message following

1/3
technology
...is
an expansion
...........of
our identity

2/3
our life
.......is
our message
.......is
our life

3/3
the medium
...........is
the message
....is
the medium

(3*3)
our identity
.......is
a medium
....................we
.......are
...........the
messenger
..................of

~
bleep.
.

The Escapees

They're hiding from me again. They don't want to play.
Don't want to describe those things that I have been spending my time on.
They're not interested in stanza formation or syntax or iambic pentameter.
They don't care who I think I am or what I call myself.
They refuse to cooperate.
They could give a care about my need for artistic expression...
But they don't.
I beg them, I have to tell people about the moon!
No, you don't, they respond.
But, what about the sky? I moan.
Everyone's seen it, no one cares what you see in it.
They're being deliberately cruel.
They know I have things I must express to certain people.
People I love and people I don't love and people I don't know
If I should love.
And they laugh at me.
More's the pity, they say; you're just going to have to get used to disappointment.

Apparently so.

Manipurna, Ajna, Camera?

a different way of seeing?

Sahasrara

Wednesday evening. Yoga again. And also: rain again. As if it was part of the lesson. Part of the drive, of the atmosphere. I park the car, walk through the floor of the parking house. Look for a certain poster at the entrance. It’s still there, holding a poem of an ice bear who is walking through a palace of green ice. I don’t know how often I have passed those 4 lines without noticing them. Then one day I saw them, and stopped in mid-step, taken by surprise. Read the lines, and then recited them, first to myself, then to the others who waited in front of the yoga room:

Der Eisbär prustet und erklimmt
Den Eisberg, der im Wasser schwimmt
Und schreitet, groß und stark und weiß
Durch den Palast aus grünem Eis

The ice bear splutters and climbs over
The iceberg that swims in the water
And parades, great and strong and white
Through the palace of green ice

But back to yoga. The room, it is so well known that I woulnd't be able to tell the room number on the plate next to the door. It’s just the yoga room. Only that today, our teacher changed the pattern of the mats, and so everyone sits in another place, looking at our teacher who is happy as a cat about the slight confusion she caused. “See,” she says, and smiles, waiting for us to see.

Then she explains: “It’s the same room, but now you see it in a different way. This is because there are different levels of seeing. We see with our eyes, but to a bigger part, we see with our brain. And our brain tends to see things the way it used to see them. And doesn’t see things it doesn’t know, or it can’t relate to.”

Then she gets up, and turns the black board. There is a question on top of it: “Where do we see?” Beneath the question, she writes some words in Sanskrit, yoga terms that relate to the levels of seeing.

Manipurna – the physical level of seeing
Ajna – the understanding of what we see
Sahasrara – the ability to see everything

“The third one is for the experts,” she says and smiles again. “It’s symbol is a flower of 1000 petals. It equals the level of enlightment, and unfortunately isn’t part of the course.”
.

sprung

A week ago, I finished my year at a day job. I'm taking April off to recover my sense of perspective and enjoy weekdays--and figure out what I'm doing next. Between that and the extra hour of daylight, I'm delirious, a literal jailbird.



My image of the week comes from an unlikely source: a visit to the eye doctor. Somehow the veins and arteries (all healthy, she assured me) remind me of the moon. And of the importance of being able to see what's around you.

A happy howl at the full moon to all.

snapshots

seven little sparrows
pecking on the pavement,
picking up the crumbs
left by the big black
sleek male grackles
from the leftover buns
thrown out by my
neighbor leslie
earlier

disney on ice

imagine what it's like
to be a kid again,
going to the circus
or the rodeo.
you got to have a program,
if only for a
souvenir.

Riddle of the Bosch Pickle Jar

I did a project with my son to make rock candy,
and it became a photo op: Bosch Pickle Jar,
known otherwise as the Red Riddle.























The jar in the photo in the Bosch Pickle Jar link
is a Vlasic pickle jar, and here is another
version of that jar just above.

The jar contains sugar and syrup in water, and
strings are hanging from a paper platform at the
top.

The label on the jar (and its Stork) and the
sugar-coated strings (pretty good rock candy)
made an interesting presentation—especially the
way in which the smooth strings and smoother
glass surface contrasted with the jagged crystals
of rock candy and the turgid richness of the
sugar water.

However, the overall color of the resulting
photos was rather dull, and dullness is often
overcome by color.



















So, I converted the hue of the photos to a more
vibrant red, slightly orange shade, and I got what
looked to me to be a kind of Bosch hell.



















Bosch indeed.