Jill Bolte Taylor

quiet beauty, looking west

Slug sex

Fisheye Rainbow

Click to make bigger.

While browsing online I came across this person's webpage with many pictures of rainbows. They explain how they took them, etc. Either way, I rather enjoyed this particular image.

Image Found Here: http://www.missouriskies.org/rainbow/february_rainbow_2006.html

Beauty in Protest

from here.

Beckett - Play

Larry Harper showed me this last night, I haven't seen it before then. It's worth watching again (and again). APOLOGIES FOR THE SLIGHT OFFSET OF AUDIO TO VIDEO.

Part 1:


Part 2:

Music/Sound/Silence/Meaning

From Saturday's Protest in SLC

WANTED: MORE PROTESTING

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
-- Abraham Lincoln

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
--Elie Wiesel

Stan Trampe Fine Art Nude Photography

For
those
who
are
interested.
(link
at
bottom)



http://www.stantrampe.com/

3 more poems by Kenneth Patchen

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I Feel Drunk All the Time

Jesus it's beautiful!
Great mother of big apples it is a pretty
World!

You're a bastard Mr. Death
And I wish you didn't have no look-in here.

I don't know how the rest of you feel,
But I feel drunk all the time

And I wish to hell we didn't have to die.

O you're a merry bastard Mr. Death
And I wish you didn't have no hand in this game

Because it's too damn beautiful for anybody to die.

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The Rites of Darkness

The sleds of the children
Move down the right slope.
To the left, hazed in the tumbling air,
A thousand lights smudge
Within the branches of the old forest,
Like colored moons in a well of milk.

The sleds of the children
Make no sound on the hard-packed snow.
Their bright cries are not heard
On that strange hill.
The youngest are wrapped
In cloth of gold, and their scarfs
Have been dipped in blood.

All the others, from the son
Of Tegos, who is the bishop
Of Black Church--near Tarn,
On to the daughter of the least slut,
Are garbed in love's shining dress;
Naked little eels, they flash
Across the amazed ice.
And behind each sled
There trots a man with his sex
Held like a whip in his snaking hand.

But no one sees the giant horse
That climbs the steps which stretch forth
Between the calling lights and that hill
Straight up to the throne of God.
He is taller than the highest tree
And his flanks steam under the cold moon.
The beat of his heart shakes the sky
And his reaching muzzle snuffles
At the most ancient star.

The innocent alone approach evil
Without fear; in their appointed flame
They acknowledge all living things.
The only evil is doubt; the only good
Is not death, but life. To be is to love.
This I thought as I stood while the snow
Fell in that bitter place, and the riders
Rode their motionless sleds into a nowhere
Of sleep. Ah, God, we can walk so easily,
Bed with women, do every business
That houses and roads are for, scratch
Our shanks and lug candles through
These caves; but, God, we can't believe,
We can't believe in anything.
Because nothing is pure enough.
Because nothing will ever happen
To make us good in our own sight.
Because nothing is evil enough.

I squat on my heels, raise my head
To the moon, and howl.
I dig my nails into my sides,
And laugh when the snow turns red.
As I bend to drink,
I laugh at everything that anyone loves.

All your damn horses climbing to heaven.
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'O Fiery River'

O fiery river
Flow out over the land.
Men have destroyed the roads of wonder,
And their cities squat like black toads
In the orchards of life.
Nothing is clean, or real, or as a girl,
Naked to love, or to be a man with.
The arts of this American land
Stink in the air of mountains;
What has made these men sick rats
That they find out every cheap hole?
How can these squeak of greatness?
Push your drugstore-culture into the sewer
With the rest of your creation.
The bell wasn't meant to toll for you.
Keep your filthy little hands off it.

O fiery river
Spread over the American land.
Drown out the falsity, the smug contempt
For what does not pay...
What would you pay Christ to die again?
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Enjoy (if you haven't already) - and watch it to the end.

Joseph Beuys: How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare

In How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, Beuys covered his head with honey and gold-leaf, transforming himself into a sculpture. He cradled the dead hare in his arms and took it "to the pictures and I explained to him everything that was to be seen. I let him touch the pictures with his paws and meanwhile talked to him about them....I explained them to him because I do not really like explaining them to people. Of course there is a shadow of truth in this. A hare comprehends more than many human beings with their stubborn rationalism....I told him that he needed only to scan the picture to understand what is really important about it. The hare probably knows better than man that directions are important. You know the hare can turn on a dime. And actually nothing else is involved."

In the same vein as previous post.

This is Vanessa Mae one of my favourite violinists, very contemporary but does amazing classics too. This piece is a deconstruction of Bachs Preludio that she performs on another album. Very similar to original but different too.

The small snippet introducing her is from another song she does called Storm but this one is so much better.

Let Us Have Madness

Let us have madness openly.
O men Of my generation.
Let us follow
The footsteps of this slaughtered age:
See it trail across Time's dim land
Into the closed house of eternity
With the noise that dying has,
With the face that dead things wear--
nor ever say
We wanted more; we looked to find
An open door, an utter deed of love,
Transforming day's evil darkness;
but We found extended hell and fog Upon the earth,
and within the head
A rotting bog of lean huge graves.

Kenneth Patchen

Daydream

Jorgen and I are both very familiar with this. It's a music video of the cellist Giovanni Sollima, directed by Lasse Gjertsen.

Part One-


Part Two-

These are just a few pictures I've taken over the past couple of years that I really enjoy looking at.

Storm. Taken through the blue strip on the windshield of my car.

I-80 in Winter.

This picture was taken accidentally.

A man-made lake in Canada.

Does anyone remember the clouds on this day?

Red Skies

Anyone who has seen the touchstones poster has seen this image, but everytime i see it i am in awe. It was a saturday morning at about 6:30 am and i was on my way to administering the ACT on campus and i saw the sky behind me and had to stop, get out of the car and take these shots.

In minutes the sky sun had come up and the sky looked totally different. You don't get these kinds of sunrises in Cambridge England, or anywhere else i have lived.

2 November 2008, looking west

Firetruck - Open Shutter

A couple months back a firetruck flew past my house. I was lucky enough (by hearing the sirens a few blocks down the road) to be able to get my camera out just in time, and snap a picture with the shutter open for a full second just as it went by.

Protest: The True "Patriot Act"

I know that my perspectives about Buddhism have changed since I began this Buddhist Philosophy course with Wayne Hanewicz (highly recommended). But the protests a few months back leave me with a much deeper respect for many of the monks from Burma - and in general. Peaceful protest somehow gets a bad rap, when it should be considered of the most "patriotic" things one can do. If Americans weren't such lazy, passive, blind herds of sheep (excuse the cliche), we would be much better off as a society and a country. The most intelligent people of the world have been pointing this out for decades, yet somehow we believe that the government would never lie to us. And, given our President's track-records on lying, I wonder how we can carry on such ridiculous beliefs.

Foucault was right on in noticing that the Productive Power is much better means of control than the Repressive Power. We have Americans begging for Patriot Acts, when we should be Protesting them (which is the true patriot act).

I can only hope that someday more people will wake up.

Protest is one of the most beautiful arts ever experienced. And, if done correctly, can be the most powerful of all the arts.

Seeing Through

"The prison was on the heights above the town, and through a small window I coud see the sea. I was gripping the bars, my face straining toward the light." - Albert Camus The Stranger

Purpose

To post inspiring, astonishing, and otherwise beautiful items of text, story, picture, imagination, and so on...

Let it flow.

Also, if you would like to be an "author" on this blog, post your email here.