View allAll Photos Tagged enmesh
The very reason for me being in Tokyo, the unrefusable opportunity to actually stay for a week in one of the capsule apartments in Kurokawa's seminal Nakagin Capsule Tower (specifically the third from the top, left side in this picture of "B Tower" .
Sadly it has seen better days and is not in the best of repairs (to say the least) recently a porthole window fell out on to the sidewalk so the entire tower is now enmeshed in a safety web.
full set of my images of Nakagin (it as the reason for me traveling to Japan so why not have a set just for it):
Tates of Barnsley got enmeshed in the Island Fortitude web which ended badly. I believe Tates managed to buy itself back out of Island Fortitude ownership, but it was too late and the company folded. A remnant continues in the form of Globe Holidays, a Tates associated company which managed to retain its licences, and ex Manchester Airport Pointer Dart SN55HSU arrives in Wakefield on (I think) service 96/97 from Barnsley. Globe Holidays appears to have kept the Eddie Brown Tours name also - Eddie Brown was another company which got involved with Island Fortitude and came to an ignominious end.
Olney Pond Lincoln Woods State Park, Lincoln, Rhode Island USA(as seen through my cell phone camera lens).
...amidst the greenery of the lush and humid surrounding rainforest..........
Peroba Rosa is a very attractive, insect-resistant, native hardwood tree of the southern Brazilian Rainforest, light brown to pinkish rose-red and often variegated or streaked with pink, purple or brown. All the Peroba wood used in the restoration and construction of our old colonial style home; be it the railings, floorboards, staircases, beams, roofing, cupboards, etc. is old, used wood purchased from demolition merchants who specialize in reclaiming the wood from demolished buildings. We cleaned up the wood, pulled out old nails and screws, worked on it according to our needs in our makeshift workshop on the property, then depending where in the house it were to be used, we either oiled, sealed, wax-polished or painted it. We haven’t used new wood in the house, thus no more precious trees have been cut down to serve our needs.
Unfortunately Brasil has already destroyed 93% of its Atlantic Rainforest, where most of the hardwoods come from, so we can't afford to cut down a single tree. On the contrary, we've planted dozens of trees in our garden and even built around the existing ones, as you can see in the photo above. Hopefully they will attract even more fascinating birds and animals, which so sadly have been rapidly disappearing or even become extinct due to man's constant destruction of this country's natural forests.
Our children need to understand that the Hummingbirds are intimately related to the plants that they help pollinate in exchange for food and that this interaction between bird and plant is a relationship satisfactory to both. The Hummingbirds that feed on the nectar of a flower on the tree or bush in our garden and in exchange accomplish its pollination are enmeshed in a harmonious co-evolutionary relationship, a perfect co-existence.
Our children also need to understand why this indissoluble link must be rediscovered and conquered and that their own existence on this planet depends on such knowledge. That is also why we have created The Hummingbird Project the way we have, in a pleasant, safe and colourful atmosphere, an attractive habitat that is conductive to fellowship with our children.
BAYAN KO
‘Bayan Ko’ was composed in 1928 when Filipinos were campaigning for independence from America under the leadership of President Manuel Quezon. The lyrics are based on a poem by Jose Corazon de Jesus. Enmeshed in the song are the yearnings of a people colonized for over 400 years, first as a colony of Spain and then as a colony of the United States.
De Guzman likened that Motherland to a bird set free, the land returned to the rightful people, the true heirs of the islands. “Foreigners are intoxicated with your beauty, my country, my nest of tears of poverty. My steadfast wish is to set you free.”
This song has accompanied almost every struggle since the turn of the century to recapture the visions and ideals of the First Republic — from the anti-American protest movement and millenarian revolts of the 1920’s and 30’s, to the resistance against the Japanese occupation in the 40’s, the student revolt of the 70’s and more recently, the 1986 EDSA “People Power” revolt that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.
Source: Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation - Vol. 10
69/365, My March Break read. When I saw this book in Indigo, I had to buy it because I was fascinated with all the ephemera that it contained between the pages. I was concerned that the bits and pieces would fall out as I was reading, so I pulled them out and added a post-it with the page number so I would be able to reference them when I got to each page. From what I understand (having not yet started to read), the book is a story within a story within a story... from Amazon: One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.
A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.
The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey.
The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him.
The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.
S., conceived by filmmaker J. J. Abrams and written by award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, is the chronicle of two readers finding each other in the margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces they don’t understand, and it is also Abrams and Dorst’s love letter to the written word.
Hair Analog Dog Free Ball – li Light Browns – Free
Eyes – Arise Autumn Eyes – Autumn Effect hunt
Skin – AlterEgo Kalani Skin Autumn – Autumn Effect hunt
Sweater – Sakide Fall Trends Sweater (color change) – Autumn Effect hunt
Skirt – OMG BeSeen Mini Skirt Camo (color change) – Autumn Effect hunt
Boots – Mooh! Slouch boots with Sock – Autumn Effect Hunt
Tights – Afterlyfe Heather leggings (with appliers/3 colors) – Autumn Effect hunt
Coffee – Bean Juice Reckless Autumn Effect Hunt
Hair – Lamb.Dissolved Girl group gift in store (join fee)
Skin – 7 Deadly skins – Orchid (includes slink appliers) – Autumn Effect Hunt Gift
Top – (epia) Tamera Tank – Women’s Stuff Hunt
Skirt – WICKED Ginger Skirt – Women’s Stuff Hunt
Necklace – Hollyweird Autumn Moon Necklace – – Autumn Effect Hunt Gift
Boots – Duh! Fall Floral Hiking Boots – Autumn Effect Hunt Gift
Bag – Duh! Falling Leaves Clutch – Enmeshed into Fall Hunt Gift
Tat – G.ID Havoc Tattoo Strong (with appliers) – – Autumn Effect Hunt Gift
Background
(Surge) – Mudreaper – Enmeshed into Fall hunt
*Paper Moon* Cupped Curtains – Enmeshed into Fall hunt
The Artist’s Shed – Hay Bails and Pumpkins Enmeshed into Fall hunt
Poses - Kirin Poses
Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-Atlas ☄️
Aka: C/2023 A3 or Comet A3
The coma (comet head) currently measures about 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) in diameter, accompanied by a tail stretching out for some 18 million miles (29 million km).
Right now, as Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS continues to make its way through the inner solar system, it is shining as brightly as the brightest stars, but it is also enmeshed in the twilight glow of the sun. So, despite its extreme brightness, making an actual sighting of this object will not be a slam dunk.
Comets move fast. Really fast. According to data from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the maximum orbital speed of Comet A3 is a whopping 150,000 miles per hour.
The orbital period of Comet A3 is 80,000 years. That's because it has an awfully long way to travel—out to the Oort Cloud, a minimum of 2,000 astronomical units (AU) away from the sun. For context, one AU is about 93 million miles.
Overpeck County Park
Leonia, NJ 10/15/24 7:09pm EDT
Nikon D750 24-120mm
Louis Roland - Dangerous Affairs
Chariot Books 130, 1960
Cover Artist: unknown
"A man enmeshed in a web spun by passionate females."
My final Immersive for the year , follows Aria. The Orient as it's directly enmeshed in my life in dark vignettes and definite shorthand.
Quoted Inworld Notecard prepared by Dividni Shostakovich follows ....
SPLIT SCREEN INSTALLATION SPACE
Split Screen will have an opening party *this Saturday* for its newest installations -- the darkly impassioned "FlowerDrum" by the artist and designer Eliza Wierwight, and the dotty fractals of "D.Construct" by the team of Douglas Story and Desdemona Enfield. The installations open to the public on Saturday the 28th, and run through 30 Jun.
>>> OPENING PARTY <<< will be Saturday, 28 May, at 3:00 PM SLT. We'll have live music by the singer Zachh Cale.
We've often filled the homestead sim, so I now have a little plot of land on the sim connected to Split Screen letting people spread out onto two sims!
"seems like I'm caught up in your trap again and it seems like I'll be wearing the same old chains …
then I know somewhere I'll find the key and I know someday I'll walk out of here again …
but now I'm trapped"
(Bruce Springsteen)
inspiration: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LesRFpv6pwU
As I was driving past I saw this and had to stop for a snap. This is part of an art installation on Hurtle Square in Adelaide, and was in the process of having maintenance done to it.
Stitched Panorama of the exhibition space
The eyes } world { hands exhibit in the Albury Art Gallery (23 October to 6 December 2009).
For more images of the exhibit go to: www.ausphoto.net >> Exhibitions >> Eyes
In addition to the still images on the wall, the gallery space features three video monitors (with seating) in the centre, which play continuous loops of imagery.
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eyes } world { hands
Photography by Dirk HR Spennemann
366 days… 2 cameras …364 people
All of us are enmeshed in a daily network of inter-personal relationships: with family and friends, acquaintances and co-workers, with people in shops or strangers in the street. It is the sum of all these relationships that defines our social world.
The eyes } world { hands project documents the world seen through the eyes of photographic artist Dirk Spennemann. On each day of the year in 2008, Dirk photographed a different person, with the first and last days book-ended by ‘self-portraits’ of the two cameras used.
Shot on location, these images capture the diversity of modern society, filtered by the photographer’s experience and contact range. The 364 photographic portraits focus on the eyes and hands of the participants. In most eyes you can see a reflected image of the world around the photographer, and in the hands you see the instruments that actively shaped that world 2008.
The portraits encompass all walks of life, from A (academic) to Z (zoo photographer), from high (flight attendant) to low (diving consultant), from high-tech (IT specialist) to low-tech (happy camper), from past (archaeologist) to future (futurist).
The locations where the eye photos were taken reflects the artist’s own activity range. As an university academic, he traveled to a variety of locations in Australia and overseas during 2008. While the majority of images were taken in Albury-Wodonga, the photo series exemplifies the increasing mobility and globalization of our community
BOSCASTLE
Three Inns, three Rivers, three Churches, and a most popular harbour. Boscastle is a great day out in Cornwall, with excellent facilities, historic harbour, parking, public toilets, shops, cafes, pubs, restaurants, stunning scenery and breathtaking views.
Boscastle is a medieval harbour and village hidden in a steep sided valley. This natural harbour on the North Cornwall coastline was created by the confluence of three rivers. Boscastle is an excellent base for touring the area, all of Cornwall or North Devon, including moorlands, sheltered wooden valleys and coastal footpaths offering magnificent views.
From the harbour the visitor can explore the beautiful surrounding area with its ancient woods, the old village of Boscastle with cottages dating back to the 15 th Century, the site of the Norman Castle and the medieval strip farming system which is still in operation on the cliff top. And there is much, much more, not least the stunning coastal views.
Boscastle's small harbour now provides shelter to a number of little fishing boats. It was once a hive of activity with trade taking place between Wales, Bristol and the south of England.
From the harbour a lovely valley heads inland; a path follows a fast flowing burbling stream which leads to several hidden churches allowing you to discover the little known connection between North Cornwall and Thomas Hardy.
The Elizabethan Harbour, built in 1584 by Sir Richard Grenville of 'Revenge' fame, has been the scene of many acts of heroism and treachery over the years with privateers and volunteers, smugglers and wreckers.
An hour before low water, with a rough sea that is, you can see and bear a splendid blow hole rendering water and spray across the harbour mouth.
Along this stretch coastline lives the legend of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, the Quest for the Holy Grail. The Chapel of St. James is believed to have been built on the ancient pilgrim route to Compostella in Spain.
The Rivers Jordan, Valency and Paradise flow through the village. The Valency Valley is a fine walk around to the dark and intriguing Minster Church, almost enmeshed by rare trees and shrubs looking for light. Jordan Vale is the steep hill running from the Bottreaux House Hotel to the Wellington. A walk up or down takes one "back in time".
Forrabury Church stands high up to the south of Boscastle and not too far off the coastal path. The site of "Botreaux Castle" is at the top end of the village dating back to 1100 AD, and the views over Boscastle are quite magnificent when approaching from this direction. It' s worth turning around and going back again should you be travelling upwards.
The castle of Bottreaux, from which Boscastle gained its name, has, alas, vanished but it is said that much of the village was built from its stone. Indeed there are stone windows in the Wellington that are reputed to have come from the Castle. A tiny opening and a road near here takes you down past Minster church through a valley to Lesnewth and St. Juliots Church.
Thomas Hardy fell in love with Boscastle when working as an architect on the renovation of St. Juliots Church. He also fell in love in Boscastle, to Emma Gifford, whom he married after a four year courtship—it was not a successful relationship and ended in tragedy after 30 years. Hardy was not daunted but returned to the land he loved and wrote some of his most moving poetry. A copy of "A Pair of Blue Eyes" will describe all the valleys and cliffs up to High Cliff (731 ft), the highest in Cornwall.
The Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall, houses the world's largest collection of witchcraft related artefacts and regalia. The museum has been located in Boscastle for over forty years and is amongst Cornwall's most popular museums.
Boscastle flood of 2004
A flash flood on 16 August 2004 caused extensive damage to the village. Residents were trapped in houses as the roads turned into rivers: people were trapped on roofs, in cars, in buildings and on the river's banks. and the village's visitor centre was washed away.
Two Royal Air Force Westland Sea King rescue helicopters from Chivenor, three Royal Navy Sea Kings from Culdrose, one RAF Sea King from St Mawgan and one Coastguard S61 helicopter from Portland searched for and assisted casualties in and around the village.
The operation was coordinated by the Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre (ARCC) based at RAF Kinloss in Scotland in the largest peacetime rescue operation ever launched in the UK. A total of 91 people were rescued and there were no fatalities, only one broken thumb. Around 50 cars were swept into the harbour and the bridge was washed away, roads were submerged under 2.75 m of water, making communication effectively impossible until flood-waters subsided. The sewerage system burst, and for this range of health and safety reasons Boscastle was declared temporarily inaccessible.
Boscastle was flooded again on 21 June 2007 although the scale of destruction was not nearly as serious as in 2004.
“MOJARI” is a generic name of handcrafted ethnic footwear produced in India. These are made by artisans mostly using vegetable tanned leather. The uppers are made of one piece of leather or textile embroidered and embellished with brass nails, cowries’ shells, mirrors, bells and ceramic beads. Even the bonding from the upper to the sole is done by cotton thread that is not only eco-friendly but enmeshes the leather fibers with great strength. Displayed here are the Ladies variety only but its available for men as well...
Recently Jason and I have been visiting our local hunting grounds waiting to see the return of our friends, the net-casting spiders. They are indeed back, but the hunt continues for the perfect shot(s) of these amazing creatures. I really want to get a good portrait of them that shows off their huge median eyes as well as their beautiful fuzzy nets made of cribellate silk. The problem is that they make their webs so low to the ground that it is often impossible to approach them from the front without disturbing them or damaging their support lines. There was a larger one in the fork of a small tree but it was even harder to access. Hopefully we find one one night that is in a nice, open spot so I can get a portrait of it.
This shot was taken at just above 1:1 magnification and this female was about 30mm in length. This photo has been rotated 90° clockwise.
red broken montaneous labyrinth
HAEGUE YANG
IN THE CONE OF UNCERTAINTY
NOV 2,2019-APR 5,2020
In the Cone of Uncertainty foregrounds Haegue Yang’s (b. 1971, Seoul) consistent curiosity about the world and tireless experimentation with materializing the complexity of identities in flux. Living between Seoul and Berlin, Yang employs industrially produced quotidian items, digital processes, and labor-intensive craft techniques. She mobilizes and enmeshes complex, often personal, histories and realities vis-à-vis sensual and immersive works by interweaving narrative with form. Often evoking performative, sonic and atmospheric perceptions with heat, wind and chiming bells, Yang’s environments appear familiar, yet engender bewildering experiences of time and place.
The exhibition presents a selection of Yang’s oeuvre spanning the last decade – including window blind installations, anthropomorphic sculptures, light sculptures, and mural-like graphic wallpaper – taking its title from an expression of the South Florida vernacular, that describes the predicted path of hurricanes. Alluding to our eagerness and desperation to track the unstable and ever-evolving future, this exhibition addresses current anxieties about climate change, overpopulation and resource scarcity. Framing this discourse within a broader consideration of movement, displacement and migration, the exhibition contextualizes contemporary concerns through a trans-historical and philosophical meditation of the self.
Given its location in Miami Beach, The Bass is a particularly resonant site to present Yang’s work, considering that over fifty percent[1] of the population in Miami-Dade County is born outside of the United States, and it is a geographical and metaphorical gateway to Latin America. Yang has been commissioned by the museum to conceive a site-specific wallpaper in the staircase that connects the exhibition spaces across The Bass’ two floors. This wallpaper will be applied to both transparent and opaque surfaces to accompany the ascending and descending path of visitors within the exhibition. Informed by research about Miami Beach’s climatically-precarious setting, the wallpaper, titled Coordinates of Speculative Solidarity (2019), will play with meteorological infographics and diagrams as vehicles for abstraction. Interested in how severe weather creates unusual access to negotiations of belonging and community, as well as the human urge to predict catastrophic circumstances, the work reflects a geographic commonality that unconsciously binds people together through a shared determination to face a challenge and react in solidarity.
Yang’s exhibition encompasses galleries on both the first and second floors of the museum and exemplifies an array of Yang’s formally, conceptually ambitious and rigorous body of work. Considered an important ‘Light Sculpture’ work and one of the last made in the series, Strange Fruit (2012-13) occupies one of the first spaces in the exhibition. The group of anthropomorphic sculptures take their title from Jewish-American Abel Meeropol’s poem famously vocalized by Billie Holiday in 1939. Hanging string lights dangling from metal clothing racks intertwined with colorfully painted papier-mâché bowls and hands that hold plants resonate with the poem’s subject matter. The work reflects a recurring interest within Yang’s practice, illuminating unlikely, less-known connections throughout history and elucidating asymmetrical relationships among figures of the past. In the story of Strange Fruit, the point of interest is in a poem about the horrors and tragedy of lynching of African-Americans in the American South born from the empathies of a Jewish man and member of the Communist party. Yang’s interests are filtered through different geopolitical spheres with a keen concentration in collapsing time and place, unlike today’s compartmentalized diasporic studies.
Central to In the Cone of Uncertainty is the daring juxtaposition of two major large-scale installations made of venetian blinds. Yearning Melancholy Red and Red Broken Mountainous Labyrinth are similar in that they are both from 2008, a year of significant development for Yang, and their use of the color red: one consists of red blinds, while the other features white blinds colored by red light. With its labyrinthine structure, Red Broken Mountainous Labyrinth bears a story of the chance encounter between Korean revolutionary Kim San (1905-1938) and American journalist Nym Wales (1907-1997), without which a chapter of Korean history would not survive to this day. Yearning Melancholy Red references the seemingly apolitical childhood of French writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras (1914-1996). While living in French Indochina (present-day Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos), Duras and her family experienced a type of double isolation in material and moral poverty, by neither belonging to the native communities nor to the French colonizers, embodying the potentiality for her later political engagement. Despite their divergent subject matter, both works continue to envelop an interest in viewing histories from different perspectives and the unexpected connections that arise. By staging the two works together, what remains is Yang’s compelling constellation of blinds, choreographed moving lights, paradoxical pairings of sensorial devices – fans and infrared heaters – and our physical presence in an intensely charged field of unspoken narratives.
A third space of the exhibition will feature work from Yang’s signature ‘Sonic Sculpture’ series titled, Boxing Ballet (2013/2015). The work offers Yang’s translation of Oskar Schlemmmer’s Triadic Ballet (1922), transforming the historical lineage of time-based performance into spatial, sculptural and sensorial abstraction. Through elements of movement and sound, Yang develops an installation with a relationship to the Western Avant-Garde, investigating their understanding in the human body, movement and figuration.
Observing hidden structures to reimagine a possible community, Yang addresses themes that recur in her works such as migration, diasporas and history writing. Works presented in In the Cone of Uncertainty offer a substantial view into Yang’s rich artistic language, including her use of bodily experience as a means of evoking history and memory.
Haegue Yang lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Seoul, South Korea. She is a Professor at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Yang has participated in major international exhibitions including the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018), La Biennale de Montréal (2016), the 12th Sharjah Biennial (2015), the 9th Taipei Biennial (2014), dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel (2012) and the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) as the South Korean representative.
Recipient of the 2018 Wolfgang Hahn Prize, she held a survey exhibition titled ETA at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in the same year, which displayed over 120 works of Yang from 1994-2018. Her recent solo exhibitions include Tracing Movement, South London Gallery (2019); Chronotopic Traverses, La Panacée-MoCo, Montpellier (2018); Tightrope Walking and Its Wordless Shadow, La Triennale di Milano (2018); Triple Vita Nestings, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, which travelled from the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2018); VIP’s Union, Kunsthaus Graz (2017); Silo of Silence – Clicked Core, KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017); Lingering Nous, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016); Quasi-Pagan Serial, Hamburger Kunsthalle (2016); Come Shower or Shine, It Is Equally Blissful, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2015); and Shooting the Elephant 象 Thinking the Elephant, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2015). Forthcoming projects include the Museum of Modern Art (October 2019), Tate St. Ives (May 2020) and Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (2020).
Yang’s work is included in permanent collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; M+, Hong Kong, China; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea; Tate Modern, London, UK; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA. Her work has been the subject of numerous monographs, such as Haegue Yang: Anthology 2006–2018: Tightrope Walking and Its Wordless Shadow (2019); Haegue Yang: ETA 1994–2018 (2018); Haegue Yang – VIP’s Union (2017); and Haegue Yang: Family of Equivocations (2013).
Red Mangrove propagule, the sprout that hangs down comes from the Mangrove pod as it floats along the water's surface is literally what created Florida. The roots touch bottom and grow in all directions, catching sand and debris, and single-rootedly forming the very landmass we know of as Florida!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Creek
Without this seed, none of what we know as our coastline... and many other coastlines... would be there. Thank you, Mangrove Seed, for all your environmental work!
From "The Forgotten Pioneer", Arva Moore Parks
"Much of the coast was a "mangrove coast"; here a great mangrove tree marks the transiton from bay to land. It's curved and twisted prop roots enmeshed all sorts of natural rubbish-- its own leaves, sand, grasses, the gifts from the sea-- until slowly, slowly through the years the "squish" became the solid earth." p36
Mangroves are trees and shrubs that grow in saline coastal habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes 25° N and 25° S. The saline conditions tolerated by various species range from brackish water, through pure seawater (30 to 40 ppt), to water of over twice the salinity of ocean seawater, where the salt becomes concentrated by evaporation (up to 90 ppt).
There are many species of trees and shrubs adapted to saline conditions. Not all are closely related, and the term "mangrove" may be used for all of them, or more narrowly only for the mangrove family of plants, the Rhizophoraceae, or even more specifically just for mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora.
Mangroves form a characteristic saline woodland or shrubland habitat, called mangrove swamp, mangrove forest, mangrove or mangal. Mangals are found in depositional coastal environments where fine sediments (often with high organic content) collect in areas protected from high energy wave action. They occur both in estuaries and along open coastlines. Mangroves dominate three quarters of tropical coastlines.
Arch Creek East Environmental Preserve, North Miami, FL.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Creek
See my set, Woods, weeds and streams.
Red Mangrove propagule ... the sprout that hangs down comes from the Mangrove pod as it floats along the water's surface is literally what created Florida. The roots touch bottom and grow in all directions, catching sand and debris, and single-rootedly forming the very landmass we know of as Florida!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Creek
Without this seed, none of what we know as our coastline... and many other coastlines... would be there. Thank you, Mangrove Seed, for all your environmental work!
From "The Forgotten Pioneer", Arva Moore Parks
"Much of the coast was a "mangrove coast"; here a great mangrove tree marks the transiton from bay to land. It's curved and twisted prop roots enmeshed all sorts of natural rubbish-- its own leaves, sand, grasses, the gifts from the sea-- until slowly, slowly through the years the "squish" became the solid earth." p36
Mangroves are trees and shrubs that grow in saline coastal habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes 25° N and 25° S. The saline conditions tolerated by various species range from brackish water, through pure seawater (30 to 40 ppt), to water of over twice the salinity of ocean seawater, where the salt becomes concentrated by evaporation (up to 90 ppt).
There are many species of trees and shrubs adapted to saline conditions. Not all are closely related, and the term "mangrove" may be used for all of them, or more narrowly only for the mangrove family of plants, the Rhizophoraceae, or even more specifically just for mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora.
Mangroves form a characteristic saline woodland or shrubland habitat, called mangrove swamp, mangrove forest, mangrove or mangal. Mangals are found in depositional coastal environments where fine sediments (often with high organic content) collect in areas protected from high energy wave action. They occur both in estuaries and along open coastlines. Mangroves dominate three quarters of tropical coastlines.
Arch Creek East Environmental Preserve, North Miami, FL.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Creek
See my set, Woods, weeds and streams.
Red Mangrove propagule, the sprout that hangs down comes from the Mangrove pod as it floats along the water's surface is literally what created Florida. The roots touch bottom and grow in all directions, catching sand and debris, and single-rootedly forming the very landmass we know of as Florida!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Creek
Without this seed, none of what we know as our coastline... and many other coastlines... would be there. Thank you, Mangrove Seed, for all your environmental work!
From "The Forgotten Pioneer", Arva Moore Parks
"Much of the coast was a "mangrove coast"; here a great mangrove tree marks the transiton from bay to land. It's curved and twisted prop roots enmeshed all sorts of natural rubbish-- its own leaves, sand, grasses, the gifts from the sea-- until slowly, slowly through the years the "squish" became the solid earth." p36
Mangroves are trees and shrubs that grow in saline coastal habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes 25° N and 25° S. The saline conditions tolerated by various species range from brackish water, through pure seawater (30 to 40 ppt), to water of over twice the salinity of ocean seawater, where the salt becomes concentrated by evaporation (up to 90 ppt).
There are many species of trees and shrubs adapted to saline conditions. Not all are closely related, and the term "mangrove" may be used for all of them, or more narrowly only for the mangrove family of plants, the Rhizophoraceae, or even more specifically just for mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora.
Mangroves form a characteristic saline woodland or shrubland habitat, called mangrove swamp, mangrove forest, mangrove or mangal. Mangals are found in depositional coastal environments where fine sediments (often with high organic content) collect in areas protected from high energy wave action. They occur both in estuaries and along open coastlines. Mangroves dominate three quarters of tropical coastlines.
Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of Rhodophyta, Phaeophyta and Chlorophyta macroalgae. Seaweed species such as kelps provide essential nursery habitat for fisheries and other marine species and thus protect food sources; other species, such as planktonic algae, play a vital role in capturing carbon, producing up to 50% of Earth's oxygen.
Mangroves form a characteristic saline woodland or shrubland habitat, called mangrove swamp, mangrove forest, mangrove or mangal. Mangals are found in depositional coastal environments where fine sediments (often with high organic content) collect in areas protected from high energy wave action. They occur both in estuaries and along open coastlines. Mangroves dominate three quarters of tropical coastlines.
Arch Creek East Environmental Preserve, North Miami, FL.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Creek
See my set, Woods, weeds and streams.
For the past year I've had the pleasure & privilege to play with the mind of Manuel Gonzales on our THOUSAND WORDS project (www.whatstheworth.com). Once a week I lob a picture at him & he lobs back a story about it, something weird & wonderful & wise & always unexpected.
Wednesday at 7PM WORD bookstore in Greenpoint will host a reading of his new book "The Miniature Wife" & a story from A THOUSAND WORDS:
www.facebook.com/events/381899805236817/
I'll be introducing him with a musician friend who got enmeshed in the project.
Fun will be had.
enMESHed Into Summer 2017
June 15th - July 15th
My fun little gift for the enMESHed into Summer hunt.
Bracelets are materials enabled! (I really enjoy making norm and spec maps... >.> Dunno why, but yeah. Lawl. Nerd alert.)
Available now at the main store!
Dedicated to a dear flickr friend, Gudi
Check out her wonderful blog!
Nessun Dorma
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOfC9LfR3PI
Isn't it true, that music makes the world a whole lot better.
We live in paradise, and music reverberates and enhances the beauty!
Wir leben in Paradies, und Musik reflektiert und
Musik verbessert die Schönheit..!
I have a vacation day today, and my daughter and I are going to
play tennis, hike, bicycle and have fun!
The Bramble
Out of luck – too much in love –
I courted Tegau, a slave
To her embrace. It was more
Than a crush: much like a mire
Of longing tugging me down.
I decided – awful dream –
To go to her, and make
Wild love. Face it: a mistake.
I regret I took that road –
So winding. I can’t get rid
Of the memory: my bright yawn
Half an hour before the dawn.
No one knew; no one awoke.
What a futile thing is hope!
Just to glimpse her slim beauty
Is a poor bard’s rich bounty:
A bright pleasure – so I thought.
My credentials at her court
Were weak. I knew my sly feat
Could only work by deceit
And not by trust – so my goal
Was to avoid any soul
Out wandering. Poets will
At least admire my stealth, skill
And duplicity. I left
The path. People only laughed
Afterwards: the bold bard leaps
Among the oaks, tumps and lumps,
Traversing miles in the birch,
Midway between wilds and church,
Skulking under shade of trees –
For lust’s perfect cloak is leaves –
He stumbles, and his right foot
Is caught on a projecting root.
He flies into a bramble:
Hedge-intestine, twined trouble,
Blighted snare, taut and tightening
Like a maw round my twitching
Limbs – toothy spectre, shame’s twine,
Strop of bleeding, barbed and thin!
He flails about, sharply trussed –
Trades a limp for all that lust.
My fall was fast, ungainly,
As I plummeted grimly
Down a steep bank, entangled
In tight, tenacious brambles:
Nasty plight. A churlish snare
Incising a livid scar
On a poet’s tender flesh:
Its thousand teeth seethe and gnash,
Mutilate a poet’s legs –
Vainly he writhes and tugs,
Speared still more. Its ugly crop
Of bulbous blackberries flop
About on barbed stems, each withe
Ripe for scourging – whips of wrath
Etchers of beech-boles, savage,
Barbed halters, miser’s salvage,
Wires enmeshing fallen logs,
Branches thin as herons’ legs,
Nets of hatred, archly cast
To trap a man, justly cursed,
Tripwire snaking down a scree,
Harsh string binding tree to tree.
Come, you fires, and raze to ash
These whips giving me the lash:
Burn until the scourge is gone;
Scorch their teeth out, one by one!
Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson, 2012. Once again, Dafydd’s keen sense of self-irony is at work in this poem, not only in the candid expression of his own indignity, but also in his all-too-familiar impulse to take out his frustrations on an inanimate object: a piece of slapstick which has not diminished in comic potential from the days of the fabiliaux to the moment when Basil Fawlty bashed up his mini with a branch. Tegau is not the girl’s real name. It is derived from the Welsh Triads, in which Tegau Eururon (Gold-Breast) has a chastity-testing mantle, and is one of the “three faithful wives of the island of Britain”. Graham Thomas published a version of her story in the late eighteenth century: “Arthur’s sister was wife to Urien Rheged, and she was killed in sorcery. She sent to Arthur’s court three chastity-testing objects – a mantle, a drinking-horn, and some slices of bacon. Only Tegau was successful in the mantle-test, and only her husband in the other two tests”. (See Rachel Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydain: The Triads of the Island of Britain, Cardiff, 2006, pp. 503-4.) If this story is of mediaeval provenance, then it is likely that Dafydd’s “Tegau” was his beloved Morfudd, who was by this stage married to Bwa Bach, the spiteful “Eiddig” of Dafydd’s poems.
Note: on the website, dafyddapgwilym.net, this poem has been given the title "The Briar". With all due respect to a team of scholars who have produced a marvellous and endlessly inspiring resource, Dafydd makes it clear that his adversary is a bramble and not a briar, since its fruits are blackberries, and not rosehips, and it clearly scrambles across the ground.
I have added an alternative illustration below, and am interested to hear about the preferences of my Flickrite friends.
enMESHed Into Summer 2015 0L Hunt
June 15th - July 15th
Lots of goodies from over 50 creators waiting for you - I made 3 of them, each on a different floor, so happy hunting everyone!!! :)
Starting location: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Seduced/185/96/21
Slurl: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Behringa/232/33/22
Hints:
- for the 1st prize: What's going on?
- for the 2nd prize: Time to look for the wild and fairy stuff
- for the 3rd prize: Field flowers and chocolate eggs anyone?
Hunt info: enmeshedhunts.wordpress.com/
Some pages from a publicity brochure, dated 1935, and in French entitled "coup d œil d'ensemble sur l'entreprise" and that describes the massive, vertical integrated company of Fried.Krupp Aktiengesellschaft, Essen. Krupp's have a long history, dating back to 1811 in Essen where they were foremost in the industrial development of the Ruhr and indeed, now merged with Thyssen, their HQ is still in Essen, a city once regarded as a company town.
By 1935 this vast company, manufacturing iron and steel as well as armaments, machinery, locomotives, shipbuilding and vehicles, was already thoroughly enmeshed in the economy of the National Socialist state and they, along with the family members who ran the concern, would be active participants in Germany's rearmament and complicit the country's conduct of the Second World War.
The brochure was gifted to a visiting French businessman and describes the company's largest steel production plant the Friedrich-Alfred Hütte plant, the principal steel producing facility of the Krupp combine, that was situated on the west bank of the Rhine River at Rheinhausen, directly across the river from Duisburg at the western end of the Ruhr industrial district. The site was chosen in preference to Essen due to better transport access via the Rhine.
The first blast furnaces were constructed in 1896-8 and by 1913 there were ten in operation. The works produced many high grade specialist steels and used, as the text notes, both the Martin and Thomas conversion processes. The lower photo shows one of the rolling mills for rails and beams - hardened steel rails having been one Krupp's early specialist success stories.
The flag on the left is the Maltese National Flag, the flag on the right is the Flag of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The history below (from Wikipedia) will give you some idea of Malta's strategic importance and turbulent history -
The Knights Hospitaller (also known as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, Order of St. John, Knights of Malta, and Chevaliers of Malta) was a Christian organization that began as an Amalfitan hospital founded in Jerusalem in 1080 to provide care for poor, sick or injured pilgrims to the Holy Land. After the Western Christian reconquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade it became a religious/military order under its own charter, and was charged with the care and defense of the Holy Land. Following the conquest of the Holy Land by Islamic forces, the Order operated from Rhodes, over which it was sovereign, and later from Malta where it administered a vassal state under the Spanish viceroy of Sicily.
The rising power of Islam eventually expelled the Knights from Jerusalem. After the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291 (Jerusalem itself fell in 1187), the Knights were confined to the County of Tripoli, and when Acre was captured in 1291 the order sought refuge in the Kingdom of Cyprus. Finding themselves becoming enmeshed in Cypriot politics, their Grand Master Guillaume de Villaret created a plan of acquiring their own temporal domain, selecting Rhodes to be their new home. His successor Fulkes de Villaret executed the plan, and on 15 August 1309, after over two years of campaigning, the island of Rhodes surrendered to the knights. They also gained control of a number of neighboring islands and the Anatolian ports of Bodrum and Kastelorizo.
In 1522 an entirely new sort of force arrived: 400 ships under the command of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent delivered 200,000 men to the island. Against this force the Knights, under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, had about 7,000 men-at-arms and their fortifications. The siege lasted six months, at the end of which the surviving defeated Hospitallers were allowed to withdraw to Sicily.
After seven years of moving from place to place in Europe the Knights became established in 1530 when Charles V of Spain, as King of Sicily, gave them Malta, Gozo and the North African port of Tripoli in perpetual fiefdom in exchange for an annual fee of a single Maltese falcon, which they were to send on All Souls Day to the King's representative, the Viceroy of Sicily. (This historical fact was used as the plot hook in Dashiell Hammett's famous book The Maltese Falcon.)
The Hospitallers continued their actions against the Muslims and especially the Barbary pirates. Although they had only few ships they quickly drew the ire of the Ottomans, who were unhappy to see the order resettled. In 1565 Suleiman sent an invasion force of about 40,000 men to besiege the 700 knights and 8000 soldiers and expel them from Malta.
At first the battle went as badly for the Hospitallers as Rhodes had: most of the cities were destroyed and about half the knights killed. On 18 August the position of the besieged was becoming desperate: dwindling daily in numbers, they were becoming too feeble to hold the long line of fortifications. But when his council suggested the abandonment of Il Borgo and Senglea and withdrawal to Fort St. Angelo, Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette refused.
The Viceroy of Sicily had not sent help; possibly the Viceroy's orders from Philip II of Spain were so obscurely worded as to put on his own shoulders the burden of the decision whether to help the Knights at the expense of his own defences. A wrong decision could mean defeat and exposing Sicily and Naples to the Ottomans. He had left his own son with La Valette, so he could hardly be indifferent to the fate of the fortress. Whatever may have been the cause of his delay, the Viceroy hesitated until the battle had almost been decided by the unaided efforts of the Knights, before being forced to move by the indignation of his own officers.
On 23 August came yet another grand assault, the last serious effort, as it proved, of the besiegers. It was thrown back with the greatest difficulty, even the wounded taking part in the defence. The plight of the Turkish forces, however, was now desperate. With the exception of Fort St. Elmo, the fortifications were still intact. Working night and day the garrison had repaired the breaches, and the capture of Malta seemed more and more impossible. Many of the Ottoman troops in crowded quarters had fallen ill over the terrible summer months. Ammunition and food were beginning to run short, and the Ottoman troops were becoming increasingly dispirited at the failure of their attacks and their losses. The death on 23 June of skilled commander Dragut, a corsair and admiral of the Ottoman fleet, was a serious blow. The Turkish commanders, Piyale Pasha and Mustafa Pasha, were careless. They had a huge fleet which they used with effect on only one occasion. They neglected their communications with the African coast and made no attempt to watch and intercept Sicilian reinforcements.
On 1 September they made their last effort, but the morale of the Ottoman troops had deteriorated seriously and the attack was feeble, to the great encouragement of the besieged, who now began to see hopes of deliverance. The perplexed and indecisive Ottomans heard of the arrival of Sicilian reinforcements in Mellieħa Bay. Unaware that the force was very small, they broke off the siege and left on 8 September. The Great Siege of Malta may have been the last action in which a force of knights won a decisive victory.
When the Ottomans departed the Hospitallers had 600 men able to bear arms. The most reliable estimate puts the number of the Ottoman army at its height at some 40,000 men, of whom 15,000 eventually returned to Constantinople.
Malta was captured by Napoleon in 1798 during his expedition to Egypt. As a ruse, Napoleon asked for safe harbor to resupply his ships, and then turned against his hosts once safely inside Valletta. Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim failed to anticipate or prepare for this threat, provided no effective leadership, and readily capitulated to Napoleon, arguing that the order's charter prohibited fighting against Christians. In 1799, in disgrace and under pressure from the Austrian court, he resigned his office and retreated into obscurity.
Over time, these blossoms have become a large part of myth and magic. Although most people think that the name “love in a mist” came about purely for the nigella’s frothy appearance, some legends tell a different story. One such tale tells of Frederick I Barbarossa – the holy Roman Emperor – who, in fact, drowned in the Saleph River while leading a Crusade through Turkey. During this Crusade, it is said that a spirit of the water with green hair seduced the Emperor, leading him into the shallow river which ultimately led to his demise. On the shore, a delicate nigella flower blossomed, and is thought to represent his own departed spirit – which is now enmeshed with that of water. In magic, the nigella flower is considered a Venus herb. Unlike most Venus herbs, though, these plants are not only used to attract love, but to represent the strong feminine power of an alluring woman. As well as being used in love charms, these plants are also applied to spells that can bring about glamour and the binding of a person’s spirit.
The magical associations with the nigella flower carry over into its symbolism. These blooms are often said to represent the chains that bind people together – usually in love, but sometimes in bitterness. They are also said to express perplexity and intrigue, and are often given as gifts to tell the recipient that the giver is fascinated, or simply has a crush.
Wilson Tucker - The Time Masters
Signet Books 1127, 1954
Cover photo of Wilson Tucker by Karl Blakney
"From Outer Space... Hurtled to earth ten thousand years ago... two timeless beings become enmeshed in a weird and frightening twentieth-century conflict..."
THE ICE
Y Rhew
Shuddering beside the wall,
Teeth aquake, compelled to crawl,
Rimed with ice amid the gale –
Night to make a grown man quail
With neshness – not unknown
To me this winter walk, blown
And lonely! But how I crave
The woman coloured like wave-
Foam who hides behind this wall
And has the courtesy to call:
“By great God, are you a man?
Endure the cold! Prove you can!”
“I was baptised, by light of day,
A mortal man, but now stray
By night-time, my poise a sham!
Girl, I don’t know what I am!”
Saying thus, I fear I fell
On a sheet of ice, pell-mell –
Oh! It was a fateful lapse! –
Water closed on my collapse,
And as I began to flail,
Ice enclosed me like plate-mail.
Sure you heard – you had no choice –
My distant, pathetic voice!
I was enmeshed, because of you,
A fly in a web of blue,
Writhing on a leaden floor,
Locked behind a mirrored door,
Slipping in a sluice of muck.
Slithering, I cried, “Oh luck,
Confound you! Alas, my plight
Is worse here than on the height,
Grim indeed the wound that sears
Pierced by these gleaming spears:
Harrow blades! Each one impales
With the wrath of rusty nails:
Icicles so cruel and fierce,
Wind-whittled so to pierce
Human flesh: fell spikes of dread,
Meat-cleaving blades of lead,
Razor sharp to make me swoon,
Slivered by a sickle moon,
And I am skewered on a spit,
Broiled in bubbles, ground in grit,
Half-severed with one slice!
Love, I am at war with ice!”
More fool me, to walk impaled
By that thistle-sharpened gale,
Inviting chilblains! No boot
Is proof against the ice. My foot
A welt of hot, tingling blood,
Water-wizened in the flood!
A gentleman lost in a trice
Beneath an avalanche of ice!
Perhaps they rescued me, but then
I’ll never be the same again:
I’ve turned feeble, short of breath,
Iced and withered half to death.
Scorned by ice, a sharp sliver
Fatal as a raging river.
Lime that clings and chills within;
Glue that grabs and bites the skin.
My love, coloured like the snow
Can just forget it! I know
That there are better climes in life:
I’ll seek myself a warmer wife.
Give me sun: it will suffice
To set me free and melt this ice!
Source material: Attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. Based on the text available at www.dafyddapgwilym.net. This poem is in the fabliau tradition: the reader is invited to laugh at the poet’s misfortunes as he undergoes an assault on his dignity in his pursuit of love. Many of Dafydd’s lighter poems (‘The Goose Shed’ is another example) are influenced by this tradition.
On November 1964, the Australian federal government decided to introduce a compulsory selective National Service scheme. In announcing this decision to Parliament, Prime Minister Robert Menzies referred to ‘aggressive Communism’ developments in Asia.
20 year old males, if selected, were to serve in the Army for a period of 2 years, followed by three years in the Reserve. The Defence Act was amended to provide that conscripts could be obliged to serve overseas, and in March 1966, Prime Minister Holt announced that National Servicemen would be sent to Vietnam to fight in units of the Australian Regular Army.
Registration was compulsory and a process of selection by ballot determined who would be called up. Two ballots were conducted each year. The ballots selected several dates in the selected period and all males with corresponding birthdays were called up for national service. The ballot was conducted using a lottery barrel and marbles representing birthdays.
From 1966 opposition to conscription swelled and was often enmeshed with opposition to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Evasion of national service was not uncommon and some cases were prosecuted harshly leading to much publicity. National Service was a significant issue in the Federal election campaigns and in 1972, a change in government finally resulted in the end of peace time conscription
My dad was a sergeant in the British army during WWII and I think was of the opinion “The army will make a man of you”, so when I received the dreaded notice to enroll for the ballot, I was not a happy chappie. It was a few weeks before I finally got the awesome news, that sadly, I was granted “indefinite deferment” (read: not required).
I didn’t do cartwheels through the lounge room in uncontrolled happiness, as I wasn’t sure what my dad was thinking.
So life rolled on, and I often wondered what I might have turned out like, had I gone to Vietnam, as many had gone and many came back with issues.
The 60s and 70s were a time of social change and personal expression in Australia, as it was in other countries, and the Vietnam war was a very controversial and political issue. Ban the bomb, tie dyed shirts, free love and protests about our involvement in Vietnam meant many servicemen returned home to mixed feelings swinging between blame and “well done” over the war.
It wasn’t until many years later, that the government finally did the right thing and expressed gratitude and recognition for all the poor buggers who got shot at over there.
What is my photo title about? My birth date is the 20th, and now there are publicly available records listing the birth dates that were used in all the ballots, and I have now seen for the very first time, that if my mum had waited one more day, I would have been on the boat to Vietnam.
Here are the dates used in my ballot - March 1, 10, 15, 21
The enrollment card also says that if the card is destroyed, it must be reported "forthwith". I have waited for them to change their mind on the deferment for 43 years now, waiting for that knock on the door at midnight, ok, not really, but today Mrs Mail helped me (made me) destroy a lot of old papers that were clogging up our filing cabinet, so my enrollment card has finally been shredded.
Prime Minister Holt won’t care though - His term as Australian Prime Minister was brought to an early end in December 1967 when he disappeared while swimming at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria, and was presumed drowned.
Many people see Christ as a long-dead, myth-shrouded teacher who lives on only in fading memory, a man "risen from the dead" only in the sense that his teachings have survived. There are scholars busily at work trying to find out which words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament were actually said by him (not many, it turns out). Yet even skeptics celebrate Christmas with a special holiday meal and the exchange of gifts.
The problem of miracles doesn't intrude, for what could be more normal than birth? If Jesus lived, then he was born, and so, with little or no faith in the rest of Christian doctrine, we can celebrate his birth, whatever our degree of faith. Pascha, with its miraculous resurrection from the grave, is more and more lost to us, but at least some of the joy of Christmas remains. Perhaps in the end the Nativity feast will lead us back to faith in all its richness. We will be rescued by Christmas.
The icon of Christ's Nativity, ancient though it is, takes note of our "modern" problem. There (usually in the lower left hand corner) we find a morose, despondent Joseph listening to a wizened figure (but in the above example a young man) who represents what we might call "the voice of unenlightened reason." What is the old man whispering to Joseph? Something like: "A miracle? Surely you aren't so foolish as to believe Mary conceived this child without a human father. But if not you, then who was it?" As we read the Gospel passages concerning Joseph, we are repeatedly reminded that he didn't easily make leaps of faith.
Divine activity intrudes into our lives in such a mundane, physical way. A woman gives birth to a child, as women have been doing since Eve. Joseph has witnessed that birth and there is nothing different about it, unless it be that it occurred in abject circumstances, far from home, in a cave in which animals are kept. Joseph has had his dreams, he has heard angelic voices, he has been reassured in a variety of ways that the child born of Mary is none other than the Awaited One, the Anointed, God's Son. But belief comes hard. Giving birth is arduous, as we see in Mary's reclining figure, resting after labor — and so is the labor to believe. Mary has completed this stage of her struggle, but Joseph still grapples with his.
The theme is not only in Joseph's bewildered face. The rigorous black of the cave of Christ's birth in the center of the icon represents all human disbelief, all fear, all hopelessness. In the midst of a starless night in the cave of our despair, Christ, "the Sun of Truth," enters history having been clothed in flesh in Mary's body. It is just as the Evangelist John said in the beginning of his Gospel: "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it."
The Nativity icon is in sharp contrast to the sentimental imagery we are used to in western Christmas art. In the icon there is no charming Bethlehem bathed in the light of the nativity star but only a rugged mountain with a few plants. The austere mountain suggests a hard, unwelcoming world in which survival is a real battle — the world since our expulsion from Paradise.
The most prominent figure in the icon is Mary, framed by the red blanket she is resting on — red: the color of life, the color of blood. Orthodox Christians call her the Theotokos, a Greek word meaning God-bearer or Mother of God. Her quiet but wholehearted assent to the invitation brought to her by the Archangel Gabriel has led her to Bethlehem, making a cave at the edge of a peasant village the center of the universe. He who was distant has come near, first filling her body, now visible in the flesh.
As is usual in iconography, the main event is moved to the foreground, free of its surroundings. So the cave is placed behind rather than around Mary and her child.
The Gospel records that Christ's birth occurred in a cave that was being used as a stable. In fact the cave still exists in Bethlehem. Countless pilgrims have prayed there over the centuries. But it no longer looks like the cave it was. In the fourth century, at the Emperor Constantine's order, the cave was transformed into a chapel. At the same time, above the cave, a basilica was built.
We see in the icon that Christ's birth is not only for us, but for all creation. The donkey and the ox, both gazing at the newborn child, recall the opening verses of the Prophet Isaiah: 'An ox knows its owner and a donkey its master's manger..." They also represent "all creatures great and small," endangered, punished and exploited by human beings. They too are victims of the Fall. Christ's Nativity is for them as well as for us.
There is something about the way Mary turns away from her son that makes us aware of a struggle different than Joseph is experiencing. She knows very well her child has no human Father, but is anxious about her child's future. She can see in the circumstances of his birth that his way of ruling is nothing like the way kings rule. The ruler of all rules from a manger in a stable. His death on the cross will not surprise her. It is implied in his birth.
We see that the Christ child's body is wrapped "in swaddling clothes." In icons of Christ's burial, you will see he is wearing similar bands of cloth. We also see them around Lazarus, in the icon of his raising by Christ. In the Nativity icon, the manger looks much like a coffin. In this way, the icon links birth and death. The poet Rilke says we bear our death within us from the moment of birth. The icon of the Nativity says the same. Our life is one piece and its length of much less importance than its purity and truthfulness.
Some versions of the icon show more details, some less.
Normally in the icon we see several angels worshiping God-become-man. Though we ourselves are rarely aware of the presence of angels, they are deeply enmeshed in our history and we know some of them by name. This momentous event is for them as well as us.
Often the icon includes the three wise men who have come from far off, whose close attention to activity in the heavens made them come on pilgrimage in order to pay homage to a king who belongs not to one people, but to all people; not to one age, but to all ages. They represent the world beyond Judaism.
Then there are the shepherds, simple people who have been summoned by angels. Throughout history it has in fact been the simple people who have been most uncompromised in their response to the Gospel, who have not buried God in footnotes. It was not the wise men, but the shepherds who were permitted to hear the choir of angels singing God's praise.
On the bottom right of the icon often there are one or two midwives washing the newborn baby. The detail is based on apocryphal texts concerning Joseph's arrangements for the birth. Those who know the Old Testament will recall the disobedience of midwives to the Egyptian Pharaoh; thanks to a brave midwife, Moses was not murdered at birth. In the Nativity icon the midwife's presence has another still more important function, underscoring Christ's full participation in human nature.
Iconographers may leave out or alter various details, but always there is a ray of divine light that connects heaven with the baby. The partially revealed circle at the very top of the icon symbolizes God the Father, the small circle within the descending ray represents the Holy Spirit, while the child is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son. At every turn, from iconography to liturgical text to the physical gesture of crossing oneself, the Church has always sought to confess God in the Holy Trinity.
The symbol is also connected with the star that led the magi to the cave.
Orthodoxy often speaks of Christ in terms of light and this, too, is suggested by the ray connecting heaven to the manger. "Our Savior, the dayspring from on high, has visited us, and we who were in shadow and in darkness have found the truth," the Church sings on Christmas, the Feast of Christ's Nativity According to the Flesh.
The iconographic portrayal of Christ's birth is not without radical social implications. Christ's birth occurred where it did, we are told by Matthew, "because there was no room in the inn." He who welcomes all is himself unwelcome. From the moment of his birth, he is something like a refugee, as indeed he soon will be in the very strict sense of the word, fleeing to Egypt with Mary and Joseph, as they seek a safe distance from the murderous Herod. Later in life he will say to his followers, revealing one of the criteria of salvation, "I was homeless and you took me in."
The icon reminds us that we are saved not by our achievements, but by our participation in the mercy of God — God's hospitality. If we turn our backs on the homeless and those without the necessities of life, we will end up with nothing more than ideas and slogans and find ourselves lost in the icon's starless cave.
We return at the end to the two figures at the heart of the icon. Mary, fulfilling Eve's destiny, has given birth to Jesus Christ, a child who is God incarnate, a child in whom each of us finds our true self, a child who is the measure of all things. It is not the Messiah the Jews of those days expected — or the Christ many Christians of the modern world would have preferred. God, whom we often refer to as all-mighty, reveals himself in poverty and vulnerability. Christmas is a revelation of the self-emptying love of God.
* * *
an extract from Praying with Icons by Jim Forest; revised edition, Orbis Books, 2008
* * *
Young children tend to like to climb things. Such as book cases, cupboards, ladders, kitchen shelves, all over pianos and tables. Some of them almost get up to the ceiling. Up fences, pot plants and garden trellaces outside. When they get to the top, it's not always so easy to get down. If I was 18 months old, looking up at this Strangler Fig, I'd be tempted to climb it as well.
This fig tree grows in a sub tropical jungle, beside the Allyn River in the Barrington Tops, Australia. The enmeshed, descending roots of the tree create a framework of immense strength. It is a marvel of structural engineering.
©MadDreamer ©2👽22/All rights reserved. Do not use without written permission from photographer/artist.
You know why my hair is so big?
Because it's full of secrets...
(If you got that reference, I love you!)
Credits here ♥
Hair:[taketomi]_Kiyomi_II_GroupGift (Group gift free to join)
Tops: :SMC: Cropped Blouse-FTW(Lucky board)
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Little%20Cat%20GreenEyes/8...
Overall:{GG}::shukran::Denim Jumper skirt HUD (Group gift free to join)
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SHODOSHIMA/26/147/22
Shoes: alterego I showstoppa - funtime (free hunt, enMESHed Into Summer 2 HUNT)
The MAHABHAARATHAM depicts, the younger brother of Emperor Yudhistiran and also the foremost celebrity of the bow and arrow named as Arjunan once embarked a highly thorny THAPASS ( traditional practice like worship, praying ) to gratify Bhagavaan Sivan ( one of the trinities of Hindu culture ) for getting a highly pungent sanctified ASTHRAM ( arrow ) known as PAASUPATHAASTRAM.
The THAPASS went on for years. Surveillance of all these concentrated devotion, Bhagavaan Sivan comprehended his time to bless Arjunan has arrived. He decided to transform into a VEETTAKKAARAN ( hunter ) to assess the ability of Arjunan before hallowing him.
In short, the VEETTAKKARAN provoked Arjunan. Without realizing that the VEETTKKAARAN in front of him is Bhagavaan Sivan, started the combat. In the end, Bhagavaan became happy by the adroitness shown by his aficionado. VEETTAKKARAN appeared in his original form and presented the PAASHUPATHAASTHRAM.When Bhagavaan Sivan was in the form of VEETTAKKAARAN, Paarvathi Devi ( spouse of the former ) also transformed into a VEETTAKKAARI ( hunter ). A son was born to them at that time, who is renowned as VEETTAKKORUMAKAN. The VEETTAKKORUMAKAN Theyyam is predominantly contemplated as the PARADEVATHA ( family god ) of the superior castes like Nairs, Nambiars, Kurups.
Long ago, a KOTTA ( fort ) at Balussery belonged to one Nair family was enmeshed by KURUMBRATHIRI also known as KURUMBRANAAD VAZHUNNOR. He was beseeched to switchback the castle to it's previous possessors. KURUMBRATHIRI acquiesced to handle back the KOTTA ( fort ) by suggesting an unfeasible mission for a little boy called as KAAROLA KIDAAV of that Nair family to confiscate the shells of 21,600 coconuts in a very terse time of closing and opening of an eye.
At that moment there footed a man with an incredible guise. It was none other than the Vettakkorumakan. With the colossal vigor and verve of this giant, KIDAAV ( the small boy ) completed the task proposed to him by KURUMBRATHIRI. As the foe won, KURUMBRATHIRI has no other way. He handled the fort back to it's owners. Thus the Vettakkorumakan was idolized as the PARADEVATHA ( chief god of a family ) of the Nair castes.
(Story From Theyyam.org)