Runners, with their faces being skewed and scarred by fungus. Clickers are comparatively more aggressive than Runners and no longer resist the fungus. They aren't bound by morality or reasoning anymore, having lost their humanity long ago. They will always attack upon sound (or allegedly smell).

 

From the IGN wikis. I used pink Blu-Tac and old Lego flower peices on the head to try to simulate the fungal growth around the head ( I edited out the central hole in the flowers, and the teeth as well). Initially another 8x8 vignette, I went for a more cinematic effect for this one. From what I can tell clickers are usually found indoors where their echolocation works better, so maybe it needs a different backdrop.

 

As I walk out into the streets, I see the man dressed in red and black. Noble. Brave. But not responsible. No... He hasn't earned that yet. Peter Parker learned those principles early. This man just stops the crime, under any circumstance. Not thinking what will happen.

Something unexpected happened though. A strange alien jumped out of a window. A.... a demon. I feel the heat from under the fake skin that is shown on the outside. It burns like paper, and floats away in the wind. My eyes fall out, and all that's left is the devil's crony. I walk to the thing, and see the man follow after me.

He looks at me, confused, and then looks at the creature again. An interesting mind.

I grab the creature, and drain the liquid organism from his blood. I feel it in me. It's rage. It's feelings.

I quickly burn it in my body. I hear it scream. It pleasures me.

The man in red and black just stares as I do this. The man the creature possessed looked dazed. I raise my hand, and fire surrounds him. He is quickly transported to Hell. The "hero" looks me in the eyes, and leaps at me. I only grab his throat and throw him to the ground. I easily send him to Hell. He's done many unjust things.

I follow them down to the underworld, and find the hero. He tries reasoning with me, saying he's not supposed to be here. Then he argues.

"Who do you think you are?" he asks.

"That's a good question."

It's 1968. One year after the Rider was born. I walk the streets of Washington, waiting for the King to arise. It's April 3rd and the streets are crowded. I walk into Mason Temple, and see the King himself. He's getting ready.

"Thank you very kindly my friends..."

I sit down in one of the booths. I sign with the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

"Something is happening in Memphis..."

A woman sits next to me, and after signing, kneels. She is elderly, in her 80's. She will never see the day where whites and blacks become equal.

"I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates...."

She begins to cry. I only stare with blank eyes. Emotion does not come easily to me. She stands up, possibly hoping to see the King himself.

"The Nation is sick."

She walks out of the booth, and through the front door. I sign, and follow, to hear the words, "We want to be free."

Once outside I see her on the steps. She's ready. She's seen death in the face. But so has the King. That's why I'm here. The King was to fall. But this woman.... she was not destined to. Yet, here she was on the steps.

She leans forward, allowing herself to be beat up by the grueling stairs. Men and women rush around me, to see the woman at the edge of the steps. She never touched the ground.

The King comes out of the church, as he is finished with his speech. He sees the woman on the steps, and closes his eyes. He mumbles words, and walks on. He brushes my shoulder, and stops to say his word. I agree it was an accident, and I wish him good fortune. This will not come.

April 4th, 1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was there to show him the steps to heaven.

The speech had gotten to me. "We all want to be free." I wanted freedom. Yet, for years, decades, centuries, I was trapped. While in Mason Temple, I felt free. Free, and with people around me who felt the same. I couldn't even remember my name then. It had been to long, without using it. Who am i?

The hero mumbles more words at me. I just do as I am told, and tell him his destiny. He looks as if he has seen a ghost, and turns to wipe a tear.

I transport him to the world from where he came from, and watch him walk off.

I decided to do the same. Walk away, that is. Discover who I am. Who I was. I started my course, and walked down the steps.

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

Ye, as you can tell there is a lot of symbolism and themes in here. This is more of my "literature" stories I guess. Oh well.

On our way back down to the valley post-holing was unavoidable. Luckily, the famous “this is only for a short section” reasoning was for once true.

Learn to see what you are looking at because what is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe. All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention. Never trust to general impressions but concentrate yourself upon details

People love to stand in front of Van Cortlandt Manor at the Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze and take selfies or photos of the house itself while it's all lit up for Halloween. This year, I noticed that the vast majority of people I saw taking pictures were using their cell phones rather than regular cameras. This surprised me very much and made me wonder at their reasoning. Are they simply trading quality for simplicity or is it something more? I take a lot of pictures with my cell phone since it's very quick and easy but it can never replace my "real" camera. What does everyone else think about using a cell phone for photography versus an actual camera?

At the F50's heart there could only be a V12 engine. Mounted inline amidships and coupled to a six-speed transaxle, the four-cam 4,699cc unit employed five-valves-per-cylinder technology borrowed from Ferrari's contemporary F1 engine, from which it was directly descended. While not capable of the five-figure maximum revs of the smaller race engine, the F50's V12 used its increased capacity to good effect, producing an astonishing 520bhp at 8,500rpm, with 347lb/ft of torque available at 6,500rpm. A stressed chassis member, the otherwise mostly alloy engine employed cast iron for the crankcase in the interests of rigidity.

One of the most challenging areas of the F50 project in terms of adapting it for road use, the double-wishbone suspension featured inboard-mounted coil-spring/damper units operated by pushrods in the manner of a modern single-seater racing car, the damping response being controlled electronically. Perhaps surprisingly, neither steering nor brakes had any power assistance; nor did the latter have ABS, the F50's designers no doubt reasoning that the interposition of such systems would limit the degree of feed-back to the driver. The wisdom of this approach was demonstrated emphatically as soon as testing began, the F50 proving 3.5 seconds quicker around Ferrari's Fiorano test track than its F40 predecessor.

 

Photographed at Blenheim Palace during Salon Prive 2016

 

ferrari.com

salonpriveconcours.com/

 

________________________________________________

 

www.facebook.com/MarcinWojciechowskiPhotography/

"From the moment when I stood on the Serengeti plains holding the fossilized bones of ancient creatures in my hands to the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back. You may not believe in evolution, and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves."

~Jane Goodall

 

Firestorm is a nuclear-powered super-hero with the ability to transmute elements. The Firestorm Matrix is a composite of multiple people bonded together, originally high school student Ronnie Raymond controlling the body and nuclear physicist Professor Martin Stein giving direction as an additional consciousness. Mikhail Arkadin became a later Firestorm, Stein took control at one point, and Lorraine Reilly was also part of the matrix for a period.

 

Jason Rusch takes over the identity after the death of Raymond during Identity Crisis, and goes through several partners including Mick Wong and his girlfriend Gehenna.

 

In an interview Gerry Conway discussed his reasoning and influences while creating the character "I always loved the idea of the hair on fire, I think it goes back to Johnny Storm, The Human Torch, an entire flaming character, of course."

 

Conway further elaborated, "I’d been playing around with the idea of a teenage superhero for DC, who could sort of fill the hole that had been left in my heart by leaving Spider-Man behind. I’d been thinking about the tropes — one of which was the meek, mild alter ego, the brainy kid who, in wish fulfillment, gets superpowers, is extremely powerful… able to do things that he hadn’t been able to do before. That was, I think, the major motivating force—I wanted to play on that trope.

 

To do that, I wanted to flip it around: create a guy who wasn’t the brightest guy in the room, the not-terribly-smart guy who became a superpowered character. The way I’d make that work: I’d bring him into contact with the smarter person, who would also share the powers. This led to… the multiple-people-in-one, Professor Stein/ Ronnie Raymond dynamic."

 

Jack Kirby's 1971 design for Lightray's costume influenced the look of artist Al Milgrom's creation of Firestorm in 1978. In an interview from 2019, Milgrom admitted: "The facemask on Firestorm, the way it comes around the chin, was probably inspired by Lightray more than anything... I liked the [Lightray] head-covering thing; I said, "I'm stealin' it!"

 

Aliases

 

Ronnie Raymond / Martin Stein

 

The original Firestorm was distinguished by his integrated dual identity. High school student Ronnie Raymond and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Martin Stein were caught in an accident that allowed them to fuse into Firestorm the Nuclear Man.

 

Due to Stein being unconscious during the accident, Raymond was prominently in command of the Firestorm form with Stein a voice of reason inside his mind, able to offer Raymond advice on how to use their powers without actually having any control over their dual form.

 

Banter between the two was a hallmark of their adventures. Stein was initially completely unaware of their dual identity, leaving him concerned about his unusual disappearances and blackouts, but Ronnie was eventually able to convince him of the truth, allowing them to bond as separate individuals rather than as parts of a whole.

 

Ronnie Raymond / Martin Stein / Mikhail Arkadin

 

When Conway left the series in 1986, John Ostrander (with artist Joe Brozowski) began writing the Firestorm stories. His first major story arc pitted Firestorm against the world as the hero, acting on a suggestion from a terminally ill Professor Stein, demanded that the United States and the Soviet Union destroy all of their nuclear weapons.

 

After confrontations with the Justice League and most of his enemies, Firestorm faced the Russian nuclear superhero Pozhar in the Nevada desert, where an atomic bomb was dropped on them. A new Firestorm resulted, a fusion of the two heroes: this new Firestorm was composed of Ronnie Raymond and the Russian Mikhail Arkadin but controlled by the disembodied amnesiac mind of Martin Stein.

 

Fire Elemental

 

The Firestorm with Arkadin proved to be a transitional phase, as in 1989 Ostrander fundamentally changed the character of Firestorm by revealing that Firestorm was a "Fire Elemental".

 

Firestorm now became something of an environmental crusader, formed from Ronnie Raymond, Mikhail Arkadin, and Svarozhich, a Soviet clone of the previous Firestorm, but with a new mind. Professor Stein, no longer part of the composite at all, continued to play a role, but the focus was on this radically different character.

 

New artist Tom Mandrake would create a new look to match. It was during this phase that Firestorm met and befriended Sango and the Orishas, the elemental gods of Nigeria. He also met their chief deity and Sango's older brother Obatala, Lord of the White Cloth.

 

By the series' 100th issue, Stein learned that he was destined to be the true Fire Elemental and would have been being it not for Raymond also being there by circumstance. Raymond and Arkadin were returned to their old lives, and Stein as Firestorm was accidentally exiled to deep space in the process of saving the Earth. He thereafter spent many years traveling through space as a wanderer, returning to Earth only rarely.

 

After the transition to the elemental Firestorm, all of the main characters from the series vanished from the comics for some time after the cancellation of the Firestorm comic in 1990.

 

Raymond eventually returned in the pages of Extreme Justice.

Raymond, at the time undergoing treatment for leukemia, regained his original powers after a chemotherapy session. It took the combined might of the Justice League led by Captain Atom, and the returned elemental Firestorm, to restore Ronnie's health. Firestorm began to appear regularly in a number of DC titles, though lacking the guidance and knowledge necessary to use his skills wisely.

 

Firestorm was drafted by Batman into a "replacement" Justice League that was commissioned in case something befell the original team (in this case, being stranded in the distant past in "The Obsidian Age" storyline).

 

After the original team returned, Firestorm stayed on as a reserve member and participated in events such as a team-up with the Justice Society of America (in JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice) and the intercompany crossover JLA/Avengers. He was also briefly a member of the Power Company.

 

Jason Rusch

 

In 2004, DC revived the Firestorm comic for the second time, with writer Dan Jolley and artist Chris Cross, but instead of the original Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond, there was a new protagonist; the teenager Jason Rusch.

 

Jason was a 17-year-old living in Detroit who wanted nothing more than to escape his home city. He lived with his father, who had turned abusive after he lost his hand in an industrial accident. His mother left the family sometime after the accident.

 

With the loss of a job he needed for college tuition, Jason turned to a local thug for money, accepting a job as a courier. It was on that job that he encountered the Firestorm Matrix, searching for a new host after Ronnie Raymond's death. In the aftermath, Jason struggled to cope with his new identity and powers—a struggle that led to the death of the man who had hired him.

 

Jason Rusch / Martin Stein

 

In the 2006 miniseries Infinite Crisis, it was revealed that Martin Stein, alive in space as the "Elemental Firestorm", had sensed the presence of Jason Rusch within the Firestorm Matrix, but was unaware of Ronnie Raymond's death. When Jason, as Firestorm, was gravely wounded in the line of duty, Stein linked with him in a variation of the merge, promising Jason a new Firestorm body to let him return into battle (although Martin had been unable to save Mick) and asking him about Ronnie's fate.

 

Accepting Martin's proposal, Jason asked Stein to become the permanent second member of the Firestorm Matrix. Sensing his "errors" (including Mick's death) were the result of his youth and lack of experience, he sought the experience and maturity of Stein. Stein refused at first, but later accepted Jason's request, thus ensuring both a new Firestorm body and the reconstruction of human bodies for both Rusch and Stein.

 

It was revealed in Infinite Crisis that if the Multiverse had survived up to the present, Jason would have been a native of Earth-Eight.

 

Jason Rusch / Firehawk

 

As the storyline jumped ahead one year (and the series itself was now re-titled as Firestorm the Nuclear Man from issue #23 on), Professor Stein has mysteriously vanished, and Jason Rusch has been merging with Firehawk to become Firestorm, allowing him to use her powers as well.

 

The two decided to look for Stein together. Stein had been kidnapped and tortured by the Pupil, a former teaching assistant of Stein's. Flanked by the D.O.L.L.I.s, a group of cyborg soldiers of limited cognitive ability, the Pupil (formerly known as Adrian Burroughs) questioned the nearly dead Stein about the secrets of the universe.

 

Jason and Lorraine, along with the mysterious teleporter Gehenna, freed the captured Stein and restored him to full health. Jason is a college freshman at New York City's Columbus University and seems to have ties with Dani Sharpe, a member of the senior staff at LexCorp.

 

The Firestorm team of Jason and Firehawk made several appearances across the DC Comics Universe before the search for Martin Stein ended. This included dealing with the latest OMAC and teaming up with Superman in the "Back in Action" story arc in Action Comics.

 

Firehawk later introduced Jason to Pozhar, a Russian superhero who was once a part of the Firestorm Matrix; together, the trio takes on a newly reborn Tokamak. This series ended with Firestorm the Nuclear Man #35 (April 2007).

 

Jason Rusch / Ronnie Raymond

 

In the 2009–2010 Blackest Night miniseries, Ronnie Raymond is called by a black power ring to join the Black Lantern Corps. Like other Black Lanterns, the undead Firestorm mimics the personality of Ronnie Raymond, often wisecracking and exhibiting other stereotypical teenage behavior.

 

In the 2010–2011 Brightest Day miniseries, Ronnie Raymond arrives at Jason Rusch's apartment with Professor Stein and Ray Palmer to attend Gehenna's funeral.

 

When Ronnie is actually unable to remember Gehenna's name, Jason angrily lashes out and punches him in the face. This causes the two young men to merge into Firestorm, and they begin arguing inside the Matrix.

 

Palmer manages to separate Jason and Ronnie, but not before the Firestorm matrix causes a huge explosion. It is revealed that Deathstorm intends to create enough emotional instability between Ronnie and Jason that the Matrix will trigger another Big Bang, thereby destroying all life in the universe. Ronnie and Jason must find a way to contain their Firestorm matrix from the explosion in less than 90 days.

 

After the events of the 2011 Flashpoint storyline, The New 52 reality altered Firestorm's personal history to the point of it being completely restarted. Ronnie Raymond is now introduced as a high school senior and the captain of the football team. During a terrorist attack on their school, classmate Jason Rusch produces a vial given to him by Professor Stein, which contains the "God Particle", one of Stein's creations.

 

The God Particle transforms both Jason and Ronnie into Firestorm, and the two teens briefly battle each other before accidentally merging into a hulking creature known as the Fury.

 

Sharing the identity of Firestorm, with Ronnie being the brawn and Jason being the brains, Firestorm is considered for recruitment into the Justice League along with several other heroes.

 

DC Rebirth

 

In the Watchmen sequel Doomsday Clock, Firestorm becomes a subject of controversy after claims arise stating that he was created by the American government. Firestorm profanely denounces the "Superman Theory" and insults his Russian counterpart Pozhar, much to the dismay of Martin Stein.

 

Firestorm subsequently becomes embroiled in a fight with several Russian superheroes before appearing to inadvertently turn a crowd of civilian protesters into a glass (a feat previously deemed beyond his capabilities). Firestorm flees with the body of an affected child and is found in hiding at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine by Superman.

 

With Superman's encouragement, Firestorm returns the child to normal. Firestorm and Superman return to the affected crowd and are engaged by the Russian military. The area then becomes engulfed in an explosion of blue light. Subsequent discoveries reveal that the 'Superman Theory' is actually partially correct, as Stein deliberately engineered the creation of Firestorm to make himself a superhuman, even if Raymond genuinely had no idea of this until recently.

 

Powers and abilities

 

Firestorm has the ability to rearrange molecular or particle structures of any substance into most anything else, creating different atomic structures of equal mass. He can transmute the basic composition of an object (e.g., transmuting lead into gold) and can also change its shape or form at will. Much like Green Lantern's limitations, Firestorm can only create items whose workings are understood by the "driver" of the Firestorm Matrix, through he can make more complex sentient constructs out of the Matrix's energies. Unlike Green Lantern's creations, Firestorm's alterations are permanent unless he reverses them.

 

Initially, he could not affect organic matter without painful, even lethal, feedback (i.e., fatal biophysical disruption or even localized particle motion phenomena like extreme changes in the weather). It was later revealed that Firestorm could always change organic matter, but opted not to. As Jason Rusch became Firestorm, however, this weakness appeared to have dissipated. With old and new variations, the organic limitation does not extend to his own person, as its users can molecularly change their driver self at will, allowing them to regenerate lost or damaged bodily tissue, boost immune systems, shape-shift, increase physical capabilities and survive indefinitely without food, sleep, water or air.

 

Capacities as such produce superhuman levels of strength, durability, stamina and resistance to injury great enough to challenge the New Gods—the likes of Orion, Lashina, or an empowered Kalibak—or surviving the rigors of outer space and sitting near the inner corona above the sun's photosphere without discomfort.

 

Firestorm's power has been stated by Prof. Stein to be theoretically infinite, harnessing the spark of creation, the Big Bang itself. However, infinite power runs the risk of burning out its host.

 

While the Firestorm Matrix can be utilized by a singular host driver—as was the case with Ronnie, Stein, and Rusch—it is not recommended. The Matrix functions best with two people, a pilot and secondary, to comprehend and master it. Martin instructed Rusch on how to study current and potential powers available to them within the Matrix and to manually adjust them on the fly at a later date. Its main source of energy stemmed from the ambient stellar energies of native stars and suns but could also use its co-pilot as a power source, though they will burn out over time and genetically disintegrate if not properly adjusted to its power.

 

The merging aspect of the Matrix can enable outside fusions which assimilate any inherent abilities these others might possess. However, this can diminish its effectiveness and stability. Rusch has shown he can spontaneously warp himself and others he had previously merged with to his specific location, triggering the neural pathway connection and allowing the gestalt to access each other's knowledge and memories to better utilize Firestorm's capabilities.

 

Users of the Firestorm Matrix can access a type of ancestral memory from the continuum of past Matrix users, allowing them to access the latest knowledge of the atoms comprising it. This also translates into a form of time-space sight in which the Matrix user can glimpse the past, present, future, and alternate lives of every other Firestorm throughout reality using a collective of subatomic wormholes which exist as a part of the Matrix. This power is too complex to properly control; thus, it has been highly unreliable as an ability.

 

The driver can fly at supersonic speeds in an atmosphere and reach escape velocities. The driver can also adjust the driver's body's size or pull and enlarge others from the subatomic universe at will, Rusch having once dragged Ray Palmer from his microscopic size to the natural world while on Apokolips. Manipulation of the self at the subatomic level allows the driver to become intangible and pass through solid objects. This allowed Rusch to communicate with John Stewart and sift through his mind telepathically after he had been taken over by the void beast. Firestorm is also adept at absorbing and redistributing radiation or energy both harmlessly and productively (such as in Green Lantern: Circle of Fire #7, having both absorbed Zeta Radiation from Adam Strange's body and repurposed it to turn a universe-destroying quasar back onto itself and absorb the fallout from a massive nuclear detonation).) He can generate destructive or concussive blasts of nuclear energy, through which he can also channel his transmogrification powers.

 

While the Matrix grants the fusers unique powers, it can also accidentally bestow them on individuals caught in the Matrix by mistake. One example is Nanette Phaedon, wife of the late Allen Phaedon, who gained the ability to change her quantum state for size-shifting and flight by her own will. Following Raymond's resurrection during Brightest Day, Firestorm gained the ability to switch "drivers" between Ronnie and Jason at will; before that, only the active driver was in control, with the dormant consciousness only able to advise the other on what action to take. One of the faults of a Firestorm fusion is that the stronger psyche will have dominance of the Matrix's power, such as when Jason fused with Luis Salvador who overpowered him from the passenger seat of the Matrix.

 

During The New 52, the Firestorm Matrix could be shared through multiple users at a time. Users could fuse and become stronger, but more unstable. The entity formed between Ronnie and Jason when using the Matrix in tandem created a nuclear being called "the Fury". It was also shown that The Matrix shares a kinship to the Quantum Field in some way, enabling Firestorm users to derive its power for subatomic transmutation and manipulation. Some believe it is key to the fabled God particle theory. Its merging properties can place a large burden on the user; Firestorm runs the risk of reaching critical mass and detonating. At worst, the fusion of too many users in the Matrix could trigger a second Big Bang.

  

⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽

_____________________________

A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.

 

Secret Identities:

Ronald Roy "Ronnie" Raymond

Dr. Martin Stein

Dr. Mikhail Denisovitch Arkadin

Jason Thomas Rusch

 

Publisher: DC

 

First appearance: Firestorm the Nuclear Man #1 (March 1978)

 

Created by: Gerry Conway (Writer)

Al Milgrom (Artist)

Please indulge me here:

 

Many people are either in love with themselves

or they hate themselves-which is just another form of self love, but we can call that self absorption or self indulgence.

 

There is little middle ground here!

 

There is only you in the world and everyone else is either out to lower or raise your self esteem.

 

Other people are either our makers or breakers.

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

 

As people/human organisms we mostly want obedience, loyalty, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, UNDERSTANDING, GRATITUDE, AFFECTION, ACCEPTANCE.

 

We want our asses kissed, our flaws overlooked, our attitudes accepted our negativity applauded, our way of making coffee the best ,

 

We crave the best homes, gardens, cars, children, kitchens, bathrooms

 

basically .......... the best of everything!

 

And the MYTH that only America is great, all other countries are filled with ignorant morons who kill and hate and beg and have no money and dont strive and lack ambition and are dying to come to AMERICA but arent as good as Americans and basically AMERICA is the greatest thing since oral sex

well... is truly a MYTH!

 

Many of us think we are interesting.

Not true at all.

  

MEDIOCRE is the word for most Humans and

IGRAM and Youtube are prime examples saturated with MEDIOCRITY.

 

The DEMOCRATIZATION OF talentless talent!?

 

Many of us want an audience, fame and applause without actually making the effort.

 

Many of us are Narcissists, self aggrandizing and want clones of ourselves.

 

Materialism justifies our entire existence & it leaves us empty & poor in the soul and deceived because its illusory, ephemeral and basically just crap put together until its replaced by version 2.0

 

We dont want to work at relationships.

We want the relationship one way

our way

with our values

our opinions matter

our decisions are always the right ones.

 

What we say goes. Its our way or no way. We want it ALL our way.

 

THE LOYALTY OF THE DOG THAT ONLY A DOG GIVES IS WHAT We WANT .................. a DOG.

 

MANS BEST FRIEND.

SMACK A DOG,

CURSE IT,

THROW ROCKS AT IT,

 

POKE ITS EYES

KICK IT

REFUSE ITS AFFECTION

ABUSE IT

THROW IT DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS

 

MAKE IT AN OBJECT THAT HAS NO FEELINGS AND MAKE IT ENDURE AS MUCH VENOM YOU GOT FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD....

 

A DOG WILL ALWAYS BE LOVING AND OBEDIENT.

IT WILL NEVER ABANDON YOU.

IT WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU.

IT WILL WAG ITS TAIL AND JUMP ON YOU AT THE DOOR UPON ARRIVAL AND CRY WHEN YOU LEAVE IT.

EVEN AFTER A SEVERE BATTERING.

 

MANS BEST FRIEND ....

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

We treat,

evaluate

and judge others like we were treated as a child.

 

some call this PROJECTION for you psychology nuts.

 

If uncorrected or unanalyzed ( most human beings ) we pass all this crap on to our offspring, thus

a generation of drug addiction, hopelessness, you get it...

 

OUR VIEWS are " DOGMA "

 

a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

  

Our opinions are rarely unchangeable, we are rigid, we are so full of our childhood traumas we dont even know they are traumas. We find others to convince that youre reasoning is the right reasoning and they should join forces with you.

 

We want universal unconditional non negotiable unmitigated floridly wholeheartedly 100 percent edly acceptance. Yes basically........ we want DOGS!

  

ruff ruff.................

Dr Losack ......

  

Photography’s new conscience

linktr.ee/GlennLosack

linktr.ee/GlennLosack

   

glosack.wixsite.com/tbws

 

Sounds like the title of a dodgy film doesn't it?

 

Just been having a look back over my photos and it would seem that I don't really know who I am or who I want to be at any one given time! Well I know who I want to be but that's another story.

 

When I first started getting a little more serious about being who I am it was suggested that I shouldn't change my look rapidly from day to day because people like to see a constant and would take me more seriously if I present one image all the time. I can see the reasoning behind that advice honest I can but I just love playing different characters.

 

Not sure Helen is the kind of girl who would ever stop surprising she is one of those girls who likes to keep people on their toes. One day she is a saint the next she is a sinner (not really), one day she is the neighbour next door the following day she is a princess.

 

Most of the time she just a girl/woman trapped in a world that can't see her or won't see her.

 

So in order to be seen I am wearing this gold/yellow satin dress. Think I will stand out in this one and that makes this girl happy.

I shamelessly skipped week seven, my reasoning is here as well as more photos from week eight right over here. :)

Greco-Buddhism and Modern Rovingian Animism - Parallels in the Fusion of Traditions by Daniel Arrhakis (2026)

  

Greco-Buddhism and Modern Rovingian Animism - Parallels in the Fusion of Traditions

 

Greco-Buddhism: an encounter between Greek and Asian traditions

 

Greco-Buddhism was a cultural syncretism developed in the ancient region of Gandhara (present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan). This phenomenon fused Indian spiritual philosophy with Hellenistic aesthetics and reasoning, disseminated after the conquests of Alexander the Great.

 

Artistic Fusion (Gandharian Art)

 

The most striking evidence of this intersection is visual. Before Greek influence, the Buddha was not represented in human form; he appeared primarily symbolically, for example: footprints, an empty throne or a wheel (dharmachakra).

 

The legacy of this encounter between East and West remains visible in Buddhist art and iconography, with influences extending throughout Central Asia and reaching China, Korea, and Japan.

  

Rovingian Modern Animism: A Contemporary Spiritual Fusion

 

Just as Greco-Buddhism illustrates the fusion of cultures, rites, and spiritualities over millennia, Rovingian modern animism presents itself as a synthesis of ancient shamanic traditions, modern ecology and Asian references.

It draws inspiration from: the ancestral animistic vision, the Dharmic traditions of Asia, especially Buddhism and Hinduism, Chinese and Japanese traditions, such as Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism and Modern Ecology.

 

In line with many Asian currents and animism, and unlike Abrahamic religions, this perspective tends to be non-theistic, favoring personal enlightenment and lived practice over theocentric worship.

 

Without intending to contest other interpretations, Rovingian animism defends the immortality of the soul through successive reincarnations. This continuity is understood in a universal and timeless way: the evolution of consciousness occurs in symbiosis with matter and can acquire planetary and cosmic scales.

 

In this view, all elements participate in some degree of consciousness and relationship—living beings (animals and plants), natural elements (rocks, rivers, mountains), and even human creations. Everything exists in interdependence, in a network equilibrium, where matter and spirit co-evolve and no element subsists in isolation from the Whole.

  

Pillars of the fusion of traditions

 

The legacy of Greco-Buddhism

 

Pioneering syncretism: united Indian cosmological thought with Hellenistic philosophy, including the impulse for anthropomorphism.

 

Breaking of dogmas: helped translate the representation of the invisible (symbols) into tangible forms (Gandarian art).

 

Spiritual “Globalization”: showed that spiritual paths are not static and can expand across diverse geographies and cultures.

  

The paradigm of modern Rovingian animism

 

Non-theistic approach: focuses on self-enlightenment and lived experience, rejecting Abrahamic theocentrism.

 

Cosmic panpsychism: attributes consciousness to living beings, natural elements, and artificial objects.

 

Transdimensional evolution: proposes reincarnations that operate in symbiosis with matter on a universal scale and in relative time.

 

Radical interdependence: understands reality as a web in which matter and spirit co-evolve in a network.

  

Similarities with the concept of Pratītyasamutpāda

 

In Buddhism, the concept of Pratītyasamutpāda (dependent co-origination) states that all phenomena arise in dependence on multiple causes and conditions: “If this exists, that exists; if this ceases, that ceases.”

 

This metaphysical view presents relevant similarities with the structure of modern Rovingian animism:

 

Rejection of existential isolation: In Buddhism, there is no independent "self" or isolated static soul (empty of intrinsic existence). In Rovingian animism, individual consciousness integrates itself into the cosmic equilibrium in such a way that the evolution of the soul occurs "in symbiosis with matter," depending on the environment and the universal ecosystem.

 

Networked causality (cosmic web): The Pratītyasamutpāda does not operate as a straight line of cause and effect, but as a network of mutually conditioning factors. Similarly, the Rovingian view describes a radical interdependence in which biotic (living) and abiotic (rocks, rivers, artificial objects) elements simultaneously influence the equilibrium of the global system.

 

Multidimensional cycle and continuity: Dependent co-origination describes the cycle that perpetuates existence by generating new states (samsara). In the Rovingian model, "successive reincarnations with a timeless dimension" reflect a continuous flow of energy and consciousness that transforms and expands, acquiring planetary and cosmic proportions in relative time.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

  

Greco-budismo e Animismo Moderno Rovingiano - Paralelismos Na Fusão de Tradições

 

Greco-budismo: encontro entre tradições gregas e asiáticas

 

O greco-budismo foi um sincretismo cultural desenvolvido na antiga região de Gandara (atual Paquistão e Afeganistão). Este fenómeno fundiu a filosofia espiritual indiana com a estética e o raciocínio helenísticos, difundidos após as conquistas de Alexandre, o Grande.

 

Fusão artística (arte gandariana)

 

A evidência mais marcante desta intersecção é visual. Antes da influência grega, o Buda não era representado sob forma humana; surgia, sobretudo, de modo simbólico, por exemplo: pegadas, um trono vazio, uma roda (dharmachakra).

 

O legado deste encontro entre Oriente e Ocidente permanece visível na arte e na iconografia budistas, com influências que se estenderam pela Ásia Central e chegaram à China, Coreia e Japão.

  

Animismo Moderno Rovingiano: uma fusão espiritual contemporânea

 

Tal como o greco-budismo ilustra a fusão de culturas, ritos e espiritualidades ao longo de tempos milenares, o animismo moderno rovingiano assume-se como uma síntese de tradições xamânicas ancestrais, ecologia moderna e tradições asiáticas.

Inspira-se: nas tradições xamânicas ancestrais, nas tradições dármicas (ou religiões índicas) da Ásia, em especial o Budismo e o Hinduísmo, em tradições chinesas e japonesas, como o Taoísmo, o Confucionismo, o Xintoísmo e a Ecologia Moderna.

 

Em linha com muitas correntes asiáticas e com o animismo, e ao contrário das religiões abraâmicas, esta perspetiva tende a ser não-teísta, privilegiando a iluminação pessoal e a prática vivida em detrimento de uma adoração teocêntrica.

 

Sem pretender contestar outras leituras, o animismo rovingiano defende a imortalidade da alma através de reencarnações sucessivas. Essa continuidade é entendida de forma universal e intemporal: a evolução da consciência dá-se em simbiose com a matéria e pode adquirir escalas planetárias e cósmicas.

 

Nesta visão, todos os elementos participam de algum grau de consciência e relação — seres vivos (animais e plantas), elementos naturais (rochas, rios, montanhas) e até criações humanas. Tudo existe em interdependência, num equilíbrio em rede, onde matéria e espírito coevoluem e nenhum elemento subsiste isoladamente do Todo.

  

Pilares da fusão de tradições

 

O legado do greco-budismo

 

Sincretismo pioneiro: uniu o pensamento cosmológico indiano à filosofia helenística, incluindo o impulso para o antropomorfismo.

 

Quebra de dogmas: ajudou a traduzir a representação do invisível (símbolos) em formas tangíveis (arte gandariana).

 

“Globalização” espiritual: mostrou que caminhos espirituais não são estáticos e podem expandir-se por geografias e culturas diversas.

  

O paradigma do animismo moderno rovingiano

 

Abordagem não-teísta: centra-se na autoiluminação e na vivência, rejeitando o teocentrismo abraâmico.

 

Panpsiquismo cósmico: atribui consciência a seres vivos, elementos naturais e objetos artificiais.

 

Evolução transdimensional: propõe reencarnações que operam em simbiose com a matéria à escala universal e tempo relativo.

 

Interdependência radical: entende a realidade como uma teia em que matéria e espírito coevoluem em rede.

  

Semelhanças com o conceito de Pratītyasamutpāda

 

No Budismo, o conceito de Pratītyasamutpāda (co-originação dependente) afirma que todos os fenómenos surgem em dependência de múltiplas causas e condições: “Se isto existe, aquilo existe; se isto cessa, aquilo cessa”.

 

Esta visão metafísica apresenta semelhanças relevantes com a estrutura do animismo moderno rovingiano:

 

Rejeição do isolamento existencial: no Budismo, não existe um “eu” independente nem uma alma estática isolada (vazio de existência intrínseca). No animismo rovingiano, a consciência individual integra-se de tal forma no equilíbrio cósmico que a evolução da alma acontece “em simbiose com a matéria”, dependendo do meio e do ecossistema universal.

 

Causalidade em rede (teia cósmica): o Pratītyasamutpāda não opera como uma linha reta de causa e efeito, mas como uma rede de fatores mutuamente condicionantes. De modo semelhante, a visão rovingiana descreve uma interdependência radical em que elementos bióticos (vivos) e abióticos (rochas, rios, objetos artificiais) influenciam simultaneamente o equilíbrio do sistema global.

 

Ciclo multidimensional e continuidade: a co-originação dependente descreve o ciclo que perpetua a existência ao gerar novos estados (samsara). No modelo rovingiano, as “reencarnações sucessivas com dimensão intemporal” refletem um fluxo contínuo de energia e consciência que se transforma e se expande, adquirindo proporções planetárias e cósmicas no tempo relativo.

   

Conservative arrives in shades of navy and cream

With matching suitcases and fine cuisine

 

Appraising the violation of violet hair

With offerings of love and inquisitive reasoning

 

Reminiscing leads to a sideways shunt

With silver clouds the seaside comes beckoning

 

Surprise seizes at an appropriate location

With arms crossed and collars adorned

 

Lilac locks are no longer so livid

With cobalt, cherry and lime surrounding

 

Blackpool 2008

©Camera Poetry

A swamp and some lights.

 

straight out of the camera

 

Get your feet muddy.

What If I Am Father?

 

Comedian W.C. Fields was reading the Bible one afternoon when a friend asked him what he was doing. The actor responded wryly, “Looking for loopholes.”

Somewhere within the intended humor of this statement probably lies a revealing glimpse of our often-ironic approach to God. That is, if God is real, there is something irrational about thinking in terms of an entity that can be manipulated; if there is such a thing as truth, there is something ridiculous about defining it to suit ourselves. But we do this regularly.

Author A.J. Jacobs always assumed that religion “would just wither away and we’d live in a neo-Enlightenment world.”(1) When this did not happen, he figured he should examine whether he was missing something essential to being a human or whether half the human population was simply deluded by the existence of God. So he decided to follow literally every command in the Bible for a year—including not trimming his beard and making tassels on the corners of his garments. In his book A Year of Living Biblically, he describes his experiment, which he admits held a bit of irreverence. In the end, nonetheless, he draws the conclusion, “I now believe that whether or not there’s a God, there is such a thing as sacredness.”(2)

Many, including Jacobs, point out the irony of his experiment—namely, deciding to follow the Bible literally is hardly the same thing as deciding to follow God. Yet the popular approach to theological inquiry is not much different and is often equally suited to our own interests, the difference perhaps being that we rarely point out our own incongruous thinking. Truth is comfortably understood in terms of preference, and God is readily comprehended as one who must prepare a defense for our own thunderous line of questioning, even as we question this God’s very existence. Somehow we have arrived at a state of mind where we can live in anger with God for existing, where we can each choose our own brand of reasoning and be frustrated with life for being unreasonable—and see none of the contradictions in our words. Or else we simply choose to overlook them—along with the desperate love of the one crouched at our feet.

 

The prophet Malachi screamed of crisis during a time when people were asleep to their own incongruous thoughts. Malachi’s message came at the end of a thousand year period of God’s revelation to the people of Israel. The next voice to be heard centuries later was that of John the Baptist preparing the way for the Messiah. Yet historically, the people of Malachi’s day were standing in a period of almost eerie stillness. There was no looming threat to be addressed, no extraordinary prospering to be consumed by, no real reason to be moved by much of anything. Whether for lack of excitement or for excess of ease, the hearts of the people had grown cold and weary. Their worship was tired. Their complaints had no end. It was Malachi who pointedly voiced the irrationality of their half-hearted approach to God, the sheer irony of finding the almighty God wearisome.

Through Malachi, we hear a series of distinctive questions and answers in a dialogical fashion, and we get an eye-opening glimpse of the often-cynical, often-illogical cries of humanity in light of the cries of a Father’s heart in response to his children.

The opening lines of the closing book read powerfully, “I have loved you, says the Lord. Yet you say, ‘In what way have you loved us?’… A son honors his father, and a servant his master. But if I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?”(3) The inquiry is both direct and personal, referencing a great story of pursuit and belonging, embrace and subtle or not-so-subtle rejection. If I am Father, why am I the one being questioned? While you have grown cold and weary, I have loved you. Yet you ask, “In what way?”

In these words, in the midst of whatever inconsistency we may or may not see in ourselves, I believe a loving Father still beckons. This declaration of love, which could easily be spoken in anger, voiced as one taking back the words and years of care, is not spoken in terms of retreat. On the contrary, spoken in perfect tense, the phrase “I have loved you” signals past actions, but present implications. The immense history of God’s pursuit and care is indeed called to mind, but the sentiment remains unscathed, present and active. It is as if God is saying through a crippling lament that remembers every costly act on our behalf, and yet still hopes to assure: You don’t know what you’re saying or doing. I have loved you. I have loved you. I have loved you.

Similar words would be spoken even closer centuries later as God stood among humanity as one of us. “And when they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. But Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.'”(4)

What if God is dissatisfied by empty worship, not out of greed or arrogance or self-preoccupation, but because God’s love is so far from empty itself? What if God is grieved by barren, distant images of abstract religion, not out of legalism or fastidiousness, but because God lives so much nearer than we know? What if God laments our self-consumed inquiries as to divine love and character simply because the statement is far truer than we have imagined: “‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord.”

How do we respond to this love? For one, there is really no need for loopholes. And if we will remember the immense demonstration of this love in history, there is also no reason to ask “in what way?”

 

Jill Carattini is managing editor at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

       

There's a sad knowledge in my heart of where this tendency of content overpolicing is going on a larger scale. This overreach of control and micromanagement. If I'd posted this pic to a small local URBEX Facebook group, my post would be deleted without any explanation and prior communication on rules regarding location disclosure elsewhere, although I never disclose locations explicitly - not on Facebook, not on Flickr, not anywhere. And have been rude in the past to make clear that I won’t disclose the info, so that the received message is as laconic and clear as possible. So that the potential explorer in contact could go fuck him/herself ASAP and hard.

Today – after being around abandoned places for 30+ years and pondering this for a quite some time, especially in 20/21, I’m thinking a tad differently. Do I care about Fecesbook drama? No, I’m on my way out of there for good and only my business interests hold me to that decrepit shithole, plus I can find another ways to reach local customers, so the ban affects me only in principle (first post sanitization without prior communication) that’s laid bare below.

 

So, my first post in that group was deleted yesterday. Basis? As it turned out when I PM’d the admin of the group for some reasoning: “You have disclosed locations on your Flickr”, which just amazes me. I upload to Flickr using external tool exclusively, and have set a Publish rule to never post GPS locations. So I went through my Flickr titles, and found out whopping 5 unique places named.

This will be the 6th.

 

Some might argue that even this amount of information disclosure is too much, to which I wholeheartedly agree to a degree: only if the place is not in public domain, AND if there’s anything but walls and smashed windows left in there. Yesteryear I’d told you to fuck off. Today I’d do some work before doing so. I’d check your profile for signs of thorough and non-damaging interest, and will disclose the place only if some evidence is found. This is the healthier approach, in my opinion, and here’s why.

If you do some critical thinking on this idea of info non-disclosure between URBEX people, at least a couple of problems present themselves gloriously clearly, and they tend to contradict the assumption that information non-disclosure will somehow magically stop the entropy, and will keep the place up and in good health. 1) Places getting ruined or demolished anyways (entropy); 2) Places getting renovated and made boring to explorers.

I’m highly doubtful that scrappers, vandals, teens and addicts use local URBEX internet groups as their primary source of information. These places attract all these kinds of people. They use brains too, and scrappers can smell abandonment miles away, for their living depends on it, not just a silly drive to trespass and explore the living past. Teens and vandals are usually local pricks that enjoy the feeling of smashed windows and falling walls, and I can’t really blame them, it’s a ton of fun, if you look at it honestly.

 

I’ve been exploring long enough to see non-disclosed places destroyed by scrappers and vandals time and time again. To see how bulldozers level a premium undisclosed Soviet fallout shelter / Communications center – twice at least.

Been here long enough to experience a building getting renovated and opened to the public once again – this very picture is from that place!

And the net result of this is what exactly? What’s the message to take home?

Well, those bulldozed places are leveled, no more living history to experience and less quality pictures, because inevitably some talented photographers missed the place because of the lack of exchange of info between URBEXers. So - fewer enthusiasts got to experience those places and… that’s about it.

 

And this particular piece I’m posting – it’s Spilves lidosta in Latvia, an Airport that’s an example of premium Stalin's neoclassical architecture in an awesome shape. Only some boarded windows and that’s about it. Why it was in such a pristine condition when we visited it in 2010 and managed to get in? Well, because it was a tad harder to access (some activity on runways and around, and a very naked/open place, no hiding to be had) and guarded the whole time: security personnel, cameras and all that sweet Jazz for us to bypass non-destructively. Today this airport is available to the public and the net result is? Well, less explorers got to experience the place and take pics on their own terms, and access now inaccessible areas.

 

You tell me if this approach isn’t damaging to URBEX movement as a whole? I see a whole lot of Ego masturbation in this too, and it’s ugly. Because scrappers will find their scrap, vandals will find their stuff to smash, and owners or the city will one day demolish or renovate our URBEX sites, and we will move on, trying to protect this information from ourselves.

Thanks for the read! : )

 

Jessops Pan 100S scanned with Plustek 7600i Ai.

 

Best enjoyed with Dark Ambient / RUREX

I read in an article recently that those three parallel horizontal stripes on many American school buses are more than decorative, that they actually indicate something. The bottom one is supposed to coincide with the floor. The middle one indicates where the tops of the seats are and the top line indicates the tops of the seat backs. The reasoning given was that if needed during an accident, rescuers would have a visual indication of where to open the bus bodywork to access trapped passengers.

 

But I also read another article that stated that those black stripes in the shape of channels simply reinforce the structural integrity of the body which is essentially made of just flat pieces of sheet metal.

Smokey and the Bandit.

 

When ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ was released on 29th July 1977 in Los Angeles the stage was set for what would become a cult movie.

 

But just who was or were the real stars of the movie?

 

Was it Burt Reynolds who played role of Bo "The Bandit" Darville, perhaps it Jackie Gleason who played the role of Bufford T Justice aka Smokey Bear or was the real star of the movie is the (several) 1976 Firebird Trans Am Special Edition’s that were modified units provided to the film producers by Pontiac.

 

Which goes to prove you just cannot believe anything that comes out of Hollywood.

 

In fact the movie makers were given a total of four modified cars which were to be used for filming however of the four cars three were totally wrecked during filming and as for the fourth and surviving car it is simple – whereabouts unknown.

 

Now to get into the technical side of the matter and this for the purists and not so purists how do we differentiate and determine what is a 1976 or a 1977 model?

 

Other mods included a bumper replacement on the ’76 model with a new one of a 1977 model.

 

In addition the hood scoop was swapped out with a ’77 model scoop the reason being that the ’76 model scoop used cubic inches to measure the engine size callouts on the scoop whereas the ’77 model switched over to litres as its unit of measurement.

 

The easiest means is to look into the eyes as the eyes have it, the 1976 model was manufactured with two large round headlights whereas the 1977 model was built with quad rectangular assemblies.

 

Ponitac’s reasoning for supplying the 1976 Firebird Trans Am Special Edition for the movie is simple.

 

Smokey and the Bandit was in production in 1976 and at that time Pontiac were still poring over the drawing boards designing and redesigning the 1977 Trans Am and as such could not even spare one 1977 model let alone four cars so the 1976 model underwent a quick cosmetic transformation to imitate the 1977 version.

 

Smokey and the Bandit has come and gone but the memory of the Pontiac Trans Am has failed to fade and Pontiac still today attributes the movie to its popularity and sales.

 

Just think originally Pontiac were not prepared to associate their name with the movie and if that had occurred it could well have been a Chevy Camaro who became the leading actor.

 

Today of course there are tribute cars that have been dedicated to Smokey and the Bandit and one such car was on display at the annual All American Car Display which was held at Macarthur Square Shopping Centre.

 

Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia.