View allAll Photos Tagged frigidity
Bright, sunny and -3F/-20C. A little fresh snow and a return to frigidity. Critters in the yard overnight and heading out to traverse the lake. Tracks far more visible larger...give it a click.
Blue hydrangeas are supposed to symbolize rejection, coldness and frigidity. They really just need an autumn color boost to be hot and sexy!
Happy Sliders Sunday!
Processed with Snapseed and Photoshop 3
An up close and almost too personal look at Laughing Water Creek taken just prior to my unplanned respite in it. :-) If you blow this up and sit here a moment you will see beauty in every pixel as well as evidence of the less tranquil times when nature decides to reshape itself.
The surrounding forest is a bit humid, but right here you are shaded by the bridge over head and the cool breeze coming off the stream is nice and refreshing. I can attest to the frigidity of the water as well.......
Canon EOS 6D - f/6.3 - 1/400sec - 100 mm - ISO 200
- In Floriography (= 'Language of Flowers') the meaning (symbolism) of the Hydrangea flowers varies drastically between cultures:
* In Japan, the flower is associated with heartfelt emotion, understanding and apology. The Japanese emperor apparently made a lasting impression not only on his girlfriend’s family but also the rest of his empire. The hydrangea can further symbolize unity and togetherness.
* Contrastingly, hydrangeas have a negative sentiment in Europe where they were used to declare arrogance and boastfulness. This association is based on the ability of the plant to produce many flowers but very few seeds. English men in the 1800s used to send hydrangeas to women who rejected them, accusing them of frigidity. Thanks to the Victorian men’s poor attitude and lack of empathy, it is believed that young women who grow hydrangeas in their front yard will never get married. In other words: if you’ve been unlucky in finding a partner, maybe you should check your grounds for hydrangeas.
- Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight' is one of the most winter hardy hydrangeas. An important feature is that it flowers on new shoots so you better prune or trim it early in the season to achieve a denser plant and to avoid it grows to tall. If pruned it will grow to ca. 150 - 200cm
This is a panicle type hydrangea, not a mop-head one with big leaves and large flowers heads. Well, how to explain then that this new variety has even bigger flowers? Never mind, let’s just call them XXL size. The panicles are upto 30 cm long, fat blossoms of greenish-white colour when they come out in early August, changing to almost white after about 2-3 weeks and turning clear pink in September. The shade of pink is not a fading one, but fresh pink as if it was meant to be pink from the very beginning. Ovate, pointed leaves are dark green.
Bright, bluebird skies generally translate to cold temperatures in the winter as those darn Canadians send their frigidity south over the border. (They also want to send their oil over the border but I digress...) The last few days we've reached highs of about 10F (-12C) and the lake has concluded it's initial freeze, now adding inches of depth which will increase throughout the winter until measured in feet (meters), the shoreline already showing the tracks of various critters as they find the lake a more accommodating path than the woods to achieve their destinations during the night.
....Billie has been consuming a significant amount of my time since she came to live with us....besides being a frigidity subject for the lens. Apologies for my lack of comments and feedback of late!
The forecast is finally calling for "normal" temps in the 20s (about 0C) for the balance of the week after the extended frigidity of January eliminated any outside activities of note for much of the month. As a confirmed devotee of winter, I far prefer trekking when there's a chill in the air as opposed to the heat, insects, and other annoyances of summer wandering. Though I've yet to see mention of the phenomenon in the writing of Thoreau or Muir, there's nothing much more annoying than a swarm of gnats who have discovered that your path is precisely where they're headed and will not be deterred from your company despite frenetic arm-waving, turning in circles, and increases of pace. This, of course, except for the occasional tick seeking fine dining in the form of your person.
So, my friends, I prefer winter...but not when temps are where they've been. I've determined over the years that about 10F (-15C) without wind and preferably sunny is perfectly comfortable. This presumes proper layering and steady activity. Below this is simply too cold...and not recommended by my doctors. Thankfully, when we approach the freezing point later this week, it will seem positively balmy...
A typical scene along Italy's Amalfi Coast, south of Naples, in midsummer.
Thinking back to a brighter, warmer, more colorful place in the midst of the white and gray frigidity of the polar vortex over Boston.
In the transition between dawn and daylight, amazing methane formations tier like sculptures in the ice layers worn smooth and clear by the incessant gales whipping across the dark glaze covering the glacier-born waters of Abraham Lake, Alberta, Canada.
By way of extreme understatement, suffice it to say a lot has changed in the world since I last posted some months ago. The present challenges and loss affecting much of the world surely reveal the relative triviality of things like photography, but even so I've found taking a moment on my computer and reconnecting with photography to be quite comforting. I've always found the beauty of nature quite a salve to the stresses of the world, and this feeling apparently holds even when nature has interposed a good bit of the stress.
This image comes from an impromptu outing Sky and I quickly put together back in January after we saw a weather forecast predicting that temperatures at Abraham Lake--which had been hovering around 40 below zero (the cold, cold point on the thermometer where Celsius and Fahrenheit align)--would rise just a few days later to a much more palatable range but without getting warm enough to soften the surface layer of ice and thus destroy the transparency so crucial to revealing the beautiful methane forms within the ice.
We were intent on going when it was a bit warmer because everything we'd read over the years described the lake's surface as being scoured by winds of such persistent ferocity and frigidity as to be almost beyond belief to someone from warmer and calmer latitudes. And the wind speeds were as advertised! Stories you may have heard--like your tripod skidding away from you as if under sail the moment you release it from your grasp?--well, they're true!
But, as always, the sometimes challenging conditions only heightened the experience, even if it was quite a trick to get a steady shot during the windiest stretches. Though we had only a short visit, I found Abraham Lake to be one of the most beautiful and varied photographic locations I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing, and the subtle hues around sunrise on this morning only increased my feeling.
Thanks for viewing!
Hydrangeas are believed to have originated in Japan, and are often associated with apology. Pink hydrangeas represent heartfelt emotion, a desire to get to know someone, but the Victorians associated blue hydrangeas with coldness and frigidity, because they produce magnificent blossoms but very few seeds.
The interesting thing about hydrangeas is that a single plant or bush can have flowers ranging from pink to white to blue to purple, depending on the acidity or alkalinity of the soil. Simply adding coffee grounds or egg shells to the soil will increase the acidity and change the color of new blossoms. to blue.
The dried blossoms are also prized, In her book Tar Baby, Toni Morrison praises the flower’s beauty saying, “A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom.”
One photo a day. (164/366)Bayside, Queens, NYC -- June 12, 2020
Johanna Haarer's "Die deutsche Mutter und ihr erstes Kind" of 1934 (the German mother and her first child) was one of the Nazis' best-selling publications. After the War it was reprinted many times, up to 1987, with only the slightest changes. The advice given in this book was to break the bond between mother and child (a bond the Nazis wished to claim) and treat the child with emotional frigidity. This treatment was rolled out to the whole generation of the "Kriegskinder" (the war children) - including myself.
Mitakon Speedmaster at approx. F4, three LED lights.
As evening approached a wintry day near Wildrose at Death Valley, there was a certain eerie coziness to the cold, cloudy dusk approaching..
"On Thin Ice (horizontal):" I truly did step onto very thin ice and (with waterproof rubber boots) the very cold water below to take this shot at West Fork of Oak Creek. Even through the layers of protection, I felt the frigidity of the icy water.
"Here lies my wife Elizabeth, as cold as always".
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Basado en un epitafio real español que ví en Internet.
Una buena frase lapidaria, triste, humorística...y sincera.
Oh ain't this lovely, a big blue hydrangea with water droplets - woohoo !
People love hydrangeas for their giant cluster flowers that grace gardens and bouquets around the world, but there's much more to these classic, romantic shrubs than meets the eye.
Oh my buddha - Blue hydrangeas symbolize frigidity and apology - sorry, not today, for either.
The colours of hydrangeas are affected by aluminum ions in the soil (lower pH higher acid required).
In Victorian times, giving someone a hydrangea could mean one of two things: Thank you for understanding, or – because its blooms are considered showy – boastfulness and vanity. Talk about sending someone a mixed messages - this is so confusing.
Are you looking to give a loved one a gift to tell them you are grateful for their understanding? Now that you’re armed with these cool hydrangea facts, look no further than a beautiful Bouquet of hydrangeas!
Hydrangeas are extremely poisonous. The compounds in the leaves release cyanide when eaten, so keep the plant away from small children or pets, but feel free to feed lots to your enemies.
Hydrangeas produce the main flower clusters from the tips of shoots formed from the previous season.
Apparently, they are Madonna's least favorite flower. OK I will go with who the hell is Madonna - just kidding.
People love hydrangeas so much they have ave there own holiday, Hydrangea Day celebrated on January fifth, which, weirdly and ironically enough when the flowers are out of season in northern climes.
— This is an overview image of the little wetland area where the hopeful tree stands. The orange tree can be seen in the background on one of the previous photos.
The Westduinpark changes a lot during the seasons and this little corner of it shows it well, I think. It looks positively dead November to February when the absence of snow, which almost never falls in The Hague (sniff, says the Swede here), reinforces the barren impression. Then during the spring it comes to life gradually with the return of the warm sunlight.
By summer there's plenty going on both in and around the water. Birds and insects appear of course and the dunes biggest inhabitants, the Scottish Highland cattle, occasionally cool off here. Finally during the early autumn a real firework display of colours erupts, a nature's last hurrah before the monochrome apparent frigidity sets in again.
••• Colourful marsh (2020)
Hasselblad 203FE
Carl Zeiss 40 Distagon
Kodak Ektar 100
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range. Male bird is all red, female is more yellow green and has darker wings. taken in the dunes area of Oak Openings with a 400 Mm lens at a distance of 70 feet. You almost have to shoot from a bling to get closer. You have a count of about 1003 to get a shot off. frigidity bird constantly on the move.
I made it out to Chambers Lake this morning in Hibernia County Park, and it was quite frozen! I think I'll try to share a video of some of the fun frigidity, later :)
"Autumn's Touch in West Clear Creek:" Autumn had just begun to descend upon West Clear Creek during my last visit, as seen by the pops of red and gold accentuating the abundant foliage thriving deep in the canyon. The water here is always cold, but the cooler air temps added even more frigidity to the chilly experience.
Photo captured via Minolta Maxxum AF Macro 50mm F/2.8 Lens. Spokane City Limits. South Hill neighborhood. Inland Northwest. Spokane County, Washington. Late October 2023.
Exposure Time: 1/500 sec. * ISO Speed: ISO-800 * Aperture: F/10 * Bracketing: None
In 1964, an evil counterpart of Wonder Woman from a parallel universe named "Superwoman" was introduced. This Superwoman was a member of the Crime Syndicate of America, a villainous counterpart of the Justice League of America from the parallel world of "Earth-Three" (vs. the Justice League's world of "Earth-One").
Superwoman, like Wonder Woman, was an Amazon, and possessed similar powers of super-strength and flight. Unlike most/all other versions, her golden lasso could change shape into any form she desired, including a giant winged serpent. The Crime Syndicate first came to Earth-1 to battle the Justice League when, after near capture, they felt they needed a real challenge to their powers.
Superwoman is defeated by Wonder Woman on Earth-1 when each deploy their lassos with Wonder Woman’s proving itself the superior of the two.
However each Crime Syndicate member has a fail-safe that transports themselves and the victorious Justice League member to Earth-3. Another battle ensues and this time Wonder Woman falls victim to Superwoman’s lasso.
The Crime Syndicate puts the Justice League into a trance on Earth-1 while they prepare to battle the Justice Society of America on Earth-2, an Earth that will provide a neutral location for a final battle.
Superwoman is again defeated by the host Earth's heroine, this time Black Canary who is able to use Superwoman’s strength against her and encircles her with her own lasso.
Another fail-safe transports them to Earth-3 where Black Canary and the rest of the Justice Society are imprisoned. Superwoman and Wonder Woman have a final showdown on Earth-2 where neither has a home Earth advantage.
Superwoman yanks Wonder Woman’s lasso from her and proceeds to hurl both ropes at her rival, ensuring Wonder Woman won’t be able to make a move against her, but is surprised when the ropes sail high, realizing it takes more super-strength to control both lassos.
Wonder Woman, having anticipated this, “let” her lasso be taken and then relies on her super-swiftness to put Superwoman out of commission before she can recover from her surprise. The Crime Syndicate, having all been defeated, are imprisoned between Earth-1 and Earth-2 by Green Lantern in a green bubble.
The Crime Syndicate were freed by the time travelling villain Per Degaton after he was caught up in a time-storm, discovered their bubble, and freed them. They tried to get him, but he revealed he had made sure he and his Time Machine would vibrate at a different speed to them, meaning they could not touch him.
They helped him change history and conquer Earth-2 by stealing nuclear missiles from the Cuban Missile Crisis of Earth Prime, and when the Syndicate betrays him they are sent to 1982 of Earth-1, as he had made sure this would happen when they touched him.
They materialized on the JLA's satellite headquarters and defeated the heroes. The JSA were imprisoned in their prison, but the combined powers of Starman and Doctor Fate got them out.
They helped him again when the JLA tried to restore history, though were planning to betray him. When Degaton was defeated this timeline was erased and the Syndicate was re-imprisoned.
In the Pre-Crisis DCU any Amazon seen without her nonremovable indestructible bracelets was in fact driven mad. Superwoman was never seen with bracelets and this was part of her look to show she was, in fact, an evil aging Amazon (she also had a streak of grey hair).
On the original Pre-Crisis Earth-Three, Superwoman and Lois Lane are two separate people, with Lois working as a reporter for the Daily Star just like Earth-Two and even having a short-lived romance with Captain Comet when he came to her universe while chasing the Secret Society of Super-Villains across multiple realities.
The Pre-Crisis version of Superwoman was killed, along with the rest of the CSA, when they were trying to save Earth-Three from being destroyed by the Anti-Monitor's antimatter wave.
During the Convergence storyline, Superwoman was on death row after an accidental death happened to the Earth-Three version of Bruno Mannheim during the attack on Earth-Three's Metropolis. Due to the Rogue Hunter's interference, the Crime Syndicate failed to rescue Superwoman from death row as the electric chair was activated. She however later got better and fought her Justice League 1,000,000 counterpart.
In Post-Crisis continuity, as established in the 2000 graphic novel JLA: Earth 2 by Grant Morrison, Superwoman (and the rest of the Crime Syndicate) comes from a parallel world similar to Earth, but located in an antimatter universe (also home to the planet Qward).
Superwoman continues to make occasional appearances as a member of the Crime Syndicate, most recently appearing in storylines in the Justice League and Superman comics.
Unlike her pre-Crisis counterpart, her magic lasso doesn't change shape but releases the inhibitions of anyone tied to it (just as Wonder Woman's compels victims to tell the truth). Bizarrely she also possesses heat vision, as Superman and Ultraman do, although there is no explanation for this.
Taking the alias Lois Lane, Superwoman is an Amazon by birth, and has risen through the ranks to become the chief editor of the Daily Planet in what she calls "Patriarch's World".
This disguise resembles Wonder Woman's secret identity of Diana Prince. At the Planet, Superwoman is shown to upset her colleagues; the antimatter-Cat Grant refers to Superwoman as "Queen B", and negatively alludes to her "friendship" with the antimatter Jimmy Olsen.
In her later appearances, it is stated that prior to taking on Lois Lane's identity, Superwoman was born on Damnation Island, presumably the Antimatter counterpart to Themyscira (or "Paradise Island").
It is mentioned that she had murdered all of her fellow Amazons, and upon meeting Donna Troy, she becomes ecstatic over the prospect of being able to murder another one of her kind for the first time in years. The Antimatter Universe's version of Superwoman is the first version of the character to combine Diana of Themyscira and Lois Lane.
Jimmy Olsen is the only civilian who knows of Superwoman's secret identity. A compliant sycophant, he is so besotted that he ignores her gibes and insults, even when she tauntingly refers to him as, "Superwoman's Snitch, Jimmy Olsen", and prints it in the Planet.
Also in the Earth 2 story, her lover Ultraman hates Superwoman's frigidity towards him. Meanwhile, she is two-timing him with Owlman, and they sneak trysts whenever they feel Ultraman is not watching.
However, from his floating fortress (the antimatter counterpart to the Fortress of Solitude), Ultraman doesn't hesitate to fire warning bursts of heat vision towards them whenever he catches them together.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Flight: Superwoman can fly.
Heat Vision: Superwoman is capable of a version of red energy projection from her eyes.
Superhuman Strength: Superwoman was strong enough to rip open the thick, metal doors of Arkham Asylum with her bare hands, as well as injure Black Adam.
Superhuman Stamina
Superhuman Durability: Superwoman was able to survive Black Adam's powerful Shazam lightning, although it did knock her out.
Virtual Immortality
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
_____________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identity: Diana
Publisher: DC
First appearance: Justice League of America #29 (August 1964)
Created by: Gardner Fox (Writer)
Mike Sekowsky (Artist)
One of my day lilies, from last summer.
Well below zero F, this morning, but I think it's the last of the extreme frigidity.
More normal temps ahead.
"On Thin Ice:" I truly did step onto very thin ice and (with waterproof rubber boots) the very cold water below to take this shot at West Fork of Oak Creek. Even through the layers of protection, I felt the frigidity of the icy water.
Embracing the Elusive
Like loving the wind — ungraspable and unpossessable... 💕
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. . . Embracing the Elusive . . .
Completely drained, lost in the endless abyss.
No matter how many virtuous deeds I undertake, her heart remains unaltered.
Love squandered, akin to tears absorbed by parched soil. The more I pour forth, the more it evaporates into nothingness. No matter the depth of my affection, she remains unmoved. Do you comprehend the crushing weight of such futility?
Striving for goodness holds no significance in her eyes. Even if I surrender my very essence.
I pour out my soul, every action steeped in love, yet how much worth does my affection hold?
I pour my heart into everything I do, with love, but have you ever once truly valued my love?
Every gesture, every word, infused with the essence of my heart. Have you ever, even once, acknowledged the value of my love?
I yearn to capture her heart with acts of kindness and offerings of goodness. But how much longer must I endure this fruitless pursuit?
The love that consumes us is squandered, its essence rendered meaningless. Each day I extend kindness, hope recedes further into the shadows.
Would it not behoove you to acknowledge the agony I endure? Can you not spare a moment to comprehend? Or is your heart truly devoid of empathy? I implore you, answer me.
A noble endeavor holds no sway against the frigidity of your heart, despite the sacrifices made.
All my heartfelt love and efforts, expended in vain, are as meaningless to you as the dust beneath your feet.
In time, you repay my goodness with only remorse and regret. Yet still, I hold onto hope, praying for the day when you recognize the purity of my intentions. Perhaps, one day, you will feel the sincerity that permeates every act of kindness I bestow upon you.
A myriad of efforts expended, yet a solitary response from your heart eludes me. Just once. It would suffice to liberate me from this anguish and despair. I beseech you, allow yourself to feel it. Embrace the warmth of love and kindness. I beg of you, feel it with your heart.
* tenderly pat his head *
" You told me since beginning you were looking for a mean, heartless Miss, and today what I am is different from what you are looking for? You just got what you were looking for, so why are you complaining?..."
He muses softly, "You're such a sadist, so sadistic..."
" Loving me is like loving the wind — ungraspable and unpossessable. You know well I'm not someone you can own or possess. This is how it should be. It's like embracing the wind you love, it's there even when it seems empty. Just because you can't possess it doesn't mean you've lost it. It's always there to be felt, just not to be owned. "
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" Being kind and treating others nicely doesn't always mean you'll get kindness back. Life presents a blend of kindness, cruelty, and indifference (no reaction at all). However, don't allow this reality to discourage you or instill fear of doing good deeds. Instead, see it as a filter to choose wisely. Having a good heart alone isn't enough to make smart choices. You also need intelligence to make the best decisions and outcomes. "
_______ Scarlett Saphira
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The question should not be, "When will you give me what I hope for?"
The question should be, "When will you stop hoping for something that won't happen?"
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Sponsor: Valhalla - Head tattoo set 3 / @ Skin fair 2024
People have called me cold-hearted because I have said the word love - in the sense of 'I love you' - is meaningless. But when I say that, I am speaking from the mind, not from the heart; I am speaking of language, not feelings. If someone says 'I love you' to me, I do not know what they mean. To say to someone "I care very much for you", "I miss you so much that I cry when you are not here", "you make me a better person", "I have never been happier than when I am in your arms" "I would do anything for you", "I want to be with you forever": we all know what these mean, because they refer to things and feelings that we all understand. But 'love', a word loaded with cultural baggage accumulated over millennia, has almost as many different meanings as there are people, and a word with a billion different meanings has, in my opinion, no meaning at all.
When I was younger I used the word and the phrase as freely as hormonally imbalanced teenagers will. I was dimly aware, even then, of its futility. I would hear people say, either in the dramas of the school common room or on American TV series, "I love him, but I'm not in love with him" or "I'm in love with him, but he's not my soulmate" or "he's my soulmate, but it's not true love": they would shift the semiotic goalposts to justify what they had said before, rather than admit that what they had said before was either misguided, untrue or meaningless. The end of my first serious relationship - which lasted almost five years, from the ages of fifteen to twenty - made me wary of not only my own emotions, which I felt I had failed to understand, but of the language I had used to express them.
I did not have any motivation to formalise these thoughts until I was twenty one, when my partner at the time asked me why I would not say 'I love you'. I explained my reasoning, but he was not appeased and, eventually, I caved to pressure from him and from the vague outside - convention - and said it. I did not consider it a lie because to me it was meaningless. It was not meaningless to him, though, and that is why it was wrong of me to say it: I was using a word that had meaning in his language, but not in mine. The memory of this fact is a constant reminder to me of the importance of language.
By the time I was twenty one, I was aware of the ways language can be used to manipulate people, and aware too that I was very good at them; that I could often make people think, feel or do what I wanted them to by saying certain things in a certain way. I had to, and still have to, be continually vigilant not to abuse this. In doing so, there are three things I bear in mind:
• Dr Seuss's Horton - "I meant what I said and I said what I meant..."
• Something I once read which went along these lines: "The main purpose of language is not to make one understood, but to make it impossible for one to be misunderstood."
• Orwell's Politics and the English Language, which I re-read regularly.
Have most people thought about what they mean when they say 'I love you'? Are most people understood when they say it? It is hyperreal (hyperreality: "a hypothetical inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality"): for example, one person says 'I love you' because it is what Othello says of Desdemona; another because it is what Von Aschenbach says of Tadizio; another because it is what Ally says to Billy: all very different kinds of 'love'. I once read an article about Romantic Comedy Syndrome: a study at Edinburgh University "found fans of films such as Runaway Bride and Notting Hill often fail to communicate with their partner. Many held the view if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them."
Until this year, I had never said "I love you" in a romantic sense without feeling immense pressure to do so. Then one night, in the passion and intensity of a moment so magical I wanted to live in it forever, I started, involuntarily and spontaneously, to say it: I said 'Oh ____, I love—" before I caught myself, and continued "—this." That I didn't finish it is unimportant: that I began to say it, instinctively and unconsciously, made me feel liberated in some way; that, for a moment, I escaped from the confines of my own mind and connected with the energy of someone else. It's not like me to say something so new-agey, but I'm not speaking scientifically.
The next day I tried to discover what I had meant, and whether I could begin to understand the meaning of the word love. I experienced a depth and intensity of emotion and attachment that I had never felt before, and I wanted to express it in words. To say 'I am experiencing a depth of emotion and attachment I've never known before' would have been almost comical in its frigidity - like something Lilith would say in Frasier - and so 'I love you' is what my mind gave me. Perhaps, through this, I have reached my own understanding, my own definition, of love: the pinnacle of affection and shared pleasure. I would guess this is actually the understanding that most people have of love, but what they will not accept is the possibility of its temporariness, because culture and media tell us that love is forever. If love is the pinnacle of our affection then it is subject to change as we mature, as we reach new heights of feeling and experience. This explains the moving of the goalposts that I mentioned earlier (love but not in love…), and I think that when done retrospectively it is an unnecessary attempt to devalue the emotions of the past in order to make the emotions of the present seem more significant, more visceral, more real.
What have I learned from this? A slightly clearer understanding of what love means to me which might make me more comfortable using the word in the future. Most importantly, though, I have felt the limits of language: something as deep and as beautiful as the shared affection, understanding and connection between two human beings cannot be expressed in a single word, or ten thousand words. We must express love not only with language, but in the way we treat each other and the way we live our lives.
Photograph: Glasgow, 2011.
Words: Glasgow, 2012.
Separated
Some day we will be
together
again
HKD
Eingesperrte Emotionen
Helle oder dunkle
Sind die Ursache für Gefühlsschwäche
oder Gefühlskälte
HKD
"On Thin Ice (vertical):" I truly did step onto very thin ice and (with waterproof rubber boots) the very cold water below to take this shot at West Fork of Oak Creek. Even through the layers of protection, I felt the frigidity of the icy water.
A proof which is often advanced in favor of religion, but which is rarely understood to its full extent, is the argument of the moral efficaciousness of Divine Legislation: indeed, what does human society become if it is deprived of a Law founded upon the authority of God?
The unbelievers, who as a general rule have but a highly restricted and partially false idea of human nature (otherwise they would not be unbelievers) will answer that it suffices to replace the religious Law with a civil Law founded upon the common interest; now the opinion of the "free thinkers" concerning the public good depends upon their scale of values, hence upon their idea of man and therefore of the meaning of life. But what has been instituted by an individual can always be abolished by another individual; philosophies change with tastes, they follow the downward slope of history, because as soon as man is detached from his reason for existence, rooted in God, he can only slide downwards, in conformity with the law of gravity which is valid for the human order as well as for the physical order, notwithstanding the periodic renewal effected by the religions, the sages and the saints.
Now the fact that the Divine Law, insofar as it is fundamental and thereby universal, is definitively the only efficacious one - to the degree that a Law can and must be so - this fact shows that it is a Message of Truth; it alone is incontestable and irreplaceable.
To be sure the contemporary world still possesses codes and civil laws, but even so for the general mentality there is less and less an authority which is such "by right", and not merely "in fact". Moreover, the Law is made to protect not only society, but also the individual prone to offense; if the "secular arm" inspires fear to the degree that badly intentioned men feel threatened by it, on the other hand these same men have no intrinsic motive not to follow their inclinations, outside the fear of God. The threat of human justice is uncertain, hence relative; that of the divine justice is absolute; for it is possible to escape men, but certainly not God.
In summary: one indirect proof of God is that without Divinity there is no authority, and without authority there is no efficacy; that is to say that the religious Message imposes itself - apart from its other imperatives - because no moral and social life is possible without it, except for a brief period which, without admitting it, is still living off the residues of a disavowed heritage.
And this brings us to another extrinsic proof a contrario of God, although it is fundamentally the same: it is a fact of experience that the common man, on the whole, who is not disciplined by social necessity and who precisely is only disciplined by religion and piety, decays in his behaviour as soon as he has no more religion containing and penetrating him; and experience proves that the disappearance of faith and of morals brings about that of personal dignity and of private life, which in fact only have meaning and value if man possesses an immortal soul.
It is hardly necessary to recall here that believing peasants and artisans are often of an aristocratic nature, and that they are so through religion; without forgetting that aristocracy in itself, namely nobility of sentiment and comportment and the tendency to control and transcend oneself, derives from spirituality and draws its principles from it, consciously or unconsciously.
What the people need in order to find a meaning in life, hence a possibility of earthly happiness, is religion and the crafts: religion because every man has need of it, and the crafts because they allow man to manifest his personality and to realize his vocation in the framework of a sapiential symbolism; every man loves intelligible work and work well done.
Now industrialism has robbed the people of both things: on the one hand of religion, denied by scientism from which industry derives, and rendered unlikely by the inhuman character of the mechanistic ambience, and on the other hand the crafts, replaced precisely by machinism; so much so that in spite of all the "social doctrines" of the Church and the nationalistic bourgeoisie, there is nothing left for the people which can give a meaning to their life and make them happy.
The classic contradiction of traditional Catholicism is to want to maintain the social hierarchy, in which it is theoretically right, even while accepting whole-heartedly (as an acquisition of the "Christian civilization" which in fact has long been abolished) the scientism and the machinism which precisely compromise this hierarchy by cutting the people off, in fact, from humankind.
The inverse error is founded on the same cult of technology, with the difference that it is detrimental to the bourgeoisie rather than to the common people and that it aims at reducing the entire society to mechanistic inhumanity while on the other hand presenting it with an "opium" made of bitterness and frigidity which kills the very organ of happiness; for to be happy it is necessary to be a child, happiness being made of gratitude and confidence, humanly speaking.
The machine is opposed to man, consequently it is also opposed to God; in a world where it poses as norm, it abolishes both the human and the divine. The logical solution to the problem would be the return (which in fact has become impossible without a divine intervention) to the crafts and at the same time to religion – and thereby to an ambience which, by not falsifying our sense of the real, does not make unlikely what is evident.
One of the greatest successes of the devil was to create around man surroundings in which God and immortality appear unbelievable. (And this certainly is not, in spite of all illusions, "Christian civilization".)
(It will undoubtedly be objected that the Church could not compromise itself by opposing that "irreversible" phenomenon which is industrialism; we would reply first of all that the truth has precedence over any consideration of opportuneness or of "irreversibility", and then that the Church could always have affirmed its doctrinal position, to all intents and purposes, without having to be unrealistic on the level of facts; it could moreover have opted, with perfect logic and in accord with its entire past, for the monarchist and traditional right-wing which upheld it by definition, without having to compromise itself in the eyes of some, with the ambiguous "right" born in the XIXth century in the shadow of the machine.)
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Excerpt from the Divine to the Human by Frithjof Schuon
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image: The Facundus Codex - illustration for Rev 8:7-8
By March, I'm generally done with winter, looking forward to poison ivy, mosquitoes, and disgustingly thick, humid, Midwest suburban air. So when it snows in March, I find myself torn between my fascination with weather extremes (and weather in general!) and a disgruntled feeling about the lingering and unwelcome frigidity.
On March 11th, 2017, it snowed, and it was enough to build a snowman, albeit one quite diminutive. After spending the morning excitedly marveling over the beauty of what nature painted overnight and shooting some pics, I ventured to a friend's house, and transformed into resentful me and sacrificed a few snowmen. It's called moods, people! Just moods. I don't have a split personality, and neither do I!
3/11/2017
落叶归根, Luo Ye Gui Gen, a song by Wang Lee Hom
Raising my head to gaze at the boundless grey clouds
That season is called "loneliness"
My sack is stuffed with household tools
Thus begins my journey
During the day, I cannot feel the warmth of the sun,
During the night, I cannot see the bluish moonlight
I had no choice but to choose the beginning of frigidity
Staying would only fill me with regrets.
The arrangements of fate
stems from nature's logic;
No one is able to discover the key to the puzzle.
Wo~ leaving my homeland without excessive sighs,
with all the dreams melting into the autumn night.
And I am akin to the falling leaves returning to their roots,
Hanging heavily in your heart.
No matter how much the resultant worries or loneliness,
I am willing to bear them all.
My love is like the falling leaves returning to their roots,
Home is when I am at your side.
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I'm starting a People of Detroit mini-series dedicated to Detroiters in coffeeshops. I've read enough artist statements in museums and spoken with enough people who attended art school to know I should explain the project like this:
"Coffeeshop Cohorts examines coffeeshops, the alluvial fluid served therein, and the caffeinated pilgrams arrayed to consume it - together yet alone in the frigidity of the modern American metropolis."
:|
While that would assuredly garner an exhibition in the MOMA, the real motivation for moving the People of Detroit indoors, is that... its so coooooooold in the D, son! It's December, and despite our best efforts, the globe hasn't warmed enough yet to completely forestall Winter in America.
So, I was in one particular corporate chain coffeeshop that shall remain unspecified (however, in the event that said unspecified corporate chain coffeeshop offers to sponsor TPOD, The People of Detroit will be summarily changed to The People of Said Unnamed Corporate Chain Coffeeshop), when I saw a young woman sitting behind me.
Though I've been feeling especially withdrawn lately, the late morning light was perfect, as was her green shirt and red hair against the warm tones of the coffeeshop - I had to ask for a picture.
She obliged.
Meet Erika (I actually took NOTES this time!). Come to find out, she is a horn player with the University of Michigan Symphony Band. She was in the coffeeshop (drinking tea, because she's cool like that) ahead of an audition with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
I asked if she was from Michigan originally. She explained that she came here for school from California. That initially struck me as remarkable, as the migratory arrow usually points in the other direction, but after giving it more thought, its not that unusual I suppose. U of M, after all, is one of the world's more renown universities.
Aside from being drawn here for school, Erika intimated that of all the places she's lived in and visited, Michigan is one of the places she likes the most.
I took the discussion of visiting places as an opportunity to casually bring up the three weeks I spent living in Shanghai, China while I shot an ad campaign for a multinational corporation [insert self-satisfied sniff], and I agreed. Of all the places where I'd spent time - New York, Chicago, the aforementioned China - Detroit specifically, and Michigan in general was the place where I felt most at home.
Then something occurred to me. Erika seemed amazingly relaxed for someone on her way to an audition.
"I've discovered that I do best when I'm relaxed," Erica said. "At some point you have to just let go, do your best and whatever happens, happens"
Sip on that.
This has been done before but I thought I would take my own purity ring and form the heart shadow in this old bible.
Merriam Modell - My Sister, My Bride
Bantam Books 425, 1949
Cover Artist: Denver Gillen
"The story of a healthy man... and a frigid woman!"
Dominique Napier - House Party
Beacon Books B439F, 1961
Cover Artist: Edward Moritz
"Maybe she was really a 'frozen' wife – or maybe she just needed a real man!"